The Music of Big Star Gets What it Deserves (Part 1 of 2)

An edited version of this featured appeared in Spin.

Rock music’s history is filled with success stories, both of the gradual and so-called “overnight success” varieties. But that history also has its stories of richly deserving artists who saw their path to success cut down by forces outside their control. As chronicled in Dan Matovina’s authoritative history, Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger, the Welsh/British quartet was ultimately undone by greedy management that roped the band into an untenable record deal and then absconded with the advance money. Rodriguez couldn’t get his albums properly distributed domestically. Sure, those acts were championed by critics and the musical cognoscenti, but none reached the degree of big-time exposure and success that their music merited.

Another act that belongs on that grim, fateful list is Big Star. Initially fronted by two major talents, guitarists Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, the group made a little-heard debut album, (#1 Record) before Bell left. A second album was every bit its artistic equal; some critics name Radio City the better of the two. But the group’s label, Memphis-based Ardent, was distributed by Stax Records, then on the verge of collapse. As a result, record shops were unlikely to have copies of either Big Star LP for sale.

And as the group crumbled further, Chilton (with drummer and dark-horse talent Jody Stephens) made a last-gasp effort, Third/Sister Lovers. That independently- and belatedly-released album sold even fewer copies than the first two. And in a knife-twisting bit of cruel fate, it, too would earn rapturous critical acclaim. By 1974, Big Star – having played a total of only seven live shows – had burned away to nothingness.

Many artists who followed in Big Star’s wake would praise the band’s slim but impactful body of work. “We told everyone who would listen, ‘There’s this great band; you need to buy their records,” says R.E.M.’s Mike Mills. The dB’s Peter Holsapple recorded with Chilton post-Big Star, and a label run by The dB’s Chris Stamey released singles by both Chilton and Bell. The Replacements wrote a song called “Alex Chilton.” The Bangles recorded an ace cover of “September Gurls” from Radio City. But Big Star’s records were out of print for many years, and the group was all but forgotten.

Alex Chilton soldiered on with an often dissolute string of releases. But in the same way that he had turned his back on his early success fronting The Box Tops (best known for their hit single “The Letter”), Chilton all but disavowed both the style and substance of Big Star. Maybe, some said, he was bitter about the band’s failure to launch and wanted to forget it all. Ultimately, the details didn’t matter: he left Big Star behind.

Until, that is, he didn’t. Nearly 20 years after the release of Radio City, Chilton re-activated the group. Getting together with Stephens (who by this point was a well-respected engineer at Ardent Studio in Memphis), he added two musicians, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. Their critical-darling band The Posies owed a stylistic debt to Big Star. The new group made a low-key live debut in April 1993.

Meanwhile, Big Star’s “In the Street” was repurposed (in a remake by kindred spirits Cheap Trick) as the theme of the popular TV sitcom That ‘70s Show. Big Star began to earn its long-withheld due, with reissues and previously-unheard material getting release. Rhino compiled an exhaustive boxed set, the 4-CD Keep an Eye on the Sky in 2009, and Grammy-winning label Omnivore released a number of Big Star-related titles. Thirty-plus years after the band’s original run, the music of Big Star was finally getting a measure of the exposure and recognition it deserved.

But three days before Big Star was scheduled to play a high-profile date at the 2010 South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Chilton suffered a fatal heart attack. What had been planned as a Big Star triumph instead became an all-star Alex Chilton tribute. Nearly three years later, a documentary, Nothing Can Hurt Me finally chronicled the heart-rending saga of this influential but tragically overlooked band from Memphis.

In the period after Chilton’s death, Stamey organized another all-star project, Big Star’s Third. Featuring a massive and rotating cast of musical luminaries, the shows even featured brass, windwoods and a string section. These shows marked the live debut for much of the material: Chilton had never toured in support of Third/Sister Lovers, and his reactivated Big Star had a tight (and rarely changing) set list that focused on the best-known tunes from the first two LPs.

“Chris was kind of the mad scientist behind the project,” says Jon Auer. “He got it going and kept it motivated. It was a massive and beautiful undertaking with a lot of moving parts.” Big Star’s Third mounted performances to rapturous reviews and – in an irony Chilton may not have found amusing – brisk ticket sales. Eventually the project added the entirety of #1 Record to its repertoire. But the expense and logistical challenges of the project meant that it couldn’t go on forever; all of its principal participants had musical careers of their own, too.

Yet the passion for Big Star’s music has endured. And so once the Third dates concluded, Jody Stephens reached out to Auer about the idea of putting something new together, but something different. “I just said, ‘Hey, let’s do a five piece,’” Stephens recalls. “’It’ll be portable. It’ll be a rock band. It’ll be fun. We won’t have guests; it’ll just be the five of us presenting #1 Record.’”

And the five that Stephens had in mind would be himself on drums and Auer on guitar, plus Stamey (guitar), R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills on bass, and Wilco multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone. A much smaller group than Big Star’s Third, but every bit as super.

To be continued…