Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith by William Todd Schultz Page B

Tri-Met buses in Portland. Sketchy guys concocted elaborate shell games that kids picked up on; slowly they figured out what to say and do in order to get what they wanted. It wasn’t cheap, but it did the trick. Pickle almost never drank and he abstained completely from smoking. Denbow, however, was game. He and Elliott were accustomed to sneaking out—they’d done it many times before—so the basic plan was predetermined. Denbow would roll up at night in his pickup (he no longer relied on the rickety scooter), and the two would meander into South Oak Cliff, a rougher part of Dallas. “We were basically buying Mexican dirt weed,” Denbow recalls. It was terrible, but cheap—one-quarter ounce for ten dollars. A real bargain compared to what Elliott was used to paying in Portland. The effect dope had on his state of mind intrigued Elliott. Pickle, for instance, recalls a very long description by Elliott of how smoking marijuana appeared to affect his perception of time. He was into the phenomenology of the altered states experience. He approached it almost philosophically.
    When not scheming to get high the boys reverted to the usual ways of passing time. They shot hoops. They went to the Red Bird Mall. They alsosnuck into R-rated movies. Denbow recalls seeing
Johnny Dangerously
with Elliott, also
The Outsiders
.
    But this was all down time. The true mania was for getting the band back together, rehearsing and recording. They ran through “Ocean” and “Outward Bound” again, sometimes with small lyrical revisions. Another tune was “Barriers,” a Rush-inspired number for which Elliott played electric lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and acoustic piano. The last two verses are “pretty heavy,” according to Pickle, with intimations of mortality. Life goes on and on, Elliott sings, and mine may soon be gone; who knows how long before I sing my swan song. As usual, one version features Kim singing, another Elliott, who typically had to be pushed into recording vocal tracks. “He’s not yet a great singer,” Pickle suggests. “He’s aware of that himself and fairly unsure when it comes to singing, even when it’s his own work. Kim was definitely more confident, though there are spots when the melody is out of her range—and out of Elliott’s too. The idea of moving the songs to a different key to make things easier for the singer didn’t really occur to us. Even if we had thought of it, I don’t know if we could have pulled it off.”
    These rehearsals paved the way for the most exciting prospect by far—heading into a genuine, truly high-level studio. In the back of a free publication called
Buddy Magazine
, Pickle’s dad found an ad for “Pla-Back Recording” (“hear the quality,” the ad trumpeted), run by a Lew Blackburn. Pickle made calls to set up a time and get directions. The studio itself turned out to be a converted garage in Blackburn’s home in South Dallas. He held a degree in music education and figured he’d try to make a go of it in the music business. (It did not pan out, and later he became president of the school board for the Dallas Independent School District.) The space boasted an eight-track reel-to-reel, a large professional mixing board, effects, quality microphones, acoustical treatment, and a piano. “We were all pretty impressed,” says Pickle, garage setting notwithstanding.
    In all there were two trips to Pla-Back, one week apart. Summer band was on, and everyone—with the exception of Elliott—spent several hours per day on the parking lot at Duncanville High marching and learning music for fall. Drill activities were par for the course for freshmen—marching, counting, shouting. As a result Kim was actually too hoarse to sing on the night the group first booked the time. So they did a quick mix-down of theinstrumental tracks, then had to pay Blackburn to keep the half-inch master for another week, when they planned to return and add vocals.
    The set-up was crowded.