BIG STAR
THE SHORT LIFE, PAINFUL DEATH, AND UNEXPECTED RESURRECTION OF THE KINGS OF POWER POP
by Rob Jovanovic
Although Big Star were together for less than four years in the mid-1970s and had little commercial success, their influence reaches far and wide. In an era of glam and prog rock, they wrote addictive, radio-friendly pop tunes. Their records, the first two of which were released on the Stax-distributed Ardent label, literally changed people's lives -- including those of artists as diverse as R.E.M., the Bangles, the Replacements, Wilco, Matthew Sweet, Ryan Adams, the Dream Syndicate, the Shins, the Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Jeff Buckley, and Garbage.
Almost everyone has heard their song "In The Street," which, as rerecorded by Cheap Trick, served as the theme song for That '70s Show. But there's so much more to Big Star. Alex Chilton had believed that he would become a big star; when he didn't, he engaged in a sort of musical self-sabotage. His coleader, Chris Bell, died in a car crash after releasing the devastatingly sad single "I Am The Cosmos." Their first album was pure Beatles/Hollies pop; their second turned that sensibility upside down; and their third album sounded like an exceptionally beautiful suicide note.
Drawing on new interviews with the band, family members, friends, and the major players at Ardent Studios in Memphis, this is the definitive history of Big Star, from their boyhood to their reunion tours.
