Steven Paul Smith (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003), known as Elliott Smith, was an American musician and singer-songwriter. Raised primarily in Texas, he lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he gained popularity in the 1990s. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. His work was distinguished by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin" vocal style, his "artful chord changes," and his themes of "addiction, depression, and alienation.". The New Musical Express (NME) described him as a "widely adored singer-songwriter," who "touched countless lives with his compelling musicianship and lyricism."
After playing in the rock band Heatmiser for several years, Smith began his solo career in 1994, with releases on the independent record labels Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars (KRS). In 1997, he signed a contract with DreamWorks Records, for which he recorded his final two albums. Smith's song "Miss Misery", recorded for the film Good Will Hunting (1997), was nominated for the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Song.
A recovering heavy drinker and drug user, Smith was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression. His struggle with substances and mental illness affected his life and work, and often appeared in his lyrics. He died at his Los Angeles home from two stab wounds to the chest at age 34 in 2003. The autopsy evidence did not determine whether the wounds were self-inflicted. At the time of his death, Smith was working on his album From a Basement on the Hill, which was posthumously produced and released in 2004.
Early life Steven Paul Smith was born on August 6, 1969, at the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, the only child of Gary Smith, a student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Bunny Kay Berryman, an elementary school music teacher. His parents divorced when he was six months old, and Smith moved with his mother to Duncanville, Texas. He had half-siblings through his mother, Darren Welch and Ashley Welch, and a half-sister Rachel Smith through his father. Smith later had a map of Texas tattooed on his upper arm and said: "I didn't get it because I like Texas, kind of the opposite. But I won't forget about it, although I'm tempted to because I don't like it there."
Smith endured a difficult childhood and a troubled relationship with his stepfather Charlie Welch. Smith stated he may have been sexually abused by Welch at a young age—an allegation denied by Welch. He wrote about this part of his life in "Some Song". The name "Charlie" also appears in songs "Flowers for Charlie" and "No Confidence Man". In a 2004 interview, Jennifer Chiba, Smith's partner at the time of his death, said that Smith's difficult childhood was partly why he needed to sedate himself with drugs as an adult: "He was remembering traumatic things from his childhood – parts of things. It's not my place to say what."
For much of his childhood, Smith's family was a part of the Community of Christ but began attending services at a local Methodist church. Smith felt that going to church did little for him, except make him "really scared of Hell". In 2001, he said: "I don't necessarily buy into any officially structured version of spirituality. But I have my own version of it."
Smith began playing piano at age nine, and at ten began learning guitar on a small acoustic guitar bought for him by his father. At this age he composed an original piano piece, "Fantasy", which won him a prize at an arts festival. Many of the people on his mother's side of the family were non-professional musicians; his grandfather was a Dixieland drummer, and his grandmother sang in a glee club.
At fourteen, Smith left his mother's home in Texas and moved to Portland, Oregon, to live with his father, who was then working as a psychiatrist. It was around this time that Smith began using drugs, including alcohol, with friends. He also began experimenting with recording for the first time after borrowing a four-track recorder. At high school, Smith played clarinet in the school band and played guitar and piano; he also sang in the bands Stranger Than Fiction and A Murder of Crows, billed as either Steven Smith or "Johnny Panic". His bandmates included Jason Hornick. He graduated from Lincoln High School as a National Merit Scholar.
After graduation, Smith began calling himself "Elliott", saying that he thought "Steve" sounded too much like a "jock" name, and that "Steven" sounded "too bookish". According to friends, he had also used the pseudonym "Elliott Stillwater-Rotter" during his time in the band A Murder of Crows. Biographer S. R. Shutt speculates that the name was either inspired by Elliott Avenue, a street that Smith had lived on in Portland, or that it was suggested by his then-girlfriend. A junior high acquaintance of Smith speculates Smith changed his name so as not to be confused with Steve Smith, the drummer of Journey.
Career
1991–1996: Heatmiser
In 1991, Smith graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in philosophy and political science. "Went straight through in four years", he explained to Under the Radar in 2003. "I guess it proved to myself that I could do something I really didn't want to for four years. Except I did like what I was studying. At the time it seemed like, 'This is your one and only chance to go to college and you had just better do it because some day you might wish that you did.' Plus, the whole reason I applied in the first place was because of my girlfriend, and I had gotten accepted already even though we had broken up before the first day." His undergrad senior thesis was titled "Toward a Post-Structuralist Feminist Jurisprudence" and was heavily inspired by feminist theorist Catharine Mackinnon. After he graduated, he "worked in a bakery back in Portland with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and legal theory".
While at Hampshire College, Smith formed the band Heatmiser with classmate Neil Gust. After Smith graduated from Hampshire, the band added drummer Tony Lash and bassist Brandt Peterson and began performing around Portland in 1992. Hardcover edition The group released the albums Dead Air (1993) and Cop and Speeder (1994), as well as the Yellow No. 5 EP (1994) on Frontier Records. They were then signed to Virgin Records to release what became their final album Mic City Sons (1996).
Around this time, Smith and Gust worked a number of odd jobs around Portland, including installing drywall, spreading gravel, transplanting bamboo trees, and painting the roof of a warehouse with heat reflective paint. The pair were also on unemployment benefits for some time, which they considered an "artist grant".
Smith had begun his solo career while still in Heatmiser, and the success of his first two releases created distance and tension with his band. Heatmiser disbanded prior to the release of Mic City Sons, prompting Virgin to put the album out inauspiciously through its independent arm Caroline Records. A clause in Heatmiser's record contract with Virgin meant that Smith was still bound to it as an individual. The contract was later bought out by DreamWorks prior to the recording of his album XO.
1994: Roman Candle
In the early 1990s, Smith's girlfriend at the time convinced him to send a tape of songs he had recently recorded on a borrowed four-track to Cavity Search Records. Cavity owner Christopher Cooper asked to release the entire album of songs, which surprised Smith, as he was expecting only a deal for a seven-inch record. The album became Smith's release Roman Candle (1994).
Smith said: "I thought my head would be chopped off immediately when it came out because at the time it was so opposite to the grunge thing that was popular ... The thing is that album was really well received, which was a total shock, and it immediately eclipsed [Heatmiser], unfortunately." Smith felt his solo songs were not representative of the music Heatmiser was making: "The idea of playing [my music] for people didn't occur to me ... because at the time it was the Northwest—Mudhoney and Nirvana—and going out to play an acoustic show was like crawling out on a limb and begging for it to be sawed off."
One of Smith's first solo performances was in Portland at the now-defunct Umbra Penumbra on September 17, 1994. Only three songs from Roman Candle were performed, with the majority of the ten-song set being B-sides, Heatmiser tunes and unreleased tracks. The same year, Smith released a split 7-inch record with Pete Krebs via Slo-Mo Records, contributing the track "No Confidence Man".
1995–1997: Elliott Smith and Either/Or
In 1995, Smith's self-titled album was released on Kill Rock Stars; the record featured a style of recording similar to Roman Candle, but with hints of growth and experimentation. Though the majority of the album was recorded by Smith alone, friend and The Spinanes vocalist Rebecca Gates sang harmony vocals on "St. Ides Heaven", and Heatmiser guitarist Neil Gust played guitar on "Single File". Several songs made reference to drugs, but Smith explained that he used the theme of drugs as a vehicle for conveying dependence rather than the songs being about drugs specifically. Looking back, Smith felt that the album's pervasive mood gave him "a reputation for being a really dark, depressed person" and said that he later made a conscious move toward more diverse moods in his music.
In 1996, filmmaker Jem Cohen recorded Smith playing acoustic songs for the short film Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait. Two of these songs would appear on his next album Either/Or, which was another Kill Rock Stars release. Either/Or came out in 1997 to favorable reviews. The album found Smith venturing further into full instrumentation, with several songs containing bass guitar, drums, keyboards, and electric guitars, all played by Smith. The album title was derived from the two-volume book of the same name by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, whose works generally deal with themes such as existential despair, angst, death, and God.
By this time, Smith's already-heavy drinking was being compounded with use of antidepressants. At the end of the Either/Or tour, some of his close friends staged an intervention in Chicago, but it proved ineffective. Shortly after, Smith relocated from Portland to Jersey City, New Jersey, and later Brooklyn, New York.
1997–1998: "Miss Misery" and Academy Award nomination In 1997, Smith was selected by director and fellow Portland resident Gus Van Sant to be a part of the soundtrack to his film Good Will Hunting. Smith recorded an orchestral version of "Between the Bars" with composer Danny Elfman for the film. Smith also contributed a new song, "Miss Misery", and three previously released tracks ("No Name #3", from Roman Candle, and "Angeles" and "Say Yes", from Either/Or). The film was a commercial and critical success, and Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for "Miss Misery". Not eager to step into the limelight, he agreed to perform the song at the ceremony only after the producers informed him that if he was unwilling to perform, they would choose someone else to play it.
On March 5, 1998, Smith made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien performing "Miss Misery" solo on acoustic guitar. A few days later, wearing a white suit, he played an abridged version at the Academy Awards ceremony, accompanied by the house orchestra. Smith did not voice disappointment about not winning. He described the experience as surreal, and said: "The Oscars was a very strange show, where the set was only one song cut down to less than two minutes, and the audience was a lot of people who didn't come to hear me play. I wouldn't want to live in that world, but it was fun to walk around on the moon for a day."
1998–2000: XO and Figure 8