Alex Chilton R.I.P.

Some of the questions are awkward ("was "In The Street" written in the 70's?" Alex: (chuckles) "Yes, it was.") but I didn't really expect in depth fanboy questions. They are decent mainstream interviews and based on his responses, honesty and willingness to answer her questions, she (or the Fresh Air producers) must have put him at ease.

 

Check out the first two Big Star albums especially! Great music.

I love "3rd" just as much but it's not as accessible as he first two

 

I'm fooling around with my 2 CD "Deluxe Edition" of 3rd/Sister Lovers using the boxset..you can almost make an alternate version of the album using the demos and alt. takes.

 

When I interviewed Alex for the 33 1/3 book we talked about the Kinks and his affection for them. He had gotten to know Ray Davies a bit in recent years when Davies was in New Orleans and enjoyed the friendship. As far as Davies not knowing about Big Star covering the Kinks...I've found that creative people on the Chilton / Davies level are often very unaware of what's going on around them in terms of other artists etc.. They've got their own little world that they work in that, while it might seem insular to outsiders, is precisely what enables them to do what they do. Almost like their own creative greenhouse in their head.

 

3 for Knoxville, 4 for Chattanooga...

Saw him play the Exit-In in Nashville in 1990. A show to remember, for sure. He sang the hell out of "Volare".

 

Jeff probably wrote this on an insanely tight deadline. (He also had him passing away in Memphis.)

What got chopped out at the end was what I wanted to say the the most: that beyond the public persona (built more on myth and hearsay than reality), he was an intelligent man with a fine sense of humor and a wide range of interests and knowledge. A real gentleman.

 

Good bye Alex and thank you for The Letter, Soul Deep, and most of all for Big Star.

 

Name caller!
I'm spreading the word to someone who would definitely never hear any Alex Chilton music if it weren't up to me. Besides, the 19 YEARS collection is long out of print and otherwise unavailable.

 

Picked up "19 Yrs" on Amazon the other day for less than 3 bux as I'd always meant to grab it. Look forward to getting/hearing it.

 

Obviously, I just played that yesterday and boy, was I pleasantly surprised. For an Alex solo-only collection, it's bitchin'.

My favorite Alex solo albums are HIGH PRIEST and A MAN CALLED DESTRUCTION, the latter being a true gem nobody's ever heard. I love that record.

 

Too young

 

Another unknown Chilton-related project is an album called "I Shall Be Released" by ukulele protest punk Carmaig DeForest. Alex produced it and his distinctive guitar playing is all over it as well. A great cover of "Secret Agent Man" is a highlight, but the whole album is really good. I actually ran into Carmaig one year at SXSW and he talked a bit about working with Alex.

 

From the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ae-0321-alex-chilton-caro-20100321,0,5837268.story

When ornery Alex Chilton reunited Big Star

It wasn't quite Spinal Tap opening for Puppet Show, but the incongruity was striking:

A fabled band, seen by maybe hundreds in its original incarnation, was performing its first show in almost 20 years, and it was listed way down on the bill of a Missouri school's free SpringFest being held in a tent in a basketball arena's parking lot.

Bryan Adams would be headlining inside the arena that night in April 1993, but midafternoon in the tent, Big Star would be thrilling and occasionally mystifying a giddy cluster of fans who never thought they'd see this day, myself included.

I'd discovered Big Star in the mid-1980s, when punchy, jangly groups such as R.E.M., the Replacements, the Bangles, Let's Active, Game Theory and the dB's were touting and sometimes covering songs from the band's three barely-distributed albums. Big Star hadn't performed since 1974, had never mounted a true tour, and its leader, Alex Chilton, consistently dismissed the band's importance while pursuing an erratic, highly idiosyncratic solo career.

So when I learned that Big Star would be playing a show at the University of Missouri-Columbia — with Chilton and original drummer Jody Stephens augmented by guitarist Jonathan Auer and bassist Kenneth Stringfellow from the Seattle power-pop band the Posies — I knew I had to make a pilgrimage.

Two Big Star fans working at the campus radio station had tracked down Chilton's home number in New Orleans, and the singer turned out to be, in student Mike Mulvihill's words, "really receptive" to the suggestion that the band reunite on campus. The undergrads were stunned, as was Stephens, who said before the show that he had "no idea" why Chilton finally had agreed to a long-discussed revival.

In the parking lot before the show, people gave the floppy-haired Chilton, then 42, a wide berth. When I asked why he'd decided to do this concert, he drawled: "No good reason."

The show bristled with the kind of tension between craft and anarchy that had characterized Chilton over the years. Some performances were stirring ("The Ballad of El Goodo"), some ebullient ("In the Street," "Daisy Glaze") and some just perverse, such as Chilton's lecherous interjections of "Baby!" and "You know what I'm talking about!" during the aching youth love ballad "Thirteen." That last one didn't make the live CD that Zoo Records released later that year.

How did Chilton feel about the show afterward?

"I've felt worse."

Did he want to do more Big Star shows?

"No."

Fortunately for Big Star fans, the singer's orneriness wasn't consistent. The four-piece lineup continued to perform occasionally over the ensuing years, including a 1994 set at Metro that was going swimmingly until Chilton dedicated a cover of Todd Rundgren's "Slut" to Stephens' wife, enraging the drummer. There was even a new Big Star album, "In Space," in 2005.

Big Star was scheduled to play Saturday night at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, but Chilton, 59, died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack in New Orleans.

I own albums that are closer to flawless than Big Star's "No. 1 Record," "Radio City" and "Third/Sister Lovers," but there are very few I play as often. He (with the late Chris Bell on the first album) combined perfect pop craftsmanship and spontaneity, beauty and rawness in ways I've not otherwise heard.

As the band stepped down from the tent's stage in April 1993, engineer Jim Rondinelli asked Chilton whether the band could perform the rocker "Don't Lie to Me" a second time to get better take for the live CD.

Chilton dismissed the suggestion with a phrase that could serve as his epitaph: "Artistic expression, man."

 

I'm hoping this is added to the podcast page soon. I couldn't stay awake for it last night.

 

The whole show was pretty nice (despite the lousy, trebley sound).
The deejay Rachel and Andrew S. were really funny, enthusiastic, inspired.

 

I'm still reeling from Alex's passing. Big Star is playing at SXSW today with Andy Hummel and a few luminaries sitting in for Alex. It's my understanding that this will be released in some capacity with part of the proceeds going to the Chilton family.

 

2006 Live Clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trRkSFyA7Ns&feature=related

 

Bruce just curious as to whether or not you know John Lombardo? I played in a band, way back when, that a few members in common with John's first post-10K Maniacs band (The Bill-Ups, or The Hop Heads- Reese Campbell & Scott Miller), and we became friends. John, as I'm sure you probably know, had Alex play on the 2nd John & Mary Album (The Weedkiller's Daughter- Scott Miller played on that album & always used to to mention that Chilton commented positively on the one song he played on.).
ust for the record I love "The Wishing Chair" & John And Mary's first album "Victory Gardens", and am mixed on anything else (good tracks on lesser albums often though)...anywho...there's a song, not a great one, but it's on the "Love Among The Ruins" album (a 10K Maniacs album post-Natalie, where John And Mary had taken over the band- for John re-taken over.) called "Big Star", and certainly appears to most likely be about experiences with Alex.

I saw a big star running from me,
a world from a record on my bed.
Turn the tables on me,
what would happen if I fell to the tune of a dreamer,
to the tune of my heart?
A big star running from me,
I saw a world out sunning on my head.
Turn the tables on me now.
I would fall from heaven and ring your bell.
Baby, catch me in the middle of a lie.
The boys are out tonight,
yeah the boys are out tonight.
The big shots singin' from me,
I saw a world out sunning on my head.
Pity my heart signals:
center of a storm inside my head.
Center of my heart,
center of my out of time simple mind.
From the moon out my window a wink and a blink and a nod.
Had a wish on a star but now it's falling.
The boys are out tonight,
big skies above me signal in my horoscope it said:
never heed a caution,
never fought a lover,
never cross a street alone in the middle of a signal red,
middle of a drinker's heart,
middle of a big parade,
a signal in my horoscope.

 

"In Space" is probably my favorite Alex solo album.

 

Westerberg remembers Chilton

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21westerberg.html

 

I do know John and in fact introduced him to Alex more or less when Alex played the Tralf on a Sunday night in the early 90s. Alex was hours late for the show (car troubles) and so John went home and got his guitar and he and Mary did an impromptu set to fill in the time. After the show we all hung out in the dressing room until the club kicked us out. I went home to get some sleep and John and Alex headed out into the night.

Haven't seen John in a while but I live a bit out of the city and don't get out much in Buffalo. It would seem to me that the song quoted has much to do with Alex (the horoscope reference being a tip-off).