Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval picks her favourite Elliott Smith song
Elliott Smith’s dizzying talent seems to grow more profound with age. Offering a pleasant contrast to the grunge and Britpop bands of the late 1990s, the Portland singer-songwriter’s artfully recorded blend of acoustic rock was seemingly born from an inability to articulate his emotions in any other way. As a result, his music shimmers with a certain melancholy that has made him a favourite of doomed teenagers ever since. Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval was just one of the musicians inspired by Smith.
Sandoval rose to fame with Opal in the late ’80s, in which she performed alongside David Roback and Dream Syndicate member Kendra Smith. Things fell apart, as they so often do, in London after Smith made an abrupt departure – throwing her guitar to the floor during a Hammersmith gig and walking off stage. The tour continued with Sandoval taking over lead vocals, and by the end of the venture, she and Roback had written the songs that would form the basis of Mazzy Star’s first album, She Hangs Brightly, released in 1990. However, it wasn’t until their 1993 single ‘Fade Into You’ that they gained widespread recognition.
During a conversation with Dazed in 2013, Sandoval opened up about some of the artists that have influenced her over the years. She paid particular attention to Elliot Smith, noting: “I was just thinking about Elliott Smith the other day. I only recently got into his music. I love it so much. I don’t even know the names of the records. But I remember the cover of one because my brother used to live in Silver Lake, and when I saw the cover I knew where it was.”
She continued: “There’s this song he covered called ‘Figure 8’ that I grew up listening to – it’s from a children’s show (Schoolhouse Rock!). The cartoon is a little girl making a figure eight ice skating. So for some reason when I think about him, I think about the figure eight. I remember growing up with that song and thinking, ‘That is the most beautiful song.’ It’s a really sad little cartoon. His music is so beautiful, though. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to hear the rest of it. Cheers to him and what he’s given us musically.”
‘Figure 8’ would give Smith the title of his final record, though the track was eventually removed from the tracklist. Around the time he began recording the album, Smith started displaying signs of paranoia. He was convinced that a white van was following him wherever he went and he would have his friends drop him off a mile away from the studio, making the rest of the journey on foot. Things would only get worse. By 2003, he’d been in and out of rehab several times and was incredibly mentally unstable. In the autumn of that year, Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest – most probably self-inflicted, though the possibility of homicide remains.
