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Steve Harwell, co-founder of the band Smash Mouth in 1994, has died aged 56, band manager Robert Hayes has confirmed. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Hayes said Harwell died at his home in Boise, ID, “surrounded by family and friends.” He added that the musician “passed away peacefully and comfortably.”
“Steve has been retired from Smash Mouth for two years and the band continues to tour with new vocalist Zach Goode,” said Hayes. “Despite this, Steve’s legacy will live on through music. With Steve, Smash Mouth has sold over 10 million albums worldwide and has two #1 hit singles, five Top 40 singles, three Hot 100 singles, four Billboard 200 albums and a Grammy nomination the charts, not to mention the hundreds of film and television placements and of course the musical features in Shrek.”
He continued: “Steve’s iconic voice is one of the most recognizable voices of his generation. He loved the fans and loved performing. Steve Harwell was a true American original. A larger-than-life figure that shot into the sky like a Roman candle. Steve should be remembered for his unwavering focus and fierce 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 achievements all the more remarkable. His only tools were his irrepressible charm and charisma, his fearlessly ruthless ambition and his king-sized cajones. Steve lived a 100% full throttle life. It burns brightly throughout the universe before it burns out.”
Harwell was in hospice care for medical complications, but Hayes did not provide any information about the cause of death.
Although Harwell is no longer an official member of Smash Mouth as of 2021, he and bassist Paul Delisle are the only two original band members who have remained consistent throughout most of the group’s existence.
Harwell began his music career in San Jose, California, as a rapper with the group FOS (Freedom of Speech). After the group’s demise, he began collaborating with his friend, drummer Kevin Coleman, in 1990. He later teamed up with guitarist Greg Camp and bassist Paul Delisle. The four-piece band released two demos that received airplay on a local radio station. Soon they appeared at a summer festival alongside No Doubt and Beck.
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Their debut album, Fush Yu Mang, was released in 1997 via Interscope and spawned “Walkin’ on the Sun,” a number one hit on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart, which reached number two on the Hot 100 chart.
The band’s second album, 1999’s Astro Lounge, incorporated more pop and was more musically diverse than its ska-influenced predecessor. This also resulted in “All Star”, her biggest hit of her career. The song appeared on numerous film soundtracks, including the first Shrek film, and helped the album achieve triple platinum status. Her cover of the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” also appeared in 2001’s Shrek.
Harwell spoke about Astro Lounge’s new direction in a 1999 interview with Rolling Stone and had a message for the band’s critics. “A lot of people said we weren’t talented enough to do shit like that. Well, we did it and I want them to eat their words. We were beaten up so much by people who wanted us to fail,” he said. “Even friends want you to fail. They would laugh out loud if I fell flat on my face. We made this record to let people know, “Hey, don’t mess with us. We built this team and no one is going to take it away from us.”
That same year, the band released a collection of early songs entitled The East Bay Sessions. Coleman left the team shortly afterwards, citing back problems. Former Tripping Daisy drummer Mitch Marine eventually replaced Coleman on tour and on later albums.
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The band released two more albums in the early hours – 2001’s self-titled LP and Get the Picture? from 2003. They released their fifth album, Summer Girl, in 2006 on the new Universal label after Harwell appeared on the reality show The Surreal Life alongside Alexis Arquette, CC DeVille, Sherman Hemsley, Maven Huffman, Tawny Kitaen and Andrea Lowell appeared, with Florence Henderson serving as the resident therapist.
Smash Mouth’s most recent album, Magic, was released in 2012, the same year that their book Recipes From the Road was released. The band continued to tour as more members joined and left the group.
While Harwell remained a mainstay, he was prone to onstage outbursts before permanently leaving the group in 2021. At a show in Fort Collins, Colorado in 2015, he reportedly became angry during the encore, shouting profanities and leaving after bread was thrown on stage. He later apologized. (In August 2016, Harwell reportedly collapsed and was taken away in an ambulance while the band finished the set without him.)
But it was an incident on October 9, 2021 that caused him to retire from music. At the Big Sip Festival in Bethel, New York, Harwell was captured on video slurring his words, threatening the audience and giving fans the middle finger. A representative for the singer told the New York Post at the time that his Wernicke encephalopathy, a neurological disorder, had affected Harwell’s motor functions and memory.
“Steve has struggled with long-term medical issues for the past eight years and upon his last appearance on the Big Sip stage he was experiencing numerous symptoms that were directly related to his current medical situation,” the spokesperson said at the time. “Starting today, Steve will be stepping away from Smash Mouth to focus on his physical and mental health.”
On the occasion of “All Star’s” 20th anniversary in 2019, Harwell addressed the song’s enduring appeal to Rolling Stone’s oral history of the track. More than just an inescapable hit that spiced up movies and your favorite memes, “All Star” became part of the fabric of generations of music lovers for nearly a quarter century and continues to resonate today.
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“It was definitely a moment where other artists and people finally realized that we weren’t a bunch of punk kids. We write great songs and they are iconic,” he said.
“The song just won’t go away because it’s just one of those songs,” Harwell added. “It’s like fucking Led Zeppelin ‘Stairway to Heaven.'” It’s like fucking Lynyrd Skynyrd. There are certain songs from bands that just won’t go away. We were blessed with that and it was All Star.”