Big Star - Keep An Eye On The Sky

Shooting stars: our wishes come true

Thirty-seven years on from Big Star’s debut LP, #1 Record, they’re no longer the commercial failures whose whispered name floats around record fairs as nth-generation cassettes get traded to those in-the-know. Thanks to regular props in the 80s and 90s from the likes of REM’s Peter Buck, Primal Scream and Jeff Buckley (whose live renditions of Kanga Roo, from Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers, were as hair-raising as his famed Hallelujah cover), and foaming-at-the-mouth reactions to reunion shows, they’re now as mainstream as your other revived “failures” – New York Dolls, Stooges, Velvet Underground, etc.

Only… Big Star records will never fill the shelves like those of the aforementioned artists, while their original recordings still command the same reverence as, say, bootlegs from Brian Wilson’s 1966 SMiLE sessions. And no wonder. Any first-time listener to #1 Record can’t fail to hear Chris Bell’s vocal and melodic harmonies indebted to The Beach Boys and Beatles. Meanwhile, co-Starin- chief Alex Chilton pumped a torrent of adolescent yearning and frustration into the likes of Thirteen, In The Street and Don’t Lie To Me, to cram the first two Big Star albums with Surfer Girls and I Want To Hold Your Hands for the early 70s.

Chilton had already been through the pop wringer before, his 1976 chart-topper with The Box Tops, The Letter, making him an overnight sensation. After being ripped off by managers, he was also well primed for pop business disillusionment. Bell had dreams of Chilton’s superstardom, though. It’s no surprise that he hooked his then-band (featuring future Star drummer Jody Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel) to Chilton’s cart in the Ardent Studios in Memphis, where the boys were enjoying unlimited access to the recording equipment, thanks to chief fascilitator John Fry.

Bell – melodic, meticulous, a perfectionist – was McCartney to Chilton’s Lennon, the former Box Top bringing the edge to #1 Record’s sleek production; the pair together arguably inventing power-pop in the process. Green and putting his all into the album, however, Bell was less prepared than his partner for the vagaries of the record business. Despite rave reviews, when #1 Record got released in 1972 and then lost in the shuffle as Ardent’s distributors, Stax, signed an even bigger distro deal with Columbia and the finer points were hammered out, Bell hit the rocks, fought with his dream band, quit and temporarily lost himself in drink and drugs.

Released two years later, Radio City fell foul of the same fate. Harder tracks the likes of Life Is White (“Don’t like to see your face / Don’t like to hear you talk at all”) had Chilton’s postpub, another let-down, late-nights-in-the-studio fingerprints all over them. Despite also boasting arguably the band’s most commercial moment, September Gurls, Big Star looked set to be just another local band fuelling local memories. An undeterred Chilton returned to Ardent, churning out material for what would arguably be his finest work.

Yes, we say that knowing just how much everyone raves – and will continue to rave – about #1 Record and Radio City; and we’re not taking anything from them. Even the alternate takes and early demos here are fantastic and revealing, rather than knock-offs looking to fill box set space; particularly on the second album. What became known as Third/ Sister Lovers, however, runs far deeper than power-pop genius and into an all together weirder territory.

No wonder the 1974/75 recordings weren’t released for three years. Chilton and his assorted musicians created a record composed of tracks unified only by their underlying despair and lack of cohesion. Holocaust, Blue Moon: this is the work of a man chewed-up, burnt out, but tussling with his pop past on the likes of O, Dana – a drowsy take on the earlier Star sound.

Keep An Eye On The Sky’s big revelation is that these sessions weren’t quite as haphazard as we’ve been led to believe. Compare the demo of Holocaust to the finished version – this isn’t a man dicking about in a studio, but someone with a definite plan, the piano demo giving way to the finished version’s strings and sound effects. Too much emotional investment went into Third (see Dream Lover, Kanga Roo) for Chilton to have been recording for recording’s sake.

Despite renewed interest in, and reissues of, the first two Big Star albums (which led indie label PVC to take a risk on Third itself) 1978 was Big Star’s unhappiest year. An audience that didn’t want their perfect pop certainly weren’t interested in Chilton’s fractious masterpiece, and that too dissolved into obscurity. Even more tragically, a rehabilitated Chris Bell – back from travelling the world with this brother and latterly flipping burgers in Memphis, making another bid for stardom with his solo album I Am The Cosmos, died in a car crash aged 27. His solo album remained unreleased until 1992.

We all know how the Big Star myth has grown since. It’s arguable that their late 00s reunion shows saw a band on better form, but the January 1973 live disc here – recorded in Memphis shortly after Chris Bell’s departure – at least goes some way to giving a fuller picture of the group at that time. Playing to a near-unresponsive crowd waiting for headliners Archie Bell & The Drells, it’s one further reminder of what these remarkable songs were up against. Those in the know have known. Now it’s your turn…

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Rhino | 8122-79858-7 (4-CD)

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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