Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smithwas an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived for much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he was also proficient with piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth6 August 1969
CityOmaha, NE
CountryUnited States of America
They say that God makes problems just to see what you can stand, before you do as the devil pleases.
I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous.
I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.
Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.
Burning every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost.
It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.
I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members
The band's filter, but playing live is a lot of fun.
You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that.
My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.
I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.
So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.
I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?
But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.