Original subtitles

" Rock hard ."

" Let's have a party! "

" Rock hard, real gone stuff. "

" Can't get enough, rock hard. "

Thank you very much, ladies.

Ladies.

- Now what? - Well, you want to talk about...

All right.

- ...like Big Star, things like that? - Okay.

Well, what's the story behind the 'third" album?

There was a lot of turmoil involved in recording that album, wasn't there?

I mean, you went into the studio

and is that what caused the breakup,

was recording the third album?

Shit, no. No, it was just, um... you know,

we broke up after the first album.

Really.

After the first?

Yeah, has anybody here ever heard Big Star?

- We should play Big Star for them... - Yes.

...before we talk about Big Star is the thing, you know.

I mean, we're already playing Alex Chilton's solo records.

They're very wonderful.

However, now we're gonna talk about a band

I used to play with that, um,

"changed a lot of peoples" heads.

Rock Writers of the World, a lot of it's a blur.

We had meetings.

I think we elected like a president.

The whole premise was to unionize,

but the real reason for this

is they wanted us to see Big Star.

I can't even say that I remember

everything about their set except that, you know,

they had a bunch of rock critics dancing which is beyond a miracle.

They were... they were just unbelievably great.

I remember Cameron Crowe saying that something had really happened,

something had really been transformed in him.

He didn't think it would be this good. None of us did.

It was one of those seminal moments.

" O My Soul... "

Rock 103, WZXR, Memphis.

Morning to you, this is Redbeard.

Some of you probably weren't really too much into Rock and Roll

when Big Star was here in Memphis in "72, "73,

but they have reached a cult status.

" You know it's all right. "

" We've got all night... "

it seemed unusual that you could hear an album

that was so incredibly good

and people didn't really know the music. It was amazing.

This is Fresh Air. My guest is Alex Chilton.

He started his career as the lead singer of the Box Tops

and he formed his own band Big Star.

Many singer-songwriters have been inspired...

And after Chris Bell split the band, Chris went over to England

and while he was there recorded a considerable amount of material

at Air London Studios with...

it's a strange history.

You have to do a lot of explaining of who this band is.

All of these people in that Memphis community...

it feels like an odd connection and collection of people.

Those couple of records are such masterpieces.

They're so pristine.

And if you only knew that side,

you wouldn't know the whole history.

All the problems with distribution

and the record not getting out there.

They really were kind of on their own island.

It's that isolation that creates the uniqueness, you know?

To me, Big Star was like some letter

that was posted in 1971

that arrived in 1985.

You know, it's just like something that got lost in the mail, really.

It felt more personal to me.

It felt like it was your own. It was pretty hard to say

you could feel like Fleetwood Mac was your own.

Whatever... however... whatever quality it was,

it belonged to the world.

There's a sadness to it

because those were some of the best records made

in that decade and they just didn't get heard.

Sometimes lack of success

forces you deeper within yourself,

and that to me is the best thing about the Big Star story.

Sync and corrections by R3V0LV3R.

Well, I guess the best way to set up

the Big Star story is

the "60s in Memphis and what was going on."

There's, of course, the impact of the British invasion.

What had been just a handful of garage bands...

all of a sudden there were bands everywhere.

I wasn't particularly aware that Memphis was

one of the places where Rock and Roll got invented.

They would have contests on the radio all the time...

well, you know, "Who's the best, the Beatles or Elvis?"

I pestered my parents till they bought me a bass

and started playing in a little garage band.

" That's the truth, I tell no lie... "

Back in the "60s there were so many kids",

and neighborhoods were such a big deal,

that you could field a baseball team,

a football team, and you could also field a band.

I was 21 years old when we started that commercial studio

and I probably looked to people like I was about 16.

There was no reason for those people to think I knew what I was doing.

When I was in junior high school, we were making recordings in my house.

Every kid was going out and buying a guitar

or a drum set or something and starting a band.

So we had plenty of guinea pigs

to experiment on and then we would go

and have 45 records pressed

and we'd try to sell them locally

and actually had fairly good luck.

And I was asked to join a kind of successful local band

who made records.

So it was just something that was easy to fall into.

The first time I saw Alex Chilton,

I guess he was 11 or 12 years old.

Now Alex was what I call an art brat.

His mother ran an art gallery.

His father was a hobbyist clarinet player.

Bill Eggleston, the Memphis art photographer, had given him peyote

and he was running around with his eyes

spinning like that and his hair sticking out.

And I thought, "Well, this kid's gonna have a unique life."

I got sent to Central for one year

in the 10th grade and Alex was in my geometry room.

And I noticed that, you know, "Alex... he's not here today."

And then the next geometry class

I said, "He's not here again today. You know, what's going on?"

And, where is Alex, you know?

" Give me a ticket for an aeroplane. "

" Ain't got time to take a fast train... "

He says he was 15. I think he was 14.

The second time he ever sang in a microphone,

he recorded 'the Letter.

And as they say, you know, the rest was history.

" I was... "

" All night long I toss and turn. "

" With you on my mind. "

" Memories of you, girl. "

" I can't seem to leave behind. "

" Calling night and day... "

Stax had been re-equipping their studio,

which before 1966 had had very primitive equipment,

and we happened to buy our mixing console

and our first multi-track recorder from the same company.

So almost immediately we started

to get all of the overflow work from Stax.

So instead of recording high school bands,

we were recording Booker T and the MG's

and lsaac Hayes sessions.

It was a little daunting.

You know, if you wanted more staff or more engineers,

you had to train them yourself.

I actually set up sort of a little recording school at the studio

and when I walked into my office,

there was somebody sitting behind my desk

in my chair with their boots up on my desk, smoking a cigarette.

And I said, "Who the heck is this?"

Chris and I were at MUS,

'the best boys" private school in Memphis.

What they wore and the music they were into,

he very much rebelled against it.

And I kind of picked up on that.

We were interested in how to get the textures

and fuzz-tones and how to sound like

Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page.

You know what? If somebody went through the recording school

and we thought they were doing some pretty good music,

we'd give them the key to the studio and say,

"When it's not being used, you can come in and record your ideas."

Chris was not so much an electronics guy

as he was a sonics guy.

" How do we get this piece of equipment to get this sound

that I've got locked in my head?"

Jimi Hendrix had happened and the Yardbirds were happening

and I remember when Chris and those guys

played in the school cafeteria,

I was, like, wow! I mean, "Here's some of these guys

that are really actually out trying to do this stuff. "

Chris and I just sort of hit it off

"cause we were interested in these same things."

We were pretty... inseparable in those days,

you know, because we actually lived with each other at college.

I was sort of an audiophile and I had stereo equipment

that was better than most people had.

So a lot of times people would wind up in my room.

Chris always had a full-body,

purple aura every time you were doing acid.

We all would say,

"Whoa, what is this all about?" You know?

Andy and Chris had sort of convinced people

that they were expert drug tasters or whatever.

I think, you know, they were pretty high most of the time.

He came back a very different person.

I remember we were in the living room of his mother's house

and he had on the wall a framed gold record

for "Cry Like a Baby."

And the label had peeled off of the 45 record

and was laying down in the corner of the frame like a dead bug.

Alex really liked that.

" Free again to end my longing... "

Chris and I came back to Memphis

and we both had our fill of going away to college...

no car, having to live in a dorm room,

can't play music, no place to develop your pictures.

You know, it was really a drag.

So Chris and I started working on Chris's back house.

We got what musical equipment we had and moved it back there

and started playing a little bit. So we said, "Well, we need a drummer."

I said, " Oh, well, I know this guy Jody Stephens,

who I played with back in the 9th grade."

" To do what I want again..."

When I was a teenager, I felt like an oddball.

Music was something that made me feel

like part of a community.

Chris and Alex and Andy and John Fry...

it's a society of oddballs.

" Well, I made a mistake..."

Alex had already made enough money

that his parents had put it in some kind of a trust fund.

He went and bought his own car and drove it around.

He was kind of surviving off

being or having been a professional musician,

which was a big mystery to me.

How can anybody do that? Surely you don't make money doing this.

We're just doing this "cause it's cool, you know.

" When you smile, you make... "

Alex... life was so far off the chart...

no real pun intended...

while Chris was having to clean out

the pool on Saturdays.

I think he felt like such a victim,

because his father made him clean out the pool.

We would stand out in front of the old building over on National.

"Well, what do you want to do now?" "Well, you know..."

Chris would say, "Get Alex in the band."

Chris was very... I think he knew

what he wanted in terms of band members,

and he had this pretty specific idea

about what this band would sound like musically

and how all these pieces would fit together.

Should I use this mic?

Mm-hmm.

I still don't hear myself through the phones.

- How about now? - Uh, yeah. Wah!

And which way should I be standing in relation to this mic?

In front of it.

We had sort of weaseled our way into Ardent a little bit

and we actually were allowed to go into the studio

late at night, starting to put down...

no kidding... real tracks.

I even think we got our very own private

full-blown reel of tape.

We'd just been using scraps up till then.

Can I put on some back-up before it's late?

Mmhmm. And do the piano.

- Got a light? - They're over there.

The bands I'd been in prior to Big Star didn't have access to a studio

and that very beneficial time of evolving as a musician

and being able to do that in a studio.

Once you step into that and kind of discover

what you can do creatively,

I don't know that there is any kind of feeling like it.

" When my baby's beside me... "

- Ah! - We should have done.

- "When My Baby's Beside Me" acoustic. - One, two, three, four...

Very quickly we became sort of an organic thing.

We jived with each other, we bonded.

I think a little less vocal and a little bit more guitars.

A little less of the other vocals.

The focus was original music.

Alex and Chris were creating music

that was as relevant

and connected as emotionally to me

as all this cover material that I had been doing.

Those two were like a couple of comets

or shooting stars or something like that.

Jody and I were kind of caught up

in the bow wave of Chris and Alex.

- Tell me when. - Now.

I didn't get to hear much Big Star music

because they usually wouldn't write in the studio.

When they showed up with the first songs for "#1 Record,"

they basically had the arrangements

completely together the way they wanted to do them.

They came in, they set up as a four-piece band in the studio,

everybody playing on the basic tracks

simultaneously and that was the first time

I was hearing those tunes.

Rolling.

" Years ago my heart was set to live, oh. "

" But I've been trying hard against unbelievable odds..."

Sitting down to go through 'the Ballad of El Goodo"

it seems like we'd run through that song one time

and then the next time it just all clicked.

It was pretty much realized

the way you hear it on the album.

" And there ain't no one going to turn me "round."

" Ain't no one going to turn me "round... "

Even just hearing the tracks... the two guitars, the bass,

and the drums... I said,

"You know, if they've got any lyrics

that are halfway decent to go with this, we've got something."

" Ain't no one going to turn me "round... "

Al Bell at Stax came to us and said,

" Stax would like to have a rock brand.

Would you be interested in having Ardent Records be that brand? "

And I said, "Well, of course."

Chris knew that that was coming.

I told him, I said, " You know, if you guys get a good album together,

we've got a good vehicle, I think, for putting some of this music out."

I can't get over how really nice the Mellotron sounds on that.

This one wouldn't make a bad single probably.

I think the name Big Star was just desperation.

We needed to have a name and nobody could think of a name

and when we were sitting out in between

the old shack on National

and the actual storefront studio

smoking I don't know what... smoking something.

And there was, of course, the Big Star grocery store right across the street.

You know, we could have been jinxing our future

by calling ourselves Big Star and our first album "#1 Record."

I do remember feeling really uncomfortable

with the name because it was so pretentious.

Do you want me to do that?

Yeah, I like that.

I would normally turn most of the overdubbing to them

because Chris could engineer plenty good enough.

You know, I had other work to do.

I wasn't particularly anxious to be there 24/7, so.

Before all that got too awfully far along,

the move to Madison Avenue occurred

where Ardent moved from their old storefront on National Street

over to this big, wonderful new studio.

They just did everything technically that you could imagine doing

and there's still studios to this day,

I'm sure, that don't light a candle to it.

I felt like I'd walked into the Disney World

of music at that point.

John Fry likes toys and equipment, things like that,

so we had the first Mellotron in the United States.

We had George Harrison's keyboard.

It had come in for service and been swapped out,

so we ended up getting his Moog.

Ardent provided, you know, a real high-tech environment

and when Stax started doing really well, there was an overflow of business.

I think Terry did The Staple Singers one,

which was a great record.

So that kind of work was going on over in A Studio

and we sort of staked out B Studio as our own little space.

Big Star just spent a lot of time in there finishing up that first LP.

" Don't give up on me so fast... "

I had a little bit of an attitude back then.

You know, when I would walk through the room

and I would hear them working on something,

you know, they struck me as a little amateurish.

You know, I already had it in my mind

what something would end up sounding like,

you know, if Brian Wilson has got his hands on it

or Phil Spector or George Martin.

I remember hearing "#1 Record" after it was mixed...

and... just being floored, just floored.

" Girlfriend, what are you doing? "

" You're driving me to ruin... "

it's 9:29 on WMC-FM Memphis

and speaking of Big Star, a couple of members of the group are here...

Andy Hummel and Alex Chilton are with us.

A lot of excitement about this album. Is the album out yet in the stores?

Yeah, the album should have hit the stores today.

"#1 Record" is the very first

from Big Star and you won't forget, will you?

Here it is only January

and you're getting an awful lot of critical acclaim for your new album.

Yeah, that's nice. I hope it sells.

We got a great review from "Cash Box"

and "Billboard" and "Rolling Stone."

That was looking good.

You know, in a way the back-house crew

moved over to Ardent, and I was part of that crew.

We shot some film.

We all loved music, and we'd hang out together.

And then I was asked by John to do the art and advertising.

" Look at the sun... "

it was pretty exciting, especially getting the album.

Great front cover that Carole Manning shot

and the back that... I think John Fry actually wound up shooting that.

Chris persuaded John that I needed to be aboard,

"cause we were all going to be a success.

And if I couldn't be in the band, I needed to be there.

And with my college radio experience

he would like to have somebody

focusing on Big Star all the time.

Chris was a master manipulator

and I wanted, you know, something to do,

and so Chris found me as a willing participant.

Yeah.

- Tell me about the Ardent family. - Bizarre.

We've got a big new studio here.

We're a real company.

We're not operating out of anybody's backyard anymore.

We've got a big label behind us.

Yeah, you're damn right there were expectations.

I realized that it was a matter of probabilities,

but for Chris it was 100% certain

that this thing was gonna all take off.

After all these years of just listening to music

and just looking at the covers and studying everything

about a Beatle cover, it was like a dream.

We were so fortunate to have landed in this spot doing this

that I think we kind of thought,

"Well, this is how life is.."

Savoy Brown will not be able to appear.

Now, Friday, August 25th,

at the auditorium plan to see Cactus plus Rory Gallagher

and special guest stars Bloodrock.

Tickets are $3.50.

I worked at Pop Tunes

from 1970 to "73."

On every other aisle in the store

were two record players

so people could listen to the music.

Saturday afternoons, there'd sometimes

be everything from John Lee Hooker,

you know, to Led Zeppelin and Ray Conniff,

all blasting at one time.

Ardent and Stax naturally

always got preferential treatment.

When Big Star showed up...

I mean, I even remember where it was on the floor.

It just didn't look like a Memphis record.

Big Star came out of the gate

with a kind of finely-tooled precision.

The whole time we were promoting Big Star,

Stax is sending over posters of lsaac Hayes.

"Hot Buttered Soul,"

totally distracted towards where this big acceptance

and these big sales were coming from.

But that's just a microcosm of what was going on

in the whole industry.

All the resources get put behind the big sellers,

guys that have the potential

to become the Elton Johns of the world.

I make 50 calls a day to radio program directors

and they'd say, "Well, you know,

have you got any records in the stores yet?

I mean, we're not getting any report of any sales."

What's going on? You know?

We've got all these great reviews.

Stax seems behind it.

The record's great.

You know, what is going on out there?

And that's "out there"...

it's such a netherworld, you know.

You don't know what is out there.

" Be my friend... "

You know, we were all frustrated.

Picking up "Rolling Stone" magazine and it says,

'this is the greatest stuff we've ever heard.."

And, you know, nobody is buying it

and you can't find it in a record store.

People would call from different parts of the country

and just say, "Wow. Where can I find this record?

I just heard it on my local radio station."

At some point a decision was made

that we really needed more promotional help,

which, in fact, is probably not what we needed.

Probably what we needed was distribution help,

but John was brought in on a retainer

and hired to sort of coordinate the promotion effort.

It was like they kind of needed

somebody to beat a drum and light a fire.

I got through to more people when the Argent record,

"Hold Your Head Up"... when that was out,

"cause when I'd say "Ardent" they thought I was saying "Argent.."

"Ooh, yeah, hey. Remember that." And so...

Al Bell wanted to have more of a presence

in the pop market or the white market

or whatever you want to call it.

But I never got

a sense of how they planned to forge a beachhead

in the pop or Top 40.

There was always a band.

So I would be lugging around my 15-year-old,

14-year-old brother with amps and P.A. systems

and what-have-you.

"#1 Record" was being recorded the year

that I was in France when I escaped Memphis.

And it was at that time I remember being home

and Christopher played me on his stereo,

up in his room, "#1 Record."

" Won't you let me walk you home from school? "

Oh.

I'm not ashamed to say, but I cried.

It was just, you know, this is your kid brother

and you've known all these years

how he had progressed and what he wanted.

And it was like, 'my God, you've come out with something..."

I don't know that I'd... it wasn't the Beatles

but it was damn good. It was great.

Things started going sour for Chris

when he started reading reviews of "#1 Record."

it was such a large part of his kind of creative vision

that when the press started coming back

and focusing on Alex,

I think he thought he might have to live

under that shadow from that point.

" Rock and Roll is here to stay. "

" Come inside where it's okay... "

I'm sure that was a factor in, you know,

his emotional problems that he started having around that time.

I mean, the guy, he poured his heart and his soul into this thing,

so I guess he felt kind of betrayed.

Chris is in every way a tragic figure,

but you're dealing with a reality and a fantasy.

Big Star never had to face the big mirror,

you know, just staring yourself

right in the face night after night,

trying to pay for the damn bus, you know.

I mean, so the fantasy which all starts

when you're strumming your tennis racket

in front of the mirror, you know...

the fantasy was able to grow until it blew up.

" If it's so, well, let me know "

" if it's no, well, I can go... "

Late in the day he came by the studio

and was arguing with me. Then he stomped off and left

and I... you know, I went home and, you know,

I got a call from Richard Rosebrough

who was down at the studio and said,

"Chris is back up here and he's erasing the multitrack tapes

for "#1 Record."

My father, with incredible understatement and euphemism,

picked me up at the airport around Christmastime

of "72 and said",

"Well, we've had some trouble at home.."

He apparently took a bunch of pills

of some kind and...

wound up in the hospital.

So that was a...

That was a sad day.

What do you think?

It's very nice.

One, two, three, four...

" You feel sad "

" 'Cause I got mad and I'm sorry... "

I love "#1 Record" and I think it's probably

one of the most peculiarly

sequenced records,

because it starts off with all this bravado

of "Feel," you know, and "In the Street,"

you know, and it's got these really great...

you know, 'don't Lie To Me"... these moments.

And then the record just sort of slides

into this kind of melancholia.

I mean, "Watch the Sunrise"

is sort of like this last glimmer of hope

that sort of sparkles a little bit,

you know, right before it just totally fades out.

" I can feel it, now it's time... "

By "72 I'd started sending reviews in

and I was getting published here and there.

So I was starting to get on mailing lists

and I would get the occasional album in the mail, which was very thrilling

to get an actual record album in the mail for free.

And I opened it and that, you know, that laminated cover with the neon sign,

it was a eureka moment hearing "#1 Record" for the first time,

an absolute life-changing moment.

I played it. It would end. I'd play it again.

I really remember hearing Big Star clearly for the first time.

I was on Silas Creek Parkway in North Carolina.

I'd just gone through the light. "Baby's Beside Me" came on the radio.

I was driving an old Thunderbird

and I started going way over the speed limit really quickly.

It was really exciting. Big Star had a song in the Top 10,

or Top 20 anyway, in my hometown, and I thought

this was the same all over the world.

I knew the people over at WTOB,

and the DJ's would make extra money

by selling their promos... records.

I probably bought all their copies for a dollar

and it meant they didn't even have copies to play.

So I probably wrecked the chance

of Big Star getting any more famous in Winston.

Okeydoke.

These are books which I can't...

don't have room for... oh, Spector, I loved him.

And now these are the Beatles

and then Big Star's got a section.

And of course KISS which I'll never listen to, but gotta have it.

Ooh, Sinead O'Connor, I love her.

She's so serious, you know.

I've got, like, Dance and Techno and House in these cases.

I'm into hits. I love hits,

no matter where they come from.

'this is the Rock Writers" Convention

where Big Star performed.

I put a page ad in "Billboard"

and then flew in a hundred or so

of the leading music-publication people back then.

"Rolling Stone," of course, "Circus,."

"Crawdaddy," "Creem," "Fusion."

When you came up with this idea for the Rock Writers,

was that a real earnest thing that you just thought

- they needed a union or something? - Very much so.

See nobody ever... they just thought,

"Oh, this guy in Memphis wanted everybody to see Big Star.."

That was definitely part of it

but no, they needed some sort of organization.

Hard as hell to get paid

and nobody really respected them at the time,

but they sure do now.

The day before my birthday in April of "73

I got this package in the mail

and I just flipped.

And it was just, "I'm gonna get invited to a junket."

I remember they called 'Creem's office and said,

"We're going to take everybody.."

And I go, "Everybody?".

"Creem" magazine, we made $22.75 on the weeks that we got paid.

Like, "We won the lottery."

What exactly we hoped to accomplish

was open to debate, but we all had a ticket,

a hotel and freedom to run around Memphis.

" I wish I could meet Elvis..."

They put us in a school bus and they made this big deal

that we were going to go to Graceland and maybe see Elvis.

I remember seeing the gates with the musical notes,

and they came out and said, "Elvis has left the city."

Elvis was not there.

I vividly remember looking over,

you know, Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer,

the two of them are standing there

pissing through the gates at Graceland.

And I just thought, "if this isn't what it's all about,

I don't know what is."

I just sort of showed up for the second day

and they gave me a press pass and I met Lester Bangs.

He was doing so much speed that... he could barely talk.

He just went, 'mm-hmm."

This is perhaps the most bland time in the history of western civilization.

Now the difference between this and 1967

is stupefying.

Lester Bangs came out so irreverent and so clever.

He never treated musicians

like they were any different than us.

There was the sense that the edifice of Rock and Roll

had gotten a little unwieldy.

That resulted in records

that had lost some passion, perhaps.

In about 1971, that's when I started

to really hate hippie shit.

I mean, I liked radical politics,

but I saw hippies as just mainly getting high

and "Let's... let's get high and ball!"

I gave my life to Rock and Roll music.

It had been taken away from me

just as I was getting old enough to really enjoy it.

You know, everything got bloated into heaviosity.

It started becoming more product and less art.

I guess we just felt like we were trying to reclaim

that attitude that had been there

at the beginning of Rock, you know, stripping everything back

to where it's all started from and let's try this again.

" I really don't wanna go..."

I remember there was a meeting the morning of,

I think, the second day where we were supposed

to elect a president of the organization

and draft minutes for the meeting,

but it was anarchy.

It was like that clich�, like herding cats.

We didn't want to be organized.

You know, our gift was chaos.

The last night they had a big concert

with the acts that were on Ardent.

The rock writers were just yawning and going,

"Yeah! This is horrible!" And then Big Star came on.

The flower that had blossomed

when I heard "#1 Record," re-blossomed. They were just great.

As soon as they started playing

all the rock writers started dancing

and Richard started taking his pants off

on the dance floor while Big Star was playing.

So he danced in his tighty-whiteys for a while.

" 'Cause when my baby's beside me... "

I had seen Big Star a number of times before then

and they never got that kind of response. No one ever adored them.

This hand-picked perfect audience.

That was really, to me, where we all came together.

I still marvel at the fact that Ardent Records paid

to get 140 rock writers in the same place.

Something was forged in that ridiculous moment

of a record company trying to organize us.

No one forgot those few days.

I mean, not a whole lot of business

got accomplished then,

but it certainly was a galvanizing point

for the whole Big Star thing.

"Coming off the performance at the Rock Writers" Convention

certainly had instilled a new confidence in me

and my perception is that the band had been kind of on hiatus prior to that.

So we were all pretty charged about it.

That's a neat sound.

- Okay, you're rolling. - Ready?

Hey, John, turn up the bass in the headphones.

Even before Chris left the band,

they had already started writing some more songs.

I was glad that the band decided

that they wanted to make another album,

but things were a little different.

Nightclubs and liquor by the drink in bars...

you know, you can almost see

the geography reflected in "Radio City."

I need help,

ladies and gentlemen. Rattle my jam.

Memphis did not get liquor by the drink until August "69."

There was a great hue and cry saying,

" This is going to turn the youth of Memphis into degenerates.

There's gonna be bars on every corner." Well, guess what?

" Had to leave my home. "

" Love my girl, ooh yeah. "

" She got to save... "

Fridays was the cornerstone bar

and you saw some crazy, crazy people

who probably, if say liquor or drugs or sex had not brought them together,

they would never have been in the same place,

much less the same moral universe.

Everybody who was in the least bit

interested in raising hell would be there.

- Typically we were. - " How long. "

" Can this go on? "

Oh my God, yeah,

we'd probably drop a couple of 'ludes

and then have drinks

and then we'd go from there, probably to Fridays

and then... probably to a liquor store

and then probably to oblivion.

When we would party, I mean, where do we go?

We'd go back to the studio,

"cause we were having so much fun."

Fry would find us wrapped up

in drum blankets on the floor of the studio.

Big Star will be playing at Max's Kansas City

from tomorrow through Monday.

It's in the city.

Stax cut a deal to be distributed by Columbia.

So when we went to New York it was another attempt to get attention,

to meet with the man who negotiated the deal with Stax.

That took a long time to set that up.

We had to buy a beaucoup of airtime.

One, two, three, four...

There was a showcase.

So anybody that had been in Memphis, any of the New York people or...

I mean, I know I sat at the bar between Richard and Nick.

They were like this reluctant rock band,

yet there they were with that ironic name, "Big Star."

Those of us that were writing or trying to write about them a little

knew that we were gonna have to go through the magazine route.

Unfortunately, I think to some of us the prospects of helping somebody get big

was not really what we were hoping for.

We wanted them to be a tiny band that everybody listened to.

This is taking a bit of a left turn.

" I'm driving alone..."

This is probably the best song to me on "Radio City."

That second album to me was just... it was just one of those...

almost the perfect record. All the songs had a sensibility

and a feel and a certain kind of, um, a mystery.

This was not a record that revealed itself fast.

When you listened to these songs, they were complicated.

" Better not leave me here... "

You got to feel the emotional depth

and angst that was within the band.

" Ooh, I want you here..."

I look at "Radio City" as a transitional record.

It's the pristine brilliance of the first record,

but it's the beginning of the unfraying

and the sound of falling apart.

" You're gonna die. "

" Yes, you're gonna die. "

" Right now. "

Love that ending.

Uh, those last few chords that Nick Lowe later stole.

When you hear a really great guitar sound,

that sounds really unique,

like even just at the beginning of "September Gurls,"

the way the guitar sounds right at the beginning,

that sound is just... it 's one of these things that's just...

you know, it's like... osmosis. It just kind of goes right into you.

" September gurls do so much. "

" I was your butch and you were touched. "

" I loved you, well, never mind... "

I think "' September Gurls" is probably

as close to a big hit as they would have.

It's a good hit. And, you know,

the fact that it wasn't on every radio station

in America is, you know,

the target practice of the music business.

You know, sometimes you just miss.

" September gurls... "

There is that, you would tag things with "City."

if you're in a Rock and Roll band, "Rock City."

if something bad happened, it'd be "Drag City."

And "Radio City,"

we all thought this was a radio-friendly album.

" She's a schemer and she makes me bad... "

Columbia was gonna be our savior

and we now had a real distribution company.

But they didn't give a damn about Ardent Records.

It was a different game, you know.

They were used to dealing in tonnage.

For Stax to get picked up and distributed by Columbia

was supposed to be going big time.

Well, it's a comedy of errors here

but shortly after the Stax distribution deal, we get word

that Clive Davis, the man who negotiated the deal with Stax,

is being investigated for improper spending

on his expense account and they fired him.

The offices of Stax here are closed.

A lot of other problems have also plagued the firm.

The latest came yesterday.

A judge declared the firm officially bankrupt.

I was already feeling the pressure

of having to make the eventual decision of school or band.

Having that decision in my head was causing me to sort of morph away

from the band quite a bit.

So my departure from Big Star had started back that early.

Obviously, Chris had already departed and Alex...

that left Alex kind of on his own, Jody being Jody.

And so the boys club, if there was one, was kind of falling apart at that point.

John Lightman is our brand-new bass player.

He's only been with us about three weeks.

And...

...he's a fine man.

And this is Jody Stephens back on the drums.

We often played to rooms that were almost empty

and I felt really awful for how disappointed

they were in the lack of response that they got.

It was sort of chaotic at Ardent

and the future was all unknown.

It was... it was sort of in limbo.

We had a rehearsal set up there.

Jody and I arrived at 2:00 and we waited and waited.

And about 5:30 Alex comes sauntering in

and he says, "Well, here I am, but I don't have my guitar.

What do you want to do?"

So, you know, that would be a typical day.

And then after a while of this sort of thing going on

Alex said to me,

'my attitude about music is I could take it or leave it."

I met Chris "75. I was working in CBS Records."

He was over with his brother David, looking for a deal.

And there was a guy called John Tobler, who was like head of press there

at the time and I was the in-house photographer.

There was rumor of... you know, in working with Geoff Emerick...

if he could top anything that he'd done with Big Star,

it would be amazing. And we were looking forward to it.

He was very kind of... intense, shy.

Fortunately, he had David with him, so he could be the mouthpiece

and talk all that business nonsense. John would put David in contact

with various people in various record companies.

But unfortunately, sadly,

as we know, he never got a deal for it.

He was drinking a lot, an awful lot.

Steadily, it became kind of more and more depressing.

And, you know, I was taking him here and there

and wherever to show him something

and maybe get... you know, show him a good time.

I can always get inspired by environment.

I was taking pictures, and especially of him.

Because I've always had a dramatic side...

was quite aware that...

difficult times

can be translated into great photography, great music.

And when he saw that picture,

we talked about using that possibly for an album cover.

I purposely cut him off just below the knees

and with the background that he had,

to make him look like he was kind of floating in the ether.

Come on. Come on.

When we walked this road with Bob Dylan,

he said, "Jim, a man could do a lot of thinking here."

And Jim said, "Bob, I'm thinking all the time."

" In the Arizona Prison..."

10 years before he ever played on.

'time Out Of Mind" with Bob Dylan,

he told me that we had to get out

of the big fancy house we lived in...

what he called "suburban squalor"...

and get to Mississippi and move in trailers,

because otherwise Bob Dylan would get the wrong message.

The idea of living in trailers... l'd never considered that,

but it worked out fantastic.

It was our second honeymoon.

" Oh, my mouth is dry with dust... "

Jim wasn't interested in things that were real put together or polished or...

he was more interested in the forces of nature.

Here's a good symbol of Jim's philosophy of art.

It's said that the song "Dock of the Bay"

was written on this piano by Otis Redding.

We turned it into what is known as yard art,

a magnificently manufactured musical instrument

subject to the forces of nature.

" A long long way from here to Tennessee... "

There's one thing I learned from Jim... is that everything is important.

" Long long way. "

" From me to the girl... "

You might say, "that is the most cluttered room I ever saw."

It's his ambience and it's... his sonic genius is in here.

" Will she wait for me? "

Jim's background was theater

and he learned early on that a play comes together

and very intense and real friendships

and enemies are formed that basically

only last the life of the play.

He learned about how to be part of a cast...

a cast of characters.

" My Lord, he did just what he said... "

You made a point earlier that Memphis music is what it is

because it's done differently than anywhere else.

" Shine on me... "

People who have made Memphis music in the past

wouldn't even have the opportunity to make music other places,

from Elvis... from before Elvis, Robert Johnson.

" Shine on me, well, let it shine on. "

" Let it shine on me... "

What happened in Memphis in those years...

so much had fallen apart,

yet this was coming together in a way

that nobody could predict or understand

what the outcome could possibly be.

It was full of energy, creativeness and always,

always trying to push the envelope

and in "'Stranded in Canton," we definitely did.

That was our scene.

I was stranded in Canton.

Revolution!

Beep beep.

I used to go to shows and see Jim Dickinson.

I saw Big Star play.

Alex... he and Lesa introduced me to a social set

where...

there were a lot of disconnected, messed-up people.

And I felt right at home. I said, "I found my social set."

" Shine on me... "

There was some sort of thing that happened

with this group of people, especially around Bill Eggleston, the artist.

The standard artistic equation for that scene

was horror equals beauty, beauty equals horror.

If say something felt terrible, if something sounded out of tune,

if say something was just wrong,

then somehow that could become beauty.

Alex, Jim, and Bill Eggleston all...

for me, that's all the same body of work.

For me it's just visual...

and musical.

And Bill thinks of himself as a musician

as much as he thinks of himself as a photographer.

Mm-hmm.

Jim was a man who respected tradition.

He talked about knowing truly great men.

These are the truly great men

who helped him make the music of the spheres.

This was his shrine.

The boys and I put him front and center.

Jim always said

that the part of the recordings

that he claimed were the space between the notes.

That's where he wrote his signature.

And I think of all his recordings,

he succeeded in... in the space

between the notes most with "Big Star Third."

I worked with these other legendary producers

and saw that the people who were the heaviest,

were, in fact, doing the least.

But that's the way you pull it out.

It's not your record. It's their record.

The producer's name goes at the bottom of the back

in the smallest typeface known to man.

And that's the way it should be.

We all had keys to the studio at that point.

Alex would come in the studio in the middle of the night with Lesa,

his girlfriend and the muse of the record,

whose importance cannot be overstated.

I come in one morning

and he's got this little evil grin on his face and he said, "Well,

Lesa and I cut something last night I want you to hear."

"Okay, Alex.."

So he plays me "Like A Kangaroo," which is... it's just 12-string...

acoustic 12-string and vocal.

I said "Yeah, Alex, what do you hear on that?"

And he says... again with the evil grin he says,

"Well, why don't you produce it, Mr. Producer?"

" I next saw you. "

" You was at the party... "

But you could hear how it grew up out of the chaos.

That's the space that I don't think anybody had given him before.

" I..."

" Came against... "

A lot of different things about how Alex thought about music

were changed by his influence from Jim.

Alex would be showing someone a song,

for instance, showing them how the guitar went,

maybe noodling around a little bit.

And then they hear Dickinson say, " You know we were recording.

That's it, we got it."

And they'd say, "What?

You know, you were recording that?" And he'd say, "Yeah."

And he'd say, "it was great. Great. I wouldn't change a thing."

" Take downs... "

There was a sense of "How do we get

to complete spontaneity?"

There was a little tendency to be

kind of sonically deconstructive,

and it was pretty clear to me

that he didn't have much interest

in trying to tailor anything to have commercial appeal

or to be radio-friendly.

" I'm well versed in the walls of worst."

" In the windows of most, wind down..."

I thought it had become an Alex album.

I thought it was an Alex album.

All of those records from "#1 Record" through

"Radio City" to the "Third"... Alex was the commonality.

He was the common point of all of them.

And as they progressed they became more Alex records

than Big Star records.

You know, it just...

it became such a different scene at that point

in terms of where Alex was going musically,

in his personality.

It got painful for John. And he did reach the point where he said,

"Jim, I know you're not finished,

but you've got to mix what you've got,

because I can't do this anymore."

" Child, will you come on down? "

The mix is half of the record,

and Alex was excluded because he would have ruined it.

" Morning says to idle on. "

" And stay clear of the street. "

" On the wing and on the land... "

I've worked with guys who were supposed to be

the real guys and none of them were as good as John.

He would treat classical cello and sheer distortion, equally.

You know, they were both equally musical,

you know, paint that he was pushing around the canvas.

" Stroke it Noel... "

it really is this amazing reflection

of where Alex was at that time and that lifestyle.

But whether I wanted to sustain

that kind of emotional lifestyle is...

it wasn't for me.

What was the lifestyle?

Oh, it was kind of self-absorption

and self-focus and...

and drugs and alcohol.

" Driving in my big black car. "

" Nothing can go wrong... "

You know, everybody was kind of down and depressed then.

You got to remember our biggest studio customer,

Stax, had just gone out of business, also leaving us without a distributor

for our record label and, you know, we were kind of wondering

was Memphis music now going to implode

and we are all going to be unemployed.

The band had fallen apart.

Alex and Lesa were going through this soap opera

that was their relationship.

The record was about deteriorating relationships.

That's what the record is about.

" Nothing can hurt me. "

" Nothing can touch me. "

" Why should I care? "

" Driving's a gas "

" it ain't gonna last. "

When I came over here to start working,

John was showing me around the place

and there was a humongous loud noise

coming out of Studio A. And I was prepared for...

I don't know what I was prepared for,

but I opened the door and it was just Chris behind the console,

running the tape machine, punching himself into record

and out of record and singing and doing all of it by himself.

He was more concerned about his solo stuff

and getting that right,

whatever that definition of that is. I know he worked on it forever.

The way that Big Star was presented to me,

it was always "Alex, Alex, Alex."

And I didn't realize until I heard Chris's solo stuff

how responsible he was for the whole sound of the band.

" You didn't have to make a scene... "

Chris just lost interest in bands period,

and he just wanted to hear his songs...

not translated.

He was incredibly frustrated with the fact that he couldn't find

anybody at a record company who would support his music.

I mean, he went over to England to do remixes with Geoff Emerick,

to get his music in line with something

that someone would appreciate,

and he wasn't achieving that to the least.

" I walk the streets. "

" And all alone... "

Chris came to a very settled faith in Jesus Christ

as Lord and Savior.

It made a big difference in his life

and it made a big difference in mine.

Music was still his great gift and he knew it,

and he wanted to do whatever he could with it.

But nothing topped God.

For him to be singing a song about.

"You got to give your life to Jesus,"

you know, it was like, "God, Chris, that's"...

I never knew he had that element, you know.

It wasn't just as easy with Chris as to say,

"I've been born again" and to live that life,

to accept it completely, you know.

I think there were things that troubled him... not about religion,

but about other aspects of his life that didn't...

like the two didn't really balance each other out

or complement each other.

" You should've given your love to Jesus "

" it couldn't do you no harm..."

He once told me, " You should do drugs.

It takes away your sexual urges. "

I have a feeling that drugs and then religion, obviously...

had a way of keeping any of that at bay.

There was a part of Chris that, to me,

seemed like a highly-combustionable blend

of whatever substances he was in-taking,

whatever was his baggage concerning his sexuality

and born-again Christianity.

It was like all of this stuff mashing around.

I heard about it.

I heard about a lot of that stuff. Thinking back on it,

I could see that he was searching,

which could explain the religion thing.

It could explain experimentation of one kind or another.

It could explain drugs, you know, travel,

whatever, you know. You're searching, you know.

I was sent out on an assignment

from 'the Village Voice" and I met Alex the day

he had just moved to New York from Memphis.

As I got to the place, Lesa was leaving

and he started crying on my shoulder.

This is from the first session we did.

He was living up in Little lndia then.

He was very sweet, very Southern.

He had a copy of "Radio City"

and "Here's some of my music," you know.

Despite claims to the contrary, he knew he'd done something.

A guy named Terry Ork, Ork Records, said,

"Well, we've got this project. Alex Chilton might be coming up.."

This is maybe my second week in New York.

He called in and said, "Do you want to play with Alex?

Could you put together a band?"

Nobody knew what would happen,

but they knew that television had gotten a real record deal with a real label

and it seemed like, you know, " This is kind of crazy."

I've only been here a couple of weeks.

" Here's a little thing that's gonna please ya. "

" Just a little town down in lndonesia, Bangkok... "

I asked him at one point,

"Why don't you write more stuff like you did with Big Star?"

And he just said, "I can't. I can't write that way anymore."

He realized he could write a different kind of lyric.

He could write a lyric like "Bangkok"

that was a witty Algonquin Round Table kind of thing.

And I don't think that that unattainable muse mechanism

was the way he wrote songs anymore after Lesa.

Punk gave him an outlet

where he could get a lot of his anger out

from the debacle of Big Star

being totally ignored. And I mean, that would create

a certain amount of bitterness and anger,

and I mean it was a nice place for that to fit in.

You like Punk Rock?

Not in the least.

Well, never mind the Sex Pistols then, Byron, here come The Cramps.

Charles Raiteri reports on the Rock and Roll

werewolves from the Black Lagoon.

Alex saw the Cramps at CBGB's

and came back talking about it the next day and he loved it.

It was, you know, Memphis but New York at the same time.

" I tuned you inside my radio, like this!"

I had heard that it was a performance-art project

that had gotten a following as a band.

They were ghouls, you know, deliberately ghouls.

When The Cramps came here in September of "77",

Lux and lvy and Nick, I mean, they stopped traffic.

People would go...

"What the fuck are you?"

For me, that was Memphis Rock and Roll 20 years later.

Not Rock music, not retro-rockabilly,

not... not Punk Rock. That was Rock and Roll.

Memphian Alex Chilton, well-known in the Punk world,

is producing The Cramps album, not from this old board.

This is the board which first recorded the man many consider to be

the first rockabilly punk, Elvis Presley.

Well, yeah, I think it makes them feel good to be in Memphis,

you know, down here where all the music

that they have collected for so long

and like so much came from.

I just love those up-tempo waltzes.

" Rock hard... "

You know, there were people in several other areas

reaching for Punk Rock and reaching for a new,

you know, aggressive, cutting-edge denial of the past.

We were too.

" Rock hard, the ripples... "

But yeah, Punk Rock was different in Memphis

than it was other places.

" Lonely days are gone. "

" I'm-a going home. "

" My baby just-a wrote me a letter... "

it was at the Beale Street Blues Festival

that Memphis first realized it had a Punk in its midst.

Alex, are you being punkish on stage? Is that what it is?

Yeah.

" Rock hard. "

" Rock hard. "

" The ripples. "

" Rock hard. "

" The nipples. "

" Rock hard, purple... "

I think the Memphis Pilgrimage

was just the natural thing to do for us at that time,

because I had met Alex in New York

and then Chris Stamey, of course, was playing with him.

It was summer. We were like, "Let's do something."

And the thing we're gonna do is instead of going to the beach,

we're gonna go to Memphis.

We also had the idea that we were going to meet Chris Bell.

We were going to try to. We just were curious about him.

He was more mysterious,

"cause, you know, he sort of disappears from the Big Star story early on."

It was kind of like hanging out with the Beatles for us,

because those records to us were as good as any records on earth.

I guess we were probably like... every year got a little more

into them in a way, like realizing just how good they were,

and thinking more and more about how they did them and stuff.

And then, of course, this picture on the back is great,

because they look pretty cool and look like they're having a good time.

And you have to love Jody's jacket. You cannot beat that.

We had a bit of information about

which Danver's restaurant Chris Bell was working at

and found it and went out there.

Well, Alex told us where to find Chris.

- Did he? - Yeah, he said,

"Yeah, he works out at this Danver's in..."

Germantown or something?

Germantown or whatever it was, the suburb.

And sure enough, we went out there

and he was wearing the little two-corner paper hat

and... didn't seem particularly glad to see us.

- Well, we passed a note back... - He was rambunctious.

- ...through the person at the counter. - Right.

And he came out looking completely bamboozled like,

- "You want to see me?" - Yeah.

Alex had invited us to go stop into the studio,

"cause he was having a listening session.

He was making an album that became "Like Flies on Sherbet,"

and we kept bugging Chris Bell,

who was really reluctant to go.

He really did not want to go.

And we finally bugged him

long enough that he agreed to go.

And Chris Bell sat in the corner and was really, really uptight

and Alex just kind of said hi to him.

But we did wind up staying there

right after he beat it out of there.

Oh, yeah yeah. Chris left as quick as he could.

Yeah, it struck me... those two probably hadn't seen each other in a long time.

And it was perfectly cordial, but it wasn't exactly comfortable.

- And so we were the enzyme there. - Yeah.

And I felt a little bad about it later because I hate to have thought

that Chris thought we just wanted, you know, to get to Alex,

because Alex was sort of the...

I mean, there was a little bit of the Lennon/McCartney thing.

There was a magnetism that Alex always had and I'm sure he felt that.

" Oh, little foo. "

" Are you learning anything in school? "

" Maybe you might... "

Oh! Oh! Oh...

This is anti-music, is that right?

This is an anti-musical environment. We'd like to do...

The Panther Burns would like to do one more tune.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

That may be the worst sound I've ever heard come out on television.

- The loveliest pictures... - Thank you very much.

That's what you want though, I'm assuming.

Well, the best of the worst.

- It's just art and ambience. - You're really very bitter, aren't you?

I'm not bitter about anything. I get exhilarated by this kind of music.

Why don't you introduce the band members to us?

This band is Panther Burn.

And we have on synthesizer, Eric Hill,

Ross Johnson on drums,

Rick lvy on trumpet,

Axel Chitlin on lead guitar...

and Gustavo... Gustavo Falco on guitar and vocals.

We'd like to do one more tune, which is a rock and roll tango...

Gustavo, we're not quite ready for it, okay?

- Okay. - We're gonna take another break

here on "Straight Talk" and we'll be back to the studio in just a moment.

There was Muddy Waters,

there was the Rolling Stones, now there's...

the Panther Burns.

And...

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we're obviously underground.

" Home of the brave, land of the free... "

it was art damage.

That was the concept... to perform, entertain, and to provoke.

I thought that part of Rock and Roll was gone.

I didn't think really you could do anything

that would truly be offensive. And sure enough, you could.

You still could.

I felt he had consciously distanced himself from Big Star.

There was this syndrome where...

when Alex is involved, you create something

that's beautiful,

and then the next phase is to destroy it.

So Alex told me that Chris Bell had this crazy song

and told me he had mixed it with Geoff Emerick

and I started hearing something about it.

I don't know if I got much of it.

It was mainly just Alex said, "it's a great song. You ought to put it out."

Alex was just sitting here and he said it goes like this,

" Every night I tell myself I am the cosmos,

I am the wind, but that don't get you back again."

And then Alex just, like, laughed.

And he just thought that was so much like Chris.

Like Chris had written the perfect Chris Bell line.

"I Am the Cosmos" would never have come out without Alex

wanting me to put it out. It was the song, you know.

It was the perfect anthem to him. It was a big deal to Chris.

" Every night I tell myself. "

" I am the cosmos. "

" I am the wind. "

" But that don't get you back again. "

" Just when I was starting to feel okay. "

" You're on the phone. "

" I never wanna be alone..."

I remember being at Shoe,

a few hours after Cosmos was mixed,

and I thought, "Oh my God, that's where Big Star went."

This just picked up where...

what I loved in "Radio City,"

and this just went... here.

It was somewhat overwhelming to me, you know.

It was really beautiful,

but I was so distracted by the musical aspect of it.

I didn't really get the lyrics until probably

the second or third time that I listened to it.

"I Am the Cosmos"... that's... there's a brilliant song for you.

Somebody who's just so full of ego

and so full of himself, he just thinks he can control the universe,

but nothing he can do can get this one thing

that he's lost back to him.

" Want you too much to say no, no. "

" Yeah yeah yeah... "

I put it out on my label and sent out review copies,

and I always felt like the world changed a little bit,

maybe it's "cause the song is called "I Am The Cosmos.".

But never sold many copies, but it made Chris Bell very happy, apparently.

" I can't confide. "

" Don't know what's going... "

I never heard "I Am the Cosmos" while he was alive.

Yeah.

So, you know, but I can...

I can just speculate on that.

- Go ahead. - Well, I mean, I can...

I don't really have much I can say about that.

I mean, I can... I can sense his pain.

That's song's painful for me to listen to.

" I'd really like to see you again. "

" I really wanna see you again. "

" I'd really like to see you again. "

" I really wanna see you again..."

Records I like have

a lot of Ying and a lot of Yang. You know, I like for things to be...

you know, kind of the way batteries work.

I like the idea that "Cosmos" would be

on one side and 'sister" would be on the other.

" They say my love for you ain't real. "

" But you don't know how real it feels... "

Chris's voice... he's pushing against his limitations.

And sometimes he sounds like

he is one breath away from evaporating

in front of my ears.

" Hold you. "

" Your sister says that I'm no good. "

" I'd reassure her if I could..."

Alex's genius happened

because he could so carelessly throw things away.

And I can tell that Alex is probably

just tossing his lines off,

but there's something about the way

that the two of them sing together on that take.

Half the time I listen to it, I'm reduced to tears.

" Plans fail every day. "

" I want to hear you say "

- " Your love won't be leaving " - " Run run, run run "

- " Your eyes ain't deceiving" - " Run run, run run. "

" Fears will soon fade away. "

" Smile now, don't be afraid. "

" All I want to do is to spend some time with you. "

" So I can hold you, hold you..."

I used to have this terrible premonition that Chris

would never grow old, because he had nowhere to go, you know.

He had no way out

and I just couldn't project him

into growing to the age I am now

because he had just no way to survive into the future.

It was like a shooting star.

It was just something that was...

it had its time and it was gonna... out.

But sure as hell didn't make it any easier when it happened.

" Spend some time with you. "

" So I can hold you. "

We would just talk,

and it was usually me saying "Now don't worry about this"

or "Why don't you go in this direction

and do something," like I said, "more normal?"

Just because I just saw him...

frustrated and unhappy, I felt like.

And we'd have some conversations about religion.

And I know y'all did too.

I mean, Christopher was a very spiritual person and...

talking to me about going to heaven.

And saying, "By the grace of God, that's the only way you go to heaven."

The night that Chris died, I was in bed.

All of a sudden, I just sat bolt upright in the bed.

I had this overwhelming feeling that somebody was in the room.

You know, I expected to encounter a burglar or something.

And there was nobody in there at all.

And, you know, I looked over at the clock

and as I recall 35,

which was the exact time of Chris's crash.

And I've never had anything like that happen in my life before or since.

I feel almost guilty sometimes

talking about the music part of it,

because it wasn't my thing.

I can't help it.

I kind of resent it, "cause it... it makes me sad."

Mmm.

I mean, I'm happy for him, but I...

You'd rather have him instead of having

the music out there. I know, sure.

" But I'll try. "

" Again... "

I had heard, one night on the radio,

somebody talking about all of these

different Rock and Roll people, who died at the age of 27.

And, you know, there was Hendrix I believe,

there was Joplin.

You know, just a long string of people that died at 27

and they included Chris Bell of Big Star.

You know, it's like he just kind of walked into a template

for a Rock and Roll legend in a lot of ways.

If you look at what happened with the Big Star records in 1976,

I would have told you nothing will ever happen

further about it.

The first rumblings

that we heard that something was up

and that there was this cult following building,

were not coming from the United States.

They were coming from the UK and Europe.

" We did last week. "

" Not a thing to do. "

" But talk to you... "

I spent some time in London in 1978,

I'd pick up a "Melody Maker," or a "New Musical Express,"

and there would invariably be something about Big Star...

whether it was just a mention of Alex,

or whether it was a band in an album review

and they compared them to Big Star,

or whether it was somebody back in the classifieds

looking for someplace

to buy a Big Star album.

Then I had somebody call me up and say,

" Did you know that EMI had leased

"#1 Record" and "Radio City"

and that they had put it out in England as a double gatefold vinyl?

Particularly in Scotland,

it's like a nuclear bomb hit.

And, you know, they were such an influential band

to so many groups.

I was sort of hanging out with the guys

from Primal Scream and Alan McGee and people from the Glasgow scene.

They were all fans of the Big Star albums.

I think kind of in the "90s, it's like,

it was established that Big Star were great.

They'd be one of those kinds of bands... like someone would say,

"You ever heard Big Star?"

And by then, you've heard like 20 records

that are actually influenced by Big Star.

Uh, this next song is by

a mutual favorite band of ours, Big Star.

" Hanging out... "

it's a cult hit all around the world,

you know, some people have never heard of Cheap Trick.

They don't even know it's us. They just know... they just know it's a great song.

When we do play "In the Street,"

it's a crowd pleaser.

" Not a thing to do... "

Yeah, I'm not sure about when I felt like there was

a Big Star resurgence, but it might have just been like

when maybe the REM guys talked about them.

It seems like maybe Pete Buck was listening to them or something.

I mean, he was a real record guy.

You know, and then it seems like

you started hearing Paul Westerberg talk about them.

Alex was opening for the Replacements

and I went over to Alex, I said, "Look, Paul loves you."

I said, "Please go back and introduce yourself to him."

And as it wound up, Alex produced a demo

that got them signed to Sire.

We want people to know who Alex is.

Who don't... never heard of Big Star.

And it's our way of, like...

you know, he doesn't need our help.

He doesn't want our help, but damn it,

he's gonna get it, whether he likes it or not.

" Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton... "

He was always totally grumpy about his past,

which is in a way to his credit.

I mean, in some ways I got tired of hearing him

talk about how terrible Big Star was. I'm like, "No, they weren't. Shut up.

Isn't it long enough now that you can sort of,

like, recognize that a lot of us like this stuff,

even if we're not totally cool or whatever?"

But I can also really appreciate the fact

that he's really got that sort of burning artistic,

unsettled thing in his soul that really made him mean it.

I used to live up-river in Memphis.

And, uh, Memphis has got...

well, it hasn't got a lot of the things that New Orleans has.

I feel a lot freer here.

You know, he made his own way and escaped his many incarnations,

which I also find really fascinating. You know, he came out of the Box Tops

and he could have been that gravel-voiced singer forever,

but he made a new start.

For years and years he toured with, like, a rhythm section and...

- you know, playing Volare. - Yeah.

Volare!

I know these are complex things with people,

but I didn't think it served him that well

to always be turning his back on some of this stuff.

And in his attitude towards his own career,

I think there was a certain kind of self-destructiveness on that level.

" I love. "

" The walking dead. "

" No, I really do..."

I think he went through an evolution

to get to where he wanted to be.

It isn't necessarily where everybody wanted him to stay.

I think there are people who would have rather him still be in the Box Tops,

and people would rather him still be in Big Star.

But, you know, he was a real musician and a real artist.

Morning. Do you mind signing?

- No. - Thanks, man.

You keep buying 'em, I'll keep signing 'em.

Alex was always difficult.

- Was that at TGI Fridays? - Yes.

For instance, when he reformed Big Star in "93",

anyone that knew him was shocked

that he did that because people asked him to.

And if you ask Alex to do something,

you can bet he's gonna say, you know, no.

Um, I had... I thought it was a hoax.

They'll be playing tomorrow night at the House of Blues right here in L.A.

Please welcome Big Star.

" Hanging out. "

" Down the street... "

" Ain't no one. "

" Going to turn me "round... "

When Big Star reformed

I felt like that was a gratifying payback

to get in touch with the many, many, many thousands of people

that were touched by the music that were invisible to them,

you know, who were finding Big Star records

and CD's in little record shops.

Thank you, Jody.

Not bad. Not bad.

I am so grateful that Jody is on the planet.

In some ways, you know, I think he carries the heart

and soul of what we love about Big Star.

I think he was always true to something

that was true to him.

It was essential to him.

" I thought I'd sit and write this song. "

" Just for you... "

Being in the band with Alex and Jon and Ken...

Wow, I've got this amazing seat

to these great performances by the three of them.

So it's more about the three of them

and I'm kind of a spectator back there.

There's such tremendous joy in playing with Alex.

You know, there would be this smile on his face that...

that, umm...

maybe it was a spontaneous smile

and maybe he realized that he was smiling

and so maybe he stopped.

But... Alex...

I've never known Alex to do anything

he didn't like to do,

so he must have liked playing

and performing on stage and playing that music.

The gentleman is recognized for one minute.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Today I come before you with a heavy heart

for a friend of mine and a great friend of music in the world...

in particular from my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee...

passed away last night, Alex Chilton.

Alex Chilton at age 16

had a #1 hit with a group called the Box Tops,

a song called 'the Letter." then he had a group called Big Star.

Big Star wasn't well-known. They did three albums,

but "Rolling stone" put all three albums

in the Top 500 albums ever produced in America.

He was supposed to play at South by Southwest

this week in Austin. They are mourning him.

He is an embodiment of Memphis music...

hard, different, independent, brilliant, beautiful.

We're lucky he came our way.

You know, obviously this has been a difficult thing

and I'll just say, you know, after the news

on Wednesday about Alex's passing,

my instinct was "We'll probably cancel everything,"

and that was sort of the initial impulse.

But after talking with Jody, it seemed like

the best thing to do was to play.

So anyway, just tell a little bit about the show, just so folks know. Tonight...

Well, a lot of people have agreed to come.

You know, we'll play some of the stuff we always sang, but, I mean, everybody...

we've got like Evan Dando, John Doe, Chris Stamey.

I think we're going to talk Andy into getting up and playing on a song.

Uh, the Watson Twins, Sondre Lerche...

- Mike Mills. - ...Mike Mills.

" Lord, I've been trying. "

" To be what I should. "

" Lord, I've been trying..."

I guess REM was just getting started. I mean, I was in college still...

and... trying to sort out all the things you're trying to sort out in college.

We were just forming our band and...

just beginning to write songs and trying to figure out how to go about that

and Big Star was always a benchmark for me, all my life.

If I could ever make a record as good as any of the Big Star stuff,

that's kind of how I felt I would be successful.

" Lord, I've been trying..."

They have this legendary status among musicians, for sure.

When people say Big Star,

it's just... it's not an era thing, it's a band thing.

" Think about her all the time... "

They 're alone. They're Big Star.

That's one of those bands like where you go, "Big Star."

You don't go, "Big Star and that ilk."

I've listened to his records on many, many occasions,

but I've never had to sing them.

You can see that a lot of time was spent making those records.

You know, they are things of beauty.

It's difficult to find a weak moment.

There aren't any.

" Won't you let me walk you home from school? "

it all makes perfect sense now, when the artist is in the shadows.

That's the stuff that people actually want to go and hear.

And Big Star has joined that club.

They've only made these three records

and there's a different line up with each album

and a different kind of approach.

The thing that holds the band together,

I suppose, is trying to express something melancholic

and something exuberant. It's kind of two extremes.

" A cool jerk. "

" Oh, I want you. "

" Like a kangaroo. "

Well, there's two separate dreams...

have always been in my head.

There was a dream of really putting out the best record you could,

and it was just like you wanted to, versus some other dream

which would be being commercially successful about it.

I thought about the former dream a lot more

than I ever thought about the other dream.

" I see sadness in your eyes... "

" it has been said that art should create the sense

that time has stopped.

Big Star transcended normal escapist pop convention

by creating music that somehow froze moments

that were concurrently vibrant and yet startlingly brilliant,

and yet oddly spent. "

it was after my mother died in this home,

my brother-in-law noticed some people

in the front yard...

taking pictures of the house.

They said, "We're from New York

and we're fans of Chris Bell."

That knocked us all out.

Having a very personal relationship to a band...

especially if a band doesn't become big commercially...

they were trying to do something. They were shooting for the moon,

a certain kind of purity in terms of what the music was going to sound like.

It's more an idea I think on some levels.

It was too individual.

It was too Memphis.

It was unrecoupable and has never really recouped,

but nevertheless it changed music.

They were there waiting, like a little jewel in the earth,

for me to dig them out and to find them

and to appreciate them retrospectively.

That, to me, is a great gift of recorded music.

My personal viewpoint on... Big Star story

is pain transformed into beauty.

Everybody suffered, everybody feels pain,

not everybody turns that into that kind of art.

It really harkened back to real,

authentic pain, real, authentic loneliness...

things that would become alternative music

20 years later.

" They never gave a damn for us. "

" Never gave a hand to us... "

I'm not sure where we belonged

and maybe that's why I wasn't so surprised

when Big Star wasn't commercially successful.

But it seems to belong now.

" September gurls do so much."

" I was your butch and you were touched. "

" I loved you, well, never mind. "

" I've been crying all the time. "

" December boys got it bad. "

" December boys got it bad. "

" September gurls, I don't know why. "

" How can I deny what's inside? "

" Even though I'll keep away. "

" They will love all our days. "

" December boys got it bad. "

" December boys got it bad. "

" When I get to bed late at night. "

" That's the time she makes things right. "

" Ooh, when she makes love to me. "

" At nighttime I go out and see the people. "

" Air goes cool and hurryin" on my way. "

" And dressing so sweet, all the people to see. "

" They're looking at me, all the people to see. "

" And when I set my eyes on you. "

" You look like a kitty. "

" And when you're in the moon. "

" Oh, you look so pretty. "

" Caught a glance in your eyes. "

" And fell through the skies. "

" Glance in your eyes. "

" And fell through the skies. "

" I'm walking down the freezing street. "

" Scarf goes out behind. "

" You said, "Get them away. "

" Please don't say a word. "

" Get me out of here, get me out of here. "

" I hate it here, get me out of here."

" At nighttime I go out and see the people. "

" Air goes cool and hurrying on my way. "

" Glanced in your eyes. "

" And fell through the skies. "

" Glanced in your eyes and fell through the skies. "