Getting to Know Elliott Smith...Elliott

By Julie Simmons | Music Journalist

I remember feeling I needed to take the day off. Elliott Smith had just died. No one seemed to understand. I could hardly understand why I was so affected by someone I didn't know.

Like many, the first time I heard his music was when I listened to the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting. It was the winter of 1997. To warm the tips of my frostbitten ears, I slipped on a pair of communal headphones at the Tower Records on Clark St in Chicago. Racks of CDs vanished as my vision surrendered to the sound of “Between the Bars (Orchestral).” I followed the wire to the corresponding plastic jewel box and saw Robin Williams next to a guy and a goldenrod backdrop. I guess this is why I’ve been listening to him every autumn since 1998. It’s classical conditioning.

I skipped to track 3, “Angeles,” by Elliott Smith and listened as his gentle voice floated on top of a carefully selected patchwork of chords. From there, I went backwards -- as new fans often do -- consuming every solo album he ever made (and Heatmiser) pre Good Will Hunting. My admiration for his work grew stronger the further back I dug. Seeing him live became my next goal.

Soundtrack cover to Good Will Hunting

I saw him once at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago on October 9, 1998. There's that fall theme again.

Before the show, I remember going across the street from the venue to grab a bite to eat.

There he is.

Elliott Smith was with his backing band, Quasi. And he was eating a bratwurst.

“Did you go up to him?” A friend of mine later asked me.

No.

This was an honorable moment when you just stand there as the voice in your head narrates, that’s Elliott Smith eating a bratwurst and you’re always going to remember this moment because it’s when you realized that he was just a human. Everyone in the tiny meat shack knew it was him, but I didn’t see anyone approach him. I think we were all just saying wow in our heads. He and his band left for the venue. The rest of us followed.

Among fans, it’s become cliché to offer witness testimony that when he performed, especially later in his career, there was a collaborative hush inside the venue.

But, it’s true.

And, let me explain why this was different from anything else I'd witnessed before or have witnessed since.

Even among a respectful crowd, there was always the sound of bartenders prying open caps and tossing dead bottles into a mass grave of glass. All this happened except during the song, “Between the Bars.” Without command, the entire venue fell silent.

A holy moment.

Every time he inhaled in preparation for the next verse, it sounded like the back end of a sob. There was collective receptivity as one man opened a vessel and channeled his talents from the depths of his soul. If a recording of that show exists, somewhere, I’m fairly certain I yelped at the opening chords of him playing a cover of George Harrison’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).” The sting of nostalgia made me do it. I'm sorry.

Next, I wanted to interview him.

Elliott Smith

I had tickets to see him perform (with Grandaddy opening) at The Vic in Chicago on November 3, 2000 but I was traveling for work and couldn't go. By 2001, the media had drained him. He looked tired and he had personal struggles. As much as I wanted to interview him, I never did. I never even tried. Instead, I ended up meeting him after he died on October 21, 2003.

Grandaddy is on record for touring with him the most. I was scheduled to interview Grandaddy’s lead guitarist, Jim Fairchild, about a week after his death. I’d interviewed Jim during the band's previous tour. Back then, he told me about hanging out with Elliott and how they were close friends. So knowing what had just happened earlier that week, I asked if Jim was still up for the interview. 

He was.

We met in the basement of the Congress Theater in Chicago. We sat in a white room I hardly remember. It was so stark, or maybe I drained out all the visual distractions so we could have this moment in a vacuum.

Jim was still visibly distraught. Though we both tried to talk about other matters, the conversation kept coming back to Elliott. I observed quietly as he knuckled the inside corners of his eyes to press tears back into their ducts. He shared a lot of memories yet spoke of his friend's character in the present tense. During the interview, my journalistic agenda shifted from the original story idea to a feature story about the death of Elliott to most of this being too private to share publicly.

When the interview was over, Jim asked me unselfishly, “Did you get what you needed?”

I looked at my mini cassette tape recorder and realized that although the red light was on, I had accidentally slipped a dial into pause mode.

Nothing recorded.

I nodded, “Yeah.”

There's a lot I've forgotten about that conversation, but I remember Jim saying that Elliott was very sensitive. If he knew a friend was suffering, it would often keep him up at night, trying to figure out how he could help even if he was the one who was really suffering the most.

The next day, I met with the lead singer and guitarist for Earlimart, Aaron Espinoza. Aaron was also close friends with Elliott. Not only was he featured in the documentary, Heaven Adores You, the movie title is from an Earlimart song by the same name. A week later, I received an email from another friend of Elliott's in the band, Panty Lions. He needed to process what happened too.

You can learn a lot about a person in the early days following their death. Before opinions have been boiled down into little anecdotes, before friends and family have formed their unofficial press releases, there are just memories. Through the raw, convoluted memories of his friends, I finally got to know Elliott a little better.

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To listen to "Between the Bars"

To learn more about the documentary "Heaven Adores You"

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