Elliott Smith's XO Read online

  XO

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  XO

  Matthew LeMay

  2010

  The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc

  80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

  The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

  The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

  www.continuumbooks.com

  33third.blogspot.com

  Copyright © 2009 by Matthew LeMay

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  LeMay, Matthew.

  XO / by Matthew LeMay.

  p. cm. - (33 1/3)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-6009-6

  1. Smith, Elliott, 1969-2003. XO. I. Title. II. Series.

  ML420.S668L46 2009

  782.42166092-dc22

  2009006651

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Part One—“Making Something From Nothing”

  The “Story” of XO

  XO Song by Song

  Part Two—“Pictures of Me”

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you Philip Fischer for your help, guidance, and insight. This book would not exist without you.

  Thank you Larry Crane, Greg Di Gesu, Garrick Duckler, and Rob Schnapf for taking the time to speak with me.

  And finally, thank you mom for your love and support.

  Preface

  Like many of his fans, I first encountered Elliott Smith when he performed “Miss Misery” at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 13, 1998. I was fourteen years old, and watching the Oscars with my parents had become a family ritual-by-default—not because of any particular interest in film, but rather because it was a rare chance for us all to share opinions on a subject where our spheres of cultural knowledge had some degree of overlap. I had never heard Elliott Smith’s music before, but the sound of his name rang a vague, elusive note of recollection; I had heard of this guy before, but I couldn’t place the name. As the camera focused in on a man standing uncomfortably in a white Prada suit, the significance of Smith’s name suddenly returned to me. I turned to my parents and said, “Oh, this is Elliott Smith—now he’s on the Oscars and he’s gonna be really famous, but he used to be this homeless junky who did HEROIN!” My father, whose cynicism was nectar to my junior-high mindset, let out a forced laugh and deadpanned, “you can tell.”

  I’ve listened to “Miss Misery” hundreds of times since then, and it’s come to be one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs. As pop music goes, it is fairly undeniable; a strong melody, a great structural arc, unobtrusively clever and emotionally evocative lyrics. But the song I now know and love has no resemblance to the song I remember hearing during the Academy Awards. While it took a visit to YouTube for me to remember the visual component of Smith’s performance, I have a distinct recollection of the song itself—or, rather, of a musical corollary to Smith’s sad sack reputation. I couldn’t even say where I had heard about Smith in the first place; likely a newspaper or a brief story on MTV or VH1. But my understanding of “Elliott Smith” not only colored my experience of his song—it effectively created a new song; a harsh, self-indulgent, and near-unlistenable ditty that lived in my memory and was almost impossible for me to shake.

  It would be easy to write off my initial contact with Smith as a product of its particular time and context, or of my own immaturity. But even as I matured and Smith’s musical vocabulary expanded, I could not seem to get past my own illusory reading of “Miss Misery.” As a musically ravenous high school student aware of Smith’s reputation as a songwriter, I purchased XO in 1999, but never got into the record beyond a passing interest in its first single, “Waltz #2.” I saw Smith at the Beacon Theater in 2001, and was taken aback by the professionalism and energy of his performance, but not enough so to spark any further interest in his recorded output. Later that year, I purchased Domino Records’ box set of Smith’s early work, primarily in an effort to win the affections of a girl whose AIM screen name was a combination of her given name and the letters “ESG” (“Elliott Smith Girl”). For a time, I listened obsessively to a CD by Smith’s friends and collaborators Quasi—but I still felt an insurmountable distance between myself and any music that bore the name “Elliott Smith.”

  It was only when writing my band’s second record in late 2005 that I truly began to bridge that distance. As a fledgling songwriter terrified of taking my lyrics too seriously, I had been writing exclusively from some semblance of “personal experience.” But I was interested in the idea of using songs to literalize emotional observations; as a chance to say things via fictionalized characters that could never be said in person. In a conversation with a friend and bandmate, who grew up in Portland and was very familiar with Smith’s music, XO came up as a record that does just that—an album that is unflinchingly harsh and emotionally direct, to the point of being difficult to listen to at times. For fear of looking stupid, I said “yeah”—we had discussed Smith’s music in the past, and I wasn’t ready to admit just how limited my interest.actually was. But the conversation intrigued me—how could Elliott Smith, the poster boy for wallowing, mopey self-loathing, make a record that is unsparing, incisive, and … mean?

  With that conversation in mind, I began reevaluating Smith’s music, particularly XO. The ensuing process was gradual, but revelatory. Lines that had passed by suddenly stood out; characters that once seemed little more than one-dimensional projections of Smith himself were populated by fraught and contradictory emotions. The music itself grew richer and more complex, suddenly bursting with nuance, intelligence, and humor. Of course Smith’s music fell short and failed to connect as weepy sad bastard music—it isn’t.

  When I
sat down to write this book, I considered entirely omitting my dubious early impressions of Smith. But part of my fascination with Elliott Smith stems from this moment of misrecognition; from how Smith’s cultural legacy seems perpetually at odds with the nature of his music. The “story” of Elliott Smith is that of a man with no agency; a mopey, weepy, druggy singer-songwriter plucked from coffeehouse obscurity to ambivalent semi-stardom by no effort of his own. XO is a work of incredible craft, intelligence, wit, and insight. In its lyrical concerns and its musical realization, it suggests that suffering does not create great art; that, instead, it leaves you “deaf and dumb and done.” Far from a tear-stained journal entry, XO is a fully realized work of art.

  As such, this is not a book that tells the story of Elliott Smith, or even a book that tells the story of Elliott Smith making XO. Countless stories of varying merit and tact have been written that begin “Steven Paul Smith was born in 1969 …” and I’m sure countless more will be written. In the particular case of XO, any effort to fix the record’s meaning in Smith’s biography seems thoroughly counter to the album’s tone and mission. Telling the “real story” of Elliott Smith often serves only to emphasize his personal troubles, to place them above his craft and—given the sad and unsolved nature of his death—to cast a suspicious and dour pall over an incredible body of work.

  Furthermore, telling the “real” story of a record almost invariably involves seeking out the “real” stories behind the songs, the “real” people the songs are about. Such information ostensibly exists regarding XO, but, as I will suggest in my analysis of the record, the songs on XO tended to veer away from personal details as Smith refined them. Understanding XO does not mean understanding Smith’s personal pain—it means examining his tireless, impeccable craft.

  In the first section of this book, I discuss how XO came to be, primarily by tracing the development of its songs. Though Smith was not given to discussing his work, he recorded more or less constantly, and many of the songs on XO are culminations of a fascinating sequence of demos and live performances, many of which have been widely circulated among fans. Obviously, any inferences made about the “creative process” are just that, but there are discernible trends in the development of XO that speak to the record’s unique strengths. Specifically, I am interested in how XO’s lyrical content grew bolder, more incisive, and less tethered to personal experience as the album’s production grew more professional and elaborate.

  Smith’s lyrical prowess, and his lyrical precision in particular, remain largely obfuscated by his reliance upon simple and unassuming language. And while Smith utilized a conventional and conversational pop song vocabulary, he mobilized common words to unique thematic ends. By drawing attention to his lyrics as meticulous, intentional writing— not simple confession—I attempt to shed light on some of the beliefs, ideas, and attitudes that permeate XO, especially those that explicitly contradict Smith’s supposed biography.

  In the second section of this book, I examine the cultural construct of “Elliott Smith”—how Smith was introduced to us via the media, and how the resultant construct was read against XO. Rather than simply dismissing the “Elliott Smith” produced by popular culture, I argue that it is important to analyze how this figure came to be, not only for understanding XO’s cultural legacy, but also for understanding how problematic concepts of “authenticity” and biography can color our understanding of music in general. The way we discuss artists matters—it changes and directs the way we hear and understand their work. In examining the myth of “Elliott Smith,” I attempt to provoke a wider discussion about agency, narrative, and craft.

  Specifically, I seek to explore how Smith’s positioning as an “obscure singer-songwriter” and the story of his “sudden ascent” created contradictory demands and expectations that were often articulated and tenuously resolved via Smith’s “personal life.” Smith often spoke of the difference between personal turmoil and artistic craft, both on XO and in countless interviews conducted around the time of the album’s release, but this troubling correlation often informed Smith’s popular image, even in articles ostensibly refuting it.

  I must admit that this book is meant to be something of a corrective; not to “set the record straight” about Elliott Smith’s life, but rather to deemphasize his personal struggles and examine his craft. I can make no claim that any amount of research I could do would give me a window to the “real person” behind Smith’s music. Furthermore, as Smith was well aware, knowing a “real person”—and that person’s trials, tribulations, and failings—doesn’t necessarily help you to understand that person’s art. In fact, as my initial experience with Elliott Smith suggests, the illusion of such an understanding can lead to very limited and unsympathetic readings. In a 1999 interview with Spin Magazine, Smith said, “I don’t like when people talk about all the bad things that have happened to them as if that makes them unique. Because I don’t think I’ve had a harder time than other people.” As a songwriter, Smith needs no excuses and no apologies. It is no coincidence that XO contains neither.

  Part One—“Making Something From Nothing”

  The “Story” of XO

  Certain albums have fantastic back stories, rife with interpersonal turmoil, record industry intervention, and/or the birth or destruction of a local musical scene or cultural movement. XO is not one of those records. The extenuating circumstances directly leading up to the release of the album, which I will discuss briefly in the following pages, are almost maddeningly straightforward and unexciting. At the time of its release, XO constituted a substantial and logical step forward for Smith, aesthetically and occupation-ally, but it was by no means a sea change, nor was it in any way without precedent or contested by Smith, his label, or the majority of his fan base.

  In the canon of Smith’s work, XO is notable largely for being his “major label debut”—but that designation is in many ways misleading. In January of 1996, under the guidance of future manager Margaret Mittleman, Smith signed a music publishing deal with publishing giant BMG. Mittleman had made a name for herself in the music industry by signing then-largely-unknown Beck to a similar publishing deal in 1992, and would go on to be Smith’s manager for a substantial portion of his career. Publishing deals such as those struck by Beck and Smith remain largely unexamined in the “major” vs. “indie” discussion, but have had a hand in some of the most creative albums made in the 1990s, including those by Built to Spill and Neutral Milk Hotel.

  Rob Schnapf, who is both XO’s producer and Mittleman’s husband, describes a publishing deal as follows:

  It was sort of like having a bank. You’re selling part of your songs. A company is giving you money—it’s sorta like you’re getting equity out of your songs. So you sell 50% of your songs and you get a bunch of money. Whereas if you owned all of it, the money coming in would be all yours. But when you have a deal, you have to recoup whatever amount was advanced to you, and you share ownership. It’s like a roll of the dice—the wisdom is, if you don’t have to, you don’t do it. But on the other hand it can really be a great vehicle for helping you do a bunch of artist development type things. Especially if you’re starting from ground zero.

  While album royalties are generally thought of as the primary source of income for musicians, song-writing royalties can be much more lucrative, especially in the case of an artist like Smith whose work is played, performed, and covered extensively. Major labels are free to set up extremely unfavorable payment schemes regarding album royalties, but the basic terms of “mechanical” royalties and other songwriting fees are written into US copyright law, and as such are harder for labels to manipulate.

  In a sense, then, a publishing deal such as Smith’s necessitates that the artist relinquish a stake in one of his most reliable and potentially lucrative streams of income. But it also pays out in a creatively proactive way; while songwriting royalties can generate a steady flow of cash for an already-successful songwriter, Smith’s publishing
deal advanced him a sizeable sum of money in advance of each album’s release ($25-30,000 per independent release and $50,000 per major label release). The timing of the deal, signed years before Smith’s music would take on national prominence, was nothing short of perfect. With a steady salary from BMG, Smith was able to quit his day job and focus full-time on songwriting. Jackpot! Studio owner Larry Crane, who worked closely with Smith throughout the time that the deal was signed, recalls it having an immediate and noticeable effect on Smith’s songwriting:

  I think that as soon as [the publishing deal was signed] he got better. I’m not much of an advocate of speculative music business practices, but it means he could stop doing drywall, doing that kind of work, and focus full-time on writing and recording. That gave us Either/Or and most of what later became New Moon.

  Indeed, Smith’s creative output seems to have skyrocketed around the time that the publishing deal was signed. In Steve Hanft’s 1998 documentary Strange Parallel, shot while Smith was living in New York City and working on XO, Smith succinctly summarized the benefits of being a professional songwriter: “it’s better than laying gravel.”

  Smith’s involvement with the world of “major labels” did not end with the BMG publishing deal; Smith’s then-primary creative outlet Heatmiser released their final album Mic City Sons on Virgin offshoot Caroline Records in late 1996. The band’s contract with Virgin included a “leaving member clause,” giving the label first dibs on any of Smith’s future solo output. As Smith pointed out in an interview with Jim magazine, Heatmiser’s contract with Virgin rendered it effectively impossible for Smith to continue releasing albums independently; either he would continue to release albums through Virgin, or he would be bought out of his contract by a label with sufficient capital—inevitably, a major.