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Alex Chilton's story is rags to riches in reverse, beginning with teenage rock stardom and heading downward. Following stints leading 60s sensation the Box Tops ("The Letter") and pioneering 70s popsters Big Star, Chilton became a dishwasher. Yet he rose again in the 80s as a solo artist, producer, and trendsetter, coinventing the indie-rock genre. By the 90s, acolytes from R.E.M. to Jeff Buckley embodied Chilton's legacy, ushering him back to the spotlight before his untimely death in 2010. In this career-spanning and revelatory biography, longtime Chilton acquaintance Holly George-Warren has interviewed more than 100 bandmates, friends, and family members to flesh out a man who presided over--and influenced--four decades of American musical history, rendered here with new perspective through the adventures of a true iconoclast.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
Chilton wasn't the most sympathetic character and there are always multiple sides to every story, but I think that George-Warren did the biographer's thankless job of walking a solid middle ground: he wasn't an angel but he wasn't the devil incarnate either (except, of course, when he was). For music fans of A Certain Age, this is required reading; for the rest, at least it's down in one place so he won't be forgotten (not that those songs ever would). It's a quick read.
Here's the context: Alex Chilton comes from an upper-class white family in Memphis, TN, an educated, artsy family, his father a pianist, his mother ran an art gallery. As a high school student he got an audition for a band, became their front man, pretty much immediately recorded a song someone else wrote, "The Letter", which became one of the biggest pop hits of all time. Out he goes on tour, cruising the country before he can drive, singing this song to millions of adoring fans.
Eventually he learns how to play guitar, joins a band, writes some songs and learns a great deal about audio technology and engineering. His twenties and thirties are an endless series of obscure recordings that never make it big, no money, uneven performances, admiration from people who are really into music, sex drugs, etc. George-Warren goes into tremendous detail about the recording sessions, the live shows, who writes the liner notes and who takes the publicity shots. If you've any interest in the music business as such, this is really informative stuff. [I've been married to an audio engineer for twenty years and am only now really grokking this stuff, to his chagrin].
Not surprisingly this unsettled life is unsettling. Romantic relationships burn up and out, people quit music to pursue real jobs, some stay on the fringe, etc. In actual page count this goes on for eternity. I knew that he died youngish, and I was pretty worried about him. Made it hard to keep going, honestly. Then, abruptly, the last two chapters cover Chilton's last twenty years, which are pretty damn good. Zoom, it's over. He finally gets some money to go with the recognition, he gets a house of his own, decent tours, a loving wife. So, that's all right then. Rushed account of two decades, but it's a pretty good life in the long run, which is all any of us can ask.
Library copy.
The author is particularly good in her description of the Memphis of Chilton's youth, his artistic and intriguing family life, and the kinds of musical magic that can happen when you give a bunch of Memphis dudes the keys to a studio to use for free after hours. And, while I've never been a fan of the kind of music writing that lists out versions of songs and talks about what music sounds like, I found the inner workings of the Memphis music industry to be fascinating, especially in this time between the old school music machine of the Box Tops and the wild experimentation that was to come.
Chilton is a guy who was never anything other than himself, musically and personally. I'm glad he was able to make and record as much as he did, and even though he got a little tired of playing the Big Star stuff, I'll never get tired of listening to it.