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>> [Music: Elliott Smith “2:45 AM”]
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>> Elliott Smith: Oh, definitely. Yeah, there's a bunch of Elvis Costello records that like...
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when I was in high school, just made all the difference
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between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak.
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[laughter]
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A freak among other freaks.
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[Music:Elliott Smith: "2:45 AM"]
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>> Barney Hoskyns: Tell me how your very distinctive, soft vocal style kind of emerged.
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>> Elliott Smith: I didn't like how I sounded singing in my band,
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but it was hard to sing like how I wanted to because
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playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time,
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and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something.
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It sounds really hoarse and kind of macho and weird. [laughs]
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I mean I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager,
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where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it,
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so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did,
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because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music
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that you don't really like as much as another kind.
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>> [Music]
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>> Barney Hoskyns: Obviously some people have given you some sort of folk music tag
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and it just seems to me to be pretty off the mark.
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>> Elliott Smith: Yeah, that really bothered me right at first,
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when I first started playing, people would be like, “Paul Simon.”
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I'd be like, “I don't feel like I'm anything like Paul Simon.”
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>> Barney Hoskyns: And in some ways…
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>> Elliott Smith: Thank you. Oh, iced tea.
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>> Waitress: Do you want me to get you Cokes? They didn't have any.
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>> Elliott Smith: No, that's fine, iced tea is great, thank you.
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>> Barney Hoskyns: How much of your writing about, let's not call them addicts,
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let's call them dependents.
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How much of that is based on subjective experience
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and how much is just based on being an observer?
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>> Elliott Smith: I'm definitely in them, but on the other hand
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it's not like a diary or anything.
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But, yeah, it's good to call them dependents,
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because that was the point, as opposed to them being songs strictly about drugs or…
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There's lots of ways people can be dependent on another person, or drugs, or...
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>> [Music: Elliott Smith “BETWEEN THE BARS”]
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>> Elliott Smith: I think everybody has that... Those two irreconcilable ...
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>> Barney Hoskyns: Impulses. >> Elliott Smith: Constant…
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Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks,
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but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else
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People are so… seem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form
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like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood.
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It's hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something.
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It's much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation.
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People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it
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into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.
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>> [Music: Elliott Smith “Either/Or”]
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>> Barney Hoskyns: Listening to Either/Or, I was kind of struck by how well it does manage
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to juggle sweetness and pain. Is it too easy to say
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these songs are kind of melancholy, there's a lot of sorrowful quality to Elliott Smith's music?
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>> Elliott Smith: Yeah, they don't make me sad or feel sorrowful to me,
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but on the other hand I’m not… a lot of people are kind of depressed.
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I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.
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But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever
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it’s usually happy and sad at the same time.
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But, yeah, certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words
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and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is.
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>> [Music]
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>> Barney Hoskyns: You lived in these very different parts of America.
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Dallas, Portland, Brooklyn, is a kind of interesting triangle, there.
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>> Elliott Smith: Yeah, actually, I've been thinking about moving somewhere, out of the US, maybe,
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just to get out of here.
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>> Barney Hoskyns: Whereabouts are you thinking of going?
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>> Elliott Smith: I don't know, I have no idea.
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Somewhere where people aren't so mad would be nice
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but I don't know if there is anywhere like that.
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Who knows?
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