Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith by William Todd Schultz Page A
Authors: William Todd Schultz
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stairway to a converted office upstairs, with professional-grade microphones and sound foam all over the walls and ceiling, and an eight-track reel-to-reel setup, with the possibility of various effects. In the endfour songs were recorded over four hours—all instrumental, no singing, mainly keyboards and Elliott’s Gibson SG guitar. Most of these tunes were carryovers from the Dallas days, but there was one new number in the batch, written by Elliott in Portland. Elliott was clearly into the process, the details of getting the sound just right. “He was very interested in recording and recording technology even then,” Pickle remembers.
The new number, “Inspector Detector,” he had written in the spring, just before Pickle’s arrival. Pickle watched Elliott finish it and work out the arrangement. This time, Elliott had worked on the keyboard, which was different, Pickle recalls, “since most of his songs at the time were guitar compositions.” The verse begins in a minor chord. When it comes back around, Elliott throws in a half-beat major chord. “That’s from a wrong note he hit when working it out. He decided he liked the major chord anyway, as an accent, but decided not to use it every time.” Inspector Detector was the name of a large, bearded, suit-and-tie-wearing police officer in the
Speed Racer
cartoon series. Pickle says, “At the time, I thought the riff/guitar solo in the middle conjured up images of a guy in a trench coat sneaking down a dark hallway looking through windows, on some secret mission.” Elliott’s guitar playing on the song was minimalist: “He doesn’t throw in a lot of flashy licks but hits some good notes to create an effect. He was already working out the ‘less is more’ concept that some musicians never quite get.”
The boys rerecorded “#37” during this studio jaunt too. It was in fact the chief reason the two booked the time—to get the song down on tape. One year before, they’d talked over the possibility of adding lyrics. Pickle came up with some but “I didn’t think they were that great and neither of us wanted to sing.” Why 37? Pickle guesses it was a take-off from the number 42 in
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
—humorously selecting a random number and assigning mysterious significance to it. “I know I read that book in junior high and I’m pretty sure he did too.”
Spring break over, Pickle headed back to Texas. Several months later, in July 1984, his first year of high school at Lincoln now finished, Elliott did the same. His life situation had reversed itself. Now it was Bunny he visited for weeks at a time—and Ashley and Darren—whereas before it had been Gary. The occasion, and this would repeat itself one year later, was his August6 birthday. He’d spend it with his mother and his two half-siblings, and with Charlie too, of course.
By this time Elliott and Kim had broken up, although he would spend quite a bit of time with her, as it turns out. They phoned over the year he was away, and sent letters back and forth, but the “long-distance” relationship challenge proved to be too much. They were thirteen and fourteen, and it was largely “out of sight, out of mind.” They stayed friends all the same. To Kim, he was always a “dedicated” boyfriend. Very sweet, very attentive. In fact, she says, he was the type of boy a girl could take advantage of if she wanted to—but Kim never did. She recalls the breakup happening over the phone one night, prior to his return. One thing she noticed immediately was that “he was much calmer when he came back from Portland,” as if the time away from Texas, in particular, had done him a world of good.
Back in Cedar Hill, there was more music to make—as always—but Elliott also wanted to get high. This was new. Before it had been a rarity; now it was something more than that. It wasn’t a daily thing, the pot smoking, but Elliott told Denbow he’d been buying dope in the back of
The new number, “Inspector Detector,” he had written in the spring, just before Pickle’s arrival. Pickle watched Elliott finish it and work out the arrangement. This time, Elliott had worked on the keyboard, which was different, Pickle recalls, “since most of his songs at the time were guitar compositions.” The verse begins in a minor chord. When it comes back around, Elliott throws in a half-beat major chord. “That’s from a wrong note he hit when working it out. He decided he liked the major chord anyway, as an accent, but decided not to use it every time.” Inspector Detector was the name of a large, bearded, suit-and-tie-wearing police officer in the
Speed Racer
cartoon series. Pickle says, “At the time, I thought the riff/guitar solo in the middle conjured up images of a guy in a trench coat sneaking down a dark hallway looking through windows, on some secret mission.” Elliott’s guitar playing on the song was minimalist: “He doesn’t throw in a lot of flashy licks but hits some good notes to create an effect. He was already working out the ‘less is more’ concept that some musicians never quite get.”
The boys rerecorded “#37” during this studio jaunt too. It was in fact the chief reason the two booked the time—to get the song down on tape. One year before, they’d talked over the possibility of adding lyrics. Pickle came up with some but “I didn’t think they were that great and neither of us wanted to sing.” Why 37? Pickle guesses it was a take-off from the number 42 in
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
—humorously selecting a random number and assigning mysterious significance to it. “I know I read that book in junior high and I’m pretty sure he did too.”
Spring break over, Pickle headed back to Texas. Several months later, in July 1984, his first year of high school at Lincoln now finished, Elliott did the same. His life situation had reversed itself. Now it was Bunny he visited for weeks at a time—and Ashley and Darren—whereas before it had been Gary. The occasion, and this would repeat itself one year later, was his August6 birthday. He’d spend it with his mother and his two half-siblings, and with Charlie too, of course.
By this time Elliott and Kim had broken up, although he would spend quite a bit of time with her, as it turns out. They phoned over the year he was away, and sent letters back and forth, but the “long-distance” relationship challenge proved to be too much. They were thirteen and fourteen, and it was largely “out of sight, out of mind.” They stayed friends all the same. To Kim, he was always a “dedicated” boyfriend. Very sweet, very attentive. In fact, she says, he was the type of boy a girl could take advantage of if she wanted to—but Kim never did. She recalls the breakup happening over the phone one night, prior to his return. One thing she noticed immediately was that “he was much calmer when he came back from Portland,” as if the time away from Texas, in particular, had done him a world of good.
Back in Cedar Hill, there was more music to make—as always—but Elliott also wanted to get high. This was new. Before it had been a rarity; now it was something more than that. It wasn’t a daily thing, the pot smoking, but Elliott told Denbow he’d been buying dope in the back of
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