The ‘Place Pigalle’ French Girlfriend Reacts To Some Pages Of Schultz’s Biography

I don’t know of many articles mentioning that particular story, actually I couldn’t find any English articles mentioning it, not even the one the journalist is referring to in this article published by ‘Les Inrocks’, but a few french magazines (http://www.humanite.fr/node/413155) show more curiosity, intrigued no doubt by the worktitle Elliott Smith had chosen for what was to become ‘Figure 8’. This is the translation of what was written in ‘Eight heaven’ published in Les Inrocks in 2000:

‘Before anything, let’s clear up a few-week-old mystery regarding the title of Elliott Smith’s fifth album. In January, an English monthly did announce that the American prodigy’s new album would be called Place de Gaulle. Elliott is still the only person worrying that he could be assigned such approximate knowledge of Parisian places: ‘I know that there is no place de Gaulle in Paris! In fact, the working title I used for the album was Place Pigalle, where I lived for several months when I was in Paris last year. I remember having spelled it on the phone to the journalist, but he did not understand or didn’t want to. I am very unhappy to have come across as a phony to the French public.‘

In 1999, Elliott spent some time in Paris at the end of the XO tour, and some French articles actually venture to mention a “coup de foudre” for a French girl he met there. He came back from London to stay in Paris for a short spell in April and May, and then invited her to stay with him in New York in early June. I’ve been communicating with her for a few years now, and I even met her in Paris several years ago. What she told me explains the “Place Pigalle” song and sheds a different light on possible meanings behind some of Figure 8 songs.

As someone who knew Elliott, she is entitled to give her opinion about some pages of Schultz’s book, and this is what she had to say on a few interesting points. She’s generally not interested in going public about Elliott, but some paragraphs in the book annoyed her enough that she was willing to peep for once. 

At the beginning of the book, Schultz writes about a dream that Elliott had about Courtney Love: “the context was sexual, but more too: Love signified fame. To have her, he realized later in thinking the dream over, was to have it’. J. Chiba is even claiming in the book that Elliott romanticized and envied Cobain’s suicide.” This is what she  has to say about it:

‘The Cobain alleged ‘fascination’, I don’t know where Chiba gets that from, if she’s lying or if he had changed that much over the course of a couple of years, but in 1999, he was absolutely not romanticizing or envying Cobain’s suicide (what a lousy turn of phrase btw!). If anything, he was more feeling sorry for the man than anything else! Really like “poor bugger”… and believe me, there was not an ounce of admiration or fascination for Cobain’s fate at the time. He told me about one C. Love dream, maybe it’s the same & maybe it’s not, the whole Oscars circus was not that long ago by the time he told me, and Love had been pursuing him with some obstination and vulgarity (not unlike Chiba herself…). He also told me about one occurrence IRL when Love and Stipe tried to make him see the light, tell him what he should do to get more exposure, how to navigate his nascent fame. He told this with some kind of bewildered disgust. That was for real, and the dream was about Courtney Love & himself making love at her dogged request (something of a rape, actually), even though the outstanding thing in that dream wasn’t that fact at all: he said, with again  a fair amount of disgust in his voice, that Frances Bean was there watching (she was six or seven at the time, but even younger in the dream), and her mother wanted her there. That’s what was really disturbing to him. So if this was some kind of rumination about fame, that wasn’t a pretty one. And if it had anything to do with “obsession”, then they’re certainly Elliott’s very own, looming larger & deeper than Cobain! He wasn’t naive about fame. He could deal with it, and part of him wanted it. But fame has weird twists that maybe outsmarted him.”

Chiba told Schultz how she met Elliott, if you want to read the whole meeting, it is described (by Chiba obviously) pages 260-3. She basically says they met at Spaceland where Chiba had just finished playing a gig with the Warlocks. Steve Hanft was there, and Elliott asked for an introduction. Chiba and he then talked about Russian literature, Ferdinand the bull, ‘one of Chiba’s favorites from childhood too’, while being shy, looking at their shoes, and Elliott feeling ‘really uncomfortable’. It was during the summer of 1999, Elliott had just moved to Los Angeles, and he ‘didn’t even know his phone number’. ‘Elliott asked for hers, then gave her the number of Mittleman’s assistant’. There is even a sentence explaining that Chiba didn’t want to get involved as ‘she’d recently ended a 10-year relationship with Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, and in the moment she didn’t feel she could deal with being in the public eye again.’ When they met again, at her next gig, they talked more, discovering surprising commonalities, such as Chiba’s hospitalization for depression and suicidal thinking, even comparing their medications… Actually, all this wasn’t a surprise for my French friend:

“That part amuses me for various reasons! Notably because you can tell she thinks she’s so special, when we know how easily he’d hook up with anyone, really, and the M.O. could be misleading! Anyway…Chiba tells & doesn’t tell the same story to Schultz that she told Vox Pop (a french Magazine that interviewed Chiba); it’s funny because I was about to write that I was pretty sure it was actually her that had asked Hanft for an introduction (logical deduction…) & re-reading the VP piece, she actually admits to it, which is hilarious to me: rewriting history to her advantage, possibly by now she DOES think she remembers it happened this way.”

This is the translation of what Vox Pop wrote in 2010:

“We briefly met at the Rockfest festival, but it’s later, after he had moved to Los Angeles, that I asked my friend Steve to introduce me”… the rest is a repeat of Schultz’s paragraph.

“She doesn’t mention anymore any previous meeting (you can logically deduce that she failed to interest him then, in Rockfest !)”, adds my French friend. “Interesting. She wanted him, and she sure worked at it, but she tries to make it look like some wildly romantic coup de foudre – by very slow degrees then! It all sounds so phony and starstruck, it really has the fan quality, her little narrative! Like “the Ferdinand story, one of Chiba’s favorite from childhood, TOO” That tiny word “too” makes me laugh out loud! Trying to create that sense of connectedness, sameness , of “we were meant to be together because Ferdinand is a favorite” thing! Typical fan fantasy. Ferdinand wasn’t especially any fav of Elliott. It came later on, when he was a young adult & the story came handy! He told it so many times, but fans like her keep making the mistake of modeling themselves to create fake bounds between yourself & the Idol, and they often do it in a sloppy way! She sounds like a 13-year old, not some mature woman. (btw, the amusing thing is : I’m ready to bet Ferdinand wasn’t either any kind of favorite to her but she forced the mistaken connection! Lol…)

I’ll add as a footnote that when I met him, he wasn’t “really uncomfortable” at all! And the phone number thing is also quite funny: he had a very good memory for numbers! So even if maybe he had not quite memorized his brand new L.A. phone number yet, he knew Margaret Mittleman’s phone numbers by heart, so to me, knowing that what he gave her was only that of MM’s assistant is odd and speaks of cautiousness! Do I need to add that he had a cellphone as well?”

Later in the book, Schultz writes that they had ‘reached a provisional agreement: ‘Neither of us would hurt ourselves’. This either didn’t sound right for my French friend:

“As for the “provisional agreement” of neither hurting oneself, it was also common talk from E. Routine talk, almost! Honestly, he’s really just politely declining the prospect of a relationship with her, in terms she can romanticize (since she’s fond of the word)! I don’t know, the way it’s told, she wants to make it sound oh-so-very-romeo&julietesque but it’s just E being E, dodging and trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings! At this point, the bottom line is: he’s not interested! And if you read between the lines, you can see she’s already sort of pressing him (“what do you propose we do about this?” “she told him she’d always been there” – I’m really having good fun reading her clumsy report! Undeterred, you bet…”

In the lawsuit, Chiba claimed she was romantically involved with Elliott since 1999, but based on this, there is just no relationship at that time! She’s just an acquaintance, maybe a “friend”, but nothing more.

 About the treatment reserved to Valerie Deerin in the book, I couldn’t agree more with my friend, Schultz writes for example that ‘for Elliott it was no more than a tour hook-up at first. In most ways he and Deerin had very little in common. Unlike JJ and Joanna, unlike Chiba, with whom Elliott was still only ‘friends’, she was not artistically inclined. She also lacked the sort of inner chaos Elliott was usually attracted to. She wasn’t troubled, at least not in the beginning, and she was no introspective brooder’,… Yet Deerin pursued him, she wanted badly to be his girlfriend’

Is it because Valerie refused to talk to you that you treat her so well, Todd? Anyway, this is what my friend had to say:

“I think it’s nearly insulting, the way Schultz is dismissing her, & in some sort of teenage way. Like what he’s saying, exactly? (I’m trying to think “teenage” again) she’s not interesting or “profound” because of lacking “inner chaos”? what a laugh! She is not “artistically inclined” ? Now, that’s a sound girl! Possibly exactly what Elliott may have needed at that point in his life, possibly tired of the arty – long suffering type? I can only say this: once he told me “I like it that you have your own thing” . Once again, E. wasn’t too keen on people trying to model themselves after what they imagined it was like being like him. That’s one thing he definitely didn’t like about being marginally famous, the long string of copycats. Chiba tries to build her case on a supposed “likeness”, and you can be certain that’s one thing he would have resented at least as long as he was his usual insightful self. Love is about alterity, not sameness (not to mention fake likeness!). I don’t know about “adoration”, though. Liberal use of the “adore” word, except the one time he uses it in Place Pigalle, everyone hears “endures” (!!!) So, Deerin tagged along? Again, insulting way of putting it, when she succeeded where Chiba consistently failed… I don’t know Valerie Deerin, but I do know that Valerie Deerin did the opposite of pulling him under, which is much more than can be said of Chiba. Schultz can mock the selflessness of taking the nursemaid role seriously, what does he mean? That Elliott should have died sooner? Unpleasant whiff of something bloated & ugly, there…Funnily enough, when it’s Chiba’s melodramatic turn to “save” him, it all becomes glorious & beautiful.”

She could only react to the few excerpts I gave her, but maybe she’ll have more to say.