Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (10 page)

BIG STAR

Steve Wynn, solo / Dream Syndicate:

[Big Star] influenced me so much that when I was 21 I took a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Memphis just on the chance I might meet Alex Chilton. I spent a week buying him beer and cigarettes, trying to ask him about his music. But he was so bitter about music, it kind of bummed me out. I thought I would meet the voice behind those records, but the person was so different. Now I know how unfair that is, but I was young and idealistic. He was very cordial, and put me up a couple nights. But he was just so bitter about music, which is not what you hear in Big Star.

In rock, Big Star was a freak of nature. While most British bands of the ‘60s tried to sound like they were from Memphis, here was a group of white kids from Memphis (in the ‘70s) who couldn’t get enough of Beatles harmonies and Kinks riffs. Their records mixed Brit-pop with middle-of-the-road production, bits of garage and glam rock, and an inescapable Memphis country-soul sound that came across as unfashionable at the time and helped to keep them obscure.

By the end of the ‘70s, though, Big Star’s take on rock would serve as a blueprint for the “power pop” that connects ‘80s bands like the dBs to current acts, from Matthew Sweet to Fountains of Wayne. And with the emergence of postmodern rock, Big Star’s technique of constructing new songs out of various classic pop building blocks made them natural reference points for young musical historians. Their quirky blend of styles, along with undeniably catchy tunes, would make them heroes to scores of later groups interested in pursuing pop in all its shades: R.E.M. and the Dream Syndicate have sighted them as a big influence; the Replacements, the Jayhawks, and Letters to Cleo have all named songs after the band or its members; the Bangles, Afghan Whigs, and tons of other groups have covered Big Star songs; while Teenage Fanclub and the Posies have outright copied their sound.

Back in 1971, Memphis singer/guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel, and drummer Jody Stephens were playing Badfinger and Led Zeppelin covers in a band called Ice Water. Though all three were heavily into British pop music, they couldn’t escape the influence of local Memphis soul groups like the Bar-Kays. Alex Chilton, Bell’s childhood friend who had recently moved back to Memphis after spending some time in the New York folk scene, attended an early Ice Water gig. Chilton, who as the sixteen-year-old lead singer for the Box Tops had scored a number one hit with 1967’s “The Letter,” was something of a local celebrity, and already a music biz veteran at twenty-one. In search of a new project, Chilton accepted Bell’s invitation to join his band. Renaming themselves after a supermarket chain, Big Star was born.

Around the same time, local producer John Fry had decided to start a record label based around his recording studio, Ardent, and was looking for acts. Ardent had already become a hangout for the small community of mostly white, mostly suburban Anglophiles on the fringes of the Memphis music scene, and Big Star quickly emerged as the most promising of the pack. Without bothering to do gigs or coalesce as a band, Big Star began recording.

What they created in 1972, a debut record they optimistically called
#1 Record
, was the product of collaboration between two very talented songwriters, Chilton and Bell. The tracks combined elements of all the music that had touched them: the light blues rock of
Feel
, Byrds’ jangle of
In the Street
, the folk picking of
Thirteen
, country boogie of
My Life Is Right
, the soft rock of
Try Again
, tied together with M.O.R. arrangements and well-crafted Beatlesque harmonies.
#1 Record
was hardly revolutionary, but the skill with which it navigated styles made it an early model for future underground pop packrats like the Pooh Sticks and Papas Fritas. And the songs, taken at face value, could be quite effective emotionally.

Immediately after the debut’s release, cracks began to appear in the band. While Bell wanted to keep the band a studio project, Chilton wanted to tour. In addition, Bell was battling depression, which only worsened when he began to sense that Chilton was emerging as the dominant figure in the band. “With the first album we got a lot of great press, most of which was focused on Alex, and I think Chris thought he was going to have to live in the shadow of this famous band member,” drummer Stephens says. “That first record was primarily the result of Chris’s vision of what the band should sound like, and somebody else was getting the spotlight for it.” As Big Star began to make their follow-up to
#1 Record
, Chris Bell quit the band.

Eric Matthews:

Big Star directed me to a new sound and style. There was something incredibly haunting and strange to it. It’s strange to discover music that you’re just not aware of that has existed for so long. It’s really the new wave of the time.

While Bell returned for a brief period to work with Chilton on new songs, they soon divided the material they’d written and split up for good (some of the final Bell/Chilton material, including,
Back of a Car
, eventually showed up on Big Star’s second record). As a three-piece, Hummel and Stephens’ creative impart increased, but Chilton was clearly the main force in the band.
Radio City
, their 1964 follow-up to
#1 Record
, is predictably more raw than the debut, and also more consistently Beatlesque, with songs like
Way out West
and
She’s a Mover
harking back to ‘60s Brit pop. In 1974, though, this sound was almost a decade out of fashion, and it would be a number of years before “power pop” (which would adopt
Radio City
’s
September Girls
as its Rosetta stone) brought these sounds back.

Tony Goddess, Papas Fritas:

Radio City
is one of my all-time favorite records. Alex Chilton shaped my ideas a lot. I read a quote from [producer] John Fry about how they got a couple guitars together to use in an orchestral way. And it got me thinking. On
Radio City
there’s so many guitars, but it’s never like a wall of guitars. There’s one percolating, one strumming. Also, I was a huge Replacements fan and when I finally got Big Star records I was like, “Oh, there it is. That’s the whole thing right there.”

Big Star’s problems, though, were deeper than just being out of step. While they received terrific reviews and even got some radio play, they had terrible luck with record companies that always seemed to be in a state of transition, or bankruptcy, when it came time to promote and distribute their records.
Radio City
, like
#1 Record
before it, got lost in the shuffle. Fed up that artistic acclaim was not leading to commercial success, Andy Hummel quit the band and went back to school, leaving only Chilton and Stephens from the original Big Star.

Nevertheless, the remnants of the group went ahead with a third album in 1975. Though Stephens played drums, wrote one of the songs, and was responsible for introducing string arrangements to the band’s sound, for the most part the record turned out to be an Alex Chilton solo project (with help from new producer Jim Dickinson). Attempts were made to produce a richer, more orchestrated sound, with the addition of back-up singers and strings. But Chilton, disappointed by his lack of success, had reached a low point personally, which is reflected in the dark, subdued feel of songs like
Holocaust
and
Big Black Car
.

Matthew Sweet:

Big Star just sounded so great to me it was my total inspiration. With all my teenage emotions I could really get into
Big Black Car
, feeling really morbid. I don’t know if I ever tried to do stuff like Big Star in the way bands that are obsessed with them do – like the way Teenage Fanclub would do something that was so Big Star – but I was really influenced by Alex Chilton’s writing, the way anything goes, even though it’s really melodic and poppy.

Ardent Records folded before the album called
Third
and/or
Sister Lovers
(because Stephens and Chilton had been dating twins) was completed, and the record was not released until three years later (and then only in the U.K.). Once the record was complete, Stephens quit and Big Star ended. As such,
Third
serves both as an appropriate end to a troubled band and as a telling prelude to a moody, uneven Alex Chilton solo career.

Dean Wareham, Luna:

It’s amazing that Big Star didn’t become famous. I discovered them around the time Galaxie 500 [Wareham’s first band] was forming. Those records are beautifully produced. I know they’re an influence on a lot of people, but I don’t think anyone has really come close to the haunting qualities of their
Third
record. People have emulated their production, but not gotten the “scraping the bottom of the barrel” feeling of that record.

After leaving Big Star, Chris Bell struggled through depression to launch a solo career. Though he made a solo record in 1976, it went unreleased for decades (I Am the Cosmos was eventually issued in 1992). Tragically, Bell died in a 1978 car crash, never having achieved the stardom and recognition he deserved.

Alex Chilton moved back to New York and in 1977 made an EP, then a couple of inspired but uneven solo albums (Like Flies on Sherbet, Bach’s Bottom) into the early ‘80s. By then, Big Star’s legend had grown, and Chilton became a popular draw in New York rock clubs. Though he’d resurface over the years as the producer of early
Cramps
records, or to release a sloppy EP (often full of cover songs), for the most part Chilton has continued in a no-man’s land between cult hero and has-been. He made an art out of lazy, underachiever music, and became a hero to bands like the Replacements (who recorded a song called “Alex Chilton” in Ardent Studios) and other “slacker” bands. Though he returned, along with the Ardent label, in the early ‘90s to make new records with occasional moments of brilliance, he remained bitter and enigmatic, an oft-cited example of wasted talent in rock. Recently, Chilton was back on the road with his first (and most successful) band, the Box Tops.

While Andy Hummel became an engineer for General Dynamics, Stephens continued drumming with Chris Bell and other local musicians before going back to school for a degree in marketing. In 1987 he was hired by Ardent Studios and, as projects manager, oversaw Alex Chilton’s recent solo records. Stephens also plays with Golden Smog, a side band for members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, and Wilco.

Gary Louris, Jayhawks:

When I grew up I wanted to be in Big Star, not Buffalo Springfield. My roots are in bands like Big Star, and I think we have something in common with them in that they were a little bit out of step with the times. On his solo record, Chris Bell – someone very influential who was never recognized in his time – sounds like somebody who’s frustrated, who can’t understand why he isn’t understood musically.

In 1993, Chilton and Stephens re-formed Big Star, with the help of Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies. A reunion concert (released as a live album) and short tour followed, though there are no plans to continue the band.

DISCOGRAPHY

#1 Record
/
Radio City
(Ardent, 1972/1974; Stax / Fantasy, 1992)
; the reissue of Big Star’s first two albums is the classic document of the band at the peak of its powers, especially on
#1 Record
, which features Bell.

Third
/
Sister Lovers
(Ardent, 1978; Rykodisc, 1992)
; dark and pain-ridden, the band’s final record (reissued with bonus tracks) was essentially an Alex Chilton solo project, and certainly his finest at that.

Big Star Live
(Rykodisc, 1992)
; taken from a 1974 radio broadcast, the live set includes Chilton solo and acoustic, as well as full band performances and an interview.

Columbia: Live at Missouri University
(Zoo, 1993)
; featuring members of the Pixies along with Chilton and Stephens, this Big Star reunion show was historic but adds little to the band’s legend.

TRIBUTE:
Big Star Small World
(Ardent, 1998)
; a collection of Big Star covers, done by Juliana Hatfield, Whiskeytown, Afghan Whigs, Teenage Fanclub, Gin Blossoms, and Matthew Sweet, plus a new track by a reformed Big Star.

YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS

Lou Barlow, Sebadoh / Folk Implosion:

One of the things that really shaped the way I structure my own music was Young Marble Giants. I heard them around 1979 or ‘80, when I first discovered punk rock. I guess you’d call the record low-fi, but the Young Marble Giants in particular was so sparse. They used that cheesy percussion of old organs, and this cool, edgy, clipped guitar sound, with beautiful female vocals soaring overtop. But the songs were really short and compact. From the first time I heard them it just absolutely made sense to me. It sounded like this perfect music in a small scale.