“The one that really, forever, sticks with me is meeting Elliott Smith. It was ’95 or ’96. Jon Brion had been introduced to Elliott and just went out and filled a shopping bag with Elliott Smith albums and distributed them to all of his friends and I was fortunate that I was among them and Jon was like “You have to hear this, I think you’ll really like it!” It was really transformative.”
Grant Lee Phillips
https://www.recordbinradio.com/crate-dig-grant-lee-phillips/
“Last week a 13-year-old performance by the late Elliott Smith was posted on YouTube by a user named Al Rose Promotions. It was accompanied by this message: “I tore up the floorboards at H.Q. the other day and came up with this little number on VHS. She holds up well. Love, Al.”
There is no Al. The promotions company belongs to Paul Thomas Anderson, the director responsible for a parade of critically acclaimed films including Magnolia, The Master and the Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood. Running more than 43 minutes, the video features storied producer and musician Jon Brion playing host to a show staged in an instrument-filled studio. Brion’s guest is Portland-native and pop songwriting genius, Smith.
The concept of the show is that Brion will play accompaniment to his guest, sometimes inviting other performers on stage to assist. Like the regular Friday night shows that Brion performed at the club Largo in Los Angeles at the time, the performance is largely improvised. Those Largo performances, displaying the depth of Brion’s pop knowledge and musicianship, were huge successes. And in this instance, with Smith, the result is one amazing musical moment after another. Continue reading
This was 1998 [1999] during the shoot for the VH1 pilot for the Jon Brion show. Elliott’s first gig post the Oscars! […not really, memory is a tricky thing]
We spent the day on the pier at a venue that was briefly a revamped attempt to revive the famous club the Ashgrove ( which is now the Improv on Melrose ave .)
It had a stage and was set up as a club, though it was no longer functioning to the public.
Elliott was a trooper , he asked me what song I would like to hear and I requested this Heatmiser song that he rarely played.
Elliott’s grandmother passed away this same day [a few days before, actually] and he was bummed about that but liked that this distracted him. He did a bunch of songs with Jon. (A lot of this stuff has been leaked online over the years. We have all of tapes safely in quarantine) Continue reading
“When we met, he wanted that to happen. He wanted me to produce him, but he had made an agreement to get his previous album finished to use friends’ studios and, if he got a proper deal, work with them. He honored that, which is great. I’m a fan of the work. I was just happy that we were friends and we were sharing ideas, and I went over and played on things. By the time he had come around to actually work with me, he’d taken a horrendous turn in his own life and was not really capable of working in any consistent way. It was all very cliché and very heartbreaking. At the point when we were going to work together, he was randomly capable. He’s absolutely one of the best songwriters in the last 30, 40 years.”
Jon Brion
“Totally untrue story, for what it’s worth… I worked with Jon and Ethan when they were sidemen for Sam Phillips/T-Bone Burnett. I had signed Heatmiser and Brendan Benson at the same time as well. Ethan produced Brendan’s debut, Brendan and Heatmiser toured together. I played “Roman Candle” for Ethan and T-Bone, Margaret Mittleman brought Jon into the picture a bit later.”
Andy Factor
“My introduction to Elliott Smith was perfect. Songwriter/producer Jon Brion, who has always been a lightning rod for creative goodness, phoned me up and said, “I have something that you have to have.” He showed up in a coffee shop the next day, still wearing his pajama top over jeans, sheet wrinkles fresh on his cheek, and presented me with three CDs, Roman Candle, Elliott Smith and Either/Or. Now, I like a good pop record as much as the next guy, but very few things will propel me out of bed with a compulsive need to share. “Imagine the best of Paul Simon’s lyricism and melody, Simon and Garfunkel’s harmonies with those fragile Nirvana verses. You, of all people, have to hear this. You’re going to love it. It’s amazing.” Driving away, I popped in Either/Or. It was playing in the background, I was talking to someone … and then I heard it. I had to pull over. I was doing that thing you do, when you stare at the CD player, at the wondrous device that is allowing a blue rental car to become an emotional transporter, to become a bearer of art. It was pure pop revelation.”
Shireen Liane
“Jon Brion played on Mary Lou Lord’s record. She told me that there was this guy knew all my songs and he might come down and play some songs with me at a live show I was playing in L.A. And I was like, “Okay.” He showed up and said he knew all my songs, and I was like, “Why?” “Because,” you know. So I said, “Let’s go through a couple things at sound check.” I didn’t think he knew all my songs at all. And he was like, “Oh, okay,” but the way he said it was sort of like, “Yeah, we can go through some stuff at sound check if you need to, but I don’t need to.” So we started going through a song at sound check, and about halfway through I was like, man, he’s not kidding. There he was, he even ended up playing on some songs that night that he hadn’t even heard before. And he was just really brilliant. He’s the most melodic, musical person I’ve ever met. He makes me feel pedestrian. He’s like our own Paul McCartney.”
Elliott Smith
“When I was making my album in LA, I had been working with Jon Brion and Ethan Johns doing pre-production. I had a cassette of Elliott’s songs that I gave to Jon who had never heard Elliott. About a week went by, and I told him again that he should listen to the tape of my friend. The next night, at around 3 am, I got a call from Jon who was freaking out about Elliott, and the music/tape. I told him to call me in the AM (I was sleeping). I was so happy he had finally listened! Then, Jon passed the tape along to Ethan, and the same thing happened. Took a few days for Ethan to hear it, and then, Ethan called Jon at some ridiculous hour freaking out to him!! So cool. Very shortly after (a week)? I introduced Jon to Elliott at our gig at Spaceland? or something. Continue reading
“What a damn fine writer. His loss is the worst one, it really is, and I mean that in every way. I personally feel that he was our finest writer and his loss is incalculable, which makes everything all that much more heartbreaking. I have some very personal memories of sweetness. Before he took out his own mind, because he spent a few years without himself, he was a creature of immense sweetness. He was not without his grinding angers inside like the rest of us but his day-to-day interaction had a lot more shyness and sweetness in his heyday. The memories I have of him are so big to me that I’ll never be able to adequately communicate it. The nature of his music might suggest an endless dourness but he was really the opposite to that when he was in good shape.”
Jon Brion
so flawed and drunk and perfect still 