But look closely, and what slowly reveals itself is something gentle and exhausted. This might be why, after Good Will Hunting's Minnie Driver and Matt Damon broke up, rumours circulated that Driver and Smith were an item. (He denies that they were anything but friends.) I don't feel any sadder than anybody else I know," Smith says. "I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not." One of the times when he was not came in 1997, when the singer tried to kill himself. He won't say why this happened, though a piece in the Los Angeles Times suggests it had to do with a breakup from his girlfriend.

When Elliott was 14, he entered a talent contest held by the farm team of capitalism. For weeks, the sound of Elliott practicing Beatles songs on his guitar wafted from his bedroom. Maybe he likes songs too much: his keep gagging on pieces of the past. " I'm so glad that my memory's remote/'Cause I'm doing just fine hour-to-hour, note-to-note," he sings on his fourth album, XO. But no matter how much his songs reveal an urge to burn all the photo books, there's a bone-tired weariness in his singing that can't let go of old business. However calm his songs sound, they still roar like a car crash echoing in a seashell. Finally, Smith arrives, in his T-shirt from Value Village, his bargain-bin green suede shoes, his knit cap, and frayed, flared green pants. "Trying to look good just gets on my nerves," he says. Smith flashes his room key, and confirms that all these people actually are his friends. Massaging a glass of beer, he seems happy, truly happy, which is not something a singer/songwriter so often linked with words such as "gloom" and "Garfunkel" is supposed to be. Happier than someone who sings about the need to "bottle up and explode", and happier than someone who last year tried to kill himself. I'm not interested in making 'Elliott Smith records' over and over again. I'd be really happy if I could write a song as universal and accessible as I Second That Emotion," he says. "It's a big game to play, trying to make something that's mainstream enough and still human." Casting about for a career, he settled on being a fireman, because a fireman is an indisputably essential guy, right? "Someone has to put out fires, while it's not particularly essential for me to play songs to people. It's important that somebody play songs, but …"

Love Elliott Smith ?

But, um, yeah – I, uh, jumped off a cliff. But it didn't work. It was in North Carolina or somewhere. It wasn't like I made up my mind to throw myself off a cliff. I got freaked out and started running, it was totally dark, and I ran off the edge of a cliff. I saw it coming up, and it wasn't like, 'I'm gonna throw myself off this cliff and die.' It was just, 'Ground's coming up. Who cares, whatever.' I landed on a little tree, punctured my, you know, body. It just made a really ugly wound." A pair of Dutch dowagers try chatting him up from their bar stools, and they have a conversation neither party understands before Smith repairs to his table. "It's all OK," he says with a fraction of a smile. "I'm doing fine now."

I don't like when people talk about all the bad things that have happened to them as if that makes them unique. Because I don't think I've had a harder time than other people.

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It's easy to get the wrong idea about that face. At first, the skin's waxy softness, the three-days' growth, the brawler's nose, is all you notice. He looks uncared for and unconcerned. Until finally he can't take it any longer. He graciously excuses himself and waits until he's across the room before muttering, "The last thing I need right now is somebody telling me how fame can make you crazy."