HOWEVER THEY GOT THERE Big Star
Oct 02, 2009
"Music's always gotta connect with you emotionally": that, in a nutshell, is the story of the Memphis power pop godfathers.
BY FRED MILLS
So it all comes down to this, all you long-suffering Big Star fans: boxed set, remastered reissues, permanent enshrinement into the collective consciousness, under-served no longer. Rhino's rarities-stuffed, 4CD Keep an Eye on the Sky is an exquisitely-packaged marriage of comprehensive career overview and collector/critical catnip - it's reviewed in the new print issue of BLURT; tracklisting and more details here - while the recent reissues of the #1 Record/Radio City twofer (read here) and Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos (read here) additionally round out the picture.
Some are calling 2009 The Year Of Big Star, in fact, although if memory serves, 2005 brought similar hosannas when a long overdue biography of the band appeared along with the first Big Star studio album in 30 years, titled In Space and featuring founding members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens plus Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer (replacing Andy Hummel and the late Bell; starting in 1993 with a reunion show, the two Posies rounded out the band whenever Chilton and Stephens had the time or inclination to tour). I profiled the band in the November '05 issue of BLURT predecessor Harp magazine and it was a particularly gratifying story to file as Big Star had long been one of my faves ever since discovering the first two LPs in the mid ‘70s.
I wasn't alone in my love for the band. Rob Jovanovic, author of the 2005 biography Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop, told me how he first encountered the group in the late 1980s via vinyl reissues of the first two albums. "I couldn't believe they hadn't been massive and started wondering why I hadn't heard more about them," said Jovanovic, adding, of Big Star's enduring appeal, "I'm not an expert by any means when it comes to the guitar sounds, but, especially on the first two albums, it always seems to be the guitars that people come back to with Big Star's music. The exquisite songwriting merged with those guitars are what have endured for 30-plus years, and I don't see why that would change in the foreseeable future."
Chris Stamey of the dB's also enthused, saying, "'When My Baby's Beside Me' [from #1 Record] got reasonable airplay in Winston-Salem when we were growing up. And I think it went straight to that ancient part of my brain - it was just amazing to hear it. It's my impression that at a certain point Big Star was really trying to emulate the Beatles. But I heard "When My Baby's Beside Me" as a very American kind of record. And for Radio City, you know, it seemed like it wasn't trying to be something it wasn't. It was Southern American guys like me trying to say something about their lives.
"But I don't know if it really matters which album is ‘best.' Because it was all a part of an experience, and also [based] around a recording studio, you can think of them as just individual songs. I think of them more as a collection of however many tracks - 40 tracks or as many as there were.... Something about the way air moves and makes your eardrums vibrate seems to get at you deeply. And this is something that a lot of people experience. And however they [Big Star] got there, the fact that it continues to have that effect on a lot of different people means that it might hang around for awhile."
However they got there, indeed. Keep an Eye on the Sky helps illuminate the path that Big Star took. Given the group's star-crossed history, one could say that path wound its way towards obscurity, but as both Jovanovic's and Stamey's comments suggest, time has a funny way of transforming "obscurity" into "longevity." I also talked to drummer Jody Stephens, and though exceedingly humble as an individual, he was clearly aware that his group carries with it a very special legacy. Some of the following interview with Stephens appeared in the original 2005 Harp article, but most of is previously unpublished.
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BLURT: What got you interested in music?
STEPHENS: Oh, the Beatles! The Ed Sullivan show. There was nothing quite like it: You just wanted to jump out of your skin. And Ringo was such an amazing drummer... Influences on me as drummers were usually drummers you could spot after hearing a measure, like Ringo or Charlie Watts or Al Jackson, with Booker T and the MGs. Even BJ Wilson from Procol Harum. Keith Moon. John Bonham. All those guys played a role in influencing me. And I'm sure Beatles, Badfinger, a lot of pop stuff - Terry Reid and others that we actually played as [Big Star precursor] Rock City.
Was it inevitable that four Anglophiliac musicians would find each other in an R&B-fixated town like Memphis?
I don't know if it was inevitable we'd find each other. I met Andy Hummel through a friend of mine in 7th or 8th grade. Andy and Chris were a year older than I. And when I was a senior in high school, along with this band I was in with my brother, we auditioned to be the band for the first off-Broadway production of Hair, at Memphis State. I'll be damned if we weren't all selected. Our lead singer actually played the role of Berger in that. So there I was - talk about my eyes being wide open! I'd had a pretty sheltered existence. And towards the end of the run of that play, Andy Hummel came onstage during the grand finale. We reconnected and talked and he invited me to a jam session.
Andy and Chris went to school together so there was that connection, and both of them had been in bands. And Alex and Chris got together too. Memphis, you know, wasn't so big; it did have a music community and a bit of a networking thing just because you were always going out to see bands.
Big Star's records, of course, eluded a lot of people first time around...
We got a lot of press back then, but nobody could buy ‘em! We got letters and phone calls like, "I'm in New York City and I would like to buy your record..."
Was that key in Chris Bell's decision to leave the band?
I don't know. My perspective on Chris leaving the band is I always thought as Chris not wanting to live and create in the shadow of Alex. You know, Alex actually joined Chris and Andy for the band, and Chris Bell, really, if you had to select a creative director for the first record, he would have been it. I know Alex contributed a lot, but a lot of it was Chris' vision. It was a collaboration, but Chris was way into doing all those kinds of harmonies, those sorts of things, and he had some studio chops and was developing kind of as a producer. So he played a major role in that first record, and then we got the reviews and everybody was talking about Alex. It was just a bridge builder of course: "You haven't heard of Big Star but you have heard of the Box Tops, and this guy Alex Chilton was in the Box Tops..." But still...
It was a drag to see that come to an end. Because the material on that first album really meant a lot to me. I was just talking to someone about how we rehearsed for that record and worked the songs up, at least some of them, and I can remember working up "The Ballad Of El Goodo" and just getting a big rush out of it: "Damn, I can't believe I'm actually a part of this band and this incredible song!" I gotta admit, a lot of times I almost felt like I was part of the audience. Because we'd finish these records and I'd be just completely floored!
So that was a big drag to see that come to an end. My career had never even gotten off the ground! I'd always been in bands, and bands always broke up. It's hard to find people that you really connect with creatively like that, and play songs that inspire you and, you know, fill a void. But at that point in time, from my perspective of a 20-year old, I'd never planned to be in a band all my life anyway. I just didn't see it as a possibility. I never really saw Big Star making a lot of money.
But you still were able to keep going as a three-piece to do Radio City.
I think that point did come at the Rock Writers' Convention [Memphis, May 1973]. There was a helluva lot of encouragement from the guys in the audience - it was pretty fascinating! The list of people that were there - Cameron Crowe, Bud Scoppa, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, all those folks. And I guess there were fewer of them back then, and there was more focus on music as a whole. There weren't 18 billion factions in music and there weren't 150 different kinds of music magazines. I could see how writers would have followings and a little more clout back then.
I don't remember rehearsing the second album like we did for the first. It was a lot simpler, a bit more raw, whereas there were a lot more overdubs on the first record. All that was pared down on the second. A lot more spontaneous than the first. We're all music fans, and to that extent there are going to be influences, but for me, there wasn't that studied approach to doing that record so much as it was just letting go, getting inspired by the music and playing.
Big Star didn't really tour all that much - did you prefer the studio?
Interestingly enough, it wasn't by design, but the simple fact that we couldn't find a booking agent. Nor did we ever really have a proper manager. [laughs] And those are two key elements to being able to go out on the road. Really, it's as simple as that. The tours that we did were set up by the record label. We went up to New York a couple of times, we'd play Max's Kansas City. It would be just for 3 or 4 days at a time; we'd play Max's for 3 or 4 nights. One time it was with Ed Begley Jr. on the bill, although he doesn't remember it! But I saw an ad for it in some magazine I'd saved. The other time we were on with the Butts Band and that was fun.
It would have been fascinating to see what could have happened had we had a proper booking agent and gone on the road a bit. There's nothing like going on the road to prove your chops as the band plays together.
Big Star Third: Chilton solo project, or a true Big Star record?
You know, to a large extent it was an Alex solo record. But I think the bridge between that thought and it being a Big Star record was just the fact that I was present. So yeah, I consider it a Big Star record because I played a role in it. It just fit in the general lifespan of the band in terms of how things evolved.
The three albums are really the Big Star evolution story. From this kind of innocence on the first record to this sophistication and edge to the second to the really dark, raw sort of emotion on the third. It kind of spanned the same sorts of emotions that, as humans, we all have.
That's a good way to put it. Even as unsettling as the third album is, people respond.
It's odd that people will tell me that they went through a rough period and the third album helped get them through it, because it's such a dark, melancholy record. But maybe in the melancholy moments we have in our lives, maybe you tune in to somebody to share that thought and feeling with them. It kind of lightens the load.
How did you know when the band was over?
Well, Alex and I were doing a radio show for a college radio station [Memphis' WLYX, in early 1975]. And I don't know if there was a specific moment or a specific action or anything. But I just thought, "This is it for me." You know, I'm not a dark person. And there was certainly a lot of darkness there. At the end of it I'd just kind of figured out I wasn't comfortable with that and needed to move on.
Was there ever an actual phone call from Alex - "I'm ready; how about you?" - regarding making a new album with the latterday Jon/Ken lineup of the band?
I'm not sure if it was ever quite that definitive. We really just casually walked into it. I wish I could remember what the actual turning point was! Maybe he did call me one day and say, "I'd like to make another record, and here's the plan." Alex had made an announcement about doing one from the stage of the Mean Fiddler in London [in 2001] and we talked about it, but what brought it into focus was the fact that Alex had a plan, and that was to write and record a song a day. Do, you know, 15 songs and pick 12, then do overdubs on those and mix. That gave it a real meaning - it took it beyond just a sort of daydreaming thing [into] something that we thought might happen.
Here's a twist on the usual "legacy question": with the new record, is there a conscious notion of getting past the legend to make sure that you're remembered for something other than those three albums?
Well... [long pause]... I don't remember the thought of getting past legends. I do remember a thought about people's perception of Big Star pre-this record, and then what this record might do. At the end of the day, it was what the hell, let's do a new record.
I mean, because in some people's eyes, in a very cult, private way, Big Star means a lot to a lot of people, or at least a certain group of people, and it's defined by those first three records. They've been living with those three records for 30 years. So how do you introduce - it's like introducing a new puppy to a dog that's 10 years old. It takes a while, you know? The puppy challenges the older dog, the older dog growls and snarls, but sooner or later you know there's an appreciation of it even though you don't want to let on.
And then to the actual "legacy question"...
You know, music's always gotta connect with you emotionally. And it is emotional communication - it's music that sticks with you and moves you passionately enough to go out and turn somebody else on to it.
[Photo Credit: John Fry]
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