Whatever Happened to Steve Eliovson?

Brownian Motion · February-17th-2007, 06:54 PM

He made one record for ECM, "Dawn Dance", in 1981, and then fell off the Earth.

Sand · February-17th-2007, 07:05 PM

Tell me more, Brownian. What have you found out so far?

Dennis Gonzalez · February-17th-2007, 07:12 PM

There is no biographical information to be found anywhere on the internet about him.

Sand · February-17th-2007, 07:22 PM

He played weth Collin Walcott on that recording. We can't ask him.

Sand · February-17th-2007, 07:49 PM

Then, again, do we need to know more? No, we don't necessarily need to know more. He may, if he's still among us, prefer to live his life without our attention. If that is so, shouldn't we respect that?

Dennis Gonzalez · February-17th-2007, 10:03 PM

I think there are people interested enough in the one album that he did, especially with someone like Collin Walcott, to be interested in what happened to him. And if the case is as you conjecture, then yes, we should respect his silence.

But let me give another case of a respected artist who disappeared from view, and it turned out nobody knew he was in a nursing home with no visitors and nobody aware of his plight, until someone asked about him: Marion Brown.

Fred Jung interviewed him in 2003 and said this at the time: Through Gunter Hampel, I learned of Brown's trials and they are many in number. Brown has undergone brain surgery, eye surgery, has had all of his teeth extracted, and a portion of his leg has been amputated and he has had to learn to walk with a prosthetic.

Tom Marcello · February-17th-2007, 11:23 PM

I found this:

Date: Dec 15, 2006 11:47

I just got back from Cape Town, S Africa...
I spent a week and a 1/2 making a nuisance of myself at various
gigs/jams. I got to sit in with Bensonphile, Richard Caesar,
Wes-o-phile, Alvin Dyers and other sundry bands/guys.

So on saturday I was invited to a party at great pianist Robert Payne's
pad. There were a few people there, and one guy was introduced as
"Steve". About 1/2 way thru the nite I heard "Steve" mention recording
in Germany. I tentatively asked him for his last name, and his response
FLOORED me: Eliovson. This was the legendary Steve Eliovson who
recorded on ECM in '80 and promptly vanished. HE is a legend amongst SA
gtr players, and here he was in front of me alive and well !!!!! He
told me lots of stories of hanging with Towner and Abercrombie et al,
and how the exigencies of survival forced him to abandon his gtrs in
NY storage NEVER to return to music- sad freaking story....Anyway I
pulled out my gtr and he played a bit. Rusty, but with glimpses of a
Mclaughlin style...then I took over and showed him how to do it
properly ;-)

He told me he was in Europe to record his 2nd ECM date and the weekend
before recording commenced he broke a leg ski-ing in the Alps. It all
began to fall apart for him after that. They postponed the rec. date,
and Steve went back to NYC where he was living at the time. He said he
couldn't really play gigs or get around with a cast up to his hip in NY
and he was living on someone's couch. He decided to store his
belongings and head back to SA to regroup. He never got back....and it
seems he lost momentum...I could sense the sad regret/loss behind his
eyes...He mentioned hanging with Richie Bierach in those days, and that
Richie was living in a literal "shoebox": one room with barely space to
move.He also recalled jams with Towner and Abercrombie where they all
got so stoned that guys were literally falling over while playing...

His sad story reconfirmed to me that if you can simply find a way to
keep playing music in your life (never mind being a "star" or
"famous")you can count yourself lucky...

Brownian Motion · February-18th-2007, 08:56 AM

Thanks for the post, Tom. Ah, the banality of the truth. I wish he had fought harder for his art.

Dennis Gonzalez · February-18th-2007, 09:41 AM

Oof...that is a sobering story. Twenty-seven years gone.

orangefunk · September-4th-2007, 12:10 PM

Man... I only just heard this LP for the first time this week... so I am going to bump this thread..

This is just amazing music... it goes way beyond most of the guitar stars I know of... this is technique and soul... the two very rarely go together...

That Venice track kills me... Collin is amazing on this...

I can only dream about what that second recording would have been like...

lpgeffen · September-4th-2007, 04:26 PM

A copy of the CD just arrived from Amazon UK. I heard this LP many years ago (and still have a copy) but haven't listened to it for a long time.

I hope the artist gains some benefit from this purchase.

- Paul

Quote:

Originally Posted by orangefunk

Man... I only just heard this LP for the first time this week... so I am going to bump this thread..

This is just amazing music... it goes way beyond most of the guitar stars I know of... this is technique and soul... the two very rarely go together...

That Venice track kills me... Collin is amazing on this...

I can only dream about what that second recording would have been like...

Nitya · September-15th-2007, 03:16 AM

This thread is an eye opener. I noticed while at Punkt Festival in Norway:

http://www.punktfestival.no/

(take a look at the list of artists on the right column of the web page) the
musicians we follow and relish every new release typically live modestly.
I always envision them driving Mercedes Benz's and living in big houses.

Baladin · October-6th-2007, 05:05 PM

this question led me to this forum, I had the LP for many years and finally acquired a CD copy this week on Ebay. My wife was totally enthralled by the album and asked if he'd recorded anything else. I was sure that Dawn Dance was his only recording and I'm sad to have it confirmed, such an amazing talent that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Let's hope the 2nd ECM recording does actually happen.

bhakti vedanta · December-20th-2008, 03:16 AM

hey everyone

just signed up to the forum for this post... i wanted to say that i found a demo white label LP of steve eliovson called "For You"... it was alongside "Dawn Dance" which i bought both of... it features 5 songs from Dawn Dance, 5 other originals and a cover of Donna Lee by Charlie Parker... its also more of a band album featuring Romeo Avelino of percussion, Kendall Kay on drums and Denny Lalouette on bass... i assume only 100 or so of these demo's where made... it is also signed by steve to one Godfrey and Edith...

i would also like to mention [commenting on tom's words] that steve isn't a legend in south africa at all... to my knowledge, no ones knows him hear and i'd like to think i'm fairly involved in the guitar scene in SA... i did however hear that he is living in Cape Town but have never heard of him doing any shows around the country... it is in fact a very sad case...

anyways, happy to find this forum...
take care...

bhakti

CraigL · December-20th-2008, 08:43 AM

I am glad that this thread was updated, since I missed it on my run through the ECM thread. It fills in information on a question I've also been asking myself, since the LP meant a lot to me through my early guitar playing years, and I nearly wore out the vinyl copy I had (I've found it on CD and it is now on my iPod in regular listening rotation).

What a sad, sobering story, as others have said. What particularly galls me is that talentless, empty artists (pretty much any of the screecher singers who appear on TV on American Idol and the like and end up with big recording contracts) striking it rich, while those who really push the boundaries of music end up often in dire straits.

Amazing how lazy the vast majority of the public (in America, anyway) are when it comes to the arts - movies, music, literature - any type of art.

Allanmcf · August-27th-2009, 03:33 PM

Glad to read that Steve Eliovson is still alive. Not so glad to read about his circumstances. I feel that ECM might have helped him out a bit more. Dawn Dance is just stunning and I too play it regularly. Up until recently I was stuck with playing it on vinyl then I discovered the CD and now I am turning a lot of friends onto it. I was also sad to read about Marion Brown. I managed to track down a CD of Three for Shepp. One of my all time favourite Impulse albums from the late 60s. I remember getting an import copy from Dobell's Record Shop in London many, many years ago and being knocked out by it