Elliott Smith – One of Portland’s Most Well-Known Musicians

Jeremy Raglin

PORTLAND, Ore. – If you’re an alternative music fan then the name Elliott Smith will be well-known to you since he’s responsible for recording some of the best albums over the last 25 years including Roman Candle, and Either Or but what most music fans don’t know is that Smith spent much of his short life writing and recording music in the Portland Oregon area.

About Elliott Smith

Born in Texas in 1969, Elliott Smith moved to Portland at the age of 14 to live with his father and it was during his teenage years that he took to music as a way to escape the abuse he was experiencing at home and he quickly learned to play the drums, bass guitar, clarinet, and piano.

Thanks to music, Elliott Smith found an outlet to channel all of his creative talents and by the time he graduated from Lincoln High School he was a National Merit Scholar and well on his way to becoming a professional musician when he started playing in bands like A Murder Of Crows.

Rise and Fall

From the moment, his music career launched in the 1990’s it was almost as if everyone knew that Elliott Smith would soon fall since he dealt with severe depression over the years along with addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs.

By the mid 1990’s Smith had released some of his best albums ever including Elliott Smith and Either Or; thanks to his success he was able to sign a record deal with a major record label (DreamWorks) and this gave him the platform to release XO and Figure8, two albums that have been described as having the best sound of his career.

Sadly, by the early 2000’s Elliott Smith’s problems with addiction and depression were spiraling out of control and he ultimately took his own life in 2003 at the age of 34.

Like many Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin and other musicians who have come and gone too fast over the years, Elliott Smith’s music is still remembered to this day thanks to the Internet, film, B-Sides and recordings from his early work that continue to surface to this day, leading to posthumous and compilation albums so even though he’s been gone for almost 20 years now, he’s not forgotten.