There are some artists whose work you just understand little more clearly when you visit the city that functions as their muse: the strangely wistful and surreal nightscapes of David Lynch's work are a perfect evocation of Los Angeles, for instance, and Suede's mixture of desperate glamour and basement flat squalor is infinitely more relatable once you've tasted the "love and poison of London."
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If Dallas is a shadow on the wall in Smith's songs, then Portland is rendered in full colour and intricate detail. But I won’t forget about it – although I’m tempted to – ‘cause I don’t like it there." "I didn’t get it because I like Texas," he explained to Comes With A Smile. Still, there are some lyrics that clearly have their roots in Smith's own experience, even if that experience has been used as a basis for something more universal. They're more like dreams they're true in one way, but they're not factually true." “They're songs, they're not like a speech or a journal.
" have to come from somewhere,” he told the Washington Post in 1999. He often expressed frustration at people taking his lyrics as being directly autobiographical. It's always a difficult business trying to find an artist's own life in their work, especially an artist as cagey as Smith.
The legacy of abuse is a constant theme in Smith's songs, from his earliest work right through until the very last songs he recorded before his death. The ramifications of the decision manifest throughout the rest of his life and throughout his discography. " come more from moving out of my mom's family than anything else," he told Rolling Stone in 1998. He formed his first band (called Stranger Than Fiction) at high school, and, not long after graduation, began calling himself "Elliott" instead of Steven. The decision to move to Portland was one that would shape Smith's life and art. He left Dallas and moved to Portland to live with his father. In his final years, Smith also talked of having been sexually abused.įor his part, Welch denies the accusations of sexual abuse, although he admitted in a letter to "having been too hard" on his stepson.Īt age 14, Smith had had enough. Smith's parents divorced soon after his birth, and his mother Bunny married Welch – a member of something called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – when Smith was four years old.Īccording to Smith, Welch beat him regularly. Smith endured what biographers euphemistically call a "difficult" childhood, largely because of the abuse he often spoke of having received from his stepfather, Charlie Welch. They're more like dreams they're true in one way, but they're not factually true. They're songs, they're not like a speech or a journal. His early years in Portland, Oregon, his move to New York City as his solo career really took off, his subsequent relation to Los Angeles, and his final work, most identified with the “basement on the hill” that gave its title to his last, posthumous album.
His solo career divides into four main chapters, each of them corresponding neatly to the city where he was living at the time. This deeply emotive, literate artist whose work was as stunning as anything we’d heard before will forever be the subject of obsession from lovers of fine singer-songwriters until the end of time.įeature by Tom Hawking Chapter 1 A geographical examination of the work of Elliott SmithĮlliott Smith’s music has been looked at through many lenses, but one of the less-examined aspects of his music is how it reflects a sense of place. But that he left us so early in his life and career remains as heartbreaking as the saddest of his songs. That he received such well-deserved mainstream recognition of his talent through breakthrough songs like ‘Between The Bars’ and ‘Miss Misery’ and albums XO and Figure 8 feels like some justice. Elliott Smith was one of the great songwriters of the late 20th Century.
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