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Singer Elliott Smith dead at 34
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Elliott Smith, a singer-songwriter whose dark, introspective songs won him critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination, has apparently committed suicide, his publicist and coroner's officials said Wednesday. He was 34. Smith's body was found by his live-in girlfriend Tuesday, Los Angeles County Coroner Records Supervisor Marsha Grigsby told AP Radio. He sustained a single stab wound to the chest that appeared to be self-inflicted, she said. His New York-based publicist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also confirmed his death. Smith released five solo albums that received widespread acclaim from rock critics and garnered modest commercial success. "Miss Misery," recorded for Gus Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting," was nominated for an Oscar in 1998. Smith's songs often were compared with those of Alex Chilton, Nick Drake and the Beatles, his favorite band. Lyrically, they addressed dark subject matter such as drug addiction, troubled relationships and loneliness -- though Smith tried to distance himself from the label of confessional songwriter. "I don't feel like my songs are particularly fragile or revealing," he said in a 1998 interview in the Los Angeles Times. "It's not like a diary, and they're not intended to be any sort of superintimate confessional singer-songwriterish thing." However, Smith had recently spoken in interviews about his struggles with alcoholism. "When I lived in New York I was really a bad alcoholic for a few years," he told Under the Radar magazine in an interview published in June 2003. In an effort to quit drinking, Smith said he had undergone treatment which administers an intravenous solution meant to clear the bloodstream of toxins. Smith was born Steven Paul Smith in Nebraska; his mother was a singer and his father was a psychiatrist. He spent most of his childhood with his mother in the suburbs of Dallas,Texas, and then moved to Portland, Oregon, while in high school to live with his father. He studied piano and guitar as a youth and began composing songs when he was 13. He began calling himself Elliott in middle school, he later explained to a reporter, because Steve sounded too "jockish." A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, he later joined a Portland punk band called Heatmiser. On the side, he recorded several solo albums -- "Roman Candle" (1994), "Elliott Smith" (1995) and "Either/Or" (1997), all on independent labels -- that won him a devoted underground following. In 1997, he moved to New York, where Van Sant approached him with an offer to use several of his songs on the soundtrack to "Good Will Hunting." The movie was a hit, bringing Smith's music to a mainstream audience. Smith subsequently signed with DreamWorks Records and recorded two albums; "XO" (1998) and "Figure 8" (2000) continued his critical winning streak, and took him to the middle reaches of Billboard's Top 200 albums chart. He told AP Radio in a 2000 interview that he didn't mind being remembered mostly as the "Good Will Hunting" guy. "I liked that movie. I thought it was really nice that Gus put my songs in it. There's always some sort of name tag on any band, any person, so if that's the one I have, that's great." Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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