Today is the former birthday of
Elliott Smith whose discography is only shortly behind food and water on a list of what my body requires to function. As some of you may know, quoted from DailySwarm:
Shortly after Elliott Smith’s suicide was announced in 2003, the singer’s Los Angeles fans began to gather at Solutions, an electronics store in Silver Lake on Sunset Boulevard where Smith had once posed for the cover of his 2000 album Figure 8. The mural became a makeshift memorial, with many people writing notes, poems, and rememberances on top of the black and red painting. Ever since, the store has become a L.A. fixture, with thousands adding to the ever-changing collection of thoughts and tributes added to what became known around the world as the Elliott Smith Memorial Wall.
But [in the summer of 2007], the wall was defaced with a large graffiti tag. While many local residents were horrified by the vandalism, the tag remained a part of the Silver Lake scenery. Recently, the wall was hit yet again, with an even larger bubble-letter tag covering most of the memorial.
This latest affront to the wall inspired some local artists and Elliott Smith fans – who had already set-up a MySpace page devoted to restoring the wall – into action, and earlier this week the original mural was restored to its pristine state. The thousands of memorial tributes are gone, though the blank canvas is sure to be covered with words of love for Smith and his music again soon.
We happened to be in Los Angeles with the
Twisted Twins shortly after the recreation and we stopped by Solutions to briefly look at the new wall (which
has been vandalized a few times since, once famously by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.)
If you have not seen this
Elliott Smith book by Autumn De Wilde, longtime friend of Elliotts and the photographer who took the original cover photo, it is an absolute required purchase and one of our favorite things easily.
The book contains hundreds of photos and candid conversations with those around him. Stories like this from the dress rehearsal the day of the Oscars broadcast where Elliott was nominated for his original song.
After confessing to Mark that he was terrified people would "call him out," Elliott stumbled out of Largo at 5am and re-surfaced later that night in a white suit on the Oscars singing Miss Misery.
