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M$1 January 17, 2009 12:22 AM

Did Elliott Smith play piano on his recordings?

Elliott was an accomplished guitarist, but many of his songs were very piano-heavy.  I used to assume he played keys on these songs, but I saw a live video where he is only playing guitar on "Everything Means Nothing To Me."  I wasn't sure if this was just a live setup so he could play guitar at the end of the song or what.

I know he worked with some talented people including John Brion, who is a very good pianist.  Many of these songs sound like they were written on piano, though.
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January 17, 2009 02:01 AM
Yes. Not only did he play guitar, he also played piano, drums and bass on almost all of his records except Figure 8.  By the way, he recorded "Everything Means Nothing To Me" while on mushrooms.

The "Baby Britain" video shows him recording.  (Sorry the embed has been disabled)

Q: You play piano on the record, any chance we’ll see you play one on stage?

A: Very little. Most places don’t have a piano and also, if you sit down
at a piano, that calls up Billy Joel or Elton John. But that’s a good
reason to do it, just to try to blow that up. But, who knows?

Q: It's ironic that you should mention 'The White Album', because 'Figure
8' reminds me a lot of it...particularly Everything Means Nothing To
Me'...was that one of the songs recorded at Abbey Road?

A: I take that very much as a compliment, thank you. That song, though, wasn't recorded there... but it was made up when I had been in a psychedelic state, shall we say, for a couple of days... and that was the product of that. That one was recorded really quickly, so I really like how it turned out... probably because it required next to no effort.


Source(s):
http://cwas.hinah.com/interview/?id=11

http://adamwalton.co.uk/mmt_arc/int-elliott.htm

Asker's Rating:
• It all falls into place. I love his music.


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January 17, 2009 12:39 AM
Wow, it looks like from this that he was a pretty amazing pianist actually:


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January 17, 2009 02:07 AM
That clip is from an awesome movie called Strange Parallel. I have a VHS copy of it, it's pretty hard to find, but you can watch it in it's s entirety on YouTube. Watch out for the robot hand. Classic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgQZBsL3f8s

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