{"id":1091,"date":"2009-08-07T15:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T22:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/08\/the-late-great-elliott-smith.html"},"modified":"2009-08-07T15:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T22:52:00","slug":"the-late-great-elliott-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/08\/the-late-great-elliott-smith.html","title":{"rendered":"The Late, Great Elliott Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SnzBlhcF5oI\/AAAAAAAAAXQ\/a3MiGy_s_k4\/s1600-h\/elliott2.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SnzBlhcF5oI\/AAAAAAAAAXQ\/a3MiGy_s_k4\/s320\/elliott2.jpeg\"><\/a><br \/>YESTERDAY would have been the 40st birthday of elliott smith, perhaps the finest songwriter of my generation, and a musician who killed himself six years ago. my wife &#8212; a longtime music journalist who considers him the deepest artist she&#8217;s ever interviewed &#8212; and i remember that dark day well.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>smith, of course, came up through the portland band heatmiser, and released some powerful and very spare solo records up there before moving to LA&#8230; he came to the southland a few years after i did, and i was lucky enough to see him perform several times, as well as to sit next to him at the bar at the troubadour, where he was nursing a guinness and clearly did not want to be disturbed. (i also recall, maybe a year before he died, smith waiting in line behind me in line at amoeba music, with a basket full of vinyl. his girlfriend had to lead him to the register like he was an overmedicated old man.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2004\/feb\/15\/entertainment\/ca-timberg15\">HERE<\/a> is my piece from 2004, in which i interviewed his girlfriend, producer, biographer, and musical friends, and look back at his life and then-controversial death. as sad as i still am to have him gone, he&#8217;s one of the people who reminds me of how emotionally direct and inventive the music of the indie-rock movement can be. also: as influenced as he was by indie and by the british invasion (especially george harrison), smith was, musically, every bit his own man.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>YESTERDAY would have been the 40st birthday of elliott smith, perhaps the finest songwriter of my generation, and a musician who killed himself six years ago. my wife &#8212; a longtime music journalist who considers him the deepest artist she&#8217;s ever interviewed &#8212; and i remember that dark day well. smith, of course, came up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[171,103,419,40,30,146],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-beatles","7":"category-elliott-smith","8":"category-george-harrison","9":"category-indie","10":"category-los-angeles","11":"category-portland","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}