Chords for Story of BIG STAR on NPR (Alex Chilton / Chris Bell)

_ _ The statement, usually ascribed to Peter Buck of REM, that only a thousand people bought
the Velvet Underground's albums in the 1960s, but every one of them started a band, also
holds true for a Southern band whose albums in the 1970s sold even fewer copies than the
Velvets, but whose posthumous reputation is nearly just as large.
Rhino Records has released Keep an Eye on the Sky, a four-disc collection of recordings, _
outtakes by Big Star as well as an expanded version of I Am the Cosmos, a collection of
recordings by founding member Chris Bell.
Today, rock historian Ed Ward tells the story of the band with the worst luck in American rock history. _ _ _
[F] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ _ [F#] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ [E] _ _ [F#m] _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [E] _ _
[F#m] _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ [E] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [C#m]
Big [E] Star was almost named the Sweden Cream.
[F#m] Taking a break from recording [F#] at Ardent Studios in Memphis one evening,
the four band members, [F#m] Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody [B] Stephens and Annie Hummel,
were standing outside [D] talking about what to name this group [F] that would suddenly come [Am] into being.
There were two buildings across the street.
One was an ice cream shop, the other a [E] Memphis grocery chain with a big red star as [C] a logo.
_ Bell, Stephens and Hummel were school friends,
and Chris and Jody worked at Ardent at night, learning how to run a recording studio.
They were rabid Anglophiles.
Chris often told his brother he'd been born in the wrong country at the wrong time
and should be leading a band like the Who or the Kinks.
Certainly they wrote some interesting songs, and at one point John Fry,
one of the owners of Ardent, went to New York with a tape they'd made,
only to have it turned down as being too derivative of the Beatles.
Into this situation came Alex Chilton, who as a 16-year-old,
had tasted major success as the front man of the Box Tops,
whose hits The Letter and Cry Like a Baby had given him an education
on how to be ripped off by your record company.
He'd used Ardent for some Box [G] Top sessions, and [D] now that he was free of his [Am] contract,
he'd drop by to see his old friend [D] Chris Bell.
[G] Soon he was at Ardent at night too, and writing songs for Chris.
They [A] were good.
_ He could _ _ _ _ _ _ _ talk to my street
_ _ [Am] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [F#m] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ The best Big Star songs are a distinctly American take
on [A] the kind of pop the British invasion had brought to this country,
and far from the sort of Southern rock the Allman Brothers and others were doing in 1972
_ when Big Star's ironically named debut, Number One Record,
was released on the new Ardent Records label.
Ardent did recording for Stax when Stax's studios were overbooked,
and with Stax being distributed by Columbia, Ardent, as a division of Stax,
was [C] assured of blanket distribution.
But that's not what happened.
A casualty of machinations within Columbia, Number One Record barely got distributed at all.
It got a rave review in Rolling Stone, but a rave review's not much good if you can't buy the album.
Chris Bell, who'd been working for years on this band before Alex Chilton came along, was devastated.
To make things worse, his longtime girlfriend left him.
Words were spoken, fists flew, and by the time it was over, Chris was in a [Am] psychiatric institution.
_ Alex and the other two continued making [B] demos, and a [E] couple of years later, in 1974,
a second album, Radio City, appeared.
It was even better. _
_ _ September Girls
[B] They said how much
[A] I was your _ [F#m] butch
And you were touch
[E] I _ loved you [B] well
_ _ _ [A] I've been crying
[F#m] All the time
[E] Cause September [B] boys [A] got it bad
_ _ [E] Cause September [B]
boys [A] got it bad
_ _ _ [E] _
September Girls would be a hit, but not for Big Star, and not for over a decade,
when the Bangles recorded it in a more pop-friendly world.
Andy Hummel threw in [B] the towel and went back to school.
Meanwhile, Chris Bell was recuperating.
Like Chilton, he was from a wealthy family, so it was relatively easy for him to pack up with his brother
and head to Europe [D#] for an extended trip.
He took with him two recordings he'd made, and was honored when Beatles engineer Jeff Emmerich mixed one of them for him.
Every night _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Fm] _ _ _ [F] I am the _ [A#] man _ _ _ _
[Fm] Why don't you [G#] show that you're [A#] the man
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [D#] Just when I was starting to [F] feel _ okay
[G#] _ _ _ [D#] You're on the [A#] phone
_ _ [Fm] _
I'm in [G#] a little audio
_ [A#] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ [D#] _ But he couldn't get any record companies to bite on [Cm] I Am the Cosmos, [D] or the equally excellent You and [Fm] Your Sister,
even after EMI had reissued [Em] the two Big Star albums in England.
So he went back to Memphis and took a job with his family's restaurant management company,
while recruiting a band of young kids to work with him.
Coming home from a rehearsal late at night a few days after Christmas 1978,
he went off the road at high speed and was killed.
_ Rumors persisted among the growing Big Star underground, though, that there was a third album in the can,
tracks cut in 1974 by Alex and Jody, who was still working at Ardent as an engineer,
and overseen by producer Jim Dickinson.
There was, in fact, and it was [A] experimental, eccentric, and uncommercial.
Just what [G] the fans wanted.
At night [C] time I go out [G] and see the _ people
Air [C] goes cool [G] and hurrying on my way
_ [D] And dressing's are sweet, all [C] the people to see _
_ [D] They're looking at me, all the [C] people to see _ _ _ _ _
And [G] when I [Em] shut my eyes
By [G] the time the album, titled [Em] either Third or Sister Lovers, [F#] depending on which version you bought,
came out in [G] 1978 on the tiny PVC label, Big Star was history.
Jody continued to work at Ardent, and Alex spent a number of years washing dishes in a New Orleans restaurant.
Eventually, however, the band's reputation hit critical mass, and reissues became available.
All those kids who'd bought Number One Record and Radio City had bands now,
and their music was called Power Pop.
Chilton emerged, reluctantly, to record some more and produce The Cramps.
He still wasn't a big star, but he was a legend.
_ Edward lives in the south of France and blogs at wardinfrance.blogspot [N].com