Big Star
The three albums made in a small Memphis studio barely reached the record stores of their day, and twenty years later they became a textbook for guitar bands.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Members and colleagues ⏳🌊
- MemberAlex Chilton
A former teen star of the Box Tops on vocals and guitar, he led the band after Bell left and died in 2010.
- MemberChris Bell
The guitarist and singer who founded the band, he designed the sound of the first album but left in 1972, and died in an accident in 1978 at twenty-seven.
- MemberAndy Hummel
He played bass on two albums, left in 1974, worked as an engineer, and died in 2010.
- MemberJody Stephens
The original drummer, he stayed to the end, and by working at Ardent Studios he kept the band's legacy alive.
- ProducerJohn Fry
The engineer who founded Ardent Studios and Ardent Records, giving the band a place to record and its first contract.
- InfluencePaul Westerberg
As leader of the Replacements, he released a song titled with Chilton's name in 1987 and invited Chilton to the sessions for the same album.
I. The boys of Memphis · 1966–1971
(Memphis) The band formed in 1971 in Memphis, Tennessee. They grew up in a city of blues, soul, and rockabilly, but the ears of the four members were turned across the Atlantic to the Beatles and the Kinks, and west to the clean guitars and harmonies the Byrds were building. That mismatch was where the band began. (Alex) Alex Chilton was born in Memphis in December 1950 to a jazz-musician father and an art-loving mother. In 1967, at sixteen, he sang “The Letter” as the vocalist of the soul-pop group the Box Tops and went to number one nationwide. The rough, gravelly voice, so at odds with his age, was an effect producer Dan Penn asked for, and the songs and the way they were recorded were mostly decided by adults. Chilton later recalled that for all the relentless touring, little money ended up in his hands. When the group broke up in 1970, he was already a has-been star, not yet twenty. (Chris) Chris Bell was born in January 1951 into a well-off Memphis family. Smitten with the Beatles, he picked up the guitar, and he grew obsessed with stacking sounds layer upon layer and polishing them until they were flawless. Ardent Studios, founded by engineer John Fry, gave its night hours to young musicians, and Bell, coming and going there, learned the craft of recording with his own hands. (Friends) At Bell's side were Andy Hummel on bass and Jody Stephens on drums. Hummel was a calm, sardonic engineering student, and Stephens, the youngest, was gentle and diligent. The three played together in bands with names like Icewater and Rock City, learning British-style guitar pop. What they still lacked was a voice that had lived through an era in song.
II. #1 Record · 1971–1972
(Joining) After the Box Tops, Chilton tried to make it alone as a folk singer in New York, then came back to Memphis. Bell asked him to join his band, and when Chilton came aboard in 1971, the four were together. The name came from the sign of Big Star, a grocery chain with a store near the studio. It amounted to pinning a grandiose name on themselves as a joke. (Roles) Bell and Chilton split guitar, vocals, and songwriting, with Hummel on bass and Stephens on drums. The two agreed to credit their songs jointly, like Lennon and McCartney. In reality many songs were written separately, but Bell's meticulous arrangements and Chilton's light, nimble sense of melody locked together into a single sound. Hummel contributed songs too. (Ardent) The recording was done at Ardent, in Fry's hands. Bell layered guitars and voices again and again (overdubbing), wanting a gloss that could stand beside any British band. Fry decided to release the album as the first serious project of the newly founded Ardent Records, and he entrusted distribution to Stax, the great soul label of the same city of Memphis. (Failure) #1 Record came out in 1972. Music magazines vied to praise it, but the album never actually reached the record stores. Stax's distribution network was geared to Black soul records and had no experience selling a white guitar band. Sales reportedly fell far short of 10,000 copies. The half-joking title, a promise to become number one, turned into pure irony. Later critics would come to name the album the archetype of a music that fused short, vivid melodies with heavy guitars (power pop).
The album in which Bell's perfectionism and Chilton's melodic sense meshed most evenly, and a debut that never reached the stores because its distribution failed.
- In this card's video, “The Ballad of El Goodo,” Chilton sings the verses calmly until, at the chorus, many layered voices rise all at once. Listen for the moment the harmonies begin to stack, and you can hear the layers of overdubbing that Bell designed.
- The opening track, “Feel,” is one where Bell steps to the front. Its thickly layered guitars and high voices show how precisely the band tried to re-create British-style guitar pop in a Memphis studio.
- “In the Street” depicts the boredom of teenagers with nothing to do, circling the streets. Through another band's remake it later became the theme song of an American sitcom, so it is worth comparing with the original's drier guitar tone.
- “The India Song,” written by bassist Hummel, is a dreamy miniature with a grain unlike the rest of the album. It is a trace of the brief period when all four contributed evenly.
Regarded as the song in which Chilton, having shed the gravelly voice of the Box Tops, first found his own.
- With no drums, it is almost nothing but two acoustic guitars and a voice. One strums the chords softly while the other plays them out one note at a time (arpeggio), the two wrapping around each other.
- Chilton's voice is thin and careful, the very opposite of the rough sound of “The Letter.” Listen with in mind that the same person sang both, and you can guess what he was trying to reclaim in this band.
- It speaks as a thirteen-year-old boy shyly confessing to someone he likes. It holds both the hesitation of a kid conscious of his parents' eyes and the teenage bravado of leaning on a Rolling Stones song.
- It is a short song with no big climax. Rather than dramatic development, its restraint in holding the same temperature to the very end is often cited as the reason it has been loved for so long.
III. The one who left · 1972–1973
(Dismay) The failure struck Bell hardest. He considered the album essentially his own work, yet what little attention it drew went to Chilton, whose name was already known. Bell struggled with depression for a long time, and biographers write that around this time he leaned more and more on alcohol and drugs. The sense of becoming a supporting player in the band he had built tormented him. (Departure) At the end of 1972 Bell left the band. Along the way he got into a fistfight with Hummel, and the story goes that an enraged Bell tried to destroy the recording tapes. Accounts differ on the truth and the details. What was certain was that the man who had designed the band's sound was gone. (Hiatus) The remaining three scattered for a while as well. Chilton weighed going it alone again, while Stephens and Hummel went back to school. With their first album buried, the band seemed likely to survive in name only. (Convention) The turning point came from an unexpected place. In May 1973 Ardent held a convention in Memphis that gathered rock critics from across the country, and the three took the stage again. Their playing was rough, but the critics were ecstatic. The champions won that day would summon the band again and again in print for decades to come. The three decided to make a second album. (Turn) Without Bell, Big Star had to become a different band. Instead of layer upon layer of gloss, the choice left before them was the raw sound of three people playing together in one room.
IV. Radio City · 1973–1974
(Leader) Chilton was now, in effect, leading the band. As if to erase the memory of singing sounds that others had chosen for him in his Box Tops days, this time he wanted to leave improvisation and wobble intact. The guitars grew sharper and more crooked, and the songs' structures loosened. Fry again served as engineer, capturing the trio's playing as nearly as possible just as it was. (Traces) Bell was gone, but his shadow remained. He is said to have had a hand in early drafts of songs such as “Back of a Car” and “O My Soul,” but his name does not appear on the album. Stephens's drums and Hummel's bass came much further forward than on the first album and became the band's backbone. (Distribution) Radio City came out in 1974. Critics praised it again, and “September Gurls” got airplay on some stations. But once again the album was nowhere to be found in stores. In 1972 Stax had signed a distribution deal with the major label Columbia, and when relations between the two soured, Columbia effectively blocked the distribution of Stax-affiliated records. Thousands of copies were reportedly stuck in warehouses. Stax went bankrupt the following year. (Hummel) After two false starts, Hummel left the band in late 1974 and finished his studies. He majored in mechanical engineering and worked for many years as an engineer at a Texas defense contractor, choosing a stable life over music. In the span of two years, two of the four original members had left. In a band reduced to Chilton and Stephens, not even the expectation of selling records remained.
The brightest song the trio made after Bell left, and the signature song of a time when it played on the radio while the album was absent from stores.
- The guitar in the intro has a metallic, clear, shimmering timbre (jangly tone). Recalling the Byrds' guitars of the 1960s, this sound became the benchmark for countless guitar-pop bands that followed.
- Chilton sings in a high register, and a second recording of the same melody laid over the first (double-tracking) thickens the chorus. Listen for the grain of the voices, which sound slightly different in the left and right ears.
- Stephens's drums push the song forward without hurrying, and Hummel's bass, rather than simply hitting root notes, draws a melody as if singing. Follow only the bass in the second verse, and you can hear where the song's energy comes from.
- Unlike its bright, buoyant sound, the song's feeling is heartbreak over a love gone awry. That contrast is regarded as the hallmark of a Big Star song.
- Set beside the Bangles' 1986 remake, it becomes clear how dry and light the original recording was left.
An album that captures the raw, crooked sound of the trio Chilton came to lead, named by many critics as Big Star's finest.
- The opening track, “O My Soul,” runs more than 5 minutes and starts over a loosely surging rhythm. It announces a departure utterly different from the tidy pop of the first album.
- In this card's video, “Back of a Car,” thick guitars and layered harmonies collide. Since Bell is said to have had a hand in its draft, it is worth hearing as the passage that retains the most of the first album's texture.
- Across the whole album, overdubbing was pared back to keep the feel of three people playing together. The places where a guitar solo pushes and pulls slightly at the beat sound not like flaws but like deliberate wobble.
- Short acoustic miniatures like “I'm in Love with a Girl” carry on the lineage of “Thirteen.” Set among the rough songs, these quiet ones give the album its breathing.
V. The third album · 1974–1978
(Dickinson) In the fall of 1974, Chilton and Stephens recorded a third album at Ardent with producer Jim Dickinson. Dickinson was one to leave musicians alone rather than drive them, and he let the songs come apart as Chilton wished. Carl Marsh arranged the strings, and Chilton's girlfriend at the time, Lesa Aldridge, helped shape the songs and added her voice to “Femme Fatale.” (Darkness) At the time, Chilton was deep into alcohol and drugs, as he and his colleagues later attested. The songs were slow and uneasy, and some never took full shape. The despair of “Holocaust” and the near-collapsing sound of “Kangaroo” did not hide the state he was in. Labels turned it down as uncommercial, and the recordings sat in a drawer for nearly 4 years. Only in 1978 did it come out on a small label as Third, and depending on the edition it also bore the name Sister Lovers. (Bell) Meanwhile Bell had gone to Europe and continued recording on his own. Wrestling with depression, he leaned heavily on his Christian faith, and “I Am the Cosmos,” written in that period, holds both loneliness and a longing for salvation. In 1978 the song was released as a single on a small label. On December 27 of that year, while driving in Memphis, Bell crashed into a utility pole and died at twenty-seven. (New York) Chilton moved to New York in 1977. In the Manhattan club scene swept by the Ramones and Television, he took the stage with unpolished playing, deliberately choosing a rough, loose sound. By then the name Big Star had been all but forgotten.
It is the song that most nakedly exposes the darkness Chilton was in at the time of recording, and it distills the mood of Third.
- A slow piano leads the song, and Chilton's voice drifts along drained of force, almost murmuring. Listen with the Box Tops and the voice of “September Gurls” in mind, and the distance becomes chilling.
- Behind it, a guitar rings out in long, trailing notes, and a wide wash of reverb sounds like the empty space of a room. Dickinson left these sounds as they were, unpolished.
- The song speaks to someone, offering not comfort but a cold resignation. Its blank expression, which makes no attempt to hold on to the listener, is the heart of the song.
- In the 1980s, This Mortal Coil, a project of the British label 4AD, remade the song. Set beside the dreamlike treatment of that version, the dryness of the original stands out all the more.
Recorded in 1974 and shelved for 4 years before its release, the album shows how failure and isolation become sound.
- In “Kanga Roo,” distorted noise and erratic sounds break in over an acoustic guitar, and the song's shape sways as if about to collapse. Follow it to the end and listen for what suddenly emerges behind the singing.
- The video on this card, “Thank You Friends,” is a song that swells lavishly with choir-like backing vocals and strings. Critics widely hold that the gratitude is so overblown it sounds, if anything, like sarcasm.
- Carl Marsh's string arrangements change the face of “Stroke It Noel” and “Take Care.” Listen for the moments on a guitar band's album when violin and cello hold up the song.
- Aldridge's voice blends into the remake of the Velvet Underground's “Femme Fatale.” It is a passage that reveals Chilton's reverence for the New York music he loved.
- The track order differs from edition to edition. Chilton never settled on a final sequence, and the album's first impression changes depending on which version you hear.
VI. A name that came late · 1979–1992
(The Cramps) Chilton returned to Memphis and, around 1979, produced recordings for the punk band the Cramps. His solo album Like Flies on Sherbert was a recording that deliberately kept its sloppiness. That the hands which once crafted sleek pop should choose the opposite sound seemed his own answer to a perfectionism that had failed. (New Orleans) In the early 1980s he moved to New Orleans. He made his living washing dishes in restaurant kitchens and trimming trees, and he said he quit drinking around this time. Afterward he took to singing old R&B and jazz standards, playing modestly in small clubs. He spent the rest of his life in that city. (Heirs) Meanwhile, Big Star's records passed from hand to hand among a few. In the 1980s, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Mike Mills cited Big Star as an influence again and again, and the Bangles remade “September Gurls” in 1986. In 1987 the Replacements of Minneapolis released a song titled with Chilton's name itself, and Chilton played guitar on the recording of “Can't Hardly Wait” from the same album. In Britain, Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream carried the lineage on. (Reissue) In 1992, Rykodisc reissued Third along with Bell's posthumous album I Am the Cosmos. A band that had not survived for lack of sales belatedly won a name as the few who had bought its records became musicians. Chilton himself often greeted this worship with indifference.
VII. Reunion and farewell · 1993–2010
(Reunion) In April 1993, arranged by the University of Missouri's student radio station, Big Star took the stage again in Columbia, Missouri. Joining Chilton and Stephens were Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Seattle band the Posies. The two belonged to a generation that had grown up listening to Big Star. Hummel did not take part. The concert was released as a record, and the band went on touring sporadically afterward. (New work) In 2005 the four recorded In Space at Ardent. Chilton had no interest in re-creating the old sound, and opinion was split between those who found the album playful and scattered and those who welcomed it. That year, when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Chilton stayed home and was rescued by helicopter. (Farewell) On March 17, 2010, Chilton collapsed in New Orleans from a heart problem and died at fifty-nine. A few days later, the Big Star show scheduled at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, became a memorial performance with fellow musicians. Four months later, on July 19, Hummel also died of cancer, at fifty-nine. Of the original four, only Stephens remained, and with that the band came to an end. (Legacy) Stephens worked for many years at Ardent Studios, safeguarding the band's records. He later joined Chris Stamey, R.E.M.'s Mike Mills and others in concerts re-creating Third on stage with strings. In 2012 the documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me came out, and the story was passed on to another generation.
Lesser-known stories
The cover of Radio City is a photograph of a red ceiling taken by the Memphis photographer William Eggleston. The image would later hang in museums as a work that raised color photography to the level of art, but at the time it was regarded as little more than a borrowed snapshot by a local acquaintance. Eggleston was close to the Chilton family, and during the Third sessions he dropped by the studio and even played piano on “Nature Boy.” Because art history and rock history were recorded separately, the fact that the two stories meet in one man long remained a footnote. Strictly speaking, the album we know as Third does not exist. Chilton finished recording in 1974 without ever fixing the track order, and since its first release in 1978 each edition has differed in sequence and in the songs it includes. Critics and fans are still divided over which order comes closest to the original intent. The very fact that it was left unfinished has made it a work that each listener completes differently. Of all the band's songs, the one heard by the most people is probably “In the Street.” In the late 1990s the American sitcom That '70s Show used it, in another band's remake, as its theme song. Millions of viewers heard it every week, yet few knew it came from an album that barely sold in 1972. It is a rare case of music that failed in its own day reaching the public's ears without its creators' names.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Power pop
(The word) It means pop with power behind it. The name itself says what it is: the might of rock guitars and drums added to short, catchy pop melodies. (In rock) A branch of rock marked by songs of around three minutes, easy-to-remember melodies, clear layered harmonies and ringing, open guitars. Starting from the Beatles and the Byrds in the 1960s, it is said to have found its archetype in Big Star in the 1970s. On a school lunch menu, it would be like a sweet side dish everyone loves with a dash of spicy seasoning — easy for anyone to eat, but never bland.
Overdubbing
(The word) A combination of the English over and dub (to lay sound onto something), it means adding new sound on top of sound already recorded. (In rock) A method of building up a recording layer by layer, adding guitars, vocals, harmonies and so on while listening to a performance recorded earlier. One person can sing several times over to sound like a chorus. It is like painting a watercolor in art class, letting it dry, then brushing another color over it to create depth. Chris Bell used this method to give Big Star's first album its sheen. (Elsewhere) The dubbing that lays Korean dialogue over foreign-language films and animation comes from the same root.
Distribution
(The word) Baegeup (配給) means to divide (配) and give (給). The English distribution, too, means to divide and spread something out to many places. (In rock) The work of shipping the records a label has made to record stores across the country and getting them on the shelves. No matter how good a record is, if distribution is blocked, people cannot buy it. In school-lunch terms, it is as if, however delicious the side dish, no one gets to eat it if the serving cart never reaches the classroom. Big Star's first two albums failed to sell precisely because of this distribution problem. (Elsewhere) It can also mean handing out food and supplies in times of war or disaster, and in the film industry it refers to getting a film into theaters.
Vocal harmony
(The word) Harmony comes from the Greek harmonia, which meant a joint or a fitting together. The idea of joining different sounds so they fit well is built into the name. (In rock) Singing voices at different pitches above and below the voice carrying the main melody, making the sound fuller and more beautiful. Big Star's choruses are famous for moments when such harmonies soar up all at once. It is that very feeling in music class when your classmates split into sopranos and altos to sing together and, though each sings a different note, it sounds like a single song. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech it also means that several people or elements go well together.
Recording engineer
(In rock) The person in the studio who decides where to place the microphones and operates the tape machines and console to capture a performance as sound. Even the same performance can come out warm or cold depending on the engineer's hands. If there is a friend in your school's broadcasting club who adjusts mic placement and volume to make the broadcast sound clean, that friend is a little engineer. John Fry, as engineer at Ardent Studios, captured Big Star's sound. (Elsewhere) An engineer usually means someone who designs and builds things such as machines, buildings or computers. Bassist Andy Hummel became an engineer in this sense after leaving the band.
Cult
(The word) It comes from the Latin cultus, which originally meant the service of the gods — that is, worship. (In rock) Musicians or records that never won wide popularity but are cherished and revered with great fervor by a small group of fans are called cult bands and cult albums. Big Star barely sold in its day, but it is the archetypal cult band, the people who heard its records becoming musicians who spread its name. It is like a game only a few kids in class know about, but those few love it so much and keep talking about it until, a few years later, everyone knows it. (Elsewhere) In daily life and in the news, the word is often used negatively for a pseudo-religious group, so it should be kept distinct from its sense in talk about music.