Post by petrolino on Apr 25, 2019 22:27:44 GMT
: Random recollections from 35 years of fandom
4AD Records was founded in 1980 under the aegis of Beggars Banquet but soon established itself as a music label through developing a clear aesthetic and direct philosophy. When the 4AD musical collective This Mortal Coil was formed to record song compilation albums, they adopted the work of a rock n roll band who were important to many of the group's musical contributors, power pop progenitors Big Star.
The band Big Star, with their contemporaries Raspberries, had once influenced emerging bands like Cheap Trick, the Cars and the DB's. Now they were exerting a different kind of influence long after the fact, as younger artists unearthed obscure cuts of vinyl. Also of note was a successful cover of their song 'September Gurls' by popular hitmakers the Bangles.
Now, 35 years on and counting from the release of This Mortal Coil's debut album, 4AD continues to welcome Big Star's one surviving member into the fold with open arms, as an open invitation, cradling Jody Stephens from this cruel world, while asking he lay down tracks with fellow rock survivor Todd Rundgren and brand new signing the Lemon Twigs.
"Alex Chilton defined the term cult hero. He was difficult, mercurial, endlessly self-sabotaging and, for a brief time, utterly brilliant. His 70s group Big Star remain almost unknown to the mainstream but are one of the key abiding influences in rock music of any calibre, their short life only fuelling their near-mythical status. "I never travel far without a little Big Star," sang the Replacements on their strange love song, "Alex Chilton". Several influential rock groups, from REM to Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub to Wilco, would echo that sentiment. REM's Peter Buck once described Big Star as "a Rosetta stone for a whole generation".
'Rosetta Stone' - Throwing Muses
Chilton found fame early, aged 16, as lead singer of the Box Tops, who scored a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in the summer of 1967 with the tough blue-eyed soul song "The Letter". He formed Big Star in 1971 with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel, and, the following year, their debut album, No 1 Record, was greeted with critical acclaim but disappointing sales. That set the tone for much of what was to follow in their brief tempestuous lifespan. The follow-up, Radio City, was also lauded by music writers but failed to even dent the charts. The group's swan song, Third/Sister Lovers, was made by Chilton and Stephens with the help of the great Memphis producer Jim Dickinson in 1974. By then, Chilton was out on the edge. "I was getting pretty crazy and into some pretty rotten drugs and drinking a lot," he told the music writer Barney Hoskyns years later. The result was a darker, more raggedy affair that was deemed too uncommercial for release on its completion. It finally surfaced in 1978 and remains, arguably, Chilton's most influential, if uneven, album. On songs such as "Holocaust" and "Kangaroo", Chilton sounds just this side of unhinged.
In 1978, Big Star's other troubled genius, Chris Bell, died in a car crash, having ingested downers and alcohol before speeding away from a Memphis studio into the night. By the mid-80s, Chilton was everywhere and nowhere, having fallen out of sight while a whole generation of British guitar groups were in thrall to the lost genius of classic jangly pop-rock.
Chilton himself, post-Big Star, surfaced only intermittently, most notably on his wilfully lo-fi solo album Like Flies on Sherbert, from 1979, and as a producer of the Cramps album Songs the Lord Taught Us, released the following year. "There were guys with guns, man, all sorts of crazy things," the late Lux Interior told the music writer Nick Kent when quizzed about the making of the album. "He's a real southern boy, is Alex. He believes in the Lord and the Lord sure as hell takes care of him."
Or maybe not."
In 1978, Big Star's other troubled genius, Chris Bell, died in a car crash, having ingested downers and alcohol before speeding away from a Memphis studio into the night. By the mid-80s, Chilton was everywhere and nowhere, having fallen out of sight while a whole generation of British guitar groups were in thrall to the lost genius of classic jangly pop-rock.
Chilton himself, post-Big Star, surfaced only intermittently, most notably on his wilfully lo-fi solo album Like Flies on Sherbert, from 1979, and as a producer of the Cramps album Songs the Lord Taught Us, released the following year. "There were guys with guns, man, all sorts of crazy things," the late Lux Interior told the music writer Nick Kent when quizzed about the making of the album. "He's a real southern boy, is Alex. He believes in the Lord and the Lord sure as hell takes care of him."
Or maybe not."
- Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian
"This Mortal Coil often relied on covers rather than their own written material, their interpretations were very characterful. Featuring on It’ll End In Tears, Howard Devoto provides the vocal part for This Mortal Coil’s cover of Alex Chilton’s ‘Holocaust’, which originally depicted the increasingly strung-out and emotionally unhinged side of the Big Star songwriter. The album also features another Chilton cover, ‘Kangaroo’. The musical arrangements of ‘Holocaust’ were provided by Simon Raymonde, and it has a similar feel to Cocteau Twins in terms of its murky quality. As with much of This Mortal Coil’s material, processing ‘Holocaust’ requires a lot of emotional investment from the listener; the song refers to a particularly low point in Chilton’s life, with strong allusions to the destructive nature of his addictions."
- Lottie Brazier, The Quietus
'Ballad Of El Goodo' - Big Star
"Sifting through the monochromatic, eerie covers of 4AD albums from the 80s can be like walking through a cold, impenetrable fog – you feel you have to brace yourself emotionally for this journey. The label’s in-house art team – Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson, known as 23 Envelope – ranged between psychedelic, indiscriminate textures on Cocteau Twins covers to Simon Larbalestier’s monochromatic Catholic-influenced photography for Pixies. This penchant for dark, impressionistic, oblique aesthetics helped to seal an identity for the label, but can also give the impression that all those bands – This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, Ultra Vivid Scene and Dead Can Dance – shared a uniform sound world. It’s true that This Mortal Coil borrowed members from other 4AD artists – Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, Dead Can Dance’s Brendan Perry and Pixies’ Kim Deal – but the project did at times include less well known artists that label owner and band member Watts-Russell discovered, and they soon developed their own sound, distinct from that of their label-mates.
Despite their tendency towards dirges (their cover of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’ is bleaker than the original), the band’s albums are vivid and eclectic in texture, using collaging and sampling techniques, drum machines and proto trip-hop beats. It’s hard to see why they haven’t been used as a sampling goldmine, in the way Cocteau Twins have by pop artists from Prince to The Weeknd. This Mortal Coil’s adherence to minimalism and their celebration of the singer, and their pleasure in overt sound manipulation (in Depeche Mode and Yazoo’s Blackwing Studios), makes them an oddly modern-sounding 4AD group."
Despite their tendency towards dirges (their cover of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’ is bleaker than the original), the band’s albums are vivid and eclectic in texture, using collaging and sampling techniques, drum machines and proto trip-hop beats. It’s hard to see why they haven’t been used as a sampling goldmine, in the way Cocteau Twins have by pop artists from Prince to The Weeknd. This Mortal Coil’s adherence to minimalism and their celebration of the singer, and their pleasure in overt sound manipulation (in Depeche Mode and Yazoo’s Blackwing Studios), makes them an oddly modern-sounding 4AD group."
- Lottie Brazier, The Quietus
“I brought in the skeleton of ‘Rise’, which was more clubby-sounding, as the groundwork of our relationship had been dancing, but that was shortlived - it took us about two practices to realise we were terrible at it! So Kim [Deal] played me the songs she wasn’t taking to Pixies, and I played her mine, and we recruited a bunch of local Boston musicians, David Narcizo and [Pixies drummer] David Lovering, and we had two other drummers too, sitting on the couch and waiting their turn! We had Carrie too, and a couple of members of [Boston band] The Driveways, all to make demos and play live, but Kim and I had no special ambitions, we just wanted to play together. It was only when Ivo Watts-Russell heard the demos that he offered us to make a record.
The Muses were about to make The Real Ramona [album], and I didn’t know which of my new songs would land on there, so Kim and I made an informal deal, that the first Breeders album would be her songs and the second would be mine [Pod featured one Deal/Donelly co-write, ‘Only In 3’]. But by our second tour, Kim had committed to a Pixies world tour, which would take a year, and I didn’t want to wait.
As far as guitar playing goes, I was totally in my element with Throwing Muses. I’m really attracted to intricate, mathematical stuff, but as far as being a songwriter, I’m more attracted to straightforward, universal songs, though for me, it’s less The Go-Go’s or girl groups and more Big Star and Neil Young.
There was no space on Muses records for more of my songs, but I never wanted more space - that wasn’t the formulae, and my sister was ten times more prolific than I was. When I first decided to leave, I pulled ‘Gepetto’ and ‘Full Moon Empty Heart’ off the demos. ‘Gepetto’ never felt like a Muses song, and it was the least worked on of my songs. True, ‘Not Too Soon’ was just as poppy, but we used to play an old version with Kristin’s dad [he wrote the chorus], so that song had a different context for the Muses.
I said I’d leave after The Real Ramona, but I went back on that, and we toured the album. But I felt that if I was in somebody else's band, I'd never become a good songwriter. I needed to learn the hard way. What muddied those waters was that we’d been so close, for so long, so I thought, maybe I won’t leave entirely. Like Kim, it was hard to leave the safety of a band doing well and feeling good. But we’d been playing together for ten years, so we were tired and a bit numb. [Ramona producer] Dennis Herring told me that when Kristin or I were in the studio individually, things were very musical, but together, we totally sucked the music out! Being sisters, we were so careful with each other that things had become almost static.
As far as guitar playing goes, I was totally in my element with Throwing Muses. I’m really attracted to intricate, mathematical stuff, but as far as being a songwriter, I’m more attracted to straightforward, universal songs, though for me, it’s less The Go-Go’s or girl groups and more Big Star and Neil Young.
There was no space on Muses records for more of my songs, but I never wanted more space - that wasn’t the formulae, and my sister was ten times more prolific than I was. When I first decided to leave, I pulled ‘Gepetto’ and ‘Full Moon Empty Heart’ off the demos. ‘Gepetto’ never felt like a Muses song, and it was the least worked on of my songs. True, ‘Not Too Soon’ was just as poppy, but we used to play an old version with Kristin’s dad [he wrote the chorus], so that song had a different context for the Muses.
I said I’d leave after The Real Ramona, but I went back on that, and we toured the album. But I felt that if I was in somebody else's band, I'd never become a good songwriter. I needed to learn the hard way. What muddied those waters was that we’d been so close, for so long, so I thought, maybe I won’t leave entirely. Like Kim, it was hard to leave the safety of a band doing well and feeling good. But we’d been playing together for ten years, so we were tired and a bit numb. [Ramona producer] Dennis Herring told me that when Kristin or I were in the studio individually, things were very musical, but together, we totally sucked the music out! Being sisters, we were so careful with each other that things had become almost static.
Once I’d talked about leaving, the tension went, things were fine and the tour after Ramona was one of the happiest, because I knew it was over. Only after the fact did I realise what a rare situation we’d had as a band, with the kind of joy that we shared. Leaving was really sad, but I was in danger of losing my sense of self to something that had run out of control and that nobody involved had any control over. Kristin and Dave understood, and we got over it the second I quit. We’d all grown up on a tiny island together, and learned to navigate life-long relationships, and we’d had much more intense family struggles in our childhood than this, so it wasn’t anything like a brutal surgical operation.”
- Tanya Donelly, 'Rhode Island Odyssey'
"History is written by the winners, but in the case of Big Star it's the losers-- the quiet obsessives, the hopeless romantics "in love with that song" (to quote Paul Westerberg)-- who kept the band's legacy alive under the threat of perpetual obscurity. Certainly Big Star itself (current iteration aside) didn't really last long enough to bask in any belated good will. Alex Chilton's writing partner Chris Bell was gone by the time the band released its second album, 1974's Radio City, and by the next year Chilton had essentially pulled the plug on the group, leaving behind a few loose ends later collected as the once-abandoned, later-resuscitated masterpiece Third/Sister Lovers.
Bell died in a car accident not long after that album's eventual 1978 release. Prone to serious depression and chemical indulgence, he began fitfully working on solo material as soon as he exited Big Star (though he reportedly participated in at least some of the Radio City sessions), and if there was every reason to expect good things from him, Big Star's own bad luck was indication enough he'd have just as much trouble getting people to hear it. In fact, it wasn't until Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers showed up on shelves (however haphazardly) that Bell made his solo bow: the single "I Am the Cosmos" backed with "You and Your Sister", songs coincidentally (or not) steeped in the same sense of sadness and loss that marked Big Star's swan song.
That's all most heard of Bell's solo work until 1992, when Rykodisc compiled his extant studio material on I Am the Cosmos, which fittingly showed up alongside a spiffy definitive reissue of the scattershot Third/Sister Lovers and followed some renewed interest in Bell's writing (This Mortal Coil covered both "I Am the Cosmos" and "You and Your Sister" on 1991's Blood, the latter song sung by then-Breeders Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly). It turned out that Bell, between demo sessions, working in his parents' restaurant, gigging around Europe with various pick-up bands, and dealing with his ongoing depression, had amassed more than enough strong material to make him a cult hero, almost akin to an American analog of Nick Drake, another struggling songwriter lost too soon but unearthed and embraced later (thanks, in no small part, to his own reissues)."
Bell died in a car accident not long after that album's eventual 1978 release. Prone to serious depression and chemical indulgence, he began fitfully working on solo material as soon as he exited Big Star (though he reportedly participated in at least some of the Radio City sessions), and if there was every reason to expect good things from him, Big Star's own bad luck was indication enough he'd have just as much trouble getting people to hear it. In fact, it wasn't until Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers showed up on shelves (however haphazardly) that Bell made his solo bow: the single "I Am the Cosmos" backed with "You and Your Sister", songs coincidentally (or not) steeped in the same sense of sadness and loss that marked Big Star's swan song.
That's all most heard of Bell's solo work until 1992, when Rykodisc compiled his extant studio material on I Am the Cosmos, which fittingly showed up alongside a spiffy definitive reissue of the scattershot Third/Sister Lovers and followed some renewed interest in Bell's writing (This Mortal Coil covered both "I Am the Cosmos" and "You and Your Sister" on 1991's Blood, the latter song sung by then-Breeders Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly). It turned out that Bell, between demo sessions, working in his parents' restaurant, gigging around Europe with various pick-up bands, and dealing with his ongoing depression, had amassed more than enough strong material to make him a cult hero, almost akin to an American analog of Nick Drake, another struggling songwriter lost too soon but unearthed and embraced later (thanks, in no small part, to his own reissues)."
- Joshua Klein, Pitchfork
'Tanya Donelly and her friends; The Blizzard of 78 (ex-Delta Clutch), Slim Cessna, Eric Fontana and the StereoBirds (formerly the Mockingbirds) will perform an acoustic evening of music on Friday May 30th at The Vartan Gregorian School, 455 Wickenden Street, Providence - Show begins at 7pm Donation is $20. All proceeds will go to the Nick O’Neill Scholarship Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation. Nick O’Neill died in the Station Fire on February 20th. Nick, age 18, was a musician, songwriter and actor performing with his band Shryne.
Nick met Tanya Donelly at the Carriage House where Tanya’s father, Richard Donelly was performing in The Caretaker. After the Station Fire tragedy, Tanya wanted to do something in honor of Nick. A performance with her Rhode Island musician friends was organized. The stage at the Vartan Gregorian School, where Nick performed as a musician and actor was chosen for the benefit.
Nick met Tanya Donelly at the Carriage House where Tanya’s father, Richard Donelly was performing in The Caretaker. After the Station Fire tragedy, Tanya wanted to do something in honor of Nick. A performance with her Rhode Island musician friends was organized. The stage at the Vartan Gregorian School, where Nick performed as a musician and actor was chosen for the benefit.
Tanya Donelly, the former Throwing Muses/Belly frontwoman, coming out of sabbatical, has just released her first record, beautysleep, in five years. It goes without saying that Tanya’s career is filled with wonderful, sparkling songs such as "Angel", "Not Too Soon" and "Manna" but beautysleep offers something different - a warm sense of coherence, a richness of texture, a meditative poise. Tanya’s friends have donated their talents to the evening’s benefit. The Blizzard of 78 (ex-Delta Clutch) has played with greats like Alex Chilton, Ronnie Spector, and the Throwing Muses.'
- Press Release from The MockingBirds in advance of a tribute concert in memory of musican Nick O'Neill
"Of all the so-called “Christmas” records to come across my desk in the past month, only one has meant a rat’s ass to me—and it doesn’t even mention the word. Not that it’s a namby-pamby bearer of feel-good wishes for a polite, tolerant, and thoroughly denatured holiday season. Instead of “Christmas,” the songs on Kristin Hersh’s The Holy Single give you “fear,” “grace,” “grave,” “glory,” “Narcissus,” “Augustine,” “Satan,” and “Jesus”—a completely nonsecular record for a completely holy day. Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh abandons her electric guitar and her band’s skewed time signatures as if they were remnants of a past life.
She starts with an act of redemption, buying back the soul of Alex Chilton’s “Jesus Christ” from the black fog of Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers. Chilton’s words are sublime: Two of the first four lines are carol titles, woven seamlessly into a verse that sets Bethlehem beneath its star as plainly as any centuries-old hymn.
Hersh keeps all these, as well as the snow-faint jingle bells and thunder-rumbling tympani, but she dispenses with the demented tack-piano intro and Chilton’s smugly ironic cry at the break—“We’re gonna get born now!”—and replaces the wordless exit harmonies with two more repetitions of the triumphant, joyful chorus.
“Jesus Christ is born” is repeated 16 times—backed by tubular bells (which, miraculously, recall neither Mike Oldfield nor handbell choirs until you stop to identify them)—swelling to an anthem, without bloating to false afflatus. (The danger, as always, is that of becoming Bono, who has never been a convincing gospel singer because he reduces Christianity to mere theater—that’s him in the spotlight, losing his religion.) But Hersh’s “Jesus Christ” is simultaneously intimate and universal, recognizing the ego as an inevitable, worldly relic—and subsuming it entirely."
She starts with an act of redemption, buying back the soul of Alex Chilton’s “Jesus Christ” from the black fog of Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers. Chilton’s words are sublime: Two of the first four lines are carol titles, woven seamlessly into a verse that sets Bethlehem beneath its star as plainly as any centuries-old hymn.
Hersh keeps all these, as well as the snow-faint jingle bells and thunder-rumbling tympani, but she dispenses with the demented tack-piano intro and Chilton’s smugly ironic cry at the break—“We’re gonna get born now!”—and replaces the wordless exit harmonies with two more repetitions of the triumphant, joyful chorus.
“Jesus Christ is born” is repeated 16 times—backed by tubular bells (which, miraculously, recall neither Mike Oldfield nor handbell choirs until you stop to identify them)—swelling to an anthem, without bloating to false afflatus. (The danger, as always, is that of becoming Bono, who has never been a convincing gospel singer because he reduces Christianity to mere theater—that’s him in the spotlight, losing his religion.) But Hersh’s “Jesus Christ” is simultaneously intimate and universal, recognizing the ego as an inevitable, worldly relic—and subsuming it entirely."
- Glenn Dixon, Washington City Paper
"Baby wyatt used to dance to big star in the french quarter."
- Kristin Hersh, Twitter
Tanya Donelly & Kristin Hersh : 'The Last Embrace'
Kelley Deal & Kim Deal : Gemini Twins
'You And Your Sister' - Kim Deal & Tanya Donelly / Juliana Hatfield - 'Don't Lie To Me'
...
"The revival slowly began, with everyone from R.E.M and Teenage Fanclub to The Replacements and Jeff Buckley paying homage to the band’s unique sound. Of course, the rebirth meant nothing to Chris Bell, who died in the early hours of December 28, 1978, after losing control of his Triumph TR6 sports car on his way home from his family’s restaurant in East Memphis. Evidently it meant little to Alex Chilton too. “People say Big Star made some of the best rock’n’roll albums ever,” he told me in 1992. “And I say they’re wrong.”
I first met Chilton in spring of ’86, in the dressing room of Harlesden’s Mean Fiddler. A short, bony-faced man with darting eyes, he sat opposite, sipping water (he’d given up alcohol in 1980) and fielded a barrage of questions. He was in London in support of his first studio album in eight years, the very modest six-track Feudalist Tarts, whose southern R&B country-soul hue showed a much tighter, lighter touch than the lurching, down-at-heel vibe of his previous effort, Like Flies On Sherbet. I was truly only interested in discussing Big Star with the enigma behind the band and told him what incredible and influential albums they’d made.
“Well…” he averred, cautiously, “I guess that comes from being around for a long time…Big Star was some sort of ultimate guitar band… I guess. We spent a lot of time recording our albums and did them very carefully and tried to get different sounds of our guitars, things like that. I guess at the time we did it, nobody else was doing it either.” But he was grimacing more than grinning. “In Big Star, I was still learning to write. I still see myself as a poor songwriter. A few songs are good but many are real clunkers,” he said. When we talked again in 1988, he hadn’t mellowed. In ‘92, he was even more equivocal. “I¹m constantly surprised,” he said, pointedly, “that people fall for Big Star the way they do.”
I first met Chilton in spring of ’86, in the dressing room of Harlesden’s Mean Fiddler. A short, bony-faced man with darting eyes, he sat opposite, sipping water (he’d given up alcohol in 1980) and fielded a barrage of questions. He was in London in support of his first studio album in eight years, the very modest six-track Feudalist Tarts, whose southern R&B country-soul hue showed a much tighter, lighter touch than the lurching, down-at-heel vibe of his previous effort, Like Flies On Sherbet. I was truly only interested in discussing Big Star with the enigma behind the band and told him what incredible and influential albums they’d made.
“Well…” he averred, cautiously, “I guess that comes from being around for a long time…Big Star was some sort of ultimate guitar band… I guess. We spent a lot of time recording our albums and did them very carefully and tried to get different sounds of our guitars, things like that. I guess at the time we did it, nobody else was doing it either.” But he was grimacing more than grinning. “In Big Star, I was still learning to write. I still see myself as a poor songwriter. A few songs are good but many are real clunkers,” he said. When we talked again in 1988, he hadn’t mellowed. In ‘92, he was even more equivocal. “I¹m constantly surprised,” he said, pointedly, “that people fall for Big Star the way they do.”
- Martin Aston, MOJO
"The Replacements' classic album Pleased to Meet Me turned 25 this week. It debuted on July 7, 1987, and featured two of my favorite songs of all time: "Can't Hardly Wait" and "Alex Chilton." The rest of the album isn't bad either. The song "Can't Hardly Wait" has stuck with me all these years, partly because of its ultra-sweet sound, largely attributable to its lovely guitar line performed by Big Star's Alex Chilton."
- Chris Higgins, Mental Floss
"It was great, because back then, Beck was heavy into experimenting with open tunings and unusual scales, listening to a lot of Indian music. Liz Phair has had this strange fascination with India for as long as, you still hear this in her music today, she'd even referenced Andy Hummel's India Song in demo lyrics. They sparked off each other, got along real well."
- Celestine Fontaine, 'Candy, Kit-Bags & Cartwheels : Out On The Road Again'
'Cut my guts, stand me in an alley,
Call me a slut in front of your family,
Bite my veins, cigarettes and big eyes,
Black leather thoughts only whip like words,
Just take me home (just take me home) and make me like it,
Walk me along and help, help me spike it.'
Call me a slut in front of your family,
Bite my veins, cigarettes and big eyes,
Black leather thoughts only whip like words,
Just take me home (just take me home) and make me like it,
Walk me along and help, help me spike it.'
- Alex Chilton ('Take Me Home And Make Me Like It')
'Every time I see your face
I think of things unpure unchaste
I want to fuck you like a dog
I'll take you home and make you like it.'
I think of things unpure unchaste
I want to fuck you like a dog
I'll take you home and make you like it.'
- Liz Phair ('Flower')
'Feel' - Big Star
"Most lists of the greatest-ever powerpop tunes feature Raspberries' Go All The Way at or near the top, usually duking it out with Todd Rundgren's Couldn’t I Just Tell You or Big Star’s September Gurls. It’s got it all: Beach Boys harmonies, Beatles melody, Who power with a dash of Stones raunch (that title/lyric). A US top five hit in July 1972, Go All the Way was also one of the few powerpop success stories. The Raspberries are why many think of powerpop as a simple, sustained act of homage to a bygone era, probably because, unlike their peers, they wore matching suits, at least when they started.
But their music offered more than Fabs fetishism. It helped that they had at the helm the bouffant boy wonder, Eric Carmen, one of several powerpop dreamboats who looked like David Cassidy’s fucked-up older brothers – they could, in another universe, have been teen idols themselves. Carmen wrote a mean ballad, and indeed he became a sort of American Elton when he went solo in 1976 with All By Myself. But there’s nothing sappy about Go All The Way.
“I’d never had an easy relationship with a woman that didn’t degenerate into some kind of deception or bad feeling,” Alex Chilton once said, neatly capturing the powerpop ethos of drama and dishevelled desperation. That powerpop has become synonymous with the grinning dorks of the “skinny-tie” scene is a joke. These were barbed love songs that often deconstructed or subverted pop-romance tropes. The spelling of “gurls” in September Gurls is key: this is an askew take on female worship. “I loved you, well, never mind,” drawls Chilton in that disconcertingly high voice of his, followed by: “I’ve been crying, all the time.” If you want to find out what he’d been up to during the summer of 1973 when he wrote this song, read all about it in Holly George-Warren’s fascinating 2014 tome, A Man Called Destruction. And if you want to know why Big Star are rated as highly as the 60s gods who inspired them, check out 1974’s Radio City, their second album, from which this object lesson in warped dynamics and daisy-glazed harmonies is taken."
But their music offered more than Fabs fetishism. It helped that they had at the helm the bouffant boy wonder, Eric Carmen, one of several powerpop dreamboats who looked like David Cassidy’s fucked-up older brothers – they could, in another universe, have been teen idols themselves. Carmen wrote a mean ballad, and indeed he became a sort of American Elton when he went solo in 1976 with All By Myself. But there’s nothing sappy about Go All The Way.
“I’d never had an easy relationship with a woman that didn’t degenerate into some kind of deception or bad feeling,” Alex Chilton once said, neatly capturing the powerpop ethos of drama and dishevelled desperation. That powerpop has become synonymous with the grinning dorks of the “skinny-tie” scene is a joke. These were barbed love songs that often deconstructed or subverted pop-romance tropes. The spelling of “gurls” in September Gurls is key: this is an askew take on female worship. “I loved you, well, never mind,” drawls Chilton in that disconcertingly high voice of his, followed by: “I’ve been crying, all the time.” If you want to find out what he’d been up to during the summer of 1973 when he wrote this song, read all about it in Holly George-Warren’s fascinating 2014 tome, A Man Called Destruction. And if you want to know why Big Star are rated as highly as the 60s gods who inspired them, check out 1974’s Radio City, their second album, from which this object lesson in warped dynamics and daisy-glazed harmonies is taken."
- Paul Lester, The Guardian
"All the parts fit: There's not too much bridge, and the chorus doesn't repeat too many times. It's exciting."
- Rick Nielsen selects 'Go All The Way' by Raspberries at number 1, 'Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen : Five Songs I Wish I’d Written'
“The Raspberries was formed as kind of a reaction to prog rock, which we didn’t like. ‘Let’s bring some songwriting and harmonies back to music.’ And we did that. And the idiots that we were, we actually had hits, which is the absolute kiss of death. Rock critics seemed to get what we were about. The 16-year-old girls seemed to get it. But their 18-year-old album-buying brothers, who were listening to Jethro Tull, didn’t get it; didn’t want it. So eventually our sense of frustration caused the band to implode, which we did in about 1974. We had banged our head on the wall long enough and said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ And I guess we weren’t the only ones that felt that way. From what we read, Big Star and Badfinger were kind of feeling the same way.”
- Eric Carmen, Pop Matters
“A band I really continue to dig is Big Star. I would suggest their Radio City album as a start, but also the off-the-rails followup, Third (also called Sister Lovers). #1 Record is also a classic, and features tremendous stuff by band mate Chris Bell. Alex Chilton had a commanding slant in the delivery of his various personal sides, and was as unafraid of extreme musical intimacy as he was delivering a raging rant. In this regard, Alex, to me, was like a John Lennon, someone who put all his feelings into song and had a great courage in his reaching. Beyond all this, crazy great guitars and drums are to be had throughout Big Star’s work. I highly recommend checking them out!”
- Matthew Sweet, Rock Torch
"Chris Stamey, a founding member of the ’80s pop band The dB’s and a colleague of Big Star founder Alex Chilton, has organized a tribute concert in honor of Chilton’s music at Mason Hall in New York City for Saturday, March 26.
“It was a break from what we were listening to, which was, on one hand the Allman Brothers and on the other hand Genesis,” Stamey told Reuters, recalling the first time he heard Chilton’s voice. “I was really drawn to the honesty of Big Star.”
The concert will feature Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Matthew Sweet, R.E.M. producer and Let’s Active guitarist Mitch Easter, and members of Big Star. “Literally everything about Big Star was what I was aiming at,” said Mills. “I don’t necessarily want to sound like Big Star. But when I make a record, I want it to be as good as a Big Star record.”
“It was a break from what we were listening to, which was, on one hand the Allman Brothers and on the other hand Genesis,” Stamey told Reuters, recalling the first time he heard Chilton’s voice. “I was really drawn to the honesty of Big Star.”
The concert will feature Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Matthew Sweet, R.E.M. producer and Let’s Active guitarist Mitch Easter, and members of Big Star. “Literally everything about Big Star was what I was aiming at,” said Mills. “I don’t necessarily want to sound like Big Star. But when I make a record, I want it to be as good as a Big Star record.”
- Paul Burch, Epiphone
Raspberries - 'Ecstasy' \ 'O My Soul' - Big Star
...
"After assessing the options for their second proper album, the Lemon Twigs settled on a concept record about a childless couple adopting a chimpanzee named Shane and raising it as a human boy who deals with bullying, ostracism and rejection by setting his school on fire. The other option, a more autobiographical collection of straight-forward pop songs, “didn’t feel like much of a risk,” co-founder Brian D’Addario has said.
The risks are as much musical as narrative: D’Addario, 21, and his brother, Michael, 19, go full-on musical theater on some tracks here, in between hopping nimbly through the sounds of 1970s rock. There’s arty bombast on “Rock Dreams,” wistful quavering power-pop on “Queen of My School”—you’d swear it was a Big Star outtake, complete with Alex Chilton’s guitar tone—and touches of prog throughout. Appropriately, ’70s rock veteran Todd Rundgren helps out on “Rock Dreams” as the chimp’s adopted dad (the D’Addarios’ mom, Sue Hall, voices the mother’s part), and takes over lead vocals on “Never Know,” threading his voice through an adroit arrangement of piano, squelchy wah-wah guitar and stacked vocals. Big Star drummer Jody Stephens lends a hand on “The Student Becomes the Teacher,” holding down a slow and steady beat that anchors swirls of strings and louche vocals."
The risks are as much musical as narrative: D’Addario, 21, and his brother, Michael, 19, go full-on musical theater on some tracks here, in between hopping nimbly through the sounds of 1970s rock. There’s arty bombast on “Rock Dreams,” wistful quavering power-pop on “Queen of My School”—you’d swear it was a Big Star outtake, complete with Alex Chilton’s guitar tone—and touches of prog throughout. Appropriately, ’70s rock veteran Todd Rundgren helps out on “Rock Dreams” as the chimp’s adopted dad (the D’Addarios’ mom, Sue Hall, voices the mother’s part), and takes over lead vocals on “Never Know,” threading his voice through an adroit arrangement of piano, squelchy wah-wah guitar and stacked vocals. Big Star drummer Jody Stephens lends a hand on “The Student Becomes the Teacher,” holding down a slow and steady beat that anchors swirls of strings and louche vocals."
- Eric R. Danton, Paste
"The D'Addarios fandom spills over in some very appealing ways. "Queen of My School" would have been a standout track on either of the first two Big Star albums if it had been written a smidgeon before 2018. The vocal line is pure Chilton, and the trebly, Stratocaster sound is an uncanny likeness. Wisely, they didn't ask Jody Stephens to play on that as well as "The Student Becomes the Teacher" or he might have got his lawyer on the phone in the middle of a drum roll."
- Ian Rushbury, Pop Matters
"On the album Pete Yorn recorded with actress Scarlett Johansson, the pair covered early Big Star member Chris Bell’s woefully underrated "I Am the Cosmos." They handled the delicate track with grace -- and got us thinking about the Big Star influence on Yorn’s own work. Critics love to namedrop Bruce Springsteen when they talk Yorn, because he’s a Jersey guy, but his masterful layering of power-pop chords, acoustic guitars and virile lyrics smack of Big Star lead singer Alex Chilton. See albums Musicforthemorningafter and Day I Forgot for what we’re talking about."
- Will Levith, Diffuser
'Thirteen' - Mike Mills, Luther Russell & Jody Stephens at the Grammy Museum