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R.I.P. Alex Chilton

Posted Mar 18, 2010 by Clarisa Gerlach

Updated Mar 18, 2010 at 04:00 PM

Alex Chilton, who died Wednesday, March 17, at 59, was most well known as the leader of Big Star, the seminal ‘70s band which influenced R.E.M., The Replacements and countless others, and as the lead singer of The Box Tops, which had a No. 1 hit in 1967 with “The Letter.” 

But those bands account for a relatively small part of a 40-plus year career, and mentions of Big Star’s greatness seemed to confound Chilton in the years after the band’s dissolution. He dismissed his work as immature and as coming from an unhealthy emotional place.

That didn’t dissuade his fans, though. The Bangles recorded Big Star’s “September Gurls” for their “Different Light” album. The Replacements recorded a song called “Alex Chilton” with the line “I never travel far without a little Big Star.” And the producers of the TV series “That ‘70s Show” used Big Star’s “In the Street” as its theme song.

It wasn’t that Chilton never sold out, it was that he never bought in. He could have consolidated all the covers of his songs and all the accolades by more famous musicians into a tidy little late-career financial coup. Instead he recorded standards, obscure R&B and “Volare.” He put together a new lineup of Big Star, then put it in dry dock for the better part of a decade.

Was he obstinate or did he just not care about stardom? Maybe he just valued the freedom to do what he wanted when he wanted more than he valued fame. Maybe he made enough money off The Bangles and “That ‘70s Show” to tell everyone else to get bent.

He quit doing interviews years ago so we’ll never know for sure. His catalog won’t provide any answers, veering as it does from well-manicured pop to bordering-on-chaos rock ‘n’ roll, through jazz and R&B and whatever else he absorbed in his nearly 60 years.

As much as I love Big Star, it’s his 1979 solo album “Like Flies on Sherbet” that taught me a new way to listen to music.

Writing in Rolling Stone, Ken Tucker said the album “sounds as if Chilton and some pals broke into a studio late one night, got ditheringly drunk and then played all the songs that floated to the top of their collective consciousness.” How else to explain a program that runs from Ernest Tubb to Roy Orbison to KC and the Sunshine Band?

“The result is a small masterpiece of crudity and split-second invention,” Tucker writes, adding that “Chilton achieves his most startling, moving effects at precisely those moments when he seems least in control.”

It was off-putting at first, but intriguing as well. This wasn’t just chaos. As ramshackle as it was, something fantastic was going on and it’s the album I put on this morning when I heard that he died. I’ll get to Big Star and his later work soon, but right now I just want to hear the seething mess of guitars that make “My Rival” one of the meanest and funniest rock ‘n’ roll records ever. It’s a small part of Chilton’s legacy, but his legacy is built on small parts, strange bits and pieces that may or may not have been part of a master plan known only to him, but regardless add up to one intriguing crazy quilt of American music.