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  • >> [Music: Elliott Smith “2:45 AM”]

  • >> Elliott Smith: Oh, definitely. Yeah, there's a bunch of Elvis Costello records that like...

  • when I was in high school, just made all the difference

  • between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak.

  • [laughter]

  • A freak among other freaks.

  • [Music:Elliott Smith: "2:45 AM"]

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: Tell me how your very distinctive, soft vocal style kind of emerged.

  • >> Elliott Smith: I didn't like how I sounded singing in my band,

  • but it was hard to sing like how I wanted to because

  • playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time,

  • and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something.

  • It sounds really hoarse and kind of macho and weird. [laughs]

  • I mean I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager,

  • where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it,

  • so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did,

  • because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music

  • that you don't really like as much as another kind.

  • >> [Music]

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: Obviously some people have given you some sort of folk music tag

  • and it just seems to me to be pretty off the mark.

  • >> Elliott Smith: Yeah, that really bothered me right at first,

  • when I first started playing, people would be like, “Paul Simon.”

  • I'd be like, “I don't feel like I'm anything like Paul Simon.”

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: And in some ways

  • >> Elliott Smith: Thank you. Oh, iced tea.

  • >> Waitress: Do you want me to get you Cokes? They didn't have any.

  • >> Elliott Smith: No, that's fine, iced tea is great, thank you.

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: How much of your writing about, let's not call them addicts,

  • let's call them dependents.

  • How much of that is based on subjective experience

  • and how much is just based on being an observer?

  • >> Elliott Smith: I'm definitely in them, but on the other hand

  • it's not like a diary or anything.

  • But, yeah, it's good to call them dependents,

  • because that was the point, as opposed to them being songs strictly about drugs or

  • There's lots of ways people can be dependent on another person, or drugs, or...

  • >> [Music: Elliott SmithBETWEEN THE BARS”]

  • >> Elliott Smith: I think everybody has that... Those two irreconcilable ...

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: Impulses. >> Elliott Smith: Constant

  • Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks,

  • but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else

  • People are soseem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form

  • like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood.

  • It's hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something.

  • It's much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation.

  • People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it

  • into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.

  • >> [Music: Elliott SmithEither/Or”]

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: Listening to Either/Or, I was kind of struck by how well it does manage

  • to juggle sweetness and pain. Is it too easy to say

  • these songs are kind of melancholy, there's a lot of sorrowful quality to Elliott Smith's music?

  • >> Elliott Smith: Yeah, they don't make me sad or feel sorrowful to me,

  • but on the other hand I’m not… a lot of people are kind of depressed.

  • I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.

  • But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever

  • it’s usually happy and sad at the same time.

  • But, yeah, certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words

  • and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is.

  • >> [Music]

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: You lived in these very different parts of America.

  • Dallas, Portland, Brooklyn, is a kind of interesting triangle, there.

  • >> Elliott Smith: Yeah, actually, I've been thinking about moving somewhere, out of the US, maybe,

  • just to get out of here.

  • >> Barney Hoskyns: Whereabouts are you thinking of going?

  • >> Elliott Smith: I don't know, I have no idea.

  • Somewhere where people aren't so mad would be nice

  • but I don't know if there is anywhere like that.

  • Who knows?

  • Subtitles by the Amara.org community

>> [Music: Elliott Smith “2:45 AM”]

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