Rock & Roll Books

Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing

Da Capo Press, 218 pp., $23.95

"This is the story of an artist who just wanted to do what he did and stay alive, and there's nothing simple about that," begins music writer Benjamin Nugent in his ode to fallen songwriter Elliott Smith. But this is not an adoring epitaph. Neither is Big Nothing the full story. The majority of the book comprises interviews with friend Marc Swanson, sculptor E.V. Day, and publicist Dorien Garry, among a handful of others, while Heatmiser cohort Neil Gust, ex-girlfriend Joanna Bolme, and Quasi members Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes are notably absent. Otherwise, Nugent allows Smith's friends to tell his story, adding minimal commentary. It's the tale of a misunderstood funnyman who didn't begin the much-publicized decline into chemical dependency until late in his short life. From his uneasy Texas adolescence to his Portland, Ore., homecoming and on to New York and L.A., Nugent pulls Smith's story through his recorded output, culminating in his last few years of addiction, confusion, and redemption. David McConnell, owner of Basement on a Hill (aka Satellite Park studio in Malibu), witnessed a musician only concerned with making music but almost unable to do so. Smith had been broken by a combination of the music industry, self-deprecation, and a need to placate everyone, including his rabid fans. Those surrounding Smith late in his life say he had turned away from crack and heroin and toward the future. That man and the 34-year-old on the floor of an L.A. apartment with two fatal stab wounds to the chest couldn't possibly be the same. Nugent makes no attempt at solving Smith's mysterious death, but Big Nothing does open a window of insight into our reluctant hero.