Why I Like Elliott Smith

Today I was thinking about the many reasons I like Elliott Smith besides the obvious, “he made great music.” Here’s an important reason I came up with:

I remember reading in Autumn De Wilde’s book about how Elliott loved all types of music. First, he really liked particular parts of songs. This information is coming from the interview with Joanna Bolme (Elliott’s ex girlfriend, bass player for Quasi and Stephan Malkmus and the Jicks) by the way. He would listen to a song and wait for a specific moment of a song to come on because he really loved that part of it. Throughout the book Autumn De Wilde compiles a list of all these songs that people wouldn’t have thought that Elliott liked but he did. In the book Sean Croghan (Elliott’s roommate, they went of their first solo tour together) and Joanna Bolme talk about Elliott’s musical interests and Croghan says how you weren’t really supposed to say you liked a certain really odd or old band [see below for bands Elliott liked] because it wasn’t the cool thing to say. The people in the scene Elliott was in really only like Indie Rock and it was seen as uncool to like really random bands. He also said that Elliott found reasons for liking songs like great song writing, or it just affected him in some way and he wasn’t afraid to admit he liked it. He also could get really emotional about certain songs to the point where he had to leave the room if the song was playing because it was too sad.

I think if I was ever his friend I would respect him just for the fact that he had such a vast knowledge of music and was never embarrassed for liking what he liked.

If you haven’t read this book yet, please do! It’s really heartwarming.

Artists that Elliott really liked are: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Scorpians, Foreigner, George Strait, Charlie Pride, Chicago, Hank Williams Jr, Seals & Croft, Elton John, Heart, Phil Collins, Oasis, Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder, Charlie Rich