Elliott Smith

Steven Paul Smith (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003), known as Elliott Smith, was an American musician and singer-songwriter.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he gained popularity.

Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica.

He had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and often used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.

Steven Paul Smith was born on August 6, 1969, at the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, the only child of Gary Smith, a student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Bunny Kay Berryman, an elementary school music teacher.

His parents divorced when he was six months old, and Smith moved with his mother to Duncanville, Texas.

He had half-siblings through his mother, Darren Welch and Ashley Welch, and a half-sister Rachel Smith through his father.

Smith later had a tattoo of a map of Texas drawn on his upper arm and said: "I didn't get it because I like Texas, kind of the opposite. But I won't forget about it, although I'm tempted to because I don't like it there."

Smith endured a difficult childhood and a troubled relationship with his stepfather Charlie Welch.

Smith stated he may have been sexually abused by Welch at a young age, an allegation that Welch has denied.

He wrote about this part of his life in "Some Song".

The name "Charlie" also appears in songs "Flowers for Charlie" and "No Confidence Man".

In 1991 Smith graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in philosophy and political science.

After playing in the rock band Heatmiser for several years, Smith began his solo career in 1994, with releases on the independent record labels Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars (KRS).

In 1997, he signed a contract with DreamWorks Records, for which he recorded his final two albums.

Smith rose to mainstream prominence when his song "Miss Misery"—included in the soundtrack for the film Good Will Hunting (1997)—was nominated for the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Smith was a heavy drinker and drug user, and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression.

His struggles with drugs and mental illness affected his life and work, and often appeared in his lyrics.

In 2001, he said: "I don't necessarily buy into any officially structured version of spirituality. But I have my own version of it."

Smith began playing piano at age nine, and at ten began learning guitar on a small acoustic guitar bought for him by his father.

At this age he composed an original piano piece, "Fantasy", which won him a prize at an arts festival.

Many of the people on his mother's side of the family were non-professional musicians; his grandfather was a Dixieland drummer, and his grandmother sang in a glee club.

At fourteen, Smith left his mother's home in Texas and moved to Portland, Oregon, to live with his father, who was then working as a psychiatrist.

It was around this time that Smith began using drugs, including alcohol, with friends.

He also began experimenting with recording for the first time after borrowing a four-track recorder.

At high school, Smith played clarinet in the school band and played guitar and piano; he also sang in the bands Stranger Than Fiction and A Murder of Crows, billed as either Steven Smith or "Johnny Panic".

His bandmates included Jason Hornick.

He graduated from Lincoln High School as a National Merit Scholar.

After graduation, Smith began calling himself "Elliott", saying that he thought "Steve" sounded too much like a "jock" name, and that "Steven" sounded "too bookish".

According to friends, he had also used the pseudonym "Elliott Stillwater-Rotter" during his time in the band A Murder of Crows.

Biographer S. R. Shutt speculates that the name was either inspired by Elliott Avenue, a street that Smith had lived on in Portland, or that it was suggested by his then-girlfriend.

A junior high acquaintance of Smith speculates Smith changed his name so as not to be confused with Steve Smith, the drummer of Journey.

He died at his Los Angeles home from two stab wounds to the chest at age 34 in 2003.

The autopsy evidence did not determine whether the wounds were self-inflicted.

"Went straight through in four years", he explained to Under the Radar in 2003.

"I guess it proved to myself that I could do something I really didn't want to for four years. Except I did like what I was studying. At the time it seemed like, 'This is your one and only chance to go to college and you had just better do it because some day you might wish that you did.' Plus, the whole reason I applied in the first place was because of my girlfriend, and I had gotten accepted already even though we had broken up before the first day."

At the time of his death, Smith was working on his album From a Basement on the Hill, posthumously produced and released in 2004.

In a 2004 interview, Jennifer Chiba, Smith's partner at the time of his death, said that Smith's difficult childhood was partly why he needed to sedate himself with drugs as an adult: "He was remembering traumatic things from his childhood – parts of things. It's not my place to say what."

For much of his childhood, Smith's family was a part of the Community of Christ but began attending services at a local Methodist church.

Smith felt that going to church did little for him, except make him "really scared of Hell".