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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
A year after his death, a biography of Elliott Smith proves he was that greatest of all musician archetypes: The Tragic Rock Star.
Nov 23, 2004 | I have this little theory that begins with Bob Dylan. As the quintessential singer-songwriter, he casts one long and cumbersome shadow. Inevitably, when a spirited young artist armed with a guitar or a microphone and a head full of wit, spit, aphorism and meter hits the scene, critics and music lovers muse over the question of whether the artist is a Next Dylan. They don't have to compare the newcomer directly to Dylan, or even mention Dylan by name. What they're asking, essentially, is: Have we found a new Voice of a Generation?
Only one character trumps the Next Dylan, and that's the Tragic Rock Star. These artists have transcended the Next Dylan plane by overdosing (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious), getting shot and killed (John Lennon, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. -- those last two in the subset or alternate category of Tragic Rap Stars) or, most pointedly, committing suicide. In death, they become symbolic martyrs. They are immortalized in their fight against an oppressively normal life. They had the courage (and talent) to live harder. We're drawn to their intoxicating excesses and romantic self-destruction, even if we reject it for our own sense of stability.
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was the most notable figure to ascend to Tragic Rock Star status in current times. As he amassed millions of followers, he tried to lose them in the distortion and fuzz he shot back at them. Despite this, his generation persisted in claiming Cobain was their voice. Regrettably he found a surefire way out. For a moment, Cobain was a Next Dylan before he became a Tragic Rock Star.
Without Cobain, legions of fans were suddenly set adrift. They could have found solace in Cobain's lesser-known kinsman Elliott Smith. Now, shortly after the first anniversary of Smith's death and the posthumous release of his final album, comes a new biography, Benjamin Nugent's "Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing." The imperative questions arise for both music geeks and earnest listeners: Was Smith a Next Dylan? Did he become a Tragic Rock Star?
"Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing"
By Benjamin Nugent
Da Capo Press
230 pages
Nonfiction
In his book, Nugent quotes a friend of Smith's who notes the singer-songwriter's particular allure: "'I could never get anybody to listen to [Smith's solo debut, "Roman Candle"],'" the friend says. "'And then I figured out this really funny recipe: The time to get someone was to get them as soon as they broke up with someone ... I'd be like, 'You should listen to this,' and it'd be the same person I'd given it to six months earlier who said it was boring and sounded like Simon and Garfunkel, and they would come back to me, like, 'Your friend's amazing.'" Sad and true: Elliott Smith goes great with a breakup or losing someone you love.
Smith created compelling, layered narratives of abuse and addiction, unparalleled in their searing emotion. His songs were intimately literate and conveyed by a voice of crushing delicacy, first over flitting and intricate guitar work and later, in a bigger, fuller '60s retro rock sound. To embrace Smith after Cobain would've been easy. Not only because the hurt in his songs was so immediate, but also because Smith and Cobain lived similar lives. Both suffered through depression. Both resisted full-blown fame. Both spent a lot of time in the drizzly Pacific Northwest.
But where Cobain wailed, Smith whimpered. Cobain's ability to tap into the teenage angst zeitgeist made him a reluctant champion of the mainstream. Smith had a comparatively small pool of fans who sought him out for a fix of sadness without fury, bittersweet sorrow with a penchant for a Beatles hook.
Both fought a long, losing battle with heroin. The drug shaped the latter part of their lives and ultimately their deaths. For Smith, the drug more deeply and sometimes plainly lived in his songs. He never penned a tune titled "I Hate Myself and Want to Die," as Cobain did; instead Smith authored entire records skulking around that idea.
What most unites them now is that they both ended their lives in suicide, or at least in apparent suicide. Cobain's has been surrounded by loopy conspiracy theories and Smith's has been shrouded in genuine mystery. He died of two stab wounds to the chest with a kitchen knife, while only he and his girlfriend were present in their Los Angeles home. The death was originally ruled suicide, then deemed a possible homicide, and remains murky.
Nugent's book mentions Cobain and Nirvana but only to provide context. After Cobain's suicide in 1994, Nugent informs us, the singer-songwriter archetype all but vanished from the musical landscape. Three years later, when Smith finally achieved fame with his Academy Award-nominated song and performance of "Miss Misery" from the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack, "he was an anomaly," Nugent writes, "a holdout for guitar rock when nobody cool was playing guitar." Nugent also notes the occasion when, upon seeing Smith perform during his earliest solo days, fellow indie-folkster Mary Lou Lord aptly proclaimed that, "'the little punk kid' on stage was 'the quintessential songwriter of our generation besides Kurt Cobain.'"
