“I once sold a Heatmiser single on Ebay, the buyer agreed to meet me at a bar to pick it up. The buyer turned out to actually be Elliott Smith. We talked over drinks for almost three hours. Very nice and genuine guy. It was the “Everybody Has It” 7”. Sold it to him in 2002, he made an origami swan out of the $5 bill he paid me with after refusing to just take it for free.”
Jeff Cellers
“Stumbled onto this today. Believe it or not, I am the recording engineer on this. Wish the audio quality was better. Recorded this at Thirsty Ear Records in NYC for MTV Alternative Nation’s Left of the Dial in the mid-90s. At the time I had never heard of him or his band Heatmiser but was instantly blown away by his talent which just poured off of him. Just incredible. I don’t have the original audio but I have a better recording burned on CD.”
Owen Murphy
“Swimming Jesus was the first thing that Elliott and I did together when I showed up at Hampshire College. He was one of the very first people I met and we just sort of instantly started realized that we had the same interests in recording, playing music and Elvis Costello. So we were playing together and recording like the first week of college. Someone had a four track, they’d rented it and we went crazy with it. We had to use it, we used it over a weekend and we were playing with other people and I don’t know what happened to those tapes, but there’s one or two still out there. And from that, what we decided to do was just to do some covers and play in this little bridge cafe that was on campus. And Elliott came up with the name Swimming Jesus which he thought was really funny. Continue reading
“Elliott avait un sacré sens de l’humour, surtout quand on était dans le van en tournée, un humour très… obtus. Je ne vois pas d’autre mot pour le décrire ! C’était un mec bien plus déconneur qu’on ne le croit. Je me souviens d’une virée en voiture à Portland à écouter du John Lennon. On l’adorait, évidemment, mais il s’est mis à se moquer de quelques solos de guitare qui sont, je l’avoue, cocasses. On se marrait comme des fous sur des foutus solos de guitare…”
Tony Lash
“Touring with Heatmiser was really enlightening for me. I mean, those guys were really smart, really kind of I think a little older than I was at the time and I looked up to them. You know, Elliott of course, at that point, I was a fan of Elliott’s and kind of starstruck a little bit. Even though Elliott was… at that time, no one really had heard of him. Long before the Grammys and all that or the Oscars or whatever it was. Elliott, I remember, once gave me some great advice. I was sitting with him at the bar in, I don’t know where we were, on tour somewhere, it doesn’t matter. Continue reading
“Virgin came after us for a really long time, and we were in a situation with an indie label that was really bad because the person that ran that label couldn’t get along with our friend who was being our manager. She wasn’t like a real manager, but there was a little war going on and we had to get off that label, and the only way we could get off was by being bought out. Continue reading
“I can’t think of anybody who I’ve had hatred or wars with because it’s better to just let go. A lot of bands got poached when I would sign them for more than one record. I signed Elliott Smith via his band Heatmiser. They swore they didn’t want to be on a major label, but when major labels came calling I got boxed out. It was really hard and really awful to have to let go, but what could I possibly do? I couldn’t compete with DreamWorks.”
Lisa Fancher
“I like loud rock’n’roll, but it took me a while to realize I didn’t want to sing like that. That was the big thing about Heatmiser for me. There was a lot about the band that I liked. I liked the chords, and I really liked Neil’s songs, but I was singing in a way that I didn’t like. I guess I was trying to be… not something I wasn’t, but trying to do something I thought made sense. And then I realized I wanted to sing differently. I had to peel the layers of concrete off my voice. Continue reading
so flawed and drunk and perfect still 