In less than a month, it’s gonna be 7 years since Elliott Smith died in circumstances still unclear by many aspects,… we have discussed about it a lot on this blog.
People have said many things when he died, and here is a compilation of the best quotes I have found about him, from close friends and not so close friends, some admirative, some sweet or heartbreaking, some showing a beautiful but complex human being.
‘He was very sensitive. He was one of those bright, animated, thoughtful kids that you liked having in a class.’
David Bailey (former teacher)
‘As roommates, we were a great match if you like to be depressed all the time. It seemed like he was addicted to being sad. I think he worried that if he wasn’t sad, he wouldn’t be able to write songs anymore.’
Sean Croghan (musician and former roommate)
‘He almost shunned the stardom. I was with him many times when people recognized him, and he never got used to it, or really liked it. He never settled into fame, which ultimately fed his sadness.’
Christopher Cooper (owner of Cavity Search Records)
‘He never lets you on to which part of the lyric he’s lying about – that happiness or the sadness. And that’s Elliott.’
‘Like most great artists, he saw the world as both a beautiful and a brutal place. He found a way to explore the space in between those. Obviously, it’s all the more tragic in that his songs were a dialogue between love and loss. And in the end, he didn’t get the upper end of the conversation.’
Luke Wood (A&R DreamWorks Records)
‘Just over two years ago, people were scrambling around trying to get footage of Elliott Smith. I had maybe twenty hours of live stuff of him, but it’s all audio. I started thinking, “Why didn’t I just let somebody film him?” I regretted it, not because he’s dead, but because Elliott was, in my mind, one of the greatest songwriters ever. At Largo, his audience was always a mixture of people—Marilyn Manson, people off the street—but all total fans. And they loved him; really, really loved him and wanted him to do well, but we didn’t have any footage to remember it by.(…) I really wish that a lot of people who used to play at Largo were still around. I wish people like Mitch Hedberg and Elliott Smith were still here. In a way, I’m really proud that Elliott was a part of Largo and that I got to know him, but in a way, I just really wish he was here for the filming. I mean, I think Jon Brion and Grant and everyone else are brilliant, but Elliott was such a big part in the beginning and he would just tie the whole thing together.’
Mark Flanagan (owner of Largo)
‘He was really admirable as a person and as a star. There’s so much bullshit around, so many unhumble people who are all about the glitz and the glam and the bullshit. What we lost is a very, very, very, very truthful, honest star – I think both as a person and as a musician, as an artist. It’s really sad because he was just brutally, brutally honest. And very smart. And if you put the two together, it’s undeniably appealing.’
Russell Simins (Blues explosion)
“It’s so funny that here is this guy we all love who had, you know, one of the most beautiful minds for seeing the world in analogy, and therefore it made conversing with him a deep human pleasure, but yet at the same time he had that intense combination of heaps of self-doubt and self-assurance.’
‘And he also had another thing which, you know… everyone will attest to this, I think, any of us who knew him when he was on… long before he sunk and long before he left the planet… a lot of people who were close to him had a kind of love for him that you reserve for very few people in your life. He generated that kind of feeling in numerous people that I can think of. And it didn’t take some bad events to make some people reflect and think, ‘This is somebody I really care about.’ It was usually instantaneous and heavy.’
Jon Brion
‘But I thought to myself, Well, if you’re going to really care about this person, you have to be prepared for the fact that he might not make it.’
“He was very uncomfortable in his skin, but he was very confident about what he liked and what he believed in, and his music. He knew he was good.’
Autumn de Wilde (photographer)
‘Elliott was sort of actively involved in his own sort of mythmaking, and I think he was interested in that, and it was something that I kind of frowned on. I always felt like I didn’t want to facilitate that too much. Um… for various reasons, but I have to question if there isn’t some sort of petty reasons for it.’
Sam Coomes (Heatmiser, Quasi)
‘He was my best friend and he became iconic, and people couldn’t get enough of him, and you didn’t know – is he still my friend? But he would show up and of course he was, he’s Elliott, he didn’t treat me differently. Not totally differently. He made sure I knew that our relationship was intact. There was a lot of respect, and humor; but it was very frustrating to be around other people who were jockeying to get in. He would open himself up to them because he was such a compassionate person. He didn’t want to judge, so sometimes he opened himself up to really disgusting people. But he also wanted the attention.
[…]
“He made his own choices. He chose those weird, dark-sided people. When he bought the myth of being a rock star it was just unbelievably disappointing.’
Neil Gust (Heatmiser)
‘He was so warm and generous. I learned so much from him, not just musically, but in life as a whole. He was inspiring, hilarious, hyperintelligent and completely frustrating.
But there was always a lesson to be learned from his positives and negatives. I went over to his house so that he could help me out with a song I was stuck on. I needed some chord changes and some help with a melody (so why not ask the best, right?). We sit down at the piano together, go through the tune a couple of times, and begin to work on some chords and different melodies. He comes up with 10 different versions almost immediately. I asked him to show me again. And again. I was trying to keep up. He’s a far better piano player than I. Finally he gets frustrated and says, “You know, Aaron, maybe you should go home and work on this some more.” I left. I was pissed off. I was pissed at him for not having patience, and I was pissed at myself for not being able to hang. I picked up a six-pack and drove straight to the studio, where I sat at that piano determined to finish the tune. It was great, not only did I finish it, but, I used his ideas, embellished upon them and made them my own. The song has become one of my proudest achievements.’
Aaron Espinoza (Earlimart)
‘Elliott had a good people radar. Like he knew who he should have in his life. But then when… it’s almost as if, when he felt he couldn’t live up to his own expectations of what it took to maintain that relationship, he messed with it. You know. Sabotage.’
‘It still feels weird to him, but he understands that people are passionate about him and his songs. Some fans are just obsessed, and he’s really great with them. But it’s still awkward for him to walk into an airport or a restaurant and have people know who he is. He’s uncomfortable having a car sent for him. It definitely hasn’t gone to his head. He’s still Elliott.’
Margaret Mittleman (former manager)
‘I think the thing he doesn’t get credit for, and in some ways the truest thing about him, is that Elliott was hilarious. He was constantly joking, cracking people up, and I think that’s really the opposite of what most people think about with him.’
Slim Moon (founder of Kill Rock Stars)
‘Elliott was very encouraging to me about my songs, and that meant a lot to me. (…) I’ll always remember walking offstage one night after playing “It’s a Motherfucker” and Elliott walking up behind me in the dark and patting me on the back. That’s how I will remember him.’
Mark Everett (The Eels)
‘The new record is probably the most sad because it doesn’t sound like a man at the end of his rope. It’s just a very, very bright light. It’s an amazing record! In terms of development over the course of several records, it’s sort of his Abbey Road.’
Chris O’Riley (classical pianist)
‘If a song means a lot to me, I want it to mean a lot to the person who wrote it. I don’t really want the person to take a step back and say, ‘Oh, it has nothing to do with me, it was just an exercise. I read something in a book and thought, How intriguing.’ As an audience member, I feel a little let down when people back away from their own music. If I ever read an interview with Elliott Smith and he said, ‘Oh, it’s all totally fiction, I’m completely well-adjusted,’ I’d feel let down. I want to feel that he’s courageous enough to share things that are difficult and painful.’
Aimee Mann
‘I wanted to write about the Elliott Smith that I saw on tour, who seemed shy and fragile one minute then playing super aggressive basketball the next, whose music got me through some hard times, and when I felt bad about playing some gross club with profanity scrawled all over the ceiling, I knew Elliot was out there somewhere making beautiful music in the middle of the same kind of stink. Poets are inspired because they look up at the same sky that Wordsworth used to look at. I was inspired because I looked up at the same starscape of ‘Dookie,’ ‘Nirvana Sux’ and ‘Eat Me’ that Elliott used to look up at. Hopefully people will hear the song and five more people will go out and buy his records or think about what he meant. If it keeps him alive for another few minutes, then I accomplished what I wanted to do.’
Ben Folds
Quite a few famous people had heard about him too:
‘I think with Elliott, it’s word of mouth; because the media is too slow to catch on to people with that sort of talent. You know? ‘Cause it’s not a hyped-up, corporate record and word of mouth is crucial. And playing live.’
Ray Davies (The Kinks)
‘It’s literally the most important thing in the film. Elliott is like a character you can’t see. I can only compare the way his music works in the movie to Simon & Garfunkel’s songs in The Graduate.’
Minnie Driver (actress)
‘I’m just crazy about Elliott Smith’s From A Basement On The Hill – the lyrics, the music, everything about it is fantastic. There’s something about his vocal melodies that I love – they remind me of John Lennon and The Beatles. It’s sad music, yes, but I don’t feel sad when I hear it and I listen to it all the time. And when I listen to it, I think about nothing else. It’s beautiful.
Joaquin Phoenix (actor)