From a Basement on the Hill (2004)

In 2001, Smith begins and ends a series of recording sessions with Jon Brion, which fall apart after Brion confronts him about his drug use and self-destructive behavior. By the fall of that year, he contacts producer David McConnell.

DAVID MCCONNELL [producer; From a Basement on the Hill]: I had XO, which was given to me by a colleague, and I really enjoyed it. Well, half of it was great. Half of it I was like, “Well, great song, but I don’t know if I like the recording or the production." And then my friend Shon Sullivan [from McConnell’s L.A band Goldenboy], was playing with him live, and he invited me out to a show at the Wiltern Theater. I was blown away. It was probably one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life. So Shon introduced me to Elliott after the show briefly.

A couple of months after that show, at the end of the Figure 8 tour, he had just started recording with Jon Brion but, for whatever reason, he wasn’t happy with that process, so he split ways with Jon and got in touch with me. When he called me he was actually in Big Bear, up in the mountains, and he was like, “Man, I want to start as soon as possible, can I come down tonight?”

I could tell he was really itching to get into the studio and work with a new producer, someone who was gonna do things a little more experimentally. He wanted somebody who wasn’t so formulaic, who was willing to go down the path of discovery with him, and I guess he heard that maybe I would be that guy.

So I told him we should record in my private studio, because that’s where the more experimental equipment was. I told him he was welcome to stay in the house, too, because we had a guest room. The studio was beautiful; my ex-girlfriend actually owned the property, and it was almost like a compound, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I had named it Satellite Park one day when I was walking around because it felt like I was on the moon or on an observatory somewhere.

When he showed up, it was around 2 a.m., and he was in two cars; his girlfriend [Valerie Deerin] was driving one car and he was driving the other car, and both cars were full of all of his belongings. I mean everything from his apartment. I was thinking he was gonna show up with a suitcase and a backpack and a couple of guitars, but it was like five guitars, a giant keyboard, amps, and then five suitcases of clothes. He had toys, books, you name it. And then he had medication, and various other things.

He also brought all his his two-inch reels that he was working on at Jon’s house. So we drank a couple of beers and I gave him the tour of the place and everything, and then he goes, "OK, there’s a song on here that I recorded by myself at Jon’s place that I want to keep, that I really like. Why don’t you just mix this song for me and I’ll be back in the morning.” Then he left. He was like, "I’ve got some errands to run right now, I’ve got some stuff I gotta do.” Remember, this is 2 a.m.—well no, by now it’s 4 a.m., because we had talked about my philosophy on recording and producing for two hours.

So I put the reel on the machine and I started listening to the song, just by myself. And the first time I heard it, just pushing up the faders so I could hear the different instruments and his voice, I got the chills. It was one of the most haunting, beautiful songs I’d ever heard. It sounded nothing like the music I’d heard him do before. It sounded way more intricate, way more complex.

It reminded me of Rachmaninoff, but with lyrics, with a story. Sitting in there alone, I almost had an out-of-body experience because I knew that I was about to work on one of the best things I’d ever worked on in my life. So I spent the next three or four hours mixing the song, which was called "True Love Is a Rose". It's a shame because that song never ended up on the album. He wanted it to be on the album, it was one of his favorites.

So he finally got back, listened to my mix, loved it, and then he says, "Let’s start recording another song." At this point he probably hasn’t slept in two days.

The next track we worked on was “Shooting Star”. He told me he wanted it to have this psychedelic intensity, to take elements of Hendrix and the Stooges, but create something that couldn’t be compared to anybody else. We slowed down the reel, just slightly, so it would have a euphoric, heavy, psychedelic persona.

“Shooting Star” has three drum sets: We would do one drum take, and then we would double the drums, and then sometimes triple them. If you listen closely on headphones, you’ll hear the snare drums flailing, because there are three kits going on. He and I talked about that; I’d say "Hey, you know, this sounds great, are you comfortable with having the snares slightly out of time?" And he was like, "Man, I love it." He wanted to embrace the human quality of this sound, that was very important for him.

He wanted "Shooting Star" to be the opening track then. "Coast To Coast", the opener on the album that got released, was another one we worked on together. He recorded the drum tracks at Sunset Sounds studio with Steven [Drozd], from the Flaming Lips, and the poet Nelson Gary’s part at the end. He had two drummers playing live at the same time on that, he told me, and he stood in the middle of the room pointing at each drummer to do the changes, like he was doing his own version of conducting.

STEVEN DROZD: I went to Los Angeles to visit my then-ex-girlfriend and now wife: We'd been broken up for a few years and she'd gotten into a serious relationship and then got out of the serious relationship and I was trying to win her back. I contacted Elliott, and he said, "I know of this Suboxone doctor that's helped me greatly"—which is this drug you take to get off opiates—"and I'm doing some recording. Could you come down and play some drums?"

So we just set up the two drum kits and played at the same time. I know that you can be a highly functioning drug addict depending on what drugs you're getting into, but to me, it didn't seem like he was affected at all. He was fucking in charge of the session. People think I played drums all over that record, but it really just ended up being one song.

DAVID MCCONNELL: From that first night, he basically moved in and ended up living there with me for many months. And that’s when we did the bulk of the album. We’d be in my bedroom and he’d sit on the bed and play me songs really late at night. He played "King's Crossing" for me on his guitar one night, although that’s not a song we worked on together.

He brought his guitars, but the funny thing about Elliott is he had five of the same guitar, the Gibson ES-330. I never understood it, exactly. I was like, "OK, that’s great, we can use those, but if you want this bigger guitar sound, I encourage you to check out the guitars that I have." On “Shooting Star”, he fell in love with this old 60s Telecaster I have. Most of the really big guitars you hear on that album are that Telly because this guitar just spits at you.

He was constantly testing me. He always asked me what my favorite albums were, and it was important that they weren’t ones that were super-produced, because his favorite records weren’t slick; they weren’t perfect. Elliott was very adamant not to use Pro Tools because he didn’t want to fix things. That was one of the important things I learned from working with him on that record: The technically-correct performance isn’t beautiful. It's the performance that can’t be replicated ever again.

One of the things that was really fun and worked well was, if we would double a guitar track, we would purposefully de-tune the guitar. So for the first track, we would make it a little bit sharp, and then for the second, we would make it a little bit flat. If you played one by itself it was kind of upsetting, but when they came together, all of a sudden you’d start smiling.

I’d never see anyone use drugs like Elliott before. I knew I couldn’t give him an intervention, because he’d already warned me. I knew that I couldn’t say, "Hey, you have to leave," because if he wasn’t with me, he’d end up somewhere else which could potentially be harmful. I knew that at my place I could at least watch him.

I think I developed an anxiety disorder working with Elliott. He's one of the most complicated people I’ve ever known in my life. Every once in awhile we’d get in an argument, and he’d leave, and we wouldn’t talk for a week. Then he’d call me and say, "This is stupid, let’s go get a beer and talk." That was how the pattern went. The next day he’d be back at my place. But I loved him like a brother. I wasn’t about to turn my back on him.

It got the point when he really needed his own place to finish the record, so I helped him put together his New Monkey studio, and then continued to work with him there. That went on for months and months, and then we kind of lost track. That was basically the last year of his life.

LOU BARLOW: I was seeing him more often around that period, too. He was talking about not doing as many drugs. He had been through a really bad period and the spark was kind of coming back. He was in this really bizarre period where he was dressing like Willie Nelson—he would wear these strange silk pants with embroidery down the side and long, flowing shirts. But then he started to look like Elliott again.

He was accumulating so much gear at that time, too. He was on eBay constantly, managing a slew of auctions. This was for his studio, New Monkey, that he was building in North Hollywood. This guy who was playing drums in the Folk Implosion was also scheming heavily to be in Elliott's band and hanging around Elliott constantly. Every time he'd hang out with him, he'd come back with a different piece of equipment, like, "Yeah, Elliott handed this to me." "What? That's a $750 contraption for Christ's sake!" All of this stuff of Elliott's started accumulating in my practice space. "Wow! Where did you get that bass?" "Oh, Elliott gave it to me last night." "Really? That's a $2,000 bass." He would just be really high and tell the guy, "Yeah, you should take it."

AUTUMN DE WILDE: As a photographer, I made a decision not to document that time period. That’s not the kind of artist I am. I don’t judge someone who does that at all, but that was not what I was there for. After that point, I was there as his friend until I wasn’t welcomed as his friend. I know he loved me a lot, and I loved him a lot, but it’s not the same person. Everybody who was a close friend basically had to say goodbye twice.

JJ GONSON: I talked to him on the phone around '99, and he was a mess. I hadn't spoken with him in a very long time, because I had to say, "I can't be in touch with you anymore." The last thing he said to me was, "I'll write you a letter." Which of course he didn't do.

He burned every bridge that he crossed. He didn't just say, "Look, I need a break." He took a machete, chopped you into tiny little pieces, poured battery acid on it, then added salt and set you on fire. He did this painful, painful ripping himself away from people thing to protect himself. He genuinely believed, I think, that he was doing the right thing for other people. He had convinced himself that the world was better off not having him in it, for other people.

On October 21, 2003, Smith dies in an L.A. hospital at age 34 after suffering two stab wounds to the chest.

ROB SCHNAPF: He had been calling me the week before [his death], and was like, "Hey, I want to play you what I have for my record." I didn’t call him back. I didn’t know if I felt like dealing with it.

When our son was born in 1999, we got a phone call in the hospital room around midnight. It was Elliott. He was like, "Hey, would it be OK to come and hang out?" So he came down and he was there all night. We wandered the hospital, just hanging out. It was really cool that he wanted to come share that special time with us. Sonny was born at eight in the morning; four years later, Elliott dies on [Sonny's] birthday. We were coming back from taking Sonny to see some big IMAX rocketship thing, and I get a phone call from Luke Wood saying, "Hey, have you heard any rumors?" I was like, "No, why?" He said, "I just heard one that wasn’t good."

MARGARET MITTLEMAN: I remember Sonny bopping around the backyard in his spacesuit. We were just having a family day. It was so bizarre because I had felt so removed. Somebody called Rob. I didn’t get the call. That made me feel even worse.

ROB SCHNAPF: It was absolutely devastating. It’s one of those things: You know one day your parents are going to die, and then they die, and it’s still devastating, no matter how much you’re prepared for it. A lot of people said, "Well, you must’ve not been surprised." But I was still fucking surprised.

AUTUMN DE WILDE: He died on my birthday, which has nothing to do with me except it happened to be my birthday. Then every birthday that follows, there’s a period of mourning and a little sadness and I’m thinking, "Am I being really dramatic?" Part of what helps is imagining him laughing at me and just being like, "C’mon, dude. This isn’t a movie about your life where the perfect, crazy dramatic ending is on your birthday."

STEVEN DROZD: We were in Seattle playing the last show of a tour opening for the Chili Peppers, and a very small percentage of the crowd cared about seeing us. We found out that night. It was just awful. I'm gonna start crying just thinking about it now. It was just so brutal. It fucked me up because I went to a bar in Seattle to try to escape, and then everyone in the bar is talking about it. People were visibly upset, crying. It was crazy.

DAVID MCCONNELL: I wasn’t involved in the completion of [From a Basement on the Hill], which was interesting, because Elliott and I had already mixed several songs for the album that were done. After his death, the family took over and brought in some really talented folks, but they hadn’t been around for the process, so they didn’t really know the plans he had for the record. I thought it was odd. I don’t blame them, but I think they probably felt uncomfortable including me in the process because they equated me with that part of his life when he was using and not at his best. Maybe they thought that I was one of the bad guys. I really don’t know, I can’t speak for them. But it was unfortunate because there are many things that are different than what he wanted and planned for on that record.

Here’s something I thought would have been groundbreaking: Two songs—"A Passing Feeling” and “Shooting Star”—were gonna be mixed in mono all the way up until a certain point where they’d break into stereo. We mixed those two songs that way, and there were moments when we cried listening to them. The impact was so profound. Anyway, the family never found those mixes for whatever reason. Also, the fact that it’s missing two of the best songs is too bad. One of them is “True Love Is a Rose” and the other one was called “True Friends / See You in Heaven.” It’s not that I’m bitter about that stuff, I just think the record would have been even more impactful. But I wasn’t going to stick my nose in the family’s business. They had just lost their son and they were grieving. It wasn’t my place to do that.

ROB SCHNAPF: Dave [McConnell] was kind of an asshole. I always tried to be really straight with him. Elliott stopped working with him—I don't know why—and he just felt like he knew exactly what Elliott wanted. Then he talked shit about me in the press without ever talking to me.

Elliott’s sister [Ashley] had all the information and she had been talking to Elliott a lot. She felt like she had a good understanding of where he was going. There was one song, "Abused", that the family didn’t want on the album. Then there was another song called “Suicide Machines” that I thought was just asking for trouble if we included it. We just went through what was completed and worked off a sort of projected track order that Elliott had. There was stuff that wasn’t finished, too. I don’t even remember the names of the songs. I’d heard rumors about all this other material, but we never found it. I never heard it.

I had not worked on a friend’s record who had died before. It was weird to hear him be very alive on those tracks. You would hear him go, “Let’s do this.” You’d hear him take a drag, inhale, blow out. You’d hear the piano stool creak, and you'd think, "He’s alive." It was weird because, with all that stuff, you wouldn’t normally think about it, like how you don’t notice the hum of the refrigerator until the house is absolutely silent and it’s three in the morning.

I was hoping for it to be a cathartic release, knowing at the same time it was never going to be how he planned it, because he wasn’t there. All you could do was try; it was better than silence. It was positive and exciting on one hand, but the thing that bothered me was reading criticism about it that was unfounded. What were the options? Would you prefer to never hear the record?

People were saying of that album, “Oh, I like this version better, I liked the early versions better.” What? There was nothing different. We didn’t do anything. I didn’t record anything. I took what was there and mixed it. So all those things that are unresolved are to be that way. Unresolved.

It’s a cool, beautiful record. He wrote it when he was alive. He didn’t write it when he was dead, he didn’t write it after a suicide, or after a murder, or whatever the fuck happened. When he was writing it, he still wanted to live his life.

DORIEN GARRY: There was a space and a time after he died when I almost forced myself to listen to him a lot at home, alone, trying to process. It was a little bit cathartic. But now it’s the opposite. I can’t even listen to it. I’ve been at a coffee shop a couple of times when it's come on and it’s a hard few minutes to get through. I hope that changes. I trust that it will. I think I’ll go through another wave of grief where I can listen to him and not feel like I miss him.

ROB SCHNAPF: There was a lot of crassness and a lot of disappointing behavior from people who were supposedly his friends. But the interesting thing is: This is how history is written. The ones who were there aren’t always the ones who speak. But if people are going to go back and use this as a reference, then it should be truthful.

He would have had a great career. He would be on his own right now. He’d be like Wilco, he’d be able to do whatever he wants. He wouldn’t need the business. He wouldn’t need it at all.

I don’t really listen to the records. Elliott still makes me sad, to be perfectly honest. I enjoy it in little bits, but I end up in this particular place, so.

JJ GONSON: When I decided I needed to shut off, I really shut him off. I never heard From the Bottom of the Hill, whatever it's called. I don't know his new songs. I really don't even listen to the old stuff.

LOU BARLOW: There was an ATP show at the Queen Mary that he was meant to play, like less than three weeks after he died and his girlfriend [Jennifer Chiba] was like, "We're gonna have a show anyway. It's gonna be a tribute.” She approached me, like, "I want you to sing, because Elliott would've wanted you to sing." So I sang with his band and we did the set that he was meant to do. It was weird. I assumed I was terrible, because no one ever said anything about it, or maybe everybody was just freaked out. It was such a strange time.

AUTUMN DE WILDE: A bunch of us were tricked by journalists at the beginning, that’s why everyone’s pretty prickly about it. That was like an incredible breach of trust, and there was a great silence for a long time, from all of us.

But the loss of any friend takes a long time to heal. And then when you’re sharing that friend with people who didn’t know him—which is totally fine and amazing, because I would like everyone to know who he was, and I wish they could have sat with him—it's even weirder. When you tell people that you feel really sad about your grandma dying, they go, "Oh shit, I’m sorry." But when it’s someone famous, often you don’t say it, because immediately you worry: Does it seem like I’m name-dropping? So on top of trying to heal from losing a friend, you’re trying to manage all the bullshit in your head: What are my reasons for bringing this up right now? Is it to say that I knew him? Am I now that person crying in public so that they can say they knew him? Like, what the fuck?

LUKE WOOD: I have not spoken about Elliott since his death. I spoke to many people the week he passed, but that was about trying to express how gifted he was, trying to articulate my thoughts of him as an artist. I thought it was so important that what people remembered about Elliott was his work and not his death. My catharsis was on my own time.