Forget the music industry: Remember Alex Chilton

There’s a lot of whining about the implosion of the music industry these days: read recording industry, but most of what I have been hearing hasn’t been coming from artists and musicians, it has come from suits and those in the business. When it comes to musicians and the implosion, you don’t have to venture very far to find one who will say bring it on. That’s because the music industry hasn’t really done much to deserve the respect of artists, not for a very long time, perhaps not ever. Oh sure, there are great people in business out there who have done everything they can to help artists and make money (small labels are full of these people), but for the most part: business is business.

So it seemed rather appropriate when Blind Joe Death first told me that Alex Chilton had passed on, and I said Chilton? Hmmm. Sounds familiar. Ya know, he’s the guy from Big Star, that ever-so-obscure-yet-incredibly-cultish band from the early 1970s. Sorry, never heard of them. He’s the guy from The Box Tops. He’s been cited as a major influence by a whole host of bands. Really? So how did he escape my radar?

Being a sucker for obscure musicians, I hoisted my cyber antennae and started trolling around the intertubes. Eventually I landed over at the Adios Lounge, hosted by Lance Davis – a great place to drop by when you are looking for a musical history lesson and some interesting mp3’s to add to your collection.

I got a good supply of both, including a heartfelt speech by democrat congressmen Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who went to the trouble to make Alex Chilton a permanent part of the congressional record, so he will never be forgotten:

For people like me who are new to Chilton, Lance posted links to three comprehensive Alex Chilton tribute podcasts:

Epsiode 14 of The Ledge – hosted by Scott Hudson
Episode 39 of Monkey Beat – show details here
The Cherry Blossom Clinic – 20 March 2010 – hosted by Terre T on WFMU

With a little more trolling I managed to find downloads of the original 3 Big Star albums: #1 Record (1972), Radio City (1974), and Third/Sister Lovers (1978). Then I started reading an almost endless stream of articles and obituaries. The Chilton cult was everywhere. Here was a guy who had played guitar, written countless songs, become a hero to the punk/underground scene, and produced records for The Cramps! How was it that I had never heard of this guy? If the music industry had been doing its job, I sure would have. Enough said.

Alex Chilton, Influential Rock Singer, Dies at 59

By DAVE ITZKOFF, New York Times, 19 March 2010

Alex Chilton, a mercurial rock musician whose work ranged from the soul songs of the Box Tops to the multiple incarnations of his pop band Big Star, and who left a legacy more easily measured in artistic influence than in commercial impact, died on Wednesday in New Orleans, where he had been living since the 1980s. He was 59.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Laura. The cause was believed to be a heart attack, though autopsy results had not yet been released. Ms. Chilton said she drove her husband to Tulane Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon after he had complained of shortness of breath and chills. Mr. Chilton lost consciousness during the ride and was pronounced dead at the hospital, she said.

Mr. Chilton, who grew up in Memphis, was just 16 years old when the Box Tops, in which he sang and played guitar, had a No. 1 hit with “The Letter” in 1967. “Cry Like a Baby,” which also featured his precocious growl, peaked at No. 2 the next year.

After the Box Tops broke up in 1970, Mr. Chilton formed Big Star with the drummer Jody Stephens, the guitarist Chris Bell and the bassist Andy Hummel. The band’s first album, “#1 Record,” released in 1972, was full of Mr. Chilton’s gentle contemplations on youthful yearnings (“Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?/Would you be an outlaw for my love?” he sang in “Thirteen”), but in a year dominated by country-rock, prog-rock and glam-rock, it did not come close to fulfilling the commercial promise of its title.

Neither did a follow-up album, “Radio City,” released in 1974, which embraced the influences of bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys and added poignant pop tunes like “September Gurls” to Mr. Chilton’s catalog. Nor did a somber final album, “Third” (later reissued as “Sister Lovers”), on which Mr. Chilton and Mr. Stephens were the only founding band members to participate. Produced by Jim Dickinson, it was not properly released until 1978, four years after the band had split up.

The rapidly changing sound of Big Star across these three albums reflected the emotional evolution of its members, Mr. Stephens said in a telephone interview. “#1 Record” portrayed “a sort of innocence,” he said, “and with ‘Radio City,’ you have something that’s a little more emotionally on edge and not as naïve. With the third record you have something that is dark and melancholy, and a little bit cynical.”

What remained consistent, Mr. Stephens said, was the talent of Mr. Chilton, who was always “brilliant at relating that particular emotion of the moment.”

After the demise of Big Star, Mr. Chilton continued to release solo albums and produce records for grimy garage-rock bands like the Cramps and the Gories. But the music of Big Star found dutiful listeners via college and independent radio stations, and the songs’ introspection and modesty wove their way into the spare sounds of outside-the-mainstream artists from R.E.M. to Elliott Smith.

Perhaps the surest measure of the tug Mr. Chilton exerted on subsequent bands can be found in the lyrics of the Replacements — another malleable rock act that moved more hearts than retail units — who sang in the song “Alex Chilton”:

“Children by the million
Sing for Alex Chilton
When he comes ’round
They sing, ‘I’m in love
What’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.’ ”

In recent years Mr. Chilton resumed performing with the Box Tops, as well as with a reconstituted Big Star lineup. A reworked version of the Big Star song “In the Street,” recorded by the power-pop band Cheap Trick, reached millions of listeners as the theme song to the Fox sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

Still, Mr. Chilton was perplexed by fans’ devotion to Big Star.

“He was proud of his songs, he was proud of ‘Thirteen’ and ‘September Gurls,’ but he was always kind of frustrated,” Ms. Chilton said. “He wanted people to know of other things, other than Big Star.”

John Fry, the founder of Ardent Studios, where the Box Tops and Big Star both recorded, said, “He was, in a sense, always forward looking, and perhaps didn’t like or understand the attention that was focused on things in past.” He added: “But whatever regard people have for that music, it came organically. Nobody tried to cause that to happen; it just happened.”

In addition to his wife, Mr. Chilton is survived by a sister, Cecelia, and a son, Timothee, by a previous marriage.

Big Star is scheduled to perform on Saturday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex. In a statement, the festival’s creative director, Brent Grulke, said: “Alex Chilton was an artist of the very highest caliber. It’s too early to do much but cry about our loss right now, but he’ll be missed, and missed more as the ages pass and his myth continues to expand — that music isn’t going anywhere.”

Alex Chilton biography from BoxTops.com:

Born 28 December 1950, Memphis Tennessee.

Prior to the Box Tops Alex sang in various Memphis groups. One of these groups included Bill Cunningham and Chris Bell (of Big Star), although Alex only briefly worked with them at the time.

After the Box Tops disbanded, Alex returned to Memphis where he joined Chris Bell’s power trio, Ice Water. They changed their name to Big Star and recorded two albums which, while unsuccessful at the time, had a huge influence. After Chris’ departure from Big Star in 1974, Alex pieced together the unfinished second Big Star LP ‘Radio City.’ Big Star’s 3rd Album (aka ‘Sister Lovers’) essentially marked the beginning of his solo career. With songs such as ‘Holocaust,’ which was about pre-suicidal numbness, and ‘Kangaroo,’ with feedback of representing the nervous electricity of a first touch of a new love, Big Star’s label, Ardent, was dumbfounded and withheld the album’s release until 1978.

Meanwhile, Alex recorded several tracks with Jon Tiven in Memphis, which emerged in various guises (notably the 1980 album Bach’s Bottom). In 1979, Alex, Chris Stamey and Richard Lloyd briefly formed Alex Chilton & The Cossacks and relocated to New York, where they played the rounds with the Ramones, Television and The Cramps.

That same year Alex recorded ‘Bangkok’ in London. Everything was drenched in slap echo, with guitars, machine guns and madcap laughs jutting in at Batman angles as Alex sang of “living on Chinese rocks.” It was a pre-emptive distillation of what was to come on his album, ‘Like Flies On Sherbet’ (1979), featuring four original songs and some chaotically creative covers. Never has a record sounded so electric, with even the piano sounding as if powered by fusing neon, and rarely has so much human soul come over (even with warts and fluffed entrances). His UK label, Aura, shipped him over to London to promote it, playing to an awed audience at Dingwalls, backed by two Soft Boys and a Vibrator.

Alex was having a burst of creative energy at this point, producing the first CRAMPS records (after they stole a car and drove south to Memphis to find him), and teaming up with rock’n'roll showman Gustav Falco, under the name Panther Burns. With his razor-creased pants, Little Richard pompadour and ’showbiz Hitler’ moustache, Falco was an inspired striking partner for Alex, and their collaboration gleefully transformed tracks like ‘Bourgeois Blues,’ ‘Brazil’ and ‘Goldfinger’ into gorgeous slabs of warped, ardent cabaret. An EP, ‘Tav Falco & The Panther Burns’ (1980) was followed up by the album ‘Behind The Magnolia Curtain’ (1981), on which Alex also played drums. Despite sporadic touring in the early 80s, Alex all but vanished until the release of the Panther Burns’ ‘Sugar Ditch Revisited’ (1985).

His solo rehabilitation began in earnest when he climbed on stage with The Replacements in 1986 (the band had released a single entitled ‘Alex Chilton’ in his honor), following up with the solo album ‘High Priest’ (1987), and some stunning work on another Panther Burns outing the following year, ‘The World We Knew.’

Since then Alex has gigged and recorded on a pretty regular basis, reverting to his ‘roots’ in (fairly restrained) classy soul on record, while emitting flashes of his uncontrollable anarchic spark on stage. In 1993, he re-formed Big Star, whose influence on young bands on both sides of the Atlantic (notably Teenage Fanclub) was by now explicit. And in 1995 Alex recorded and released a solo album, ‘A Man Called Destruction.’ Like much of his more recent output, its collection of R&B covers and quasi-rock’n'roll is enjoyable.

In late 1996 and early 1997, Alex and the other four founding members of The Box Tops began to record an album that reflects early influences on the group. The album, ‘Tear Off’ was released in March 1998. Since 1997, in addition to his solo performances, Alex has toured with the other original Box Tops.