NOLA.com: Chilton's life in New Orleans was a mystery & that's how the Big Star singer wanted it

In all the Chilton post-death glut, some tributes were OK, some ill-informed & a few, pretty darned good...

Don't know if you saw this one, but it was among the best...

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2010/04/post_7.html

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Alex Chilton's life in New Orleans was a mystery, and that's how the Big Star singer wanted it

By Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

April 07, 2010, 12:45PM

Associated PressAlex Chilton on stage during the 2004 South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Tex. He died three days before a scheduled appearance with Big Star at the 2010 conference.The ancient Creole cottage in Treme sags. The paint peels. Dormer windows are boarded up. A vine sprouts from the roof.

But to Alex Chilton, one of rock’s great enigmas, this was the most precious house in the world. It was home.

As the teenage frontman of the Box Tops, Chilton’s preternaturally gritty voice sent “The Letter” — “gimme a ticket for an aeroplane, ain’t got time to take a fast train … cause my baby just wrote me a letter” — soaring up the pop charts in 1967. “American Idol” contestant Lee DeWyze recently covered it.

In 1971, Chilton co-founded Big Star. Named for a grocery store chain in Memphis, Tenn., Big Star released three albums, all commercial failures, then disbanded with little fanfare.

But those three obscure 1970s LPs are now hailed as timeless power-pop touchstones. Rolling Stone listed all three in the Top 500 albums of all time. R.E.M., Wilco, the Replacements, the Bangles, Matthew Sweet, Jeff Buckley, Cheap Trick and many more have covered and/or borrowed from Big Star.

In the ultimate affirmation of an enduring legacy, Rhino Records assembled “Keep an Eye on the Sky,” a lavish Big Star box set containing four CDs and a 100-page booklet, in 2009.

Even as his legend grew and he flew off to Big Star and Box Tops reunions, Chilton lived anonymously in New Orleans for 28 years.

On March 20, he planned to front Big Star for a high-profile showcase at the South By Southwest music conference in Austin, Tex., cementing the band’s relevance to yet another generation.

But three days before the show, Chilton died of a heart attack in New Orleans. He was 59.

The Austin showcase morphed into a musical wake featuring Susan Cowsill, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, M. Ward, John Doe and the Lemonheads’ Evan Dando. On Easter Sunday, local friends gathered privately in Chilton’s memory. On May 15, a previously scheduled Big Star concert in Memphis will serve as yet another tribute.

Chilton would likely have mixed feelings about such remembrances. His wife, the former Laura Kersting, says he was not sentimental about death. In his view, it happens. Move on.

And though he enjoyed recognition for his music, he did not crave fame. He preferred to live quietly, just another character in a city full of them. He liked that his life in New Orleans was largely a mystery to his cult of fans around the world.

New Orleans, like the cottage in Treme, was his sanctuary.

 

By 1982, Chilton had soured on the music business in general, and his native Memphis in particular. Struggles with substance abuse didn’t help. Hoping a chanwge of scenery would reinforce his decision to quit drinking, he resolved to start over in New Orleans.

“He definitely had his fill of trying to push (his career), and feeling smothered,” said Iguanas bassist Rene Coman, who befriended Chilton soon after his arrival. “Some air was needed. He was looking to escape everything that had gone on in Memphis, and to be away from negative influences. He wanted a clean start.”

In New Orleans, Chilton recruited Coman for the revolving cast of Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, a pseudo-rockabilly band founded in Memphis. In Chilton’s garage apartment behind artist Bob Tannen’s rambling Esplanade Avenue mansion, he and Coman played along to 45s on a thrift-store record player. Big Star was not necessarily on the playlist.

“Big Star was great, but that’s not how Alex saw himself,” Coman said. “To Alex, his work with Panther Burns was as legitimate as anything else he did.

“Alex didn’t feel like he had to be defined by (his past). He was perfectly comfortable defining himself.”

During those lean years, Chilton washed dishes at Louis XVI Restaurant in the French Quarter and cleaned an Uptown bar called Tupelo’s. His most hazardous gig? Working with a local tree clearing company, trimming tree branches away from River Road power lines with a chainsaw, while perched in a cherry-picker.

At one point, Chilton and Coman joined a Bourbon Street cover band called Scores. During five-hour gigs at Papa Joe’s, patrons called out requests for R&B standards from printed song lists. “It was an adventure,” Coman said. “It was like we were a human jukebox.”

With few other prospects, Chilton contacted Frank Riley, the New York agent who booked his friends in the dB’s. Riley subsequently arranged the tours that established Chilton as a solo act.

Chilton, Coman and future Iguanas drummer Doug Garrison barnstormed Europe, then criss-crossed America in a’73 Buick LeSabre with a missing driver’s side window.

“There might not be many people in the club, but the R.E.M. guys would be there,” Coman said. “The caliber of fans was much higher than the numbers.”

By the early 1990s, Chilton’s career had regained traction, aided in part by two well-received solo albums and a Big Star reunion. Always fond of decrepit houses, he bought a worn, inexpensive, 19th-century center-hall cottage in Treme.

In August 2005, Chilton rode out Hurricane Katrina there. The raised house did not flood, but high winds damaged an exterior wall. Days later, with supplies running low and the city descending into chaos, he flagged down a helicopter and escaped.

He returned months later and reconnected with Kersting, a flutist and librarian who shared his love for baroque classical music. They first met in the 1990s when Chilton produced a record by her then-husband’s band, retro-rockers the Royal Pendletons.

Kersting’s marriage disintegrated after Katrina. She and Chilton became a couple in 2007. They married in August 2009.

 

Associated PressAlex Chilton in New Orleans in 1993, around the time Big Star reunited to record a live album at a college in Missouri. Chilton's laid-back lifestyle dovetailed nicely with a city nicknamed the Big Easy.Chilton’s lifestyle dovetailed nicely with a city nicknamed the Big Easy. Treme, especially, agreed with him. “He identified with black people more than white people,” Kersting said. “He was very much a part of this neighborhood.”

As Chilton cut his grass with a manual push mower, neighbors “would sit on their stoop, silently watching, like we were a movie,” Kersting said.

During long bicycle rides, Chilton engaged people from across the New Orleans social strata. He regaled Decatur Street gutter punks with impromptu astrological readings. “Everyone was equal in his eyes,” Kersting said. “He gave everyone a chance.”

A high school dropout, he was nonetheless well-read and well-spoken. He consulted an extensive collection of reference books and engaged his wife in philosophical discussions. Given his casually elegant sartorial sense, he was occasionally mistaken for a college professor.

Dining out was a nightly ritual. The couple frequented Sukhothai in Faubourg Marigny, Maximo’s and Angeli on Decatur Street, and La Crepe Nanou Uptown. Chilton loved the latter’s roast chicken, Kersting said, because it “was just like his mother made it.”

Back at Chez Chilton, he smoked cigarettes and pot. He tuned in to deejay Joe Hastings on classical station WWNO 89.9 FM and stayed up all night watching television. “Walker, Texas Ranger” and “Touched by an Angel” fascinated him; he taught himself the “Walker” theme music on guitar.

“It was very chill when you went to Alex’s house,” said Anthony Donado, a local drummer. “Maybe you’d play a little guitar, or watch basketball.”

One activity that didn’t interest Chilton of late was songwriting. “He worked best under pressure,” Kersting said. “He wouldn’t write songs if a record deal wasn’t in the works.”

When the spirit moved him, he produced recordings by local musicians. Years ago, Chilton happened to hear Donado’s old band, Soupchain. Days later, Donado encountered him in a grocery store; Chilton offered to produce a Soupchain album. “I was like, ‘Man, are you serious?’” Donado recalled. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll come to your house.’ Alex laid on my couch, pressed ‘record,’ and said, ‘OK, boys, go.’”

In recent weeks, he worked with local rockabilly veteran Johnny J. They met in the 1980s when Chilton sang “The Letter” with Johnny J and the Blue Vipers.

“It took a long time to get to know him as a person,” Johnny J said. “He played things close to the vest. He was very reserved, and his sense of humor was very dry. But once you got to know him, he was very funny.”

Chilton once loaned him $5 to get his power turned back on. “From then on,” Johnny J said, “he was my friend.”

They shared a fondness for early rock ‘n’ roll singer Freddy Cannon. A photo of Cannon hung in Chilton’s house.

“Alex said, ‘Freddy Cannon’s shows always worked because he moved through life with ease.’ That’s exactly what Alex was like. He moved through life with ease.”

 

Thanks to his low overhead in New Orleans, Chilton subsisted on periodic Big Star, Box Tops and solo gigs, augmented by modest publishing royalties. Cheap Trick covered Big Star’s “In the Street” as the theme music for the Fox sitcom “That ‘70s Show”; Chilton received royalty checks as a result. He saw little reason to hustle additional work.

“He was kind of lazy,” Kersting said, laughing. “He took it very easy. He’d say, ‘Why work when I don’t have to?’ He wanted a very simple life. He was not interested in fame. He was interested in money — he wanted enough to be comfortable and to travel.”

In the mid-’90s, Chilton booked the occasional gig at the Howlin’ Wolf; on Valentine’s Day 1998, he shared a bill with the late Snooks Eaglin. More recently, his rare local performances consisted mostly of benefits. In December 2007, he played at a block party for longtime La Crepe Nanou bar manager Robert Strong, who was injured in an armed robbery.

“He wanted other people to have those slots at the clubs,” Kersting said. “And New Orleans was his oasis from his other life as the musician Alex Chilton. Here, he wanted to be a person, a New Orleanian. That’s why he did benefits. He didn’t want to gain from New Orleans — he wanted to give to New Orleans.”

More than once, he appeared as an anonymous sideman at the annual Ponderosa Stomp revue. Strumming guitar behind the likes of Brenton “Oogum Boogum Song” Wood and Alabama singer Ralph “Soul” Jackson “wasn’t about him making a superstar appearance,” said Stomp founder Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos. “It was the exact opposite. He didn’t want anybody to know he was there. He didn’t want to be a distraction.

“He loved to play for the music itself. The more raw, stripped-down, minimalist it was, the more he loved it.”

Kersting often traveled with Chilton to gigs in Europe and elsewhere. In November 2009, the Box Tops performed in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Big Star played a well-received show in New York City.

But Chilton’s best performance of the trip may have been at a Buffalo bar called the Sportsmen’s Tavern. The country band on stage called him up to sing “Alligator Man.”

That sort of informal setting “was where he was most comfortable,” Kersting said. “He was incredible that night. Finally I understood what the big deal is about him.”

Perhaps fittingly, Chilton’s final performance was not the much-anticipated Big Star showcase at South by Southwest, but a hastily organized Jan. 24 benefit for Doctors Without Borders at the Big Top, the funky art gallery/performance space on Clio Street. Chilton declined to rehearse or even discuss the set list in advance.

“He said, ‘We’ll wing it,’” recalled Anthony Donado, the benefit’s organizer. “He liked music on the edge.”

Chilton hit the stage with Donado on drums and Trey Ledford as the last-minute replacement bassist. They banged out a ragged 30 minute set of early rock ‘n’ roll and New Orleans rhythm & blues, including Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” and Ernie K-Doe’s 1961 hit “Te Ta Te Ta Ta.” As 100 or so patrons looked on, Chilton called out songs and coached his impromptu backing band. Donado tried out different beats — in full view of the audience — until hitting upon one Chilton deemed appropriate.

“He’d scold me in his funny way,” Donado said. “But we had fun. It was very fast and loose.”

Chilton “thrived on that kind of stuff,” Kersting said. “He didn’t like glamour or fuss. He liked simple and spontaneous."

 

At least twice in the week before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention, Kersting said, in part because he had no health insurance.

On the morning of March 17, she went to work. Chilton called her after suffering another episode; she arrived home before the ambulance, and drove him to the hospital. He lost consciousness a block from the emergency room, after urging Kersting to run the red light.

That week, the health care debate dominated Washington D.C. But Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took time to memorialize Chilton from the floor of Congress. Chilton, an avid C-SPAN viewer, likely would have appreciated the moment.

Lingering damage to his Treme house was an ongoing source of concern for Chilton. Kersting hopes, in the coming months, to raise enough money to repair the home her husband cherished.

“He loved this house more than he loved himself,” she said. “He really cared about New Orleans houses and people.

“A lot of people thought he still lived in Memphis. But New Orleans was his home. His heart was here.”

 

Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3470. Comment and read more atnola.com/music.

 

Click here to read Rolling Stone's coverage of Alex Chilton's passing.

  

Click here to read a Los Angeles Times article about Chilton.

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