Alex Chilton RIP 2010

Watching this was what finally made the tears come. Candid Big Star footage ca. 1972 set to "Thirteen." Fittingly, the last image of Chilton is him running around a corner and then a plane flying away. :(

http://vimeo.com/6806280

kinda don't know what to say, waking up to this.

"I'm just doing what I like to do, what sounds melodious to my ears."

RIP

That 70s Show just came on and the opening credits killed me! RIP, AC.

Aw fuck this.

Sleeve OTM about Memphis, I feel. Only spent a week there once, but I remember feeling a growing understanding of how much what he was could be understood in light of where he came from.

RIP

Always thought he's live to a great age actually: unlike most pop singers, he'd have made a fine old guy: I could see him like Furry Lewis, swapping songs for whiskey or joints, telling tall tales, quietly reveling in being effortlessly cooler than all the young folks: and even, like Furry, somehow blagging a pension off the city of Memphis....

I think I might be the first person on this thread to admit that I didn't know Alex Chilton until I heard This Mortal Coil in the early '80s (I was a huge 4AD stan back then), but after both hearing and being gobsmacked/heartthwacked by "Kangaroo", I at least dug back into Big Star's stuff to enough of a degree that I rejoiced that I'd found another very awesome band to keep me company when actual company wasn't actually working.

Really fucking sorry he's gone.

Damn. RIP.

no words really. would just like to go back to bed and pretend today didn't happen.

Argh, I really wish I wasn't reading this at work. Now I can't go play Thirteen. Now I'm not allowed to cry.

RIP dude, you'll be missed terribly.

Ah fuck, this seems so fucking unreal.

Gah, now they are playing it on the radio. Gotta run somewhere else and not cry.

I'm so sad. So so sad. Listening to "Back Of A Car" as I write this and it sounds so youthful and desperate yet confident. Thank you for the gorgeous moments, Alex.

Oh man, can't believe it. RIP Alex. What a disaster.

Listening to #1 Record now and wishing him well. Time to sleep.

I hope they play "I've Had It" at his funeral. Wanna listen to everything he ever did right now.

shocking news first thing in the AM but steve shasta's fine fine post put it in perspective/RIP

I was just listening to his recording of "Nature Boy," and the sad, happy-desperate laughter that enters his voice in the last verses just broke my heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ac_rTU62c

testifying to this guy and his guitar
so glad i got to see this guy - leading big star through an elgar cover, because they were playing in london, y'know - and bopping around with the box tops (picking up a bass for green onions), looking sixteen years old throughout.

will be blasting CLICHES asap. there will never be another alex.

This is so sad. I saw him just last year, fronting the Box Tops at an outdoor street fair. He was charming, engaged, ...happy. It was such a pleasure to see. I'm glad that's my last memory of him. That Box Tops reunion cd, "Tear Off," is a lovely little set of Memphis classics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0Wwv-BZwo&feature=related

i've only just heard about this - this is such sad news. RIP Alex. :(

first saw him at Folk City (in a series of $3 shows booked by Ira Kaplan) circa '83, last w/ Box Tops in the plaza of the World Trade Center in the summer of 2001. RIP

RIP. Some great albums with Big Star, and "September Gurls" will forever remain a true classic.

I know it's not the first thing on his resume, but I was a huge Cramps fan in the early '80s, so I also automatically associate him with his production work--"production work" (in a good way!)--on Gravest Hits and Songs the Lord Taught Us.

^ this

"Kangaroo" god... if a song could swoon...

This sucks. I can't believe it.

Big Star was my constant companion during my high school years. Still love them.

Watching that Neon Rainbow clip,and the YLT Femme Fatale above, reminds me that not least of the things I loved about Alex was his speaking voice and his haut- bourgeois Memphis enunciation: I can imagine what it did to women.....

there was also a crazy video piece that was all doped up footage of Alex Chilton, Jim Dickinson and everyone else who figured into "It Came From Memphis" (amazing book btw) xpost re eggleston exhibit

― dmr, Thursday, 18 March 2010 04:55 (7 hours ago) Permalink

Memphis writer Robert Gordon (not the singer) put that together for the "It Came From Memphis" book tour he did. Awesome footage of all kinds of Memphis-related stuff including if I remember correctly--a local Memphis tv news feature on Chilton producing the Cramps. I don't think Gordon(who has also done work on music docs for PBS and others now) could ever get the rights from all involved to release that video collection. In DC there were just a handful of us there at that bookstore watching the video and we were all mesmerized.

Anything to do with the video stills on the "Like Flies On Sherbert" sleeve?

thanks alex

x-post. Don't remember. There's the Eggleston home movie footage and photos and there's the Robert Gordon home-made comp of Memphis musicians stuff that he acquired over the years. Don't recall everything Gordon included.

I had to poke around a bit, but here's Rob Sheffield's recollection of meeting Renee Christ from Love Is a Mix Tape:

"Renee and I met at a bar called the Eastern Standard in Charlottesville, Virginia. I had just moved there to study English in grad school. Renee was a fiction writer in the MFA program. I was sitting with my poet friend Chris at a table in the back when I fell under the spell of Renee's bourbon-baked voice. The bartender put on Big Star's Radio City. Renee was the only other person in the room who perked up. We started talking about how much we loved Big Star. It turned out we had the same favorite Big Star song--the acoustic ballad "Thirteen." She'd never heard their third album, Sister Lovers. So, naturally, I told her the same thing I'd told every other woman I'd ever fallen for: 'I'll make you a tape!'"

Crist, not Christ.

One thing listening to Chilton has meant for me, over the years, is becoming aware of how different my understanding of what an artist is doing, and where she's coming from, may differ from the artist's self-understanding. He's been tapping into something different than my own pop trajectory---not just more personal, though of course that, but also different musical and even pop traditions. This is pretty obvious for someone from Latin America or even Europe, but I was raised in the South, but still in such a different musical place than him. So when I listen to him I wonder if I'm hearing what he thought I'd hear, or what he wanted me to hear. To me he came to seem more more alien as I became more aware of my own pop understanding, and the promise of following him back to his homeworld remains an elusive hope.

including if I remember correctly--a local Memphis tv news feature on Chilton producing the Cramps

sounds cool. what I was talking about though (what was in the Eggleston exhibit) was the Stranded in Canton movie Hatch linked to upthread

One of the disadvantages to listening to NPR so early is hearing the announcement of someone's death that casts a pall over the whole morning.

RIP

http://chuckprophet.com/blog/alex_chilton/

That opening line!

totally shocked to see this last night. major bummer. RIP crazy dude, you made some beautiful stuff.

all the westerberg quotes remind me what a perfect song about alex chilton it is. at least he got the eulogy he deserved. (and while he was alive to hear it, too.)

I'm not crazy about Westerberg's solo on that song – my only quibble.

many xposts... found the interview where he refers to it as "That $70 Show"

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/alexchilton/articles/story/5923511/alex_chilton_set_to_go

Another fan of the story of the young Steve Shasta hearing the group named after a Memphis grocery store whilst in another Memphis-based grocery store.

OK, I am a slow responder. I heard about this last night but it is just starting to sink in.

all the stories on this thread are making me tear up a bit

Brett Eugene Ralph, author, louisville punk, member of Fading Out and Rising Shotgun on Chilton:

"To ease the ache, I'll tell a story about the first time I saw Alex Chilton play. It was in Louisville, at Uncle Pleasant's, in the summer of 1988. I remember it being a banner night for music in Louisville; besides Chilton, Dwight Yoakam was playing on the Belvedere and Die Kreuzen was over at Tewligan's.

Chilton was backed by an unspectacular rhythjm section. The show was about half fantastically inspired and half workmanlike boogie chestnuts (I remember Chilton's take on "Young Blood" being among the highlights). About forty minutes into the set, they went into "The Letter." During the second verse, someone bumped into Chilton's microphone, and it popped him in the mouth. "I'm not losing any teeth over you fuckers," Chilton hissed and stalked off the stage. Everybody, including Chilton's band mates, looked at one another in disbelief.

Twenty minutes went by. Maybe a half hour. I asked the bass player if he thought they'd play anymore. "I don't know, man," he said. "Alex sounded pretty pissed off." Chilton sat at the bar with not another person in the packed bar within fifteen feet of him.

After 45 minutes, Chilton made his way back to the stage. Seemingly, he'd gotten over it. "Sorry about that," he said, "but when you get to be my age, you get pretty attached to your teeth." He glanced at the drummer. "We'll try to pick up where we left off . . ."

And then, so help me God, he counted off and they went into "The Letter" in the middle of the second verse--right where they'd stopped nearly an hour ago.

Bravo, Mr. Chilton. Bravo."

this still hasnt sunk in yet

rip
no idea why this is making me feel as bad as it is, but then again I've never really been able to understand mourning

loved this story quoted on the awl today -

Paul: My favorite tale is from Our Band Could Be Your Life, when he shut down Gibby Haynes's rampage through the Netherlands:

Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! [Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers] screamed, eyes flashing in delirious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.

“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.

Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and gestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”

"i'm alex chilton"

^^wow <3