It is an extremely painful way to die, a last resort for people so low they no longer care about themselves.Īccording to some of Smith's friends, that description fits. You turn the knife sideways and plunge it between the ribs. Although killing yourself in this way is uncommon - according to the LA Coroner's Office that dealt with Smith's death, less than 4% of suicides in 20 were due to 'sharp force trauma', and most of those were wrist-slashings - it is not entirely unknown. Never lost for an opinion, Courtney Love called it 'the best suicide I ever heard of'. Despite emergency surgery, he was pronounced dead 20 minutes after arriving at hospital. When he turned around, she saw a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Returning to the living room, she found Smith standing with his back to her. After all, this was a man who, when he decided to relocate from Portland to Brooklyn in the late 1990s, bade farewell to his Oregon friends by informing them that it was likely he would never see them again because he was 'probably going to kill himself'.Ĭhiba ignored him and locked herself in the bathroom. Like most of Smith's close friends, Chiba was used to him making melodramatic threats about ending his life. As the row got worse, Smith threatened to commit suicide.

Last year, just before lunchtime on Tuesday, October 21, Smith apparently had an argument with his girlfriend, fellow musician Jennifer Chiba, at their home in Silverlake, Los Angeles. That is not to say the circumstances of his death were not shocking. As one tribute article wryly noted, you couldn't say that Smith didn't warn you. Another, 1996's Either/Or, was named after a book by Kierkegaard, in which the philosopher posited that the aesthete would eventually find himself in a state of despair. The cover of his second, eponymous solo album, released in 1995, features a grainy image of bodies falling from a high building.

Elliott smith either or wikipedia