The American singer-songwriter Elliott Smith has been found dead at his Los Angeles home aged 34, killed by a single, apparently self-inflicted stab wound. It seems bitterly appropriate that someone who wrote delicate songs about brutal subjects, and frequently became frustrated that he had to answer the question "Why are you so sad?", should die in such a shocking, violent and lonely manner.
Chosen by the director Gus van Sant to provide songs for the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, Smith, whose roots were deep in the American independent music scene, found himself with an Oscar nomination the following year. His performance at the awards ceremony was the most incongruous in the all-too-brief career of this shy, but playful musician, whose small, soft voice and scalpel-sharp observations of the wilder side of life won him a devoted following.
The journalist David Peschek says that the first time they met he had been asked by Melody Maker to probe Smith's drug and psychiatric problems. He talked at length of his love of the trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, and was charming, frank and acutely aware of the terrible glamour inherent in the mythology of the junkie musician. "The truth," he said quietly, "is much happier and sadder than that."
He was born Steven Paul Smith in Omaha, Nebraska, but grew up near Dallas, Texas. Displaying an early aptitude for music, he learned piano and guitar from the age of nine. Moving to Portland, Oregon, he joined his first band, Stranger Than Fiction, at the Lincoln High School. Calling himself Elliott Stillwater-Rotter, he majored in philosophy and political science at Hampshire College, Massachusetts, where he co-founded the band A Murder Of Crows.
After graduation, Smith and his college friend Neil Gust moved back to Portland, well known for its fertile underground music scene, and founded Heatmiser. They both wrote and sang; Smith's songs were typically folkier than Gust's more abrasive music.
Between 1992 and 1996 Heatmiser released three albums and an EP, but by the time of their final record, Mic City Sons, Smith's first two solo albums (the intimate and acoustic Roman Candle, 1994, and Elliott Smith, 1995) had generated more acclaim than the band, and they split. Smith's first solo album, either/or, followed in 1997. It was also the first of his records to receive a full UK release, through the independent label Domino, which also licensed Roman Candle and Elliott Smith for British release.
Coming at a time when the jingoistic strut of Britpop had begun to ring a little hollow, Smith's quiet, elegantly crafted anatomies of despair generated an enormous response. Here was music free of ego, untainted by commercial consideration; here was a songwriter whose intense fragility granted him extraordinary insights.
Signing to Dreamworks in the wake of his Oscar nomination, he released two further albums, XO (1998) and Figure 8 (2000), both of which took advantage of the bigger budgets to make considerably more elaborate arrangements.
At the time of his death, he had amassed upwards of 40 songs for his sixth album, which had a working title of From The Basement On The Hill.
Though recent US solo shows sometimes saw him sullen, unfocused or incoherent, friends reported he was on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, it seems the long war he had waged against himself had damaged him more than even he realised.
He is survived by his girlfriend, his mother and father, a sister, a half-brother and a half-sister.
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith: born August 6th, 1969; died October 21st, 2003