Description
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Biographical Note: "Informed and animated by the same radical tenderness that drove its subject, Nobody Broke Your Heart is brutal and beautiful, the best biography I have read in years. Jamie Fisher's encyclopedic knowledge of Elliott's influences, earliest musical ventures, and childhood is set against the difficulties of his later life and tragic death, a tapestry in which Elliott's siblings, parents, best friends, band mates, and lovers become characters as vital as Smith himself... For decades I've wondered how Elliott Smith managed to distill so much pain into so much beauty; now, I'm asking the same question about Jamie Fisher's Nobody Broke Your Heart." --Emily Van Duyne, author of Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation "It's tough to overstate the influence of Elliott Smith's yearning, tender folk songs on the last several decades of American music, and he deserves a biography as good as this one. Jamie Fisher is a meticulous reporter and a deeply thoughtful writer; Nobody Broke Your Heart gives shape to Smith's devastations and his triumphs, making sense of a life that was equal parts tragic and extraordinary." --Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves and Do Not Sell at Any Price " Nobody Broke Your Heart painstakingly overturns seemingly every stone in Elliott Smith's all-too-brief life and glosses the finds with wisdom, empathy and a depth of appreciation that only a true fan can bring." --Michael Azerrad, author of The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Our Band Could Be Your Life "Like many musical geniuses, Elliott Smith was a complicated person. But Nobody Broke Your Heart treats these complexities with tenderness and sensitivity. Fisher also did a jaw-dropping amount of reporting for this book; as a whole, these interviews with people from Smith's life illuminate his music and humanity." --Annie Zaleski, New York Times bestselling author of Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs and music journalist Publisher Marketing: The first all-encompassing biography of Elliott Smith, offering an intimate portrait of his life and musical legacy with brand-new interviews, lyrics, and correspondence from the people closest to him, many speaking for the first time Nobody Broke Your Heart is a tender, nuanced narrative of Elliott Smith, one of the most influential and tragic musicians of the 1990s, whose records are deeply beloved to this day, written by New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker-published author Jamie Fisher. Starting with his childhood in Texas, following him through his making as an artist in Portland and New York, and reckoning honestly with his unmaking in Los Angeles, Fisher has used never-before-seen archival evidence (unheard recordings, draft lyrics, photos, and correspondence) alongside extensive interviews with friends, family, girlfriends, and collaborators to shed light on the real Elliott Smith, in all his complexity. Vividly animating Elliott's world and analyzing his work and legacy in loving depth, Nobody Broke Your Heart is an essential book for anyone who loves Elliott Smith and his music--and anyone who's loved someone grappling with addiction and mental illness. Review Citations:
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Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith
$40.80