Elliott SmithBack in 1991, an episode of The Simpsons featured a plotline in which Marge Simpson received a long-overdue response to a fan letter originally sent to Ringo Starr, encouraging her not to give up her hobby painting.
In 2013, Starr’s Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney followed suit, sharing a response to a fan letter originally sent to him in 1963 – 50 years later.
In both of these instances, however, Starr and McCartney were still around to share their long-awaited responses, making the recent story of an Elliott Smith fan sharing a similar experience all the more impressive.
In an essay penned for the HuffPost, Kirby Rock recalled how she – at the age of 17 in 2000 – penned a fan letter to indie folk musician Elliott Smith.
That year saw him release his fifth and final album, Figure 8, which in turn came after a period of increased fame, including an Academy Award nomination for his song Miss Misery, which was featured on the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting.
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“I wanted to reach out to Elliott to thank him, and convey how important his music was to me,” Rock explained. “I found an address for his record label, Kill Rock Stars, in the liner notes of one of his CDs, and I mailed the letter. And then I waited.
“Months passed, and no response. ‘Maybe I sent it to the wrong address,’ I thought. I never really expected to hear back, but I did wonder if he even got it.”
As Rock continued, she explained how the ensuing years saw her graduating high school, going off to college, and not once experiencing the thrill of a new record from Smith.
Tragically, in October 2003, Smith passed away at the age of 34, in circumstances which still inspire debate decades later.
As Rock continued, she recalled how in 2023, she was contacted by Jamie Fisher, a biographer working on the soon-to-be-released volume on Smith, Nobody Broke Your Heart.
Fisher explained that Smith's family still had the original letter, which saw Rock (then known as Kirby Van Amburgh) professing her love for Smith's music (“It’s so original and creative. I’ve never heard anything like it.”), and expressing her own desire to “write my own songs and make them as unique and personal to me as your work is to you,” with an ultimate goal of becoming a writer.
Making proper contact with Fisher, Rock recalled her own history with both writing and music, before Fisher explained that Smith had in fact written a response years earlier – though it had been left unsent for reasons unknown.
“‘Dear Kirby, I read your letter and it made me happy–thanks,’” Smith wrote in his response, with Rock taking over. “Elliott wished me success with my writing, whatever success meant to me personally.
“He talked about his love of reading and recommended an author he was really into at the moment, Mikhail Bulgakov. He shared that he sometimes secretly wished he was a writer instead of a musician, as his music so often diverged from mainstream tastes.
“He thanked me for adding a little brightness to his day,” she added. “‘I’m glad you see creativity in yourself, the world needs as much of it as it can get, so go out and kick ass!’ He signed it with a heart.”
Rock explained how the discovery of this letter affected her deeply, inspiring her to once again venture into the worlds of music and writing, explaining that – fittingly – she was “almost thankful” she never received the original letter, given that the sentiment expressed by Smith was far more suited for her current age than those formative years.
“I wrote to Elliott years ago to thank him,” Rock said in closing her essay. “And in a way, I wrote this to thank him again.”
Smith visited Australia just once in his short life, performing five shows in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane in January 1999. Following his passing in 2003, a pair of posthumous albums were released, as was a 2015 documentary about his life and music, titled Heaven Adores You.
