RADIO CITY WAS BIG STAR AT ITS BRIGHTEST

Alex Chilton was to America what Lennon/ McCartney were to England. He had a band by the name of Big Star in the 1970`s, they released three albums, one great one, one very good one and one absolutely lackluster one. 

Yes Chilton was somebody who had never heard of up until a few months ago, I just happened to pick up an el cheapo CD at JB HI-FI and I took pot luck and bought a two album in one set of Big Star, featuring their first album `#1 Record` and their second `Radio City`.

Unlike most early 70`s rockers, Chilton was inspired more by the harmonies of the Beatles, The Byrds and the Kinks from the 60`s than he was by the crash boom bang sound of The Who or the primal heavy metal sound of Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. 

Chilton started out in a band called the Box Tops which formed in 1967. After a very procrastinated career with the Box Tops which bore much artistic fruit but very little of the commercial variety, Chilton walked off the stage in disgust during a live performance in late 1969 and the Box Tops disintegrated very shortly thereafter. 

Sometime in 1970, he met up with a Memphis based guitarist by the name of Chris Bell, who had worked as a session guitarist for a number of rock and blues artists in and around the blues capital of the world. 

Alex Chilton had tried his luck in a folk rock disguise after he quit the Box Tops, but he gave up when Bell decided to stick with playing pub styled rock in Memphis with his own group called Ice Water. 

Together with Andy Hummel on bass and Jody Stephens on drums, who were in fact the other two of the trio that made up Ice

Water, Chilton and Bell went about recording an album together which would become the first Big Star album. So often, debut albums go down in history as being the best one that a band ever makes. 

#1 Record is a grainy and well polished album, Chilton`s songwriting and Beatleseque singing meshed well with the power rock leanings of Bell and his former Ice Water rhythm section. 

But the best was yet to come, and ironically, the awesome second album `Radio City` was recorded as a three piece without Chris Bell, who quit because of the tension in the band which surfaced after the debut album's

commercial failure. 

Inevitably, Radio City was going to have to

be more of a guitar driven album, because Chilton had to make up for the loss of one lead guitar and pay less attention to studio
gloss. 

He still had Hummel and Stephens behind him cooking up the groove, some of the songs on Radio City features what could only be described as some of the best soul flavoured drumming in the history of rock. 

The first track `O My Soul` is testament to that. To me, and its only personal opinion, track number five `You Get What You Deserve` has George Harrison written all
over it, just like a track that did not quite make it onto Revolver. 

Alex Chilton made this material sound better than what a Beatle could have done anyway, and with a lot less gadgetry in the studio I might add. 

`Mod Lang` is a very raw and unpolished sounding tune, probaly the most `Who-ish` thing that Big Star recorded. `Back of a Car` is one of the heavier songs, co-incidently or not I can hear the guitar tone of Ty Tybor, lead guitarist in the heavy rock band Kings X, so much when I listen to the song carefully. 

Tabor is a big fan of the Beatles, whether he knows it or not, he probably owes more artistically of himself to Big Star and especially Alex Chilton. 

`Daisy Gaze`, as the name would suggest,
is the most psychedelic tune on Radio City, but it`s still a big improvement on any of the LSD stuff which came out of San Francisco in the mid 60`s. 

`Life is White` is a blistering barrelhouse piano jam, while the final track, `I`m

In Love with a Girl`, is a short cute acoustic ballad which only lasts one minute and forty six seconds. A

Arguably the best song on the album, and some say the best song that Big Star ever recorded, is `September Gurls`. 

Certainly rock harmonies dont come better than this, and Chilton cooks up his definitive guitar riff on Gurls that`s a cross between the Kinks and the Byrds.

Dont even bother listening to `Big Star 3`, the groups long lost forgotten album, that`s if you believe the liner notes to the album

I have in front of me. 

Honestly, I haven`t listened to it, but apparently, you got none and buckley`s chance of tracking it down anyway. 

Brian Hogg in 1986 said the album was crap, he`s the guy who composed the liner notes. Anyhow, be mesmerised, and listen to the song `September Gurls` by clicking on the link below. 

This album is as good as anything else which was recorded in the 70`s. And if you ask me, Chilton was just as talented as John, Paul, George or Ringo. Now that statement might rattle a few cages Timbo you big stirrer.

YouTube - Big Star - September Gurls