Big Star
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INTRO:.
"I can't get a licence/ to drive in my car. But I don't really need it/ if I'm a Big Star". From "O My Soul", on Big Star's 1973 release Radio City.
Ah, the trials of superstardom. Too bad Alex Chilton and company never got to experience the sensation. Despite their ironic moniker, Big Star never made a dent in the pop charts in their day (1972-1974). Maybe that's for the best. Like the Velvet Underground in the 1960's, Big Star didn't get the recognition they deserved til long after their demise, but nowadays you can't turn on the damn radio without hearing some band whose sound is based completely off one of the first three Big Star albums-- R.E.M., the Bangles, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies and the dB's are just the most obvious examples, but really any "jangle pop" act owes as much to the Star as those sour-puss alternahead groups you hear on "college radio" are indebted to the Velvets.
But who exactly are these guys? Well the band was formed by one Alex Chilton, singer for the seminal 60's pop-rockers the Box Tops ("The Letter", "Soul Deep", "Cry Like a Baby") who one day realized he was wasting his time and energy fronting a band that neither wrote their own music nor played their own instruments. After walking offstage in the middle of a concert and never returning, Chilton went off to New Yawk to start a career as a folkie singer/songwriter. Bombing miserably, he retreated back to his native Memphis where he hooked up with a bunch of old friends playing under the name of Ice Water. The band featured two awesome songwriters Chris Bell (guitar/ vocals) and Andy Hummel (bass/ occasional vocals) and rocksteady drummer Jody Harris. Something clicked between them and they joined forces under the new moniker Big Star (named for the supermarket across the street from the studio they rehearsed at). The band put out two studio albums in two years which flopped commercially, and one released three years after they had broken up which did no better.
But between inter-band squabbles and the continuing loss of members, Big Star created some of the most vital songs ever committed to magnetic tape, a combination of their anglophilia obsession with the songs of the Beatles and the Kinks, their Memphis R & B roots and an affinity for early "alternative" music such as the VU. Taken as a whole, their three releases are every bit as fresh and invigorating today as they were when they were released. Of course today they are hailed as geniuses, but back in the era of Yes, King Crimson and the E.L.O. nobody gave two figs about a band playing catchy 60's inspired pop songs. Music had supposedly "progressed" from that and was headed towards such brave new worlds such as Emerson Lake and Palmer's Tarkus and similar epics of pomposity about which the less said, the better. Anyway, let's forget about that junk for now and take a look at Big Star's output, shall we??
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#1 Record (1971) -- 8
Not many bands have seemed so confident and together as Big Star on their debut album. From the git-go these guys had their shit to-get-ha. #1 Record is a pure pop masterpiece, rooted in the harmonies and chord progressions of the Beatles, but at the same time looking beyond. The band had yet to achieve the coherence it would later attain when Chilton was the sole leader-- the compositions are split between him and Bell with Hummel contributing one great track-- but Bell's Memphis rock'n'roll energy tempers Chilton's more introspective cuts nicely here, a kind of Lennon/McCartney circa Rubber Soul vibe. The one true standout is Alex's "Ballad of El Goodo", which is so derng pretty you don't hardly notice he's singing about the repression he experienced at the hands of the music industry and God only knows what else. Chris's "In the Street" has finally reached it's deserved rock-anthem status, now that a bastardized version is used as the theme to Fox's That 70's Show, while Andy chips in the Moody Blues-like "The India Song". Damn, for a #3 songwriter this is one hell of a contribution-- cool chord changes, eastern influence, neat lyrics. Very George Harrisonesque, to keep with the Beatles comparisons.
Other great songs here, too-- the ballad "Thirteen" (its title later aped for a Teenage Fanclub album) sews the seeds Chilton would cultivate over the course of the next two albums, and the gorgeous "Watch the Sunrise" could be his answer to the Who's "Sunrise". Bell's "When My Baby's Beside Me" is the kind of great uptempo U.K. pop Big Star would shy away from after his departure. Impossible to believe how this record could have tanked, but it did and Chris Bell called it a day and went to England to pursue a solo career.
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Radio City (1973) -- 10
Melodies don't get no better than this. "September Gurls" and "Back of a Car" are two lost classics of top-notch pop songwriting. Well "Gurls" ain't really lost anymore since the Bangles covered it on an album that sold like 5 million copies, but the original version has a strained passion missing from the cover, the Bangles opting for perfect vocals and losing nearly all the emotion in the process. Other tracks on this record hint at the unravelling that would be completely apparent on the next record. "Daisy Glaze", "What's Going Ahn" and "Morpha Too" are delicate little things that surely resemble the frailty of their composer. The rocker "Life is White" threatens to kick out about three times, while "Mod Lang" and "You Get What You Deserve" show the developing mean streak in Alex's personality, especially towards females. But then there's "I'm in Love with a Girl" that's as sweetly sappy as any love song you can think of, so what do I know? I know this-- every song I've mentioned is a flawless gem and Radio City is a one hell of an album. The fact that's been repackaged with #1 Record on c.d. as a 2-fer leaves you no option but to go out and buy it. If you love the Beatles (who doesn't?) you'll love Big Star, simple as that. You can thank me later.
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Third/ Sister Lovers (1978; 1992)-- 10
Completely overboard. Recorded minus Hummel who left after Radio City, Big Star was down to just John and Ringo, but along the line they managed to pick up a George Martin-- producer Jim Dickenson (the Byrds) who would take Chilton's newest group of compositions and give them the exactly the framework they'd require to reach maximum effect. The songs here are almost completely maudlin in nature, bottoming out early with three gorgeously depressed ballads-- "Big Black Car", "Holocaust" and "Kangaroo"-- after opening with a couple of great ramshackle rockers named "Kizza Me" and "Thank You Friends", a quasi-love song, and a Velvets cover, as well as the record's one truly uplifting note-- the New Orleans flavored Christmas hymn "Jesus Christ". Otherwise it's a bummer from start to finish.
Or maybe not! Underneath the slow, moody, spacey arrangements and mumbled lyrics there's an echo of sensitivity and joy that can be heard if you are listening for it. Maybe it's the sound of a lost soul asking for redemption. Maybe it's that Chilton had bottomed out so low he had nowhere to go but up. Of course his solo career did nothing to confirm this, but by listening to Sister Lovers you get the feeling that if the band had continued they either would have gone back to the form demonstrated on the first record or fizzled out completely. Sadly, Chilton chose the latter. Sister Lovers sat in the vaults for three years before it was eventually released in various forms (in some cases titled Third) with differing track lists, and by 1978 Big Star was history anyway.
Chilton went on to release a series of half-inspired solo releases that would never match the pinnacle he attained on each of the three Big Star records. Maybe he just gave up. Or maybe he threw everything he had left into this album. Whatever. The 1992 Ryko reissue contains every track recorded during the sessions and there's not a wasted minute, even the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis covers. Discover this sadly neglected album for yourself while it's still in print.
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