Steve Harwell, Founding Lead Singer For Smash Mouth, Has Died At 56
I said death. What a concept. The singer was reported to be in hospice on his final days on Sunday
Even when Shrek is love and Shrek is life, the years don’t stop coming. Steve Harwell, co-founder and lead singer of the band Smash Mouth, known for such songs as “All Star” and “Walkin’ On the Sun”, has died of liver failure at age 56. The musician was in hospice care when he died at his Boise, Idaho home on Monday.
Robert Hayes, Harwell’s manager, confirmed the news, authoring and releasing this statement: “Steve Harwell was a true American Original. A larger than life character who shot up into the sky like a Roman candle. Steve should be remembered for his unwavering focus and impassioned determination to reach the heights of pop stardom. And the fact that he achieved this near-impossible goal with very limited musical experience makes his accomplishments all the more remarkable. His only tools were his irrepressible charm and charisma, his fearlessly reckless ambition, and his king-size cajones. Steve lived a 100% full-throttle life. Burning brightly across the universe before burning out.”
Harwell was born Steven Scott Harwell on January 9, 1967 in Santa Clara, California. His career started as a Chuck D-inspired rapper for the hip-hop group F.O.S. (Freedom of Speech). They released a single, “Big Black Boots” in 1993, before he shifted gears to alt-rock. That’s when he formed Smash Mouth, or as originally styled, Smashmouth with childhood friend and drummer Kevin Coleman, songwriter-guitarist Greg Camp who indeed became the group’s primary songwriter, and bassist Paul De Lisle, the latter two coming from San Jose punk band Lackadaddy. A San Jose radio station put a demo of the group’s song “Nervous in the Alley” in rotation, allowing Interscope Records to get ahold of the group. Now a two word group name, Smash Mouth released their debut album “Fush Yu Mang” in 1997. That album featured “Walkin on the Sun”, their first major single, and a cover of “Why Can’t We Be Friends” that was featured in the film Wild Things, and went double platinum for it.
The next album, Astro Lounge, featured several songs with heavy use in film soundtracks: Their cover of “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby” in Can’t Hardly Wait, “Come On, Come On” in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, the original Snow Day, Dude, Where’s My Car, and Big Fat Liar, plus an animated appearance in Kim Possible, and of course “All Star”, which originated in Mystery Men, then featured in Inspector Gadget, Digimon: The Movie, and Rat Race but was launched into the stratosphere by its inclusion in the opening scene of Shrek, which also included their cover of “I’m A Believer” for the film. Frankly it was huge from it even before the memes took hold. Later song “Getting Better” would be featured in The Cat in the Hat, and the 2006 Tim Allen movie Zoom featured five Smash Mouth songs, including “So Insane” and “Everyday Superhero” from the album Summer Girl, and a cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”. Summer Girl came about incorporating songs from an album titled “Old Habits” that Universal, whom the band had only been with very briefly, fumbled on and never released, so Smash Mouth went to Beautiful Bomb Records. It was Camp’s last original album in the group.
Even with all this, it didn’t come without tragedy. Harwell had a son, Presley, who died of acute lymphocytic leukemia at just six months old in July 2001. That he “long” struggled with alcohol abuse may be directly tied, and certainly contributed to the liver failure. It was then exacerbated in the last decade when he began to suffer from a number of ailments that impacted his motor functions, speech, memory, and his performances. At a June 2015 food festival in Fort Collins, Colorado, he screamed profanities at the audience. In August 2016 at an Illinois show, he collapsed onstage and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. During the peak of the pandemic in the summer of 2020 the group booked a performance 10-day motorcycle rally held in South Dakota, where he taunted crowds about vaccines, mask wearing and pandemic prevention. In October 2021, at a concert in Bethel, New York, Harwell appeared to be intoxicated, threatened audience members…and allegedly threw up a Nazi salute. That seemed to be the final straw, as he announced his retirement from Smash Mouth and Zach Goode became the new lead singer, and have since released several new songs.
I saw Smash Mouth in concert opening up for NSYNC on the Celebrity tour, truly at the band’s peak, and it’s disheartening that Harwell’s behavior devolved in such a manner. A truly tragic end for anyone.
Source: Variety