This Elliott Smith celebration was a total intimate and familial affair as it is always the case at Largo. August 6th should have been his 44th anniversary but it was not the occasion for tears and sadness, on the contrary it was a fun fun night, with the right amount of laugh, smile, and moving moments.
I didn’t know exactly know what to expect as Jon Brion had insisted to keep the line up to secret, but, at one exception, there were no big Hollywood stars invited, it was the Largo crowd, people I had seen there before in their comfortable surrounding, performing in front of the red curtain which was used for the night as a screen for the projection of a slide show made by Autumn de Wilde. All night long, people played and sang Elliott Smith’s songs in the most casual and relaxed manner, telling stories and anecdotes with a lot of humor, in front of this constant Elliott slide show. Most of the people who performed on stage were friends or at least had known Elliott at one point, and there wasn’t any bullshit involved, no famous rock star invited on the spot to perform a song of someone that had never met, no last-minute fake admirers, all the performers had witnessed Elliott’s brilliance and all of them loved him.
Elliott’s half sister Ashley had organized these 4-city series of shows to celebrate his brother’s music and life, and she showed up at the beginning to promote the merchandize (t-shirts with Autumn de Wilde’s photographs and posters) benefiting the charity Free Arts For Abused Children, and showing real emotion when talking about the numerous nights spent at the old club Largo with Elliott.
Close friend Jon Brion, who was sort of hosting the night, was drinking beer after beer along the way, as if he wanted to stay in a happy drunken mood – may be to avoid to get too much emotional? During three hours (it curiously didn’t seem that long) several performers and comedians: Karen Kilgariff, Tom Brosseau, David Garza, Aaron Espinoza, Sean Watkins, Shon Sullivan, Jill Sobule,… tried to interpret Elliott’s classics, sometimes even playing his own guitars and the piano he used at Largo, sometimes playing a few covers, like Nico’s ‘I’ll be Your Mirror’, Vaya Condios My Darling’, Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’, Willie Nelson’s ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’, David Bowie’s ‘All the Young Dudes’, Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’… because, according to Largo owner Mark Flanagan, Elliott would have been embarrassed to hear his songs all night long. Flanagan shared a few funny stories about Elliott, like the one about Paul McCartney who was once doing an intimate show at Largo. Excited, Flanagan told Elliott that McCartney was there, but contrarily to everyone’s expectations, Elliott said he’d ‘bolt this door shut before that guy comes in here!’ I guess it was too much for him, or he felt he should never meet his idols, and that night Paul McCartney ended meeting everyone at Largo but Elliott.
Back in the 90s, Elliott hesitated to come play at Largo, because ‘Largo was fancy’ whereas ‘he wasn’t fancy’ but he nevertheless played there for years, building a strong friendship with the resident musicians, and the whole show had the warmth feeling of a close family reunion. Everyone had something to say about Elliott, Jon Brion, of course, who told us how he met Elliott through Mary Lou Lord. She was singing ‘Half Right’, and he asked her, ’Any of his other songs that good?’ ‘All of them’ she answered. And it was the beginning of a mutual admiration and long friendship, ‘a lovely and delightful era’ as Brion said. A cute and very young summer intern did ‘Between the Bars’, then comedian Karen Kilgariff struggled with the lows and the highs of ‘Pictures of Me’, but she was so funny and sincere that it was difficult to blame her. ‘I hate my voice’ she said Elliott had told her… and Karen was trying to explain it wasn’t possible to hate something she loved so much, expressing her admiration for someone who was writing ‘music to you, about you, for you’…’How does he know about my depression, my alcoholism?’
Talking about fancy, the String Quartet, a musical ensemble of four string players, did fancy renditions of ‘Speed Trials’, ‘Rose Parade’ as well as a few others a little later, and the evening became a relaxed succession of performers playing two songs and sometimes a cover, interrupted by jokes and stories, often complemented by Jon Brion’s participation.
Autumn de Wilde came on stage to read a few excerpts of her book (her personal therapy after her friend’s death), telling a few anecdotes like the one about the $40 that Elliott once put in a jukebox, the songs he couldn’t bear to listen, and the time when he took mushrooms and listened for Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road for 18 hours straight before composing ‘Waltz #1’. Shon Sullivan told us about the time when Elliott delayed a plane by stopping in the middle of the boarding area and tying his shoes forever, while Sullivan was been searched by the airport security. Jill Sobule admitted she had to ask for the tuning of ‘Clementine’ on Twitter, ‘and there was a fight!’ she said laughing
The whole night was a friend celebration, with no star in view, not even Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, or other big name Largo regulars, just Jon Brion interpreting a lot of songs with his strange modulating vocals. I didn’t remember this about him, may be it was too much beer, the emotion of the night, or just his current singing voice, but he sounded weird at times. During the long night, he did ‘No Name #1’ (that we heard twice during the night), ‘Half Right’, ’Coming Up Roses’, Pretty (Ugly) Before’, ‘Happiness’, ‘Ballad of Big Nothing’, The White Lady Loves You More’, ‘A Passing Feeling’, alone or with the help of Sullivan and Garza. Shon Sullivan’s rendition of ‘Everything Means Nothing to Me’ and ‘Lost and Found, Sean Watkins’ ‘Ptiseleh’, Aaron Espinoza’s ‘Punch and Judy’ and ‘Waltz #2 (XO)’, and David Garza’s ‘Los Angeles’ were particularly moving, but you could tell that the difficult songs were played with more or less ease and more or less success by the various performers,… Brion talked about the experience of going back to all these songs with a nostalgic tone, he was not really sad, but you could palpate the emotion filtering through his smile.
Then Jack Black showed up to do a very personal rendition of ‘Say Yes’, re-starting the song over and over, declaring with a large smile ‘Fuuuuuck stop! I’m not the right guy for this!… But I don’t care how many times I have to do this.’ It was funny even though it was probably a comedy ploy. Just after, his sidekick Kyle Glass joined him on stage to do a very Tenacious D Beatles medley because ‘Elliott loved the Beatles’… Jack Black, intense and hyperactive as usual, had a few very emotional words to say about Elliott, he called us ‘Elliott Smith heads’, and described Elliott’s music as ‘burnt into his brain’.
Elliott Smith heads? That was the point! All night long, they made us feel special, as if we had a special privilege to know Elliott Smith’s music and to be there… We listened to these special recordings of Elliott performing at Largo with lumps in our throats, and we sang along when invited to do so. The crowd was extremely silent and respectful all night long,… I am not even sure many people were expecting big music names to show up, Elliott Smith’s music was the star of the show and it was performed by people who deeply cared about it, that was enough. May be some people got upset about the loose atmosphere of the show and the flippancy of some performers, joking in the middle of a song or even butchering it because they weren’t real musicians/singers? I wasn’t upset at all, Elliott was the last person to take himself seriously, and I’d like to think he would have laughed a lot last night.
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