"The Christmas Song": Origins, Alex Chilton & Chipmunks...

Here's a re-post from a poster called FuzzGuitar02 on the  Alex Chilton - The man and his music ... Yahoo group:


"I'm sure most have heard it, but it seems like a good time, and I have some interesting information on it. 

The Alex version:


Story of it's origin: 
"The Christmas Song" (commonly subtitled "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") was written in 1944 by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells. According to Tormé, the song was written during a blistering hot summer. In an effort to “stay cool by thinking cool,” the most-performed (according to BMI) Christmas song was born. 
“I saw a spiral pad on his piano with four lines written in pencil,” Tormé recalled. “They started, ‘Chestnuts roasting ... , Jack Frost nipping ... , Yuletide carols …, Folks dressed up like Eskimos.’ Bob (Wells, co-writer) didn’t think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics.” 
The Nat King Cole Trio first recorded the song early in 1946. At Cole’s behest — and over the objections of his label, Capitol Records — a second recording was made the same year utilizing a small string section, this version becoming a massive hit on both the pop and R&B charts. 

Here's a spoof, "Chipmunks Roasting On An Open Fire" was made by Bob Rivers: "

Alex Chilton - 1970

Amplify’d from ratb0y69.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Alex Chilton - 1970

Alex Chilton - 1970 @ 320 kbps - Covers are included 1. Come On Honey 2. I Can Dig It 3. Just To See You 4. Free Again 5. Something Deep Inside 6. All I Really Want Is Money 7. I Wish I Could Meet Elvis 8. The Happy Song 9. Every Day As We Grow Closer 10. The EMI Song (Smile For Me) 11. Jumpin' Jack Flash 12. Funky National 13. Sugar Sugar/I Got A Feeling (Heavy Medley) This album features a good collection of Alex originals and covers that bridge the gap between his life musically between The Box Tops and Big Star. Sure these recordings at times are raw, but they do provide insight into Alex's head at the time and where he was headed as a musician. Ironically this is the first recording to feature "Free Again" which also pops up later on Bachs Bottom. It's definitely an album worth having in your collection if you have an interest in Alex's younger years, and want to see where the seeds of his pre-Big Star musicianship really began. http://sharebee.com/fd69e874

Many thanx to Toxxy for this great contribution! Read more at ratb0y69.blogspot.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/eh59

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

NEW ORLEANS MUSIC NEWS

The latest music updates from New Orleans and South Louisiana

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.

Posted via web from ttexed's posterous

Alex Chilton (R.I.P.) "Make A Little Love" french TV

blob83000 — December 01, 2006 — un étrange clip français au milieu des années 80...c'est l'époque des albums de l'ex-Big Star sur le label New Rose.
Il tourne en France en trio à cette pèriode et j'ai souvenir d'un concert magique à Sete.

Posted via web from ttexed's posterous

Getting High With Alex Chilton In Tuscaloosa, 1986-1990: An Oral History

http://deadspin.com/5507622/getting-high-with-alex-chilton-in-tuscaloosa-1986...

Getting High With Alex Chilton In Tuscaloosa, 1986-1990: An Oral History

Big Star's Alex Chilton, the musician whom your favorite band is probably ripping off right now, died two weeks ago. What follows is an oral history of Alex's very brief and extraordinarily stoned time in an Alabama college town.

Alex Chilton was born in 1950 in Memphis, and he died two weeks ago, March 17th, in New Orleans. In between, Chilton, an undeniably gifted man, rather deliberately drifted through four-plus decades of a music career in which he served as both a pioneer of blue-eyed soul and a sort of conscripted, yet bemused uncle to indie rock. Of course, this counts the years when he preferred to be neither, when he purposely walked away from the music business, took his damaged spirit elsewhere, and washed dishes instead.

Chilton sang "The Letter" and "Soul Deep" as a member of the Box Tops. He produced the Cramps' debut album. With fellow Big Star bandmate Chris Bell he co-wrote"Thirteen," my favorite song in the whole wide world, and "In the Street," subsequently used as the intro theme for That '70s Show. But for a whole generation Alex Chilton is best-known as the titular subject of a Replacements song. Which is both kind of ironic and fitting, considering the Replacements were never exactly household names themselves.

I knew Alex when I lived in Tuscaloosa, Ala., but do not misread "knew Alex" as "was friends with Alex." As I've written elsewhere, he would come by my house without so much as a pretense of visiting me. He just wanted time with my cassette deck so he could make new mix tapes for his continuing travels.

While in grad school I made extra money booking bands at a number of off-campus bars. And sometime in 1987, I arranged for Alex to play his first fraternity party, but I was more than tentative in approaching him with the idea. There is something doubly damaging about being rejected by someone whose records you've not only played but sung along to hundreds of times. So I'm certain that I began the pitch with the amount of money (about three times what the bar would normally guarantee) the fraternity was offering him.

Surprisingly, Alex accepted the gig and, based on his usual modus operandi, I didn't expect to see or hear from him until maybe 30 minutes before his scheduled start time (the man did not believe in sound checks). But just a few nights before the frat party, my phone rang at an hour when a ringing phone makes you think, "Who died?"

It was Alex. He had never ever called me before. In fact, I didn't even know that he had my number.

And the reason Alex was calling so late just three days before the most lucrative night of his Tuscaloosa career was to ask, What do you think those frat guys want to hear?

Well, Alex, I said. They know who you are and they asked for you specifically, so they realize what they're getting into. I think anything you play will be fine, though it might not hurt to break it into two sets to make the night last longer.

What about cover songs? he asked. Don't frats like cover songs? What about that "Pablo Picasso's not an asshole" song? Do you think they'd like that?

Obviously I am not the only one from that college town with stories to tell. If there are a million Alex Chilton stories around the world, there are likely hundreds in Alabama alone. Because in the late '80s, after the Box Tops and Big Star but before the Box Tops and Big Star reunions would put enough money in his pocket to make fraternity parties a thing of his past, Alex would pass through town three, four, maybe five times in a year. In Tuscaloosa at least, Alex Chilton was revered, despite, or maybe due to, a mercurial nature that seemed to tip-toe between mischievous and merciless; people felt honored just to buy him weed. Here's how some Tuscaloosans remember him.

* * *

George Hadjidakis^[1]: I was thinking about that very first show he played at the Varsity and just how everybody was just so hyped up for it. There was definitely a sizable group of people in Tuscaloosa who were really fanatical about him about that time. I just remember that for at least a month before that show it was like there were Chilton parties every night.

Will Kimbrough^[2]: Alex was in the Deep South a lot, probably making the most money there. He didn't get the romanticized cred of the Replacements or Husker Du or Black Flag, but he got in his car and drove all over the place. He was in the car and Doug (drummer Garrison) and Ron (bassist Easley) were in the van. That was his choice, you know. It seemed like Alex was the lonely guy who didn't want any company.

Sam Baylor^[3]: Yeah, the first time I met him he asked me what my sign was, and that seemed to be very important to him.

Another thing that was odd about Alex was he made Doug and Rockin' Ron drive themselves around. He drove himself, but he would make them drive themselves around. He didn't want any company, didn't need any company. He was a cynic from years of being involved in the music business. It seemed like he didn't really want or need friends, you know.

He was an unusual character, very cynical and sarcastic. Some might have thought him rude, but I read it differently. I thought he was real. And honest. And sometimes people can't take real and honest.

 

 

Kimberley Mathews^[4]: I was able to hear Alex Chilton play in a variety of different clubs over, I guess, a five- or six-year period in the late '80s and early '90s. A couple years after I had seen Alex play the first time, he played the same club, and it was right after the show, and I was walking back from the bathroom, and the Varsity had this little room — it was like their green room for musicians — and the door was open, and he was in there all by himself. And I walked by and I thought, Oh, I should say something to him.

I had just walked by the room, and then I just took two steps back. And I felt really dumb. I'm one of those people that usually thinks of the perfect thing to say after the moment has passed. And I said, "Hey, I really liked your show." And he smiled. I expected some smartass remark because of kind of how he is onstage, but he said, "Thanks. Thanks a lot."

I said, "I really, really like your music," like a total groupie, you know. And I thought, Well, that's really dumb. But he said, "Thanks. Thanks a lot." And he smiled, and he paused, and I couldn't think of anything else to say and he didn't say anything else, but he was nice, you know. He was polite. He didn't make fun of me, and he wasn't sarcastic. So that was really surprising to me.

Cass Scripps^[5]: We were lucky enough — I guess it would've been spring of 1988 — to book Alex to come and perform at our fraternity house. It was the Friday night of one of our biggest parties of the semester, and me and Howard, my roommate and running buddy at the time, were just beyond excited. Everybody in the fraternity house was all excited, but I think that they were excited because we were so excited. I don't necessarily know that they fully understood exactly how huge it was to have Alex Chilton come and play at the fraternity house, but we certainly did.

So Alex gets there, he loads in, he sets up, and he's pretty much ready to go hang out wherever they're staying until it's showtime that night. And one of the things I certainly remember about Alex is that he wasn't a huge man in stature, and his vocal presence certainly reflected his size. He spoke in a very low, sort of monotone vocal style, but it was awesome. He said: "Hey man, do you know where I can get some pot?" And my eyes light up and I was just like, "You know, I think I know a guy. I can probably help you out with that." And so he told me where he was going to be staying, and me and Howard go and find the guy. We were like kids on Christmas morning. We had scored one of our musical heroes some weed, and we thought this was going to be great.

So we go over there, we knock on the door, we go inside, we're talking to him, and there's that kind of anxious moment. You've brought somebody what you think is the prize, and then there's that moment of silence and that tension in the room of like, Well, here it is, and wondering what's going to happen next.

Then after a thick silence for about 90 seconds or maybe even two minutes, he hands back the bag and shakes his head and just says, "Nah, I can't smoke this."

Me and Howard were both just absolutely dejected.

SB: It was the first time Alex had ever played a frat party in his life. It was at the Phi house, and he showed up and the crowd was already enormous there, and so he was sort of intimidated by it and I remember winding up saying, "Okay. I'll take care of you, Alex." And I hoisted his Deluxe Reverb over my head, told him to stay right behind me, and bullied my way through the crowd to the stage. And I got him on the stage, and I got his amp on the stage. And within like two minutes he was playing the gig.

So after the gig the crowd had cleared, and we went back to the Dill's Motor Court and we hung out in his hotel room and he was frantically searching the channels on the TV looking for cartoons, and cussing out the TV because there were no cartoons on it. And I was like, "Come on, Alex. It's like 3 in the morning. There's not going to be any cartoons."

I'm not going to throw in what we might've been smoking at that time.

WK: He loved old Epiphone guitars, and I had an old '60s Epiphone acoustic guitar with a pick-up stuck in it. And the next day he came by our room. We were all staying at the Dill's Motor Court. and I was rooming with Sam Baylor, and Alex drops by.

Now he dropped by to see Sam because he wanted to smoke pot. But he also wanted to see my Epiphone. And so he said, "Can I see that Epiphone of yours?" And I said, "Sure." And he pulled it out and starts playing it, and so we're in a hotel room with Alex, and he's playing my guitar, and it's pretty cool.

And then he goes, I've got this kind of halfway written song, and he played a song that came out on High Priest a year later or something. It wasn't "I'm in Love with a Girl" or "Back of a Car," but it was cool to have Alex kind of running through this song. I mean, he didn't ask our opinion or anything. He just played it for us.

And then he got stoned and got a joint to go, and he got up and got in the Ford Explorer he was driving around in. And I went out there to say bye, and he rolled his window down, and he played me a song off this cassette he had. I think it was by Jesse Belvin. But he told me how this was on the radio when he was a kid. To me it sounded like some old record. I'm not an aficionado of that kind of stuff so I said, "All right. Cool." And then he did what he did with most people who he had more than a passing conversation with — he asked me my birthday. And as he was pulling out he said, "Wow, Will. We're almost astrological twins."

So that was the longest visit I ever had, when he paid us a visit, smoked our pot, and then gave us some astrological pointers. By that point we were — I don't know — as familiar as we were going to get. I don't think he thought too much of what we were doing or anything like that. Who knows? It doesn't matter.

Wade Gilmer^[6]: Of course he was my hero, but I was living in Atlanta — this would've been 1990 or so — and it was on a weekend so I showed up at George's house for a Chilton show, and I had no idea that Alex Chilton was staying there with George. So I walked in, and here's Alex Chilton sitting on the couch, and George said, "You know Alex, don't you?" And I said, "Well, yeah. How's it going?" And we shook hands and sat down on the couch and he looked at me, and he said, "Hey, you remind me of the guy who turned me on to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band." So that's how we started our conversation.

So I produced some marijuana and said, "Hey Alex, you want to smoke a joint?" And he was like, "Sure." So we sat, smoked a joint. And George came in and he said, "Hey Alex, have you ever seen this Cramps video of them playing at the State Hospital in California [The Cramps: Live at Napa State Mental Hospital]?" And Alex said no, so we put the tape in, and George kind of leaves the room, and so it's just Alex Chilton and me sitting on the couch, passing this joint around. And I got so tickled because neither of us said a word. We just sat and watched this video, which is just absolutely brilliant.

I saw him a couple of times after that, and he like nodded his head, and it was a real cute kind of thing. He didn't ever really say anything. He just kind of nodded his head. There was definitely recognition.

 

 

GH: The last time he played in Tuscaloosa he was playing on a Friday night, and the Cynics were playing on Saturday night, but they came in early so they could see the Chilton show. And he would stop over by the house, you know, when he was playing, and the Cynics were all over there. And Alex came in, and I think Gregg [Kostelich, Cynics guitarist] was the only one who knew who he was because I just introduced him as Alex. And we were talking about music and stuff and after a while Michael [Kastelic], the singer, goes, "So, are you in a band too?"

WK: Once, when I opened for him, he stood in front of me while I played "Thirteen," and he stood in front of me while I played a version of "The Dark End of the Street." I was probably playing from the Gram Parsons version, and he's from Memphis so he knew the James Carr original version, and he also knew ["Dark End of the Street" songwriters] Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham well.

So there's three factors involved. Number one, he walked out and stood right in front of me, and those were the days when I played almost all the time with my eyes shut. You know, terrified, early 20s, playing in front of people. He stood there and watched, and I opened my eyes at one point in the middle of his song "Thirteen," and there he was. And I was like, Fuck me, man. He's going to hate me forever. Because by that time I knew Alex was like, you know, not going to play more than one or two Big Star songs and was just scoffing at the whole notion that it was some kind of great band. That was his whole stance on it: Would you just lay off the Big Star shit, please, and let me play these Slim Harpo songs?

So anyway, I play that song and then I play "The Dark End of the Street," and afterwards he came up to me and told me that if I played a certain extra minor chord in "Dark End of the Street" that it made it especially scary and darker.

And so I took that as like, Oh cool, you know. He heard me play his song, and he's talking to me about this, and he's my idol of the decade.

You want your idol to pat you on the back and tell you you're cool. Maybe coming and telling me the scarier way to play "The Dark End of the Street" was it. In fact, I think it was.

 

 

 

KM: A few years later, after I got engaged, I saw him at the Ivory Tusk. And we used to show up early so we could get right in front of the stage. So we staked our claim in front, and we were standing there having a beer and smoking a cigarette, and he was hooking up his microphone and stuff, and he saw that I was smoking, and he asked for a light. And so I pulled out a lighter, and he noticed my engagement ring,and he looked at me kind of quizzically. You know, he kind of cocks his head and cracks that kind of funny grin, and he says, "How old are you?"

And I said, "25." And he goes, "Man, you're too young to get married." And I said, "Well, I don't think so. You know, we've been dating five years." And then we had a little conversation and he said, "Well, okay. All right." And, you know, he didn't make fun of me and he didn't make a smart remark.

And I said, "Boy, I'm really looking forward to the show," and I think I gave him a few songs that I wanted to hear, and he played one of them. So the two times that I met with him were different from what other people have told me when they tried to speak with him. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it was because I was a woman. Maybe because there wasn't anybody else around. I'm not really sure.

It seemed to me that when he was talking with other people — because I would see him, you know, onstage — he kind of had a different rapport about him, a different way that he would talk to people. You know, when guys sit around and talk it's always like they're trying to one-up each other with a wisecrack. And maybe he didn't feel like he had to do that with women.

I have to say this, though: Although he was polite and nice, he didn't, you know, make a conversation go longer than it needed to. He wasn't out to make any kind of connection to a fan or anything like that. It just happened to be, probably, that I had a lighter, and he needed a light.

CS: A year or two years later I was a talent buyer for a venue there in Tuscaloosa, and after they had loaded in and set up I was back in the back talking to Alex, and he's smoking his cigarette, just hanging out in the back. And I ask if everything was all right, and he's just like, "Hey man, do you know where I can get some pot?" And needless to say I was a little bit gunshy at that point since it didn't go well the last time. I was wondering if I should even try again. But I said, I think I know a guy, and this time I called the guy and sure enough it was like crazy, kooky, over-the-top sort of pot, and I brought it over to where Alex was staying, and his eyes lit up when he saw it, and he was just like, "Oh yeah. This is great. This is great."

So it was one of those yin and yang stories. I failed the first time but the second time he seemed quite pleased. It was quite the redeeming moment.

SB: The last time I saw him he was happy and smiling.

GH: I certainly will miss him. I'll just plain ol' miss him

* * *

^[1]George Hadjidakis owned the late, lamented Vinyl Solutions record store in Tuscaloosa. He is now a private rock 'n' roll citizen living on a small pension.

^[2]In the late '80s Will Kimbrough was best known as the "Will" of Will & the Bushmen. Along with Sam Baylor he wrote "Dear Alex" (see below) Kimbrough is currently a Nashville-based solo artist and guitar slinger for hire, and some of his most recent compositions may be found on each of Jimmy Buffett's last three albums.

Posted via web from ttexed's posterous

Alex Chilton interview from The Bob from the May-June 1987 issue

From: http://reocities.com/SoHo/8994/thebob.html

Jeff the Joker's Big Star Page has been archived at Reocities ...
and while it cannot be updated, the original Geocities page can be seen here: http://reocities. com/SoHo/ 8994/bigstar. html

Check out this EXCELLENT Alex Chilton interview from the newspaper The Bob from the May-June 1987 issue Originally published out of Wilmington, Delaware this paper established a large readership in N.Y.C.'s East Village!!!


Alex Chilton interview from The Bob from the May-June 1987 issue

During one of my usual record hunting excursions last year, I made a pit stop at what is now the former sight of See Hear Books on Saint Marks Place, in the East Village. Looking through old issues of Melody Maker, much to my surprise I discovered a decade old copy of The Bob cover date May-June 1987. In it was an amazingly candid interview with Alex Chilton, conducted by Dawn Eden. I'm presenting it here in it's entirety...

PLEASE MR. POSTMAN

Everybody knows somebody who's a Chiltonian. Thats the person who is forever scanning record shops for Box Tops, Big Star and Alex Chilton solo albums (you might even be one yourself). Chilton's fans also include many rock stars more famous than he. R.E.M. once traveled to New Orleans just to meet AC. Chilton's songs have been covered by numerous artists, from the Searchers to the Bangles (whose multi-platinum Different Light included a version of "September Gurls"). As one of the Bob's resident Chiltonians, I recently caught up with the man (via a crackly long distance phone line) while he was in Memphis recording his upcoming album for Big Time Records.

Knowing Chilton to be an astrology buff, I began by telling him I was a "September Gurl." Pleased, he asked what year I was born. When I told him, he did a quick calculation and then said, "That's the year of the Monkey. I'm a Tiger myself."

The Bob: When did you first start to write songs?

ALEX CHILTON: I was in the Box Tops, and they kept presenting me with such material that I thought was really not all that good, so I was trying to write something better.

The Bob: Were the Box Tops receptive to doing your songs?

CHILTON: Not too much at first. We had a producer named Dan Penn at first, and he was not so receptive to doing my things as the producer we had later.

The Bob: It seems that you write songs now in the same as you did back then. Your new songs still have those bluesy roots.

CHILTON: Yeah, even more so now. I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70's and early '80's, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.

The Bob: Who were some of the country blues players that influenced you?

CHILTON: I learned Lightnin' Hopkins style, and John Lee Hooker's style, Jimmy Reed's style, and Fred McDowell a bit. It's been a part of my environment around here for a really long time.

The Bob: Your voice sounds raspy in "The Letter" in a way that it doesn't sound in your other songs. Why is that?

CHILTON: The producer of the Box Tops coached me pretty heavily on singing anything we ever did, and in a lot of cases it sounds more like him singing than it sounds like me. There's a book out that has a whole lot about him and a lot of the people that I worked with in the late '60's. It's called Sweet Soul Music. I've been reading that lately.

The Bob: It sounds like your producer felt that he had to have a lot of artistic control.

CHILTON: He certainly did, and I think from reading this book you can learn a bit about what sort of person he was. He wrote a lot of our material and he pretty much insisted on it being done.

The Bob: So he was the one who wasn't receptive to your recording originals.

CHILTON: The material that he came up with for me, I just felt from the start that it was dead wrong for me, that it wasn't good stuff.

The Bob: I read an interview in which you mentioned some unreleased solo material that was recorded around 1969 or 1970, including "Sugar, Sugar."

CHILTON: Yeah, a lot of those things are from Lost Decade, a whole side of that. "Sugar, Sugar" is closer to the Yardbirds than the Archies. It was sort of a humorous thing, meant to be the heavy version of "Sugar, Sugar." Like Iron Butterfly doing "Sugar, Sugar", real spontaneous. That's floating around somewhere.

The Bob: I heard this great song of yours from that period that's never been released. It goes, "All we ever got from them was pain..."

CHILTON: That's from the '69, '70 thing.

The Bob: Will it ever be released?

CHILTON: With any luck, no.

The Bob: That surprises me because I thought it was so pretty.

CHILTON: I don't know. I was just learning to play! (Laughs)

The Bob: Around 1970, you came to New York and played the folk clubs.

CHILTON: Well, I was hanging 'round with people from that scene. there were still a lot of bluegrass muscians who'd come and hang out in Washington Square every Sunday at the time. I fell in with a mandolin player down there and we were good buddies. His name is Grant Weisbrot. He's the guy who's on the Lost Decade album as Grady Whitebread.

The Bob: At that time, did you think of trying to go farther in the New York scene?

CHILTON: Well, I was still learning to play and stuff, and I wasn't very professional about it or anything. I just met people and hung around, and we tried to play every now and then.

The Bob: Since you weren't allowed to play on the Box Tops' recordings, perhaps you were unsure of your own ability?

CHILTON: Yeah, but when the Box Tops first started out, I couldn't play guitar much at all. Only after we had our first hit records did I start playing.

The Bob: You once said that the reason Big Star was more melodic than you later work was because you made compromises to do what the group wanted to do.

CHILTON: I would have been writing bluesier things at the time. Another reason why those things are more melodic than later things is because when I was first learning to play and stuff, which I pretty much was then, I could stumble upon a cliche and be really impressed that I could make that sound. These days, I'm not so amazed with the cliches that I stumble upon.

The Bob: When Big Star's #1 Album came out, even though it recieved rave reviews in all the trade publications, somehow it failed to take off.

CHILTON: It was a great album but there were just problems in trying to get it sold, get it into the stores. We'd get a lot of radio play on it somewhere but couldn't get it released there; stuff like that.

The Bob: Since Big Star was into the Beatles rather than the heavier rock of the time, they really preceded the power-pop revival.

CHILTON: Yeah, I loved British music myself. When I first got interested in rock 'n' roll in 1964, it was when all the British stuff first started coming out. "64 through '66, I thought music was great. But then in '67, when all this psychedelic California music started happening...people got more pretentious, but '64 to '66 was still three minute songs and everything was fairly understandable. It was great.

The Bob: I was listening to a Yoko Ono album from around 1971, and there's a song on it called "Mrs. Lennon"...

CHILTON: Yes, it's just like "Holocaust." Exactly.

The Bob: Did you have that song in mind when you wrote "Holocaust"?

CHILTON: I don't know. I think that it was one of those instances of plagarism that you sort of are aware of somewhere in your mind, but not...I think that, at the time I was doing the tune, I didn't realize that I was copying it.

The Bob: Critics usually regard Big Star Third as either Big Star's weakest album or it's strongest. You don't seem to consider it to be as good as some critics think it is.

CHILTON: At that time, we'd been trying to make these Big Star albums which were real slick and pop. I guess that I had been wanting to find myself and find...I don't know, I was sort of groping as a writer until about 1976, and so I started getting into heavy-duty groping there on the third Big Star album. Sure enough, after a couple of years, I kind of did find myself and did find myself artistically a bit better.

The Bob: I think I see what you mean. It would have been hard for you to have gone on writing songs in the vein of Big Star Third.

CHILTON: Well, actually, it would be easy writing songs in that vein.

The Bob: Really? You mean you could write another 10 versions of "Kangaroo"?

CHILTON: I'm certain I could.

The Bob: It's surprising to hear you describe songs like that as easy, because, to me, nobody else can write songs like that.

CHILTON: What's cool about that piece of music is the way it's performed. the first verse of the song is good, but, starting at the second verse, it lays a couple of eggs. But the way the music sounds on that is truly revolutionary, I think. You're right. I was just thinking, I'm gonna make a note of that, that I need to do something that sounds like "Kangaroo" on this next record.

The Bob: I understand that you've kicked both drugs and alcohol.

CHILTON: That's true, although cigarettes are a drug. I don't know--drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor--I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.

The Bob: Is your new album going to be in the same vein as your last couple of records?

CHILTON: It's hard for me to say right now. I've got about half of it mapped out and the other half is pretty open, so when I get that other half together, that's gonna make all the difference. I don't know what it'll be like.

The Bob: You don't seem to be bitter about very much. You seem to take everything in stride.

CHILTON: Well, I don't know; making money off a thing like the Bangles record makes up for a lot of things. I guess that my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did was the biggest record that I'll ever have. I've been paid for some things that were real successful, for no good reasons; and I've not been paid for things that weren't so successful for a lot of good reasons. You can't live your life being upset about things, but it's a lot easier to not be upset about it if you've got enough money yourself. If your walking around broke and working a job from nine to five or seven to five, and you're really struggling to make ends meet, you start thinking about people who have ripped you off and getting pretty angry at them.

The Bob: People like Jon Tiven (a producer who reportedly owes Chilton royalties)?

CHILTON: Yes, him especially! I haven't seen him in a bunch of years, but it always amazes me that people like that still manage to walk around and prosper.***

Interview with Alex Chilton of The Box Tops & Big Star fame. Done by Steve Harris on June 3, 1994. (in 3 parts)

Interview with Alex Chilton of The Box Tops and Big Star fame. Done by Steve Harris on June 3, 1994... (in 3 parts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqVx_cbwFtE&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gto8clv2oHU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9XPm7jxI5c&feature=related


Thanks to robfromberg for the referral...