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| From | "Jennifer Leduc" <jenleduc@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Billboard.com article on Elliott Smith |
| Date | Fri, 24 Oct 2003 12:25:03 -0500 |
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The album Elliott Smith was working throughout the last year of his life was
an extraordinarily diverse effort that ranged from "phenomenal, experimental
soundscapes to the most intimate guitar vocals," his DreamWorks Records A&R
man, Luke Wood, tells Billboard.com.
"He was really having fun experimenting with recording," Wood says. "And as
always with Elliott, the lyrics were incredibly poignant and very consistent
and very beautiful." However diverse, the album -- reportedly titled "From a
Basement on the Hill" -- was a focused effort, Woods notes. "It wasn't like
a free-for-all."
There's no word yet on what will happen to the recordings. Although Smith
had tracked more than 30 songs and was said to have been considering a
double album, Wood says it's unclear how many are complete, as Smith had a
habit of working on multiple songs at a time. "He was always editing and
working," he says. "He always had a large cycle of songs that he was making
better, and sometimes that cycle took years."
Yet the Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd tells Billboard.com that when he did some
casual recording with Smith roughly a year ago, the singer had "tons of
stuff that hasn't been released. And I know a bunch was recorded and mixed
and all ready to go."
Smith, 34, died Tuesday after apparently stabbing himself in the heart.
According to a source, he did so using a steak knife at his girlfriend's
apartment in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.
About a year ago, Smith built his own studio in Los Angeles, and it was
there that he was focusing on "From a Basement on the Hill." Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion drummer Russell Simins, who occasionally collaborated with
Smith onstage and in the studio, says he recently recorded with the singer
at his own studio in New York.
Some of the new songs Smith was working on included "Strung Out Again,"
"Let's Get Lost," "Shooting Star," "A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity
To Be Free" and "Fond Farewell." The titles seem to suggest he may have been
contemplating suicide and revisiting his frequent themes of addiction.
In a highly unusual move, Wood says DreamWorks had reached an agreement with
Smith that allowed him to take a "sabbatical" from the label. The singer,
Wood says, was looking for a more intimate way to reconnect with the fans
who had followed him since his indie days, during which he issued albums for
the Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars labels.
"It was sort of like, 'How do you continue to motivate and be a true partner
to an artist who's gonna want to take turns and do different things, and
reach his audience more directly without going through radio or MTV?'" Wood
says. "I think it was really a sense of him being able to feel like he was
in control of his own destiny. And he wanted to bring it down and do sort of
less promotion, and focus just more on making a record and getting it out."
Smith, Wood says, was going to release "From a Basement on the Hill" on an
independent label of his choosing, even though he would have remained signed
to DreamWorks. During his five-year tenure with the label, Smith issued a
handful of releases on indies. In August, released the single "Pretty (Ugly
Before)" as a limited-edition seven-inch on the Suicide Squeeze label.
While it was well-known amongst his friends and peers that Smith was
battling alcohol and hard drug addiction and depression -- for which he was
on medication, according to a source -- Wood says the singer's suicide was
still quite shocking. In the past six months, Wood says, the singer seemed
hopeful and excited about completing the album and then launching a tour to
support it.
Says Simins, "He seemed to be doing really well lately. That's why it's
really sad. We all had a hope that he was in a good way, or at least heading
towards that."
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne wasn't so optimistic about Smith's state
of mind. He recalled the Lips' show in Los Angeles with Beck last year,
where a bloated and clearly frustrated Smith was involved in a scuffle with
police and seemed to be clearly losing his fight with addiction. "It really
was nothing but sad," Coyne says. "You just sort of saw a guy who had lost
control of himself. He was needy, he was grumpy, he was everything you
wouldn't want in a person. It's not like when you think of Keith Richards
being pleasantly blissed out in the corner."
"I think it points out how unglamorous the whole drug thing really is,"
Coyne continues. "For the people who knew him, the people who were around
him, it was horrible. It's not this glamorous, jetsetting, beautiful
lifestyle that everybody dreams of rock'n'roll heaven being. It wasn't like
that at all. It was ugly. It was sad."
Adds Drozd, "There's an undercurrent of f***in' real sadness in a lot of his
music that just f***in' crushes me. And that's just really the way he was. I
hate to sound that way, but he really was. And I can hear it in his music.
That's totally him."
Addiction, Wood says, was "a constant battle for him, but I gotta say, I
thought it was one he was winning." Wood called Smith the "essence of what
we would want DreamWorks as a culture to stand for -- the true song craft,
the ambition, the artistry, his performance ability. I think he challenged
the rules of songwriting and being a pop artist."
He adds that to Smith, life was "a very beautiful and brutal place, and his
songs were that ground in between."
What was lost Tuesday, Simins says, was "someone who was really admirable as
a person and as a star. There's so much bulls*** around, so many unhumble
people who are all about the glitz and the glam and the bulls***. What we
lost is a very, very, very, very truthful, truthful, honest star. I think
both as a person and as a musician, as an artist. It's really sad because he
was just brutally, brutally honest. And very smart. And if you put the two
together, it's undeniably appealing."
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