http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/elliott_smith_partner/ http://www.railrode.net/?p=13483489
Chapter I 1. Come here, Dear Reader, and I will tell you a story. It’s not a happy story; it’s not an easy story to tell. And I’m going to ask of you a favor: one of the people in the story became famous while I knew him, and then he died, and what I am hoping you can do is put aside your own knowledge of this person and hear this tale from my life. 2. I walked in on the aftermath of an intervention. Elliott* had played a very short set, and I vaguely remember being startled and disappointed by it. It was the Knitting Factory, September 1997. “Friends staged an intervention in Chicago in the middle of the Either/Or tour,” said Jonathan Valania in his article “Emotional Rescue” for Magnet Magazine. The way I remember it was this: I threw open the door to the green room, the way I had done the last time he played at the club. There he was, on the grungy sofa again. But now, friends I mostly didn’t know or had only met in passing—a few of his Portland friends and newer friends from his year of dropping into and out of New York—surrounded him, leaning against the ugly brown laminate conference table and the emergency exit door. Beautiful Joanna was there, looking anguished and pissed off, arms crossed. I had no idea if she was still Elliott’s girlfriend. When I had met her the year before, she was (or seemed to be) giddily happy with him. Now Elliott got up and hugged me and explained that an intervention was underway and that he would soon be checked into a facility in Arizona. He did not seem to be suffering over the pain he had caused others. Misery was missing. From his raised eyebrows and the scornful twist in his voice, he made it clear to me that he was disappointed in his friends for staging an intervention, but he had no choice but to indulge them. It seemed to be a kind of embarrassing joke to him, almost like a practical joke. This was New York City, but he mentioned Chicago. Now I understand that the intervention had actually occurred earlier, at a friend’s house in Chicago—but the participants had agreed to let him play this Knitting Factory gig. It’s been hard to get the facts straight. Continue Reading...
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