A Fond Farewell - Elliott Smith Song Meaning and Interpretation

A Fond Farewell

This is easily one of Elliott's most beautiful songs. It is included on his post-humous release From a Basement on The Hill . I have heard the song interpreted in a couple of different ways.

The first interpretation is a common one when it comes to Elliott's music - that it is essentially a suicide note. I disagree with this for a number of reasons. First, there is no doubt that Elliott Smith dealt with depression and drug abuse during his life, but the media portrayal of him as little more than a doom and gloom indie rocker is just that, a media portrayal. Second he wrote about drug use and suicide in his songs, using those things metaphorically for other, sometimes larger or at least different issues. And third, tying right into what I think the song is about, lots of Elliott's work expertly contrasted the intersection of and the tension between 'hope and depression' that so many of us deal with.

Elliott, quite often, wrote about not being out no matter how down things looked. Take this line from Bled White as an example:

I may not seem quite right
but i'm not fucked, not quite

Or these lines from a recently leaked song, Suicide Machine, which was not included on the Basement release:

baby got a place in the sun selling people shade

everything's alright
except for how it seems

Could it be that Elliott was speaking of his role being cast as the melancholic singer-songwriter, providing the sadness, even if that's not what he was all about.

In Fond Farewell, Elliott writes verses that seem to deal with despair as he alludes to things like drug abuse, but after each verse, he comes back with what could have been a hopeful, even defiant chorus:

this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
it's not what i'm like
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
who couldn't get things right
fond farewell to a friend
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend

Maybe it was the case that with A Fond Farewell , Elliott was echoing the way he was reported to be feeling by many months preceding his death - clean, healthy, optimistically working on a new record. He illustrates his problems in the song and then notes, maybe not triumphantly but at least hopefully, that that is no longer who he is, as he bids a 'fond farewell' to the person he used to be.

Elliott's death leaves these questions unanswered, but looking into his music in this way is an important exercise. In doing so, we keep alive his memory and the very possibly alternative scenario to a death that has been all but accepted as a suicide.