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SXSW panel: ‘I Never Travel Far Without a Little Big Star’
12:30 p.m. Saturday
Panelists: Jody Stephens, Big Star/Ardent Music LLC; Andy Hummel, Big Star; Ken Stringellow, Big Star (mach 2); John Auer, Big Star (mach 2); Chris Stamey, Modern Recording; Tommy Keene; moderator Bob Mehr, Memphis Commercial-Appeal; John Fry, Ardent Studios.
Originally intended to discuss the legacy of Big Star, in light of the 2009 box set Keep Your Eye On The Sky, the panel was nearly cancelled in the wake of frontman Alex Chilton’s death on Wednesday, as was Saturday night’s scheduled Big Star concert. However, drummer Jody Stephens decided to forge ahead in tribute to his late bandmate, and the panel carried on with the addition of Ardent Studios founder
John Fry, participating via Skype.
Chilton was never scheduled to appear at the panel, looking back on past glories not being anything he ever willingly indulged in. He was, however, well aware of the long, strange trajectory by which Big Star went from being a music-business casualty to an indie rock icon.
At a latterday Big Star show, after Chilton and Stephens teamed with the Posies’ Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer to reconstitute the band, Fry recalled that Chilton told the crowd that they were about to play some new songs: “If you don’t like ‘em now, don’t worry. You’ll love ‘em in 30 years.”
The 90-minute session was filled with such Alex anecdotes, along with some discussion of his upbringing in a musical and artistic household and a rough outline of his eccentric career path. Fry shared his memory of first meeting a teenage Chilton when he was sitting around waiting to lay vocals on top of Box Tops rhythm tracks. He recalled Chilton’s growing frustration with recording other people’s material in that band as his own songwriting talents developed, while Stephens and original Big Star bassist Andy Hummel reminisced about when they and Chris Bell enlisted Chilton in their group, Ice Water, which mostly played covers at frat parties and department-store openings.
With Fry, they talked about the recording of Big Star’s first album, when everyone was working together enthusiastically toward a common objective and Bell and Chilton were at the peak of their creative collaboration.
“They were both alpha guys, and their talents were along similar lines, but they worked together very seamlessly,” Hummel said.
Fry explained how the downward spiral of Stax Records and the Memphis music scene affected the band, while Chris Stamey made what he called a “revisionist” plea for more careful consideration of the superb musical choices and performances on the third and final Big Star album, recorded after Bell had left the group. He recalled how his dBs bandmate Peter Holsapple used to make Big Star a litmus test for
girlfriends, and once ordered a young lady from his house for showing an utter lack of appreciation. Especially fascinating was Stamey’s account of how Chilton came up to New York to play a Valentine’s Day show in 1977, slept over on a cot in the tiny room Stamey rented with his girlfriend — “and just stayed,” becoming a mentor for Stamey and for a while participating in the fertile scene at CBGBs and Max’s
Kansas City.
The panel spent a fair amount of time elaborating on Chilton’s image as mercurial and curmudgeonly. Fry said over all the years of their friendship, he always enjoyed a cordial relationship with Chilton. Stringfellow recalled: “He let you figure him out. He sort of kept his cool, he didn’t explain himself, but he was very consistent.”
Stamey said Chilton just really didn’t have it in him to maintain the fictions that govern many social relationships, but you could always count on him to be honest — although he did have a smalll set of favorite sentences to salve the feelings of bandmates after a performance didn’t go well, two of them being “It couldn’t have been better” and “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
In his sorrow this past week, Stamey said, he’d been trying to think of funny things, and one was perhaps the best and most telling anecdote of the panel. He and Chilton had had a falling out for a while, and then Stamey finally spoke to him by phone in New Orleans, where Chilton lived for the last decades of his life. Chilton had a
job at the time washing dishes, and told Stamey how he had been explaining his theory of the world to a co-worker, who told him “Yeah, Alex. You’re right and the whole world is wrong.”
“You know, Chris,” Chilton said. “I really think he was onto something.”
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By Da Blade
March 20, 2010 9:10 PM | Link to this
Thanks for the great summary! I wish I’d been at that panel and hopefully it was taped for posting later. I loved Alex Chilton and his music, and I’m glad he’s getting his accolades. Just wish he had received them while he was still around.