Steve Harwell, one of the founders of the musical group Smashmouth, passed away on Monday, September 4th, 2023 in hospice care. He was 56 years old. He was surrounded by his fiancée Annette Jones, brother Mark, and sisters Carla Crocker, Michelle Baroni, and Julie Harwell. For the last 10 years, Harwell’s life was marked by health complications and atypical behavior. In 2013, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and Wernicke’s encephalopathy. This was confirmed by the band’s manager, Robert Hayes, who said the cause of death was liver failure.
Steven Scott Harwell was born on January 9, 1967, in San Jose, California. He started off as a rapper with the group F.O.S. (Freedom of Speech) and released a single, “Big Black Boots,” in 1993. At that time, he was already seeking a new direction for his music career and observed how Snoop Dogg had altered the hip-hop scene. In 2017, Harwell told Stereogum that he had said to his manager, “I’m done with this hip-hop stuff, I want to start an alternative rock band.”
Smash Mouth made a big splash in the late ‘1990s, with their hits “Walkin’ on the Sun”, “All Star” and a cover of “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby” helping them to stand out from their contemporaries like Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind. The band’s major-label debut album “Fush Yu Mang” sold more than 2 million copies. They had even greater success with their second album, “Astro Lounge”, which included the 3-million-selling hit “All Star”, which reached the #4 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and has retained its popularity through movie soundtracks. The group was formed in San Jose, California in 1994, and was made up of singer Steve Harwell, guitarist Greg Camp, drummer Kevin Coleman and bassist Paul De Lisle. The song that put them on the map was “Walkin’ on the Sun”, a track that featured the Doors-esque sound of the era as well as contemporary ska-punk. The accompanying music video for the song showed the band’s aesthetic – fedoras, soul patches and short-sleeve shirts – and attitude, ending with a drag-race crash with Harwell driving.
The soundtrack for “Shrek” featured Smash Mouth’s upbeat version of the Monkees‘ “I’m a Believer” in the concluding scene, which propelled the album to double platinum success and the film to an Academy Award for best animated feature. Harwell remarked in a Rolling Stone article in 2019 that no one had any idea of the magnitude of “Shrek”. The song went on to be used in internet parodies, and has been streamed nearly a billion times on Spotify. Harwell’s voice remains forever linked to the song’s opening lyrics: “Somebody once told me/The world is gonna roll me/I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Following the success of “Astro Lounge”, Smash Mouth released five more studio albums up to 2012, which were not as commercially successful. Harwell was part of the cast of “The Surreal Life”, a VH1 reality show, along with Sherman Hemsley of “The Jeffersons”, Florence Henderson of “The Brady Bunch”, and Tawny Kitaen, who was known for her Whitesnake music videos.
In 2012, Smash Mouth released their last studio album, “Magic.” In August of 2020, the band performed at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota with almost no attendees wearing masks or taking Covid-19 precautions. Lead singer Steve Harwell drew cheers from the crowd when he declared that they were being “human again”. The following year, Harwell retired after a live show in New York where he was observed slurring words, cursing, and giving a Nazi salute. His statement about the incident said he was attempting to perform one last time, but was unable to due to health issues. After his retirement, Zach Goode was brought on as the new lead singer for 2022. Goode released a statement expressing his joy for the opportunity to continue what Harwell and the band created.
