I’m dedicating this week to Elliott Smith, an artist who numbers among my favorites but who for some reason has gotten very short shrift on the blog up until now. In fact, I’ve featured only one of his songs over the 721 preceding this one (I did write about a cover of another Elliott Smith song, so I suppose that’s technically two).
I’ll make up for that this week by highlighting songs from five of his albums, starting with his self-titled 1995 release. This actually wasn’t his first album… that would be 1994’s Roman Candle, which for some reason I don’t have in my CD collection. That album followed a three-year stint with a band called Heatmiser, and those early years form the missing piece in my Elliott Smith knowledge.
But the Elliott Smith album feels like a good starting point, providing the basic template that he would build on over the rest of his short life. The songs on this album are short and stark, generally featuring just Smith’s vocals and his intricate acoustic guitar work. Several are about drugs, either directly or indirectly, and all are about as sad as can be.
The best known song on this album is probably ‘Needle in the Hay,’ the raw opening track that Wes Anderson used to score Richie Tenenbaum’s suicide attempt in The Royal Tenenbaums. Another of my favorites is the poignant ‘The Biggest Lie,’ which is the track I featured on the blog nearly two years ago.
‘Clementine’ is a lovely little captured moment… a man drunk in a bar after hours mourns the demise of a relationship as the bartender sings the title song. Smith would go on to pen dozens of songs as painfully delicate as this one.
The street’s wet, you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender’s singing ‘Clementine’
While he’s turning around the open sign
“Dreadful sorry, Clementine”
Though you’re still her man
It seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing’s wrong
What if she thinks so but just didn’t say so?
You drank yourself into slow-mo
Made an angel in the snow
Anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of your mind
“Oh, my darling
Oh, my darling
Oh, my darling Clementine
Dreadful sorry, Clementine”
Meet Me In Montauk 
Such a great talent. So sad that his demons overcame him. If only he had befriended Jesus.:)
I don’t know Elliott Smith at all. I just know OF him. So when I just read that he was nominated for an Academy Award, I was intrigued to think that I (along with millions of others) must have seen him perform live at least once, though we didn’t likely know what we were witnessing – namely a man who was loathe to be where he was but more disgusted at the notion of someone else singing his song.
Watching that performance now, knowing that he would be dead five years later, makes me wonder about so many artists who walk that edge. How often do we see a performance or listen to an acceptance speech by someone who seems not at all at ease with the fame that accompanies the life of an artist. Apparently, Smith was in and out of rehab but it never stuck. And many, many people knew he was suicidal, yet nobody could keep him from ultimately hurting himself.
I tend to think that someone who has so many “handlers” (not that Smith had as many as some celebrities) should be protected from this end. The other day I saw photos of Lindsey Lohan as she was sentenced to jail and wondered if Robert Downey had reached out to her. There ought to be some special AA meetings for those who suffer their addictions under the white hot lights of TMZ and the National Enquirer.
Hasn’t Smith been the subject of a couple of songs by other musical artists? How many people were friends with him but couldn’t help him? So sad.
You’ll see a mention of that Oscar performance in tomorrow’s post. It was quite the surreal “fish out of water” moment for a guy like him, even setting aside his problems with addiction.
Ben Folds wrote the song ‘Late’ for Smith (I featured it as a SOTD last year). I’m sure there are others but I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
I remembered you featuring that song. Maybe Counting Crows, too? I look foward to learning more about Smith this week.