Big Star

Memphis

Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were both born in Memphis, and both were thirteen when the Beatles made their American debut in 1964. Chilton found fame first. As lead singer of the Box Tops from 1966 to early 1970, he had a number one hit with The Letter at sixteen. Bell, meanwhile, played in local bands called Icewater and Rock City with, at various times, Jody Stephens, Andy Hummel and Terry Manning.

In 1971 Chilton visited Icewater, played Bell, Stephens and Hummel his song Watch the Sunrise, and joined. They named the new band after Big Star Markets, a grocery chain where they bought snacks during sessions, and borrowed its star logo without the word Star.

Two records nobody could buy

The debut was recorded at Ardent Studios between May 1971 and February 1972. Bell brought songs from the Rock City days, and both Hummel and Chilton later said Bell led the work in the studio. He also did much of the engineering and mixing alongside John Fry and Manning. Chilton said he simply tried to fit Bell's stylistic approach. #1 Record came out on Ardent in 1972, with the acoustic ballad Thirteen on its first side. Billboard wrote that every track could be a single, but Stax, and then Columbia, failed to get it into stores, and it sold fewer than 10,000 copies at first.

Bell quit in November 1972, came back briefly for work on a second album, then left again, and the band had dissolved by the end of the year. After four quiet months Chilton, Hummel and Stephens carried on as a trio. They played Lafayette's Music Room in Memphis in January 1973, and again in May for the Memphis Rock Writers Convention, where the visiting journalists spread the band's name. The trio cut Radio City at Ardent late that year, including September Gurls. Hummel left to finish college shortly before release, and John Lightman took over on bass.

Radio City appeared on 20 February 1974 with a William Eggleston photograph on the cover. Robert Christgau gave it an A, but Columbia refused to process it, and it sold about 20,000 copies. The band played Max's Kansas City and a radio session for WLIR in New York that year, and broke up in late 1974.

Third and after

Chilton and Stephens had already begun a third album with producer Jim Dickinson and a cast of Memphis players. It was mastered in February 1975 and shelved. Released in 1978 and known variously as Third and Sister Lovers, it was, Chilton said, never thought of by the band as a Big Star album. On 27 December 1978 Bell died when his car hit a light pole on his way home from rehearsal. He was 27. His solo album I Am the Cosmos appeared in 1992.

A cult following grew through the 1980s. R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, the Replacements, Primal Scream, the dB's and the Posies were among the bands who cited Big Star. The Bangles covered September Gurls in 1986, and the Replacements recorded a song called Alex Chilton in 1987. Rykodisc reissued the albums in 1992.

I'm constantly surprised that people fall for Big Star the way they do.

Alex Chilton, 1992

Reunion and legacy

In 1993 two staffers at a University of Missouri student radio station phoned Chilton, and on 25 April he and Stephens played a reunion show there with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies. That line-up toured Europe and Japan, played a filmed homecoming at the New Daisy Theatre in Memphis in 1994, and recorded In Space, released in 2005. A shortened In the Street became the theme of That '70s Show in 1998.

Chilton died of a heart attack in New Orleans on 17 March 2010, days before a booked SXSW show that became a tribute concert. Hummel died of cancer that July. Stephens has kept the songs on stage, first in the Big Star's Third shows from late 2010 and since 2024 with the Big Star Quintet, playing Radio City for its fiftieth anniversary with Mike Mills, Chris Stamey, Jon Auer and Pat Sansone. All three studio albums appear on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums, and the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me tells the story.