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| From humble beginnings. Sort of. Somehow apt. |
As a member of the musical tribe I fell in with, I came late to the Big Star party. A friend passed them on as one of scores of artists burned to CDs and passed on to me back in the old “ripping” days; I’d say he put 60 bands on there, most with multiple albums. He didn’t single out Big Star or any other band - not that it would have mattered because, me being me, I started at the top of the alphabet and methodically worked through it. Getting to the “Bs” didn't take long, obviously.
I did recognize the name, though. When another friend and his wife got married, they created wedding playlist CDs as a party favor and tucked all the way that bottom was Big Star’s “I’m in Love with a Girl,” a short little song I loved the second I heard it. That sharpened the anticipation of getting to them, but I was in love with Big Star by the time I got to “Thirteen” on #1 Record on the first listen.
Who They’re For: Fans of 70s rock, for one, but they have a barrier of entry or two - lightly pinched vocals, for one, but I also wonder how many people hear that damn-near signature guitar sound and think the songs all sound the same. But I’m going to borrow something to help explain them:
"Though the Fab Four are an audible influence on the albums, it’s generally more White Album–era Beatles being drawn upon than A Hard Day’s Night, along with such disparate elements as Led Zeppelin’s swaggering hard rock, Kinks leader Ray Davies’ brooding introspection, and the sweet soul music of Big Star’s Memphis hometown.”
It’s not necessarily complex music, but it runs from busy, full of layering, dueling melodies to songs so stripped down and simple that they almost walk around naked. The mood can turn on a dime within the same album, sometimes song to song. It’s dramatic lyrically, but on a very personal, almost insular level. If it speaks to you, it speaks loudly.
The Basics: Big Star was an oddly-doomed project formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971. Two college friends, Chris Bell and Andy Hummel, formed its original core, but they’d heard of another local named Alex Chilton, who’d already made it 4-million-copies-sold big fronting a band called The Box Tops with hits like “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby.” Chilton started in the business very young (all of 16), experiencing both success and getting screwed over before agreeing to join Big Star. After taking the final step of recruiting Jody Stephens to play drums, they set out to make their debut album. In something you can’t see happening today, they had the keys to Ardent Records, a small Memphis-based label run by a young engineer named John Fry (et. al.), who passed out the keys to anyone interested in having them. The majority of the songwriting passed through Bell and Chilton, but having access to a recording studio/equipment gave them time and space to perfect the sound they wanted. Changes had also come to Ardent: after experiencing a slump after Marvin Gaye’s death, Stax Records, Memphis’ big, local (R&B, funk, gospel, soul) label, wanted to expand fast to keep up with the competition, so they roped in Ardent as a subsidiary. Bell was proficient enough on the equipment that Fry didn’t need to add much (though Stephens gives him a lot of credit) to the final product. The band took their name from a local grocery chain called Big Star Markets and made the brassy choice of calling their debut LP, #1 Record. Released in 1972 to near-universal critical acclaim - Billboard said, “every cut could be a single,” Rolling Stone dubbed it “exceptionally good,” - and with the Stax Records name behind it, Big Star looked poised to live up to its name. Another sterling review, this one from Cashbox, unwittingly glimpsed the future:
“’This album is one of those red-letter days when everything falls together as a total sound.’ and called it ‘an important record that should go to the top with proper handling.’”
“Proper handling” never came together. Stax fell all the way down on distribution, which meant that even when someone had heard of the album, they couldn’t find it - anywhere. The band spun out of control in surprisingly short order - e.g., during a fight, Hummel punched Bell, Bell smashed Hummel’s brand-new bass guitar against a wall, Hummel later retaliated by punching holes in Bell’s acoustic guitar with a screwdriver, etc. Frustrated at Big Star’s failure to launch, Bell left the band for Europe - and he took the master tape of new songs as well - leaving them to carry on as a three-piece. Convincing them to do it took a lot of work - e.g., John King, a guy Ardent Records’ hired for promotion (when what they really needed was distribution) organized a rock writers convention/junket in 1973, partially convened to organize said writers, but mostly done to put Big Star in front of them - but, between new material by Chilton and old material from before Bell left, they pulled together a second full album, Radio City. The stars once again appeared to align: all the music writers loved it and, on the business side, one of the old heavyweight national labels, Columbia Records, had stepped in to rescue Stax from collapse at the time of Radio City’s release, an arrangement that promised to finally get the distribution right. Sadly, the head of Columbia, Clive Davis, got audited for abusing expense accounts, which meant that, once again, no one coordinated the distribution of Radio City; it sold only 20,000 copies on release. With that, a second critically-beloved Big Star album died on the vine and, sensing it would all go nowhere, Hummel returned to college to finish his degree.
Apart from a late 70s revival in the 1970s in the UK and a States-side embrace in the 1990s by artists like R.E.M., The Replacements (where I first heard the name “Alex Chilton”), and Elliott Smith, that’s the Big Star story. After failing to land a contract in Europe, drinking, drugging and otherwise chasing dragons, Bell died at 27 in a 1978 car crash (I think) near Memphis. After recording a hyper-indulgent, consumingly-personal, frankly “challenging” “Big Star” album - alternately known as either Third or Sister/Lovers, because Stephens was dating Holiday Aldridge and Chilton dated Lesa Aldridge - Chilton moved on to an increasingly eccentric solo/collaborative career (e.g., Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and producing The Cramps’ first album) that saw him move to New Orleans and, for years upon years, reject the entire Big Star project. Big Star reformed at the tail-end of that 90s revival rounded out by a couple members of the Posies (Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow). They rode that for a while, some even claimed Chilton had got past his bitterness about Big Star, but both Chilton and Hummel passed in 2010 within four months of each other, by heart attack and cancer respectively.
One Two Thing(s) I Read That Felt Like It Speaks to Them
“I'm constantly surprised that people fall for Big Star the way they do... People say Big Star made some of the best rock 'n roll albums ever. And I say they're wrong."
- Alex Chilton (from Wikipedia entry, which is pretty good)
Three Sources
Wikipedia
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012 documentary, good, thorough and runs about 1:50)
Flood Magazine, 2018 interview with Stephens
Some Songs
I want to start with the material from Third on the grounds those are probably the least well-known. Third is not a pop album - a local eccentric named John Dickinson helped produce it, Chilton was going through a lot of shit as it was made, etc. - and, songs like “Thank You Friends” and (less so) “You Can’t Have Me” aside, it barely sounds like Big Star. Settling into it takes a couple listens, the half-finished demo vibe was largely intentional (e.g., “Dream Lover,” “For You,” and “Stroke It Noel”), and it’ll never work if you can’t. I rounded out that selection with “O, Dana,” which splits those poles to the extent the album allows it. I don’t know that Third will grow on everybody, but it has…just incredible touches/choices all over.
The other two albums built the Big Star legend and people of a certain age and inclination probably know most of these. From #1 Record, I made sure to include the one Big Star song just about everyone would know, if from another version, “In the Street.” The rest of the selection includes the opening rocker “Feel,” but I leaned into the slower, moodier numbers like “The Ballad of El Goodo,” “Thirteen,” “Watch the Sunrise,” and, an all-time personal favorite/lifeline, “Give Me Another Chance.” “My Life Is Right” wraps up that selection. I already linked to “I’m in Love With a Girl” off of Radio City up above, but I leaned into the more up-tempo stuff - something that feels fitting for what Big Star’s members saw as a radio-friendly album. [Ed. - I will never understand radio programming.] Those include, “O, My Soul,” “Back of a Car” (both Bell numbers), “Life Is White,” “Mod Lang,” the lost pop gem, “September Gurls,” and my favorite from their second, “Daisy Glaze.”
That’s all for this one. Till next week!
I did recognize the name, though. When another friend and his wife got married, they created wedding playlist CDs as a party favor and tucked all the way that bottom was Big Star’s “I’m in Love with a Girl,” a short little song I loved the second I heard it. That sharpened the anticipation of getting to them, but I was in love with Big Star by the time I got to “Thirteen” on #1 Record on the first listen.
Who They’re For: Fans of 70s rock, for one, but they have a barrier of entry or two - lightly pinched vocals, for one, but I also wonder how many people hear that damn-near signature guitar sound and think the songs all sound the same. But I’m going to borrow something to help explain them:
"Though the Fab Four are an audible influence on the albums, it’s generally more White Album–era Beatles being drawn upon than A Hard Day’s Night, along with such disparate elements as Led Zeppelin’s swaggering hard rock, Kinks leader Ray Davies’ brooding introspection, and the sweet soul music of Big Star’s Memphis hometown.”
It’s not necessarily complex music, but it runs from busy, full of layering, dueling melodies to songs so stripped down and simple that they almost walk around naked. The mood can turn on a dime within the same album, sometimes song to song. It’s dramatic lyrically, but on a very personal, almost insular level. If it speaks to you, it speaks loudly.
The Basics: Big Star was an oddly-doomed project formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971. Two college friends, Chris Bell and Andy Hummel, formed its original core, but they’d heard of another local named Alex Chilton, who’d already made it 4-million-copies-sold big fronting a band called The Box Tops with hits like “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby.” Chilton started in the business very young (all of 16), experiencing both success and getting screwed over before agreeing to join Big Star. After taking the final step of recruiting Jody Stephens to play drums, they set out to make their debut album. In something you can’t see happening today, they had the keys to Ardent Records, a small Memphis-based label run by a young engineer named John Fry (et. al.), who passed out the keys to anyone interested in having them. The majority of the songwriting passed through Bell and Chilton, but having access to a recording studio/equipment gave them time and space to perfect the sound they wanted. Changes had also come to Ardent: after experiencing a slump after Marvin Gaye’s death, Stax Records, Memphis’ big, local (R&B, funk, gospel, soul) label, wanted to expand fast to keep up with the competition, so they roped in Ardent as a subsidiary. Bell was proficient enough on the equipment that Fry didn’t need to add much (though Stephens gives him a lot of credit) to the final product. The band took their name from a local grocery chain called Big Star Markets and made the brassy choice of calling their debut LP, #1 Record. Released in 1972 to near-universal critical acclaim - Billboard said, “every cut could be a single,” Rolling Stone dubbed it “exceptionally good,” - and with the Stax Records name behind it, Big Star looked poised to live up to its name. Another sterling review, this one from Cashbox, unwittingly glimpsed the future:
“’This album is one of those red-letter days when everything falls together as a total sound.’ and called it ‘an important record that should go to the top with proper handling.’”
“Proper handling” never came together. Stax fell all the way down on distribution, which meant that even when someone had heard of the album, they couldn’t find it - anywhere. The band spun out of control in surprisingly short order - e.g., during a fight, Hummel punched Bell, Bell smashed Hummel’s brand-new bass guitar against a wall, Hummel later retaliated by punching holes in Bell’s acoustic guitar with a screwdriver, etc. Frustrated at Big Star’s failure to launch, Bell left the band for Europe - and he took the master tape of new songs as well - leaving them to carry on as a three-piece. Convincing them to do it took a lot of work - e.g., John King, a guy Ardent Records’ hired for promotion (when what they really needed was distribution) organized a rock writers convention/junket in 1973, partially convened to organize said writers, but mostly done to put Big Star in front of them - but, between new material by Chilton and old material from before Bell left, they pulled together a second full album, Radio City. The stars once again appeared to align: all the music writers loved it and, on the business side, one of the old heavyweight national labels, Columbia Records, had stepped in to rescue Stax from collapse at the time of Radio City’s release, an arrangement that promised to finally get the distribution right. Sadly, the head of Columbia, Clive Davis, got audited for abusing expense accounts, which meant that, once again, no one coordinated the distribution of Radio City; it sold only 20,000 copies on release. With that, a second critically-beloved Big Star album died on the vine and, sensing it would all go nowhere, Hummel returned to college to finish his degree.
Apart from a late 70s revival in the 1970s in the UK and a States-side embrace in the 1990s by artists like R.E.M., The Replacements (where I first heard the name “Alex Chilton”), and Elliott Smith, that’s the Big Star story. After failing to land a contract in Europe, drinking, drugging and otherwise chasing dragons, Bell died at 27 in a 1978 car crash (I think) near Memphis. After recording a hyper-indulgent, consumingly-personal, frankly “challenging” “Big Star” album - alternately known as either Third or Sister/Lovers, because Stephens was dating Holiday Aldridge and Chilton dated Lesa Aldridge - Chilton moved on to an increasingly eccentric solo/collaborative career (e.g., Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and producing The Cramps’ first album) that saw him move to New Orleans and, for years upon years, reject the entire Big Star project. Big Star reformed at the tail-end of that 90s revival rounded out by a couple members of the Posies (Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow). They rode that for a while, some even claimed Chilton had got past his bitterness about Big Star, but both Chilton and Hummel passed in 2010 within four months of each other, by heart attack and cancer respectively.
One Two Thing(s) I Read That Felt Like It Speaks to Them
“I'm constantly surprised that people fall for Big Star the way they do... People say Big Star made some of the best rock 'n roll albums ever. And I say they're wrong."
- Alex Chilton (from Wikipedia entry, which is pretty good)
Three Sources
Wikipedia
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012 documentary, good, thorough and runs about 1:50)
Flood Magazine, 2018 interview with Stephens
Some Songs
I want to start with the material from Third on the grounds those are probably the least well-known. Third is not a pop album - a local eccentric named John Dickinson helped produce it, Chilton was going through a lot of shit as it was made, etc. - and, songs like “Thank You Friends” and (less so) “You Can’t Have Me” aside, it barely sounds like Big Star. Settling into it takes a couple listens, the half-finished demo vibe was largely intentional (e.g., “Dream Lover,” “For You,” and “Stroke It Noel”), and it’ll never work if you can’t. I rounded out that selection with “O, Dana,” which splits those poles to the extent the album allows it. I don’t know that Third will grow on everybody, but it has…just incredible touches/choices all over.
The other two albums built the Big Star legend and people of a certain age and inclination probably know most of these. From #1 Record, I made sure to include the one Big Star song just about everyone would know, if from another version, “In the Street.” The rest of the selection includes the opening rocker “Feel,” but I leaned into the slower, moodier numbers like “The Ballad of El Goodo,” “Thirteen,” “Watch the Sunrise,” and, an all-time personal favorite/lifeline, “Give Me Another Chance.” “My Life Is Right” wraps up that selection. I already linked to “I’m in Love With a Girl” off of Radio City up above, but I leaned into the more up-tempo stuff - something that feels fitting for what Big Star’s members saw as a radio-friendly album. [Ed. - I will never understand radio programming.] Those include, “O, My Soul,” “Back of a Car” (both Bell numbers), “Life Is White,” “Mod Lang,” the lost pop gem, “September Gurls,” and my favorite from their second, “Daisy Glaze.”
That’s all for this one. Till next week!
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