Their songs sounded like guitar-driven paeans to adolescence, bursting with rich melodies and radiant harmonies. But beneath the surface was a complex world of turmoil and uncertainty, one whose narrative unfolded across three markedly different albums. By the end of the 70s Big Star were all but forgotten. One of them was dead and the others had drifted apart in various states of disenchantment.<\/p>\n
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It might have ended right there, had the band not been rediscovered by a generation of bands in the 80s and 90s. The Replacements<\/a>, Primal Scream<\/a> and Counting Crows are just some of those who acknowledged a major debt. As R.E.M.<\/a>\u2019s Peter Buck, another key admirer, once put it: \u201cBig Star served as a Rosetta Stone for a whole generation of musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were discovering the band when there was no real profile for us,\u201d says drummer Jody Stephens, Big Star\u2019s last surviving member. \u201cWe became like a secret handshake. If you knew who we were, then you were more than just a casual listener.\u201d<\/p>\n \n The progeny of mostly well-to-do families around Memphis, Big Star emerged from local band Icewater in 1971. Stephens, bassist Andy Hummel and singer\/guitarist Chris Bell were soon joined by another guitar-toting vocalist, Alex Chilton<\/a>. The latter was already arelative veteran at 20, having been frontman with the Box Tops, who scored a US No.1 in 1967 with The Letter.<\/p>\n Chilton may have been the original blue-eyed soul boy, but it was music from further afield that galvanised Big Star into being. \u201cWe were all huge fans of the British Invasion,\u201d says Stephens. \u201cThen the next wave that had the same sort of impact was Stax Records, with Otis Redding<\/a> and those folks. But we never really talked about a sound. Chris and Alex would bring songs to rehearsal and it all just came naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, the band were given free reign to experiment at nearby Ardent Studios, under the tutelage of owner John Fry. As an engineer\/producer for Stax, of which Ardent was a subsidiary, Fry knew his way around a recording console. It was an experience that fed into Big Star\u2019s 1972 debut album, #1 Record.<\/p>\n With Fry at the helm, layered harmonies and post-Byrds guitars were underpinned by white-soul beats that allowed a little grain into the groove. \u201cJohn was our fifth member,\u201d says Stephens. \u201cWithout him Big Star would never have happened. Chris and Andy would spend hours in the studio, playing around with guitar parts and vocals. There\u2019s something about the high end that always found its way on to our recordings.\u201d<\/p>\n With Chilton and Bell sharing the songwriting, #1 Record was heavy with yearning pop songs of heartache and hope. Standouts such as The Ballad Of El Goodo, Thirteen and Try Again were precariously balanced between elation and despair.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n \u201cBig Star are so effortlessly listenable, but what makes them interesting are the nuances and subtleties,\u201d says Drew DeNicola, director of the 2015 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me<\/a>. \u201cThey were one of the first revisionist rock bands in that they were recapturing the elements of their favourite music of the sixties, putting them through this Memphis blender and then back out.\u201d<\/p>\n Alas, the problems began when #1 Record was released. Despite rave reviews, Stax couldn\u2019t work out how to market an album that made precious few concessions to glam, prog or any other prevailing trends. As a result of shoddy distribution, it sold less than 10,000 copies.<\/p>\n Of even more concern was Chris Bell. His volatile partnership with Chilton came to a head when reviewers singled out the latter as Big Star\u2019s chief figure. The band tentatively started work on a follow-up at the end of 1972, but Bell\u2019s resentful behaviour became ever more erratic, picking physical fights with the others and finally leaving the group. He was, for a time, admitted to the psychiatric wing of a local hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cAlex had sung The Letter when he was sixteen, so it made perfect sense for music journalists to spotlight him,\u201d reasons Stephens, \u201ceven though #1 Record was really Chris\u2019s vision. Obviously Alex was a huge part of it too, but if you had to name a producer it was Chris.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Big Star circa 1972: Chris Bell, Jody Stephens, Andy Hummel and Alex Chilton (Image credit: Charlie Gillett\/Redferns)<\/p>\n The band split for several months, before deciding to press on as a trio. By the time Big Star re-entered Ardent the following autumn, they\u2019d received a boost by playing to an appreciative throng of industry insiders at the Rock Writers Convention in Memphis. Their resulting second album, Radio City, issued in February 1974, was slightly looser and less meticulous than its predecessor. By then the band were partying nightly amid the sybaritic demi-monde of bars and clubs on Overton Square, two blocks from the studio.<\/p>\n \u201cMidtown Memphis was the centre of the universe for certain hedonistic activities,\u201d Stephens recalls. \u201cPeople would go over to Overton Square, have a good time then come back to Ardent to record. Sometimes alcohol and whatever else you\u2019ve been taking enhances some sort of introspective pondering. I think Radio City has that kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell\u2019s presence could still be heard on O My Soul and Back Of My Car, two songs he helped originate but for which he didn\u2019t receive a credit. But Chilton emphatically stamps his singular imprint on What\u2019s Going Ahn (co-written with Hummel) and the frankly stupendous September Gurls. But for all its exuberance, Radio City is freighted with a sour kind of acceptance. It\u2019s as if the band knew they were destined to fail.<\/p>\n \u201cAlex is singing things like: \u2018I can\u2019t get a licence to drive in my car\/But I don\u2019t really need it if I\u2019m a big star\u2019, where he\u2019s making fun of the fact they\u2019re not successful. A lot of his themes were the loss of dreams,\u201d says Drew DeNicola. \u201cThe same thing that you hear in Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers and old-time rock\u2019n\u2019roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Star – September Gurls (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n The dream was indeed pretty much over. Despite glowing reviews, Radio City didn\u2019t sell a lot more than #1 Record. Stax\u2019s distribution deal with Columbia had hit financial trouble. When the label went bankrupt, Ardent was cast adrift, leaving thousands of albums languishing in the warehouse. It was a tipping point for Hummel, who duly quit.<\/p>\n Dispirited, Chilton and Stephens stumbled on and began recording a third Big Star album later that year. Legendary Memphis player Jim Dickinson was brought in to produce, but the sessions, augmented by arevolving cast of musicians, dragged on and on. Chilton had got deeper into drugs and booze, and the new songs sounded like the work of a man who was slowly unravelling. He seemed intent on deconstructing his own compositions, creating doleful, experimental numbers with intermittent flashes of white noise and pop genius.<\/p>\n Ardent eventually called time. A test pressing was made, but money issues combined with the nature of the material meant the album was shelved before finally being picked up by PVC Records three years later, in 1978. It was as desolate as it was beautiful, a concerted outrush of self. Chilton pressed his DNA into songs such as Holocaust and Kangaroo. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty wild music,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s a great hash of demonic sound.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole Big Star story is in those three albums,\u201d Stephens says. \u201cThere\u2019s innocence to the first one, then things evolve into more worldliness and sophistication \u2013 and edge \u2013 on Radio City. And we get to the third album and there\u2019s this amazingly painful beauty there. It\u2019s a revelation of where Alex was at that time in his life. He was a free spirit when he stepped up to the mic or wrote a song. It\u2019s an incredibly honest record.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Big Star without Chris Bell (Image credit: AJ Pics\/Alamy Stock Photo)<\/p>\n Post-Big Star, Chilton moved to New York, where he briefly formed Alex Chilton And The Cossacks and produced The Cramps<\/a>. There was a scrappy solo album, Like Flies On Sherbert, before he hooked up with countrybilly outfit Tav Falco\u2019s Panther Burns. He shunned his past life, turning his back on Big Star to an almost self-destructive level.<\/p>\n Drew DeNicola remembers seeing Chilton in New Orleans, where Chilton settled during the 80s, playing cover versions of Volare, wearing a lounge suit and velvet jacket. \u201cNothing made sense with Big Star to me at the time,\u201d he recalls. \u201cBut Alex had a problem with reality. He\u2019d been a star with the Box Tops while he was at school. He was dropping acid with the Beach Boys<\/a> and getting laid by groupies at sixteen.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, a bunch of US post-punk bands were in thrall to his legend. Chief among them were The Replacements, whose leader Paul Westerberg revealed in his 1987 song Alex Chilton: \u2018I never travel far without a little Big Star.\u2019 His subject repaid the compliment by playing guitar on The Replacements\u2019 Can\u2019t Hardly Wait.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really were the inadvertent godfathers of the independent music scene,\u201d says DeNicola. \u201cTheir music had elements of rock, but it also had this emotional pull that made you listen over and over again. They had a real power and complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n \n The first three Big Star albums: #1 Record, Radio City and Third (Image credit: Ardent\/Stax\/PVC)<\/p>\n In 1993, Stephens took a call from the University of Missouri, asking if he\u2019d consider playing some Big Star songs on stage with his old bandmate. Surprisingly, Chilton also agreed. The line-up was fleshed out by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from Big Star devotees The Posies. Chilton enjoyed himself so much that Big Star carried on into the next decade. A new studio album, In Space, was released in 2005.<\/p>\n Sadly the band\u2019s Indian Summer lasted only until March 2010, when Chilton suffered a fatal heart attack on the eve of the South By Southwest festival. The remaining members arranged a tribute gig at the festival, for which they were joined by original guitarist Andy Hummel (who himself died of cancer less than four months later).<\/p>\n \u201cI guess Big Star had a lot of unfinished business and they weren\u2019t completely coherent when Alex moved away and Jody moved on,\u201d says Stringfellow, trying to explain Chilton\u2019s about-face in the 90s. \u201cBy virtue of the fact that Big Star didn\u2019t succeed, Alex presented this dichotomy where the good stuff suddenly wasn\u2019t part of the commercial landscape.<\/p>\n “So in a sense, just by being this great band that didn\u2019t make it, Big Star became symbolic of that ideal: the less fans you have, the better your band is. Nowadays that\u2019s the new harbinger of quality. After all this time, I think Big Star have come full circle.\u201d<\/p>\n \n![\"Lightning](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/9NEqLC5NR7NbqTgbAwFLMk.png\")
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