with a cry of disbelief

Only got to see Big Star for the first time last year. Only just got the Third reissue on vinyl.

Everybody goes
Leaving those who fall behind
Everybody goes
As far as they can
They don't just care
You're a wasted face
You're a sad-eyed lie
You're a holocaust.

I saw him about 1996 - one of the best and most interesting gigs I have ever seen. It was small theatre in Adelaide Australia with probably no more than 300 people there but the room was filled with so much love for the man and his music it was almost palpable. He had a small band and opened the show with "Volare" of all tunes. Following that he basically took requests for the rest of the evening. I spoke to him afterwards and asked what brought him to this outpost of progress: his answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, was "the fee".

F#CK!

Fuckety fuckety fuck.

I'm going to listen to nothing but his music all day.

He was a great singer, made great records. I saw him live several times, and I had the pleasure of being part of his band when he came to Scotland in 1996 - an unforgettable experience, playing a big tent on Glasgow Green.

I just heard on the radio on the way in to work about Charlie Gillett which made me sad but I when I saw this news there was a sharp intake of breath. I want to hear some Big Star now but I'm at work, just about every media stream is blocked and I don't have any on my ipod.

I can't say strongly enough how underrated this band was. Write them off as one hit wonders - as many reporters will today - at your peril.

Big Star were a life-changingly wonderful group, "Radio City" is my all time favourite album and some of his solo stuff's not bad either...very sad about this.

A friend of mine went to see him in Bologna and after the gig he was sitting in a bar and my mate went over to say how much he had enjoyed the gig. He spent the rest of the night chatting to my friend and his wife. They said he was a genuinely nice guy and had no side to him.
He made some brilliant records and as a child "The Letter" was my favourite song to singalong to. RIP

Very sad indeed. I was lucky enough to see him with the reformed Big Star, playing those timeless songs. RIP Alex.

When I was a young boy about town in Liverpool in the early '80s I used to have to get my fix of Mod revival records at the only place that would stock such a thing: the "indie" record shop Probe. In about 83/84 bantamweight power-popsters Squire released a four track EP, lead song September Gurls. When I went to buy it the scary girl at Probe said I should buy Radio City instead.
When I look back on it Probe had a very hip, carefully-selected stock. Radio City at that time was a very obscure, but "critically" respected LP, but they had it. And it had a song called Mod Lang on it. So I bought it. And it's been one of my favourite records ever since. You can keep your "axe heroes" : rock'n'roll guitars sound the best they ever did (outside of Hollies records obviously) on September Gurls.

Heres two of my favourites

Really upset about this.
RIP Alex

Big Star via 4AD's first This Mortal Coil album which included a cover of Kangaroo. I scurried around to find out more about Alex Chilton and was smitten from the off.

(As an aside Ivo Watts-Russell should be applauded for keeping the flame burning for a number of, then, largely forgotten acts and for introducing them to a whole new generation, acts including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Judy Collins and Gene Clark)

i was playing 'Third' in work before opening. As it hit Kangaroo one of the lads that worked with us, a blinding guitarist in his own right and a major Jeff Buckley fan, came over to ask "Who's this doing Kangaroo", "This is the original" says I, "Big Star", "When was it recorded?" "Mid seventies sometime"
He had one question left;
"How the hell did they get those sounds?"
How indeed.
RIP

Someone I meant to see and didn't. One of my all-time musical heroes. Damn.

...he produced the first records by The Cramps, still their best. In fact I think that was the first time I had heard his name.

Says it all really. Apart from not mentioning his sublime production of the Cramps' first album

THE LETTER

My introduction to rock music wasn't on television, not even radio, but the jukebox, at the Nutmeg Bowl. After a couple of strings I'd find myself peering through the glass, studying the tracks, waiting for my parents to pick me up.

That's where I first heard "Dawn (Go Away)" and "I Get Around".

I heard "Pretty Woman" on the jukebox at the JCC.

And I heard "The Letter" on the jukebox at Bromley, the ski area where I spent my youth in Peru, Vermont.

The old wooden base lodge, built by Fred Pabst with his beer money long before ski areas were about real estate, featured an alcove, in the very back, where worn out at the end of the day we listened to the jukebox.

"The Letter" is one minute and fifty two minutes long. Tell that to today's artists filling up entire CDs. It was and remains solely about quality. And "The Letter" was quality. A great song, with a brilliant intro, but what put it over the top was the vocal of one Alex Chilton.

"Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain't got time to take a fast train"

This was before air travel was de rigueur. When you still dressed up to fly, were scared ******** the plane was going to crash and the ticket cost a fortune.

"I don't care how much money I gotta spend
Got to get back to my baby again"

URGENCY! That's what you heard in Alex Chilton's voice. No, he didn't write the song, but he made it his own. This wasn't an "American Idol" contestant singing for a record contract, one got the idea this record was cut on a dark rainy night and leaked out by accident. In an era where so much of what was featured on the AM band was sunny, there was a darkness to "The Letter". Chalk it up to Memphis. Or Dan Penn. Or both.

CRY LIKE A BABY

Anybody can have one hit. But can you do it twice?

NEON RAINBOW

A cross between the New Vaudeville Band and Petula Clark, if the Box Tops hadn't hit before, "Neon Rainbow" would be what we call a guilty pleasure, something outside your favorite genre that you want to hear again and again, that puts a smile on your face. "Neon Rainbow" sounds like it was recorded in black and white, and that's what makes it so great, you infuse your own colors into it.

RADIO CITY

I used to go to Andy's room to listen to the Kinks' "Everybody's In Showbiz" and the Velvet Underground's "Loaded".

"Everybody's In Showbiz" is a forgettable Kinks album, but it contains "Celluloid Heroes".

Today everybody knows "Loaded", but dropping the needle on "Sweet Jane" was a revelation, especially after that ethereal intro. The Velvets were supposed to be incomprehensible.

But one day Andy told me I had to listen to a new record, a group formed by the lead singer of the Box Tops.

The songs on "Radio City" had a certain power, and a certain intimacy. Like the Box Tops records, they seemed to be made without the audience in mind.

That's rare today. That's the first thing purveyors ask, WHAT'S THE MARKET? Put it in a slot for me, make it easy. If it's like nothing that came before, I can't sell it.

And, you guessed it, "Radio City" never sold.

But I drove cross-country with that album. The explosive guitar intro of "Back Of A Car" sounded like nothing else in my cassette box. The track was cut by someone who'd listened to a hell of a lot of English records, but there was definitely an American sensibility.

And "Way Out West" went up and down the scale with power.

"And why don't you come on back from way out west"

She didn't dump him. She moved on. But he's still here. Thinking about her...

Used to be California was a completely different state of mind from the East Coast, never mind Memphis. There was no Facebook, no e-mail, no SMS...just very expensive long distance phone calls. And when this track was cut, no one even had an answering machine. Way out west was out of mind. Yet he's still here, in the same neighborhood, going to the same clubs, listening to the same radio stations. She's living, he's dying.

Then there was "September Gurls". Just like the English cats, but better. "September Gurls" was too perfect for the radio. It was made for the garage, for headphones, just for the listener. Of which there weren't many.

THIRTEEN

Big Star broke up. They had no chance. This was before the resurgence of indie labels in the nineties, people shied away from something on Ardent.

And there was no airplay.

And the bands that were succeeding were BIGGER! From Boston to Journey, it was about playing to the last row, not the first. You wanted all the money, not some.

So I found Big Star's first album in a cut-out bin at Music Plus. No one wanted it.

But on that very first early seventies record there's a gem in the league of "Walk Away Renee". It's entitled "Thirteen".

"Won't you let me walk you home from school"

That's how it starts. It appears casual, but you had to get up the gumption, screw up your courage to ask. And carrying her books you feel like you're sitting on top of the world.

"Won't you let me meet you at the pool"

This is public. She's got to let you not only into her head, but her entire world.

"Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I'll take you"

Most people listening to this record had never been on a date. But it was their utmost desire. They lived vicariously through this lyric. It got them through until they too could find romance.

"Won't you tell your dad, 'Get off my back'
Tell him what we said 'bout 'Paint It Black'"

Rock and roll was ours. Our parents didn't wear designer jeans and work out at the gym. They hated the Beatles and the Stones. But to us this music was everything.

"Rock 'n roll is here to stay
Come inside where it's okay
And I'll shake you"

Can she leave behind her Barbies, her cheerleading and enter his world? Can she risk the power of emotions?

"Won't you tell me what you're thinking of
Would you be an outlaw for my love
If it's so, well, let me know
If it's 'no', well, I can go
I won't make you"

He's not about to compromise. He wants someone to enter his world. We all want someone to enter our world. We want to show off our trophies, both physical and emotional. We want to share not only our victories, but our point of view.

And that's why Big Star is so important. The band expressed emotions, both musically and lyrically, that squared exactly with ours.

This made it tough for radio. Radio plays to a theoretical everyman. And Big Star was personal.

But that's why Big Star lives on. You may not recall who scored the winning goal at the basketball game, but you can never forget with whom you shared your first kiss.

ALEX CHILTON

We have a fantasy that our heroes live on a higher plane, live a better life than us...that they're surrounded by bucks and babes.

But watching Alex Chilton perform you were struck that his life was much more difficult than yours. He had to go from town to town, playing to appreciative, but tiny audiences, who loved him, but that love won't keep you warm at night, it won't pay your bills, it won't pay your health insurance.

My internist told me heart attacks are preventable. If you get treatment. Change your diet, take the appropriate drugs, get monitored.

But I doubt that Alex Chilton had the cash, never mind the wherewithal.

And now he's gone.

Never to be forgotten by a small coterie of fans.

Is that enough?

I don't know.

But I do know that Alex Chilton did it for the rest of us, not brave enough to take the risk, we who prayed in our basements for girlfriends as we studied for the SATs to get into a good college so we could become professionals. And we love him for it.

"Thirteen":

I am really sad to hear about the death of Alex Chilton. Love Big Star, some of his solo stuff and what I've heard of the Box Tops. Way too many talented people dying at the moment, which is just awful. On the positive side, the music remains to remind us of how good he was.

Vic Chesnutt, Mark Linkous and now Alex Chilton. Sad, very sad.

I rushed out to buy when they appeared. Magical. Thanks for doing it all Alex.

I heard tell of Big Star via the Creation cognoscenti i.e. Teenage Fanclub and Bobby Gillespie banging on about them in interviews, bought the CD reissues and was just captivated by the songwriting chops and affecting melodies on every number, it just seemed staggering that this music could have been overlooked, twenty years later it still seems very wrong that Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were not revered to the same degree as the likes of Brian Wilson, Neil Young etc (even though anyone who knew those records would, like me become scarily evangelical when talking about them)
I'm selfishly annoyed that he's another act I had hoped to see in the flesh someday that's now beyond my reach, so long AC.

by Rep. Steve Cohen (D) of Tennessee

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/03/big_star_sin...

No Teenage Fanclub

This news has saddened me more than I could have expected. Such a huge, influential figure. Thanks, Alex.

... seems pertinent here, “I’m just dead. I’m not gone”

Mark Radcliffe played "El Goodo" last night... one of the greatest songs ever written. Very, very sad news.

Nobody else has mentioned the 80s yet : I saw him in Paris in 86 and he ripped up the Rex. His records on New Rose were great.

Here's "No Sex"

melbourne 's 3RRR replayed an interview with the (also) late jim dickinson who produced big star

referring to their third album he said" they created an album that was timeless...still is I think"

i nearly drove off the road laughing

Tav Falco has added a warm eulogy to Alex on his myspace here :

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=3562818...

as have The Hellcats

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=1981354...

and The Beat Poets

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=1607588...

the SXSW show that Alex woul;d have played still goes ahead with special guests

http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/03/21/alex-chilton-sxsw-big-star-tribute/

Nice piece from Paul Westerberg in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21westerberg.html

Lets not forget Flies on Sherbert. A record you'll hardly ever listen to (outside being dug out for drunken late - night conversations) but you're are so glad it exists