All I could say was "Oh god!" Mark was getting ready to leave for work at this point. He asked me what was wrong and I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth, even though I was saying them. Alex is dead...
We just looked at each other, dumbfounded. Mark stood totally still for about a minute, trying to take in the unpleasant reality before us, then he put on his coat and left for work. I found out later that he got about half way to work before he lost it. I wasn't so together. I just sat here and cried. I made no effort to hold in how I was feeling. Even now, a week later I'm finding this difficult to write. I had to leave some time before I could talk about this, but not so long that the emotions aren't fresh. This way I can speak from the heart.
Alex Chilton was, to me and many others, a musical legend. He didn't seem to see it that way. He was a reluctant 'hero'. I'm not going to write an obituary here. There are dozens of them out there on the internet already - google it. He was also only 59 years old. That's not old. How could he be dead? That's not right. It can't be true. But the sad truth was right there, being confirmed by the people closest to him.
We only met Alex on four occasions. I wouldn't be so presumptious as to say we were friends. We were friends of friends I guess. This didn't prevent his death from hitting me so hard that I found it hard to breathe.
Alex had a reputation for being a bit strange and having no time for gushy fans. As they say, forewarned is forearmed, so when I met him I did all I could to not be a gushy fan, even though the voice inside my head was shouting "Oh my god, it's Alex fucking Chilton!". In fact I avoided talking about his music all together. In my experience, when you meet someone you've worshipped from afar, the very best thing you can do is just talk to them about normal shit. Treat them like a human being and generally, they'll act like one. Rock stars only act like rock stars because people treat them like rock stars. In my personal experience, Alex was charming, friendly, funny and fascinating to be around.
So what's the point of this emotional rambling? I want to put all my memories in one place. I want to convey what a huge impact this man and this band have had on my life. I want to reflect, gather my thoughts and memories of good times and maybe smile while I do that.
The details are hazy, but we first heard of Big Star around 1991. An earlier encounter came in the form of 2 covers (Kangaroo and Holocaust) on the first This Mortal Coil album, It'll End In Tears from 1984. I've always loved those 2 songs, but at the time, never made the connection.
An interview with Mike Mills of REM and a review of Teenage Fanclub's new album Bandwagonesque in the Melody Maker both mentioned Big Star. Two very good reasons to check them out. We found a vinyl copy of #1 Record for £6.99 from Parrot Records in Cambridge and the rest in history.
Fast forward to 1993. There's a huge buzz of excitement as Mark and I travel to the Reading Festival with a couple of friends. We could hardly believe our luck. Big Star had re-formed. We'd played those albums to death for a couple of years and now we were getting to see them live. That was something we never thought we'd be able to do. We'd read that there were two original members, plus two new members - a couple of guys from a band from Seattle called The Posies.
The Posies were also playing at the festival, so we thought we may as well go and check them out while we were there. Good move. That was the beginning of a very special part of our lives. But that's a whole other story... At this point, in 1993 we were just a couple of other people in the crowd, lapping up the Big Star goodness.
We got to see Big Star again on 9th August 2001 at the Mean Fiddler in London (a venue which has since been closed down due to constant breaches of fire regulations). It was a Posies / Big Star double bill. A dream gig for us. The Posies played an acoustic set and Big Star played a full band set. It was an absolutely rammed to the ceiling, hot and sweaty gig. We were crammed shoulder to shoulder with people, all grinning.
This is where Mark's brilliant memory comes in. Alex was having trouble with his guitar amp and ended up kicking it at one point. Steve Mack (That Petrol Emotion) was in the audience.
Our next Big Star encounter was many years later and under very different circumstances in another country.
Connect Festival, Inveraray Castle, near Glasgow, Scotland - 2-3 September 2007
Day 1 was spent trudging through miles of mud, all of which seemed uphill to get to the festival. After some wrangling and confusion over the validity of our wrist bands, we managed to get backstage. We were introduced to Norman Blake - EEEP! Sheltering from the rain we were treated to a stage-side view of the Teenage Fanclub show, then Mogwai. Awesome. It was also the first time we met Guitar George Borowski (another legend in his own lifetime and one of the sweetest, infectiously happy people on the planet). We hung around for Primal Scream, but spent most of their set sitting on the spare drum risers backstage, just chilling out and staying warm and dry. A long trudge back down the muddy hill back to the car was 'interesting' in the dark. We were driven back to Glasgow with carrier bags on our muddy feet.
On day 2 we made our way from our spit and sawdust b&b to a very swish hotel in Glasgow. Waiting in the lobby lounge, feeling out of place, I noticed someone who looked familiar walking by. It was Alex. At that point I was still pretty nervous about meeting the man, the legend, so when our friend Jon did introduce us it was a quick hello and oh my god, I don't know what to say, so say nothing.
There followed a quite surreal experience. We all piled into the minibus, Alex, Jody, Jon, Ken and his wife Dom, a friend of Alex's, Mark and me. It was quite a long drive out to the festival. We mostly all kept to our individual conversations, but there were moments of hilarity, shared by everyone. Such as Alex launching into the Walker Texas Ranger theme tune.
When we finally found the backstage area, which was pretty well hidden near the 'other' stage, we found a nice set-up. There was a porta-cabin per band, conveniently arranged in alphabetical order around a gazebo tent seating area. Big Star were a couple of doors down from Bjork. Of course Bjork had several porta-cabins, because she's Bjork. I almost bumped into her actually. As we walked past she came out of the door and I had to take evasive action. She probably would have punched me if I'd bumped into her! :-)
We watched The Polyphonic Spree's show, which was quite something to behold, then it was time for Big Star. Hooray! But where's Alex? He's nowhere to be seen around the stage. Show time was rapidly approaching and no-one knew where he was. Mark was dispatched back to the backstage area, through the dark and the mud to look for him. No sign of him in the porta-cabin. He was about to give up when he caught a 'certain smell' as he walked past the seating tent. Inside he found Alex, sharing a joint and having a nice chat, oblivious to what time it was or where he was supposed to be. Mark said he looked like a guilty kid who'd been caught misbehaving. Bless... So Alex was found and duly escorted to the stage, and the show went according to plan.
They rocked the place.
Shepherd's Bush Empire. 28th August 2008
We were lucky enough (thanks again to our good friend Jon) to be guests at this show. We arrived at the Empire and promptly got totally lost in the maze of corridors and stairs. It's a crazy place. Eventually we found everyone, said quick hellos and left them to it. Pre-show is never the best time to talk to people. They have lots on their mind. Ken was busy learning a bass line to one of Alex's random last minute additions to the setlist - a classical piece by Elgar, I think. So we headed down to the bar and spent 20 minutes chatting with 2 really nice ladies from the Caribbean.
We had great seats for the show, up in the box overlooking the stage. Another fine Big Star performance was, as always, over too quickly. We headed back up to the dressing room and had a quick glass of bubbly before we had to leave to get a tube train back to the car. Alex was conspicuous in his absence. It wasn't until we left the venue by the side alley door that we found him, smoking fags and chewing the fat with Jody and a couple of other people. Poor Jody was horribly jet-lagged and exhausted, having just flown to the UK that day. Alex was in a great mood. We had a quick chat - I've no idea what about, and we were on our way. I vaguely recall inviting them round for a cup of tea when they were in our neck of the woods a few days later. Unfortunately, they never did.
The most random festival ever. Despite this festival being only about 10 miles away from our front door, we'd never heard of it until Big Star played there. Running since 2006 (who knew?) it's held at Twinwood, an old WWII airbase museum. If I remember rightly, it was a lovely day that day. Everyone was in good spirits and we hung out for a few hours, talking about this and that. Jody was telling Mark about the time he played on the same bill as Jimi Hendrix, many, many years ago.
I found this tiny clip of video today that I forgot all about. Jody had just noticed that Steve Cropper was on stage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49hElIByxWM
Alex was in a great mood that day, which can be seen in the videos I shot of the Big Star show. He seemed to warm to the kitch-ness of this little festival. It had no pretensions. It wasn't fancy or trying to be fashionable. I guess he liked that. Jody was fascinated by the history of the surroundings. Twinwood is the airfield that Glenn Miller took off from and was never seen again.
The Big Star set was on the main stage in the arena, but it clashed with (wait for it) Chas 'n' Dave on the other stage. About 10 minutes before Big Star were due to go on, the entire arena emptied like someone pulled out the plug and the audience went down the plug-hole. Shit! We were left standing there, with a few die-hard Big Star fans, while everyone else chose the Chas 'n' Dave show. No fucking way! Thankfully, it was more of a changeover period, and soon more people started to appear. We also suspect that a lot of people realised that Chas 'n' Dave is only tolerable for one or two songs, and they came back when they got bored. So Big Star ended up with a pretty packed arena, eventually. It was a great show - a really good set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGboO6F_3ok
I remember Jody and Alex complaining that they didn't get enough time to spend with Jon when we kidnapped him at the end of the night.
Serpentine Sessions, Hyde Park London. 1st July 2009
Remember the heatwave of 2009? Well the 1st of July was slap-bang in the middle of it. After spending several days just being lazy and sitting in front of a fan, Mark, Jon and I had to get off our arses and get on a (thankfully air conditioned) train down to London. After waiting in the longest taxi queue in the world for what seemed like hours, we finally got into a (horribly un-air conditioned) taxi and headed to the Columbia Hotel on the edge of Hyde Park. We killed a couple of hours there, staying indoors where it was cool, while various people were interviewed for a Mojo feature. Eventually we headed into the park to find the stage. That should be easy huh? Big tent in a park, can't miss it...
I had no idea Hyde Park was so HUGE. We walked and walked and walked and sweated, with no sign of anything that looked like a stage. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing though. It meant we got plenty of time to talk to Alex. This was the longest time we ever got to spend with him. He was coping with the heat so much better than we were. He was used to the humidity of the deep south, so a hot day in London was nothing to him. We talked about this astrology thing that he was really into. It's based on a pack of cards. I didn't really get my head around it, but Alex told me I am the nine of spades. Mark is the king of diamonds, which made his day.
So after what must have been half an hour of walking, we still hadn't found the stage. We were walking along by the Serpentine, checking out the ducks when out of the heat haze an angel appeared. OK, so it wasn't an actual angel, but it was 2 golf buggies that had been sent out to pick us up and take us the rest of the way. Hooray! So Jon, Mark and I jumped on one and Alex and Ken jumped on the other and we bombed off across the park. Awesome. That was fun.
We weren't sure when or where we were supposed to pick up our guest passes, and we'd been told there was a very strict policy on guests backstage, so we'd been expecting to part company with the guys at some point. In the end though, we were driven straight in and dropped off with the band. Best to keep quiet in those situations... This bloke came up to me and said "Hi, I'm Mark and I'll be your stage manager today." I just said "Hello" and tried to not look like the impostor I was.
So we ended up spending the whole afternoon sitting in the sunshine, chatting with Jon and Alex and listening to Blur soundcheck. They were playing the next day. Yay, free Blur gig! Yay, free drinks! Yay, no-one asked us who we were or what we were doing there!
There was a lot of confusion about what time Big Star were supposed to be on. The organisers kept changing the time. At one point they wanted to put them on an hour and a half earlier than the advertised time. Everyone was getting pretty stressed out, except for Alex, who remained as cool as a cucumber throughout. In the end, they had changed their stage time (at very short notice) to half an hour earlier than the advertised time. Consequently, when they took to the stage there was nobody there. We're talking tumbleweeds here people. This was pure and simple bad planning on the organisers' part. It was not good for the band and it was not good for all the people who had paid good money to see the band and ended up missing the beginning of the set. Alex was philosophical about it. He said "I take particular pride in playing really well in front of no people." And they did - play really well I mean. It was a blinding gig - on of them were on top form and obviously enjoying themselves.
Thankfully, as soon as Big Star started the first song, you could see confused people listening, looking and then running towards the tent. It soon filled up. Next time I looked behind me there was a sea of faces singing along and grinning.
It was such a beautiful warm evening. We stayed in the park till about 10pm, just enjoying the evening and catching up with the lovely Henrik and his friends.
I took a few photos of grinning fans with Jon for them. Most were probably not as cheesy as ours though. Haha!
Then we managed to cadge a lift on a buggy back to the edge of the park. In the cool of the evening that was fantastic. We tried to convince the buggy driver to take us all the way to the train station, but he couldn't do it. We hailed a cab and headed back to St Pancras.
The train journey back home was 'interesting' and hilarious. There was a guy sitting near us wearing headphones and singing at the top of his voice in Arabic. Though none of wanted to say it out loud, I think we were all thinking "Is he about to blow himself up?" I know that's terrible racial stereotyping, but we all looked to see if he had any wires sticking out of his jacket. Jon summed it up best, saying "Yeah! Get down with your bad self..." Heehee.
Though of course we could never have known it at the time, this was to be the last time we saw Alex Chilton. But to be honest, what a memory to end on.
We even toyed with the idea of blowing all our savings to go to the Big Star shows in the USA this year, but we decided against it. After all, we'll have other opportunities to see them right? How tragically wrong. It's taken me literally hours to write this blog, over 2 evenings and I still don't feel like I've even scratched the surface of what Alex Chilton's music and the music he influenced has meant to me for so many years. That will never change. It's just sad that an era has ended so abruptly and so unexpectedly. Like I said at the beginning of this long and rambling blog, Alex and I weren't friends, but his loss has hit me as hard as that of anyone. I feel so bad for his family, his band mates and his friends. He was a unique individual and he'll be sorely missed.
It's equally tragic that Alex passed away just days before Big Star were due to play at the SXSW festival in Texas. I have a lot of admiration for Jody, Jon and Ken for going ahead with that show and turning it into a tribute to their friend, despite the emotions being so fresh and raw. It was a wonderful thing for them to do. I only wish we could have been there.
They say you should never meet you heros because it'll lead to disappointment. I disagree.
So next time a band you love are playing a gig and it's a little far away and you can't really be bothered to go or it'll be a late night on a week day, think about it. Don't assume you'll have another opportunity. You just never know...
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