The Wake

My friend Perry’s stereo was broken last month. For some reason, the bass on the album he was listening to was not playing through the speakers. His roommate Alec, a good friend of mine, decided to test another CD to see if it was perhaps some glitch exclusive to Perry’s CD. He grabbed Elliott Smith’s fifth full-length album, Figure 8. When the sparkling guitar and complimentary piano hits of first track “Son of Sam” kicked in, Alec and I suddenly realized just how long it had been since we had heard the album.

Within a couple minutes, Alec had fixed the stereo and we were able to hear the CD’s full splendor. Instead of switching back to Perry’s CD, we listened to the next few tracks, continually expressing our astonishment at Smith’s songwriting abilities. It’s not like we had forgotten the songs, but Elliott Smith’s music is the kind that draws you in and compels you to utter some kind of comment, even if it’s a simple “wow.” The influence of The Beatles and Nick Drake is undeniable, but Smith’s music is all his own. Gifted with a delicate, weightless voice that bears with it the robust and heavy topics of the world, Smith’s fragile croon always sounded as if it could fall apart at any given moment. But it never did.

About a month later, at approximately 12:18 p.m. on October 21, Elliott Smith was pronounced dead due to an alleged self-inflicted stab wound to the chest. He was found in his L.A. apartment an hour prior to his death by his live-in girlfriend, who rushed him to the medical center at the Los Angeles County University. Although the coroner reports say that the death was likely a suicide, official word of his death is still pending toxicological tests and police investigation. However, one thing was doggedly clear: At the age of 34, the world was forced to say goodbye to Elliott Smith.

Elliott Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska on August 6, 1969. He was a precocious, musical prodigy, whose early songwriting talent won him an award in Dallas at the age of ten. Music stayed with him for the remainder of his life. Although he was a member of a few bands, the most famous being Heatmiser, it is his solo career that best exemplifies his musical virtuosity.

His first solo album, Roman Candle (1994), was released on a small independent label called Cavity Search, while Elliott Smith (1995), and Either/Or (1997) followed on the renown independent label, Kill Rock Stars. Mainstream success was just around the corner when Smith was nominated by the Academy for his musical contribution “Miss Misery” to Good Will Hunting, and was quite literally forced to play the song live at the awards. Soon after, major label DreamWorks released the critically acclaimed albums XO (1998) and Figure 8 (2000) to an even broader audience.

At the time of his death, Smith was working on his sixth full-length; under the working title From A Basement on the Hill. In an attempt to reconnect with the fans who had supported him since his earlier releases, Smith was planning on releasing the reportedly 30+ track double album on an independent label of his choice, instead of DreamWorks (given the circumstances, the decision is now be left up to his family). Unlike previous albums, Smith was planning to try and sell as many copies of the new album as he could, with the money intended for the foundation for abused children that he had started shortly after the release of Figure 8.

However, Smith was dealing with much more than just songwriting in the last year of his life. In November 2002, Smith stirred up quite the controversy at a Flaming Lips/Beck show, finding himself spending a night locked behind bars. Because of poor media reporting, most fans only understood that Smith got into a scuffle with the police and was consequently thrown into jail. Smith, however, claimed in an interview with Under the Radar that he and his girlfriend were victims of needless police brutality by off-duty officers working security. The brutality was enough to get Smith back on a “strict regiment of pain pills,” which concerned Smith and his girlfriend because of his recent victory over his past drug addictions.

In the same interview, conducted around spring this year, Smith talked about how some songs intended for From A Basement on the Hill were stolen off his computer and “wound up in the hands of certain people who work at a certain label.” He also believed that he had been followed around for months at a time. Needless to say, Elliott Smith had a lot on his plate.

Many journalists labeled Elliott Smith simply as a “punk-folk singer-songwriter.” But he was so much more. He was shy and reserved, a philanthropist, a person who fostered the “do-it-together” mentality over “do-it-yourself,” a person who battled his addiction head-on, a person whose only requirement was a guitar and microphone to interface between his soul and the rest of the world. In the song “Sweet Adeline,” Smith sings, “It’s a picture perfect evening and I’m staring down the sun/ Fully loaded deaf and dumb and done/ Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head/ Or any situation where I’m better off than dead.” After retrospectively reading his lyrics, one can’t help but wonder just how much of his lyrics are autobiographical. But whether the clues to his death are imbedded in the lyrics or not is trivial. We have lost a prominent voice of our generation, and he will be sorely missed.

After Alec and I listened to a few more songs from Figure 8, we told Perry that he could switch back to his CD if he wanted. Not surprisingly, he instead chose to listen to the rest of what is now Elliott Smith’s last officially-released album.