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| Big Star—Radio City |
Radio City—When people speak of Big Star's legacy, they generally have #1 Record (1972) in mind. They like Radio City, of course, but Radio City didn't have "The Ballad of El Goodo," "Thirteen," or "In the Street." The biggest difference between the two is Radio City's lack of Chris Bell, who was the band's founder, ironically, and the main reason for #1 Record's overall sound. Despite this, Radio City surpassed it; Bell's harmonies and arrangements glossed Alex Chilton's jaggedness with a bright, optimistic sheen, but the shared credits on the songs of #1 Record obscured an important detail: "The Ballad of El Goodo," "Thirteen," and "In the Street" were all written by Chilton.
After #1 Record's absolute failure commercially, tensions ran high, and Bell left the group, which effectively disbanded it. Drummer Jody Stephens recalled (Perfect Sound, December 1996) that some time after, "We got back together at the request ... rock writers ... It was a low pressure sort of thing because we were all doing it for the fun of it. We weren't promoting anything. So we got to get back together and play for the critics who were basically our only audience. We had a great time so the band got back together and immediately started working on Radio City." Bassist Andy Hummel explained (Perfect Sound, July 2001), "We started Radio City when we were still a foursome. We had four songs, a couple that we all three [Chilton, Hummel, Stephens] co-wrote at Alex's house one night ... We were looking for new, different things to do so we decided to record in mono ... It was the tightest, hottest music we'd ever done. Unfortunately those tapes were subsequently lost or stolen so we had to rerecord the ones we used later as a threesome. And of course we didn't use much of Chris's stuff because he subsequently left the group."
Soon after, Bell left the band for good, leaving Chilton in complete control of the group. The result was an indurated affair: guitars were the new spokesmen for the band, the characteristic irresolution of Chilton's lyrics serving only to give focus to the music as they had done before, but now without the pretense of optimism. The chord changes of "O My Soul" are protracted, allowing for Chilton's miniature yet rife hard-blues solos to take the forefront. On "Life Is White," he slows to a crawl, letting the screeching harmonica give chroma to the broken sentiments of the words. Andy Hummel's "Way Out West," unlike "The India Song" from the previous LP, fits seamlessly, with Hummel's melodic bass lines riding coolly beneath it all. "What's Going Ahn," a masterpiece, features multiple guitar tracks from Chilton—some acoustic and some electric—that somehow form a coherent whole and perfectly harmonize his vocal. The cautionary dirge "You Get What You Deserve" is hauntingly beautiful, while the heavy "Mod Lang" tributes white R&B.
"Back of a Car" is one of the few remaining stylistic ties to #1 Record: an imagined dialogue set to a harbinger's tune. The bipolar "Daisy Glaze" details the paranoia stemming from cheating, devolving from "I'm drivin' alone/Sad about you," to "Who is this whore? ... You're gonna die/Yes, you're gonna die." The Todd Rundgren-cum-Mick Taylor "She's a Mover" details "Marsha the name" who "look like a dove" and "smile like crocodile." "September Gurls," a heavenly, elastic pop masterwork, works off an irresistibly sunny chord progression to deliver an immortal Chilton lyric: "I loved you, well, never mind." "Morpha Too," featuring Chilton solo with piano and a single overdubbed vocal of himself, is wonderful and hazy; it is not clear what or who "morpha" is. "I'm in Love with a Girl" amazes with its simplicity that at the same time sounds like nothing that came before.
Though Big Star's final 1974 recordings were compiled for 3rd (1978) and Chilton and Stephens reunited with members of the Posies for In Space (2005), Radio City was effectively the final Big Star album. The paltry amount of original material has given Big Star a certain mystique, which is something that often unfairly elevates the legacy of a work. In the case of Radio City, it is no hyperbole. The songs are singular, the sound is tight, and Chilton is on a whole other planet with his guitar playing.
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| Big Star—#1 Record |
#1 Record—Big Star was a band that was simultaneously behind and ahead of the times. Modeled largely after bands from the British Invasion, they arrived a year after the breakup of the Beatles and well after the Rolling Stones had abandoned any pretense of being a pop band. Big Star came to be formed when Alex Chilton, formerly of the Box Tops, joined Chris Bell's band Icewater. Chilton could be seen as analogous to John Lennon, bringing a dissonant edge to the music of the more McCartney-esque Bell. As with many good songwriting partnerships, however, each brought something to the other's music that improved it.
#1 Record captures on tape something rare as it pertains to human experience: the moment just before the point of collapse. Big Star, despite rave reviews, was destined to crash and burn. The debut album was released on John Fry's Ardent label, based in Memphis, Tennessee (the hometown of every band member aside from bass player Andy Hummel) and was to be distributed by Stax, but Stax hit a wall trying to sell it. The reason why is unclear—perhaps emerging soul, funk, and hard rock trends rendered #1 Record outmoded, and drummer Jody Stephens quipped, "it's not a good idea to release a new act in the Christmas season" (interview with Perfect Sound, December 1996)—but its commercial failure led to the effective demise of the band not long afterward.
It's easy to say now that #1 Record is a great album, which mixed pop sensibilities with the kind of angst uncommon to that which it embodies. "Feel" mixes brittle, anxious guitar with horns to create a sound that was unique for the time. What really captures the listener, though, is Chris Bell's profoundly affected vocal; Bell, who would be killed in a single-car accident in 1978, had a truly singular voice. He would only record a handful of other songs in his time, most of which were compiled for I Am the Cosmos. He sings, "Feel like I'm dyin'/Never gonna live again," over a tumultuous relationship. Chilton answers with the existential "The Ballad of El Goodo," treated to harmonic backing by Bell, and the simplistic "In the Street." Sung by Bell, the ode to youth would become the theme song to That '70s Show, and could be seen as a spiritual precursor to the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979."
"I don't know if the general population even knows that Big Star had anything to do with it. As a matter of fact, it's funny, [Wilco and I] played "In the Street" together ... my wife was in the audience and she said, when we started playing "In the Street," somebody sitting in back of her said, 'Why are they playing That '70s Show song?'" —Jody Stephens for Songfacts, "What Made Big Star Shine" (June 17, 2013)
"Thirteen" looks back on childhood romance, referencing the Rolling Stones' 1966 single "Paint It Black"; the song suggests a relationship between two people of different ages, which has been the subject of discussion; its arrangement is slight as to suggest innocence, and includes the line, "Would you be an outlaw for my love," but otherwise does not harbor ill intent, and seems to imply a somewhat minor age gap. Bell's cathartic "Don't Lie to Me" is augmented by Chilton's blues licks, and Hummel's middling "The India Song" sounds like it belongs on a lesser Nick Drake album. "When My Baby's Beside Me" rollicks with great pleasure, unwittingly showing up all of Chilton's predecessors in both performance and craft. "My Life Is Right" is one of the few Bell compositions that remained relatively free from Chilton's crookedness, but this also renders it unremarkable. "Give Me Another Chance" at first appears unremarkable until the fourth or fifth listen, when the unique instrumental backing and Bell's vocal overdubs catch the ear. "Try Again" pleases with its country-inflected solo, giving the album's flow the effect of sunset; ironically, this leads to the resplendent "Watch the Sunrise" and its bright strumming, the ringing chords and arpeggios no doubt the precursor to many an indie rock song. The esoterically titled closer "ST 100/6" is an attractive, minor song that serves a role similar to the Beatles' "Her Majesty" from Abbey Road.
#1 Record is often lumped in with Big Star's second record, Radio City (mainly because they have generally been reissued together), but it's important to keep the two separate in discussion, as they are wildly different. In the case of the former, its naivety is the only thing that detracts from its legend; some of its songs are sad in how vulnerably they depict the young group, and conceptually some of them are thin, mainly on the second side. Of course, it makes sense that the album would be frontloaded: Big Star expected to live up to the name, and the foundation began to crumble immediately the following year. But the flaws are minor, and #1 Record deserved what its titled attempted to prophesy.
