“He was a great musician, and all his records are still there to be listened to.”

“It’s still there, it hasn’t been taken away, but we’re there now, too,” says McElroy, who still sounds surprised at the intense reaction. The owners have installed the missing section inside the restaurant, which they named in part after Smith’s song “Angeles.”įans were not pacified and exacted revenge through negative Yelp reviews. “It’s all been done with very good intentions,” says co-owner Wade McElroy. The owners of newish gastropub Bar Angeles incurred similar wrath when they removed part of the wall (though not, they point out, the part from the cover photo) during construction. Smith’s fans take the wall seriously: Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters covered it with wheat paste in 2010 as part of a promotional stunt, and he had to issue a public apology. The beloved singer-songwriter had posed in front of the mural for the cover of his 2000 album “Figure 8,” and the site has doubled as an unofficial memorial since his death in 2003, at 34.

LOS ANGELES - The “S”-shaped mural on the side of a building in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles used to be known as the Elliott Smith wall. Album cover for singer-songwriter Elliott Smith's 1997 release “Either/Or,” which was his best-selling album.

Elliott smith either or cover art