A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (35 page)

Rene had quit Loyola the year before, angering his parents, and thrown in his lot with Alex. They got another job—painting Rene’s grandmother’s house. “It would have been better had we not done that work together,” Rene reflects. “We generated conflicts that didn’t need to be there. Those were hard jobs, and it laid the groundwork for history that was not positive.”

In early 1984 Tav contacted them with the news that Panther Burns had been selected by the Clash to open some shows for them in March. Though Alex had lost interest in U.K. punk bands, Rene was a big fan of the Clash, even this
latter-day incarnation that no longer included Mick Jones, who’d had a falling-out with Joe Strummer; the only other original member was bassist Paul Simonon. Nashville was the first stop on their final U.S. tour, which they’d travel by bus.

Panther Burns made it to the basketball gym at Vanderbilt just in time for the show. The band—using the Clash’s gear, since much of their own had been left on the highway after the car they’d been driving had two blowouts—grappled with the unfamiliar equipment without a sound check. They soldiered through, playing before a restless audience who wanted to see the Clash. That night, the band slept on Dan and Adele Tyler’s office floor and headed out early the next morning for Knoxville to play Wednesday night at the Alumni Memorial Gym at the University of Tennessee, where both the Box Tops and Big Star had performed.

“
For the second night the Clash said, ‘There’s a $100 bonus if you show up to sound check on time,’” Rene recalls. They arrived to discover that “they had us lined up in front of the curtain on only four feet of stage,” says Rene. “We were all lined up firing-squad style, not in band formation. It was really hard to hear each other, and Tav did a classic move—he had his guitar in the wrong tuning, and he tried to play in standard tuning, and it sounded like a nightmare. He had to stop the song and retune—and the crowd started booing. Ross Johnson had these little miniature candy bars, and he threw a couple out into the audience, and people started booing more. And then all at once the whole audience started booing really loud—it was unison booing.”

Once the Clash gigs were over, more misadventures dogged subsequent dates: “We played at the 688 Club in Atlanta as the opening act, and Tav did that same thing,” says Rene. “He was trying to tune up onstage. Alex and I were laughing so hard that Tav left the stage so he could stand on the side—but still the sound was going through the amp. Alex and I were just about falling over, laughing so hard. And the club owner came and said, ‘You guys think this is funny?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, don’t you?’ He was furious. Tav came back onstage, and he finished the song, and the guy got on the PA system, so it came through the monitors, and he said, ‘Tav, how about only one more song? There are a lot of people outside waiting to get back in.’”

Soon after, the band played the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, home base to R.E.M. Guitarist Pete Buck and bassist Mike Mills, in particular, were huge Big Star fans, and the whole band turned out for the show, meeting Alex for the first time afterward.

The following tour found Panther Burns scrambling for a new drummer when Johnson quit drinking. “‘
I can’t go out and play any dates—I have to go to AA,’” Rene recalls Ross saying. “So Jim Dickinson recommended some guitar player who could play drums, and we went out in the country and picked up this big guy with a beard at a trailer, and I’m thinking, ‘This is insane.’”

By early summer an opportunity for Alex and Rene to play in New Orleans arose: A tourist bar on Bourbon Street, Papa Joe’s, regularly booked cover bands to perform day and night. An acquaintance knew a drummer looking for a bassist and guitarist to round out his trio: Alex and Rene got the gig, forming a kind of human jukebox. They named the combo Scores, to capture “
the hustler vibe of the French Quarter,” says Rene. “We were the ‘scores’—the ones who were being suckered.” Candy Dodge, a former nun with bright red hair, ran the joint, where the tables had a printed list of songs customers could request the band to play. “The soul band, sort of,” according to Alex, played four days a week, doing one or more sets, during shifts that ran from noon to 4 p.m., 4 to 8 p.m., and 8 to midnight. They were each paid $5 a set plus tips. “We usually would work the afternoons—the first or second shift,” says Rene, “because we were low guys on the totem pole as far as the bands went. You made more tips at night, but those slots were all taken up.”

“
It was the saddest, lowest joint on the street in those days,” Alex said later. “It was really fun, and in a way, that was the best time in my life. Back in show business!” They’d usually leave with $20 each.

“People would come in and look at the songs and call them out,” Rene recalls. Selections included “Looking for a Love” by Bobby Womack, who’d played on Box Tops sessions at American Studios, and “Young Blood,” the Coasters record Reid had spun for Alex as a child. Alex alternated singing lead with the drummer, who originally got the gig and led the band. Though he knew Alex had been a star in the Box Tops, he didn’t cotton to Alex’s criticisms about his varying tempos, which caused some strife. Tourists had no idea who Alex was, though occasionally someone would stare at him with a glimmer of recognition.

One afternoon as a friend of Rene’s watched them play, the bassist fooled around with the lyrics to “Land of a Thousand Dances,” a song Tav had once mangled in a similar way. “He’d say, ‘
Do the twist, slit your wrist,’” Rene recalls. “I thought that was hilarious, so while I was playing the song, I was trying to suggest to Alex to sing that lyric, and he looked over at me and said, ‘The bass player, he’s an asshole.’ I said, ‘What the fuck is that about?’ And Alex said, ‘Yeah, like you don’t know. I heard what you were saying over there.’ ‘Slit your
wrist?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s real funny to you, huh?’ I said, ‘It’s like you’re ready to punch me.’ He said, ‘Oh, you’d like me to take a swing at you, wouldn’t you? That would make everything perfect for you.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? This is crazy.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m crazy, okay, I see, I’m insane.’

“I never really did get to the bottom of it,” Rene reflects, “but maybe Alex had attempted suicide, which I did not know about. The only indication I have of that is his reaction to the thing. Maybe it was because my friend was there, and Alex felt he was on the spot and thought I was trying to embarrass him in front of my friend. We were supposed to drive up to Memphis that night to play with Panther Burns the next day, and I went to his house to pick him up, and we had this big long conversation where we were both in tears by the end of it. I finally convinced him that I hadn’t meant anything by what I’d said.”

That summer the World’s Fair took place in New Orleans, drawing even more tourists and touring acts than usual, among them R.E.M. When Scores finished their set one day, guitarist Peter Buck stepped over to say hello to Alex. R.E.M.’s new album,
Reckoning,
had entered the Top 30, with “South Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” making it into the Hot 100. Prior to gaining mainstream pop success, R.E.M. was growing a national audience by constantly touring college towns where clubs had sprung up, creating a nationwide circuit for “underground” or alternative-rock groups. The band had begun working with booking agent Frank Riley, formerly a partner of dB’s former manager Bob Singerman. Riley’s agency tapped into the network of venues eager to host alt-rock bands with a plethora of indie groups touring constantly. In addition, college radio was booming, and R.E.M. was getting lots of airplay. They were also a favorite among a proliferation of regional fanzines following in the footsteps of
New York Rocker
, which had died in the wake of MTV as record labels had diverted their ad budgets to video making.

The dB’s, which no longer included Chris Stamey (who’d gone solo), also came to New Orleans that summer to perform at a stage on the World’s Fair grounds. “During the day,
Peter [Holsapple] and I went to see Alex,” Will Rigby recalls. “He was playing all day long at the club on Bourbon Street. There was nobody there when we went. I just didn’t know what to think. It was really weird. After he saw us, he said, ‘Okay, we’re going to take a break,’ and he came over to us—‘Let’s get out of here.’ So we went for a walk around the Quarter and he said, ‘There’s not much going on with me these days, but I’m trying to start playing again.’ He had Rene, but he was looking for a drummer. That night we played at this place on the fairgrounds, and Alex and Rene came. The band was
drinking trayfulls of Jägermeister, and we got plastered onstage. Peter invited Alex up, and Alex said, ‘Can Rene and I just play with Will?’ The rest of the dB’s left the stage and turned the show over to Alex, and I played drums. He played this song, ‘Save Your Love for Me’—it was a slow one.” After work one night Alex and Rene had stopped in to watch R&B artist Walter “Wolfman” Washington on Bourbon Street, and when he performed “Save Your Love,” Alex was taken by it. Rene recognized it from his dad’s Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley LP, borrowed it, and they learned it and other tunes from the record.

At around this time Alex had picked up a cheap car from Stanley as partial payment for producing his Undesirables. The 1973 Buick LeSabre was missing the driver’s-side window, and the transmission was about to go, but otherwise it was a comfortable ride. “After our gig, Alex and I drove around in his big old car,” Will continues. “Alex was really trying to talk me into moving down there. He was so intense, and it was quite a jaunt.” Will recommended booking agent Frank Riley, should Alex want to play any dates, and jotted down Riley’s number.

A few weeks later, after they’d played with Scores for about four months, a simmering dispute between Alex and the drummer boiled over. “We lost that job,” recalls Rene, “and Alex went home and he got Frank Riley’s number, and soon he’d booked dates in the New York area.” Rene’s grandmother lent them the money to replace the Buick’s transmission for the trip.

Some of the gigs came together thanks to Riley’s clients, who were Big Star fans, including an Irving Plaza show in New York the dB’s were headlining in December. Riley also telephoned Peter Jesperson, now managing a young band in Minneapolis who had released several punky-pop records on the indie label Twin Tone: The Replacements, particularly songwriter-vocalist Paul Westerberg, were rabid Big Star fans. Jesperson recalls, “
Frank called me all excited one day and said, ‘Hey, you’re not going to believe this, but I got a call from Alex Chilton. He wants to start playing some shows again, and I’m going to be his agent.’

“I was just hysterical—‘Oh, my god, are you kidding? This is so exciting.’ So we actually tried to arrange a bunch of shows with Alex. We were going out east and had some things planned and tried to do some double bills with Alex. We found out very quickly that although promoters and the little clubs knew who Alex was and would have loved to have him come play, they weren’t willing to pay Alex the kind of money he thought he needed to get. It became an awkward situation, and Frank felt bad about it, and he was sad he couldn’t get Alex more money. It became apparent that Alex wasn’t going to be able to do it.
I started talking to Paul, and so we decided that maybe we could somehow divert some of the money we’re being paid to Alex. But we don’t want to embarrass him, so maybe we could do it without him knowing. . . . Those shows all fell apart, except one, that was at CBGB’s.” Frank managed to fill out other Northeast dates with shows for Alex’s trio at Maxwell’s, Manhattan’s Danceteria, and the Rat in Boston.

To play drums on the tour, Alex and Rene enlisted Joey Torres, who’d been in a band called the Mistreaters, which Alex used to see when he first moved to town. “
We rehearsed with him a few times, and things were going good,” says Rene, “but it seemed like things would be not-so-good the next rehearsal. We were a little bit concerned. But we had the idea at the time that just the two of us could hire different musicians at different places. I was writing out the drum parts.” Alex had been booked to do a Box Tops show in Memphis and hired Rene and his old friend Richard Rosebrough on drums, giving Rene’s charts an opportunity for a trial run. “Richard read all these charts I had written up, and it was working,” Rene recalls.

While in town, Alex and Rene stopped by an opening of a new Eggleston photo show at the Brooks Art Museum, where a jazz trio was performing. Backing the brilliant jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. was drummer Doug Garrison, twenty-five, a native of West Memphis, Arkansas. A jazzman who’d never played much rock & roll, Doug had drummed for the past several years with Charlie Rich, who’d started a weekly jazz recording session, and previously had performed in a big band with Sidney Chilton, Johnny Davis (father of Alex’s onetime flame Diane Davis Wall), and other older jazz players. Doug fondly remembered Sidney as a mentor who took him under his wing and also had a great sense of humor and a penchant for bawdy jokes.

Doug had never met Alex, nor heard Big Star or even the Box Tops. Not realizing Doug had gigged with his father, Alex got his phone number to see if he could play the trio’s first Memphis gig, at the Antenna on November 17, 1984. Doug agreed, and the threesome got together for a rehearsal the day of the show, with Doug easily following Rene’s charts. The packed performance that night was a smashing success; Alex sounded relaxed and focused, his vocals warm and emotive throughout the diverse set. He gave the fans old favorites like “Rock Hard” and “Bangkok” but emphasized the R&B he had been playing in New Orleans: “B-A-B-Y,” Slim Harpo’s “Te-Ni-Nee-Ni-Nu,” on which he played bluesy harmonica, and Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady,” as well as Carole King’s “Let Me Get Close to You” (as covered by Skeeter Davis), the Shangri-Las’ “Past,
Present, Future” (doing a deadpan version of Mary Weiss’s narrative), Charlie Rich’s “Lonely Weekends,” T. Rex’s “Jeepster,” Johnny Mathis’s “The Christmas Song,” and even Big Star’s “In the Street.” Alex also introduced “a new bluesy thing”: “Lost My Job” opened with his riveting slide guitar. Before the break and second set, Alex, still in the Scores mode, encouraged the audience, “We know every song, so don’t be bashful about making a request!” With such a crackerjack rhythm section, Alex was clearly in heaven.