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And that was the way it went. Nobody bought the three albums the band released. The band broke up. Chris Bell, who may have been Alex Chilton's equal as a songwriter (and that's really saying something) died young and tragically in an auto accident. Nobody knew who Alex Chilton was except perhaps a few rabid music fans who remembered his soulful vocals as a teenager in The Boxtops.
I'm fairly sure it was Michael Stipe who brought the band to my attention. Somewhere in the early '80s, in the flush of those first few, great R.E.M. albums, I recall reading Stipe's admiring comments about Alex Chilton and Big Star. Since, at the time, I thought R.E.M. could do no wrong, I tracked down vinyl copies of the three Big Star albums. They were, and are, enigmatic and marvelous. There were great songs there, for sure. But it was weird to hear these Memphis kids with their blatant Anglophilia. It was as if The Beatles had landed in the cotton fields. The first album was a pristine but derivative homage to Beatlemania. The second album was sloppy and loud, and utterly compelling and melodically brilliant. And the third album was just a dissolute, despairing mess. It was hard to believe that all three albums came from the same band.
But that was Alex Chilton. He was a superb pop craftsman who didn't give a flying fuck most of the time. He conveyed an air of cynical nonchalance: in the studio, on stage, in real life. And he wrote songs of such incredible depth and self-loathing that they could break your heart. He frittered away most of the good years, and I love him dearly. And now he, too, is gone too soon. Rolling Stone magazine put all three of the Big Star albums—and there were only three, as far as I was concerned, although later and inferior incarnations of the band put out a few others—in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. They were right. As Paul Westerburg of The Replacements sang, "Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton." As usual, he exaggerated. Even in their belated renaissance, Big Star were never more than a cult favorite. But he still got it right in spirit. The tens of thousands who finally paid attention, far too late, know that Alex Chilton was one of the greats. I'll miss him, and this is a sad day.
Bill Fox
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A sad day for music, as Alex chilton fronted one of the greatest little-known bands of all time. “Radio City” is my personal favorite, it doesn’t get any better than Big Star. RIP, my friend
The above is nice, but I don't agree with your assessment in some respects. The first Big Star album wasn't a blatant homage to "Beatlemania." Those acoustic numbers, like "Try Again" and "Give Me Another Chance," don't really sound much like the Beatles to me. Nor do I think that Big Star were consciously trying to imitate only the Beatles. I would suppose you have heard Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Moby Grape and the Beach Boys, and Love--West Coast American rock circa 1967-1970. Or maybe you hadn't or haven't, since, like so many music fans I know, you got into Big Star thru all that even more derivative and, in my opinion, not all that great '80s indie-alt-rock stuff, like R.E.M. and the Replacements. What made Big Star unusual and Chilton important was the breadth of what they were influenced by and the sound they were going for, which was certainly indebted to British Invasion pop but which had as much to do with the West Coast stuff I mention above.
Listen to Moby Grape--the combination of rockers and gentler acoustic numbers on their first album, or the revisionist rockers on their second album, or the dreamy impressionism of later material such as "What's to Blame" from "Moby Grape '69" and you hear the same basic combination of elements Big Star used.
I believe that it's the lack of perspective of a lot of fans whose formative influences were those '80s bands that accounts for the kind of analysis you offer above. Which isn't wrong but which certainly could be more informed and deeper.
Also, I find it amusing you say that Big Star were like the Beatles landing in a cotton field. You may want to look at a map or an almanac and bone up on the city of Memphis--a pretty large place with a sophisticated music scene that had been out of the cotton fields for quite a while by the time the suburban, middle-class members of Big Star began making their records in a rather advanced studio environment in 1971. Your analysis is simplistic--I could get these insights from the average record-store clerk these days. You're not taking into account what Memphis--a town I know quite well--is really like as a Southern city affected by (or afflicted with) the same kind of Anglophilia a lot of places have. Or the kind of ambition Memphis has always had to do the different, unexpected and syncretic.
Finally, you parrot the standard line on the third Big Star record as a "dissolute mess." This doesn't say anything about the lyricism of "Nightime" and "Blue Moon" or the sophistication of "Thank You Friends" or "Stroke It Noel." I don't hear it as dissolute that much--there is some melancholy in it.
What Alex Chilton was known for, and why his career as a "rock 'n' roll" musician was different from that of many, was his gift for analysis. Whereas your piece doesn't really analyze anything that much, although it's pleasant enough. But I certainly agree with your statement that Alex was great.
Alex and his band came to our "backyard" about a year ago - we're in Hunterdon County , NJ, out in the sticks. (Yah, NJ has sticks.) He played in a field at a county park up on an 18-wheeler of a portable stage. We sat in lawn chairs - a lot of us. The band played all the hits, but the juice was in the horns, in the lesser-known tunes, in Alex's sweet/spankin' voice and in all his stories which he shared generously. This was not just a show - we were all hangin' out on the grass. Alex filled us up. He was groovin' and so were wel. Hell, I think most of the people had no idea who he was. But that's who he played to, and they were dancing and shuckin' their stuff to a great set. Big Star. He still is, in our hearts. I feel lucky to have been able to sit back and enjoy the show. My last image of him is standing there with his shirttail hanging out, leaning on the mic stand, waving goodbye, shaking his head and laughing.