BIG STAR EPUB ED TEB

Rob Jovanovic

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780007149087
• eBook ISBN: 9780007396191
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies

"I want to make an album of real genius, to sit alongside the Stones' 'Exile On Main Street', and Big Star's 'Third'" (Peter Buck, R.E.M. 1991)

The definitive biography of Big Star, the most influential band of the last 30 years.

Although Big Star were together for less than four years and had little commercial success, the influence of their three albums – #1 Record, Radio City and Third – are still felt today. Big Star bucked the musical trend of the Seventies. In an era of glam and prog rock they wrote catchy, radio friendly Power-pop tunes that remain influential today. Artists such as Primal Scream, R.E.M., the Bangles, the Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Jeff Buckley, Garbage, St. Etienne, Pavement and Travis regularly speak of the Big Star legacy.

After singing in 1960s boy-band The Box Tops, Alex Chilton joined up with Andy Hummel, Jody Stephens and Chris Bell to form Big Star in late 1970. Chilton and Bell quickly formed a Lennon-McCartney type partnership at the heart of band and began turning out tunes laced with the best pop sensibilities of the Beatles and Badfinger, the guitars of the Byrds and the harmonies of the Beach Boys. But creative tensions, haphazard distribution, and marketplace indifference sent the band into a series of splits, solo-projects and short-lived reunions that left them on the brink of oblivion. Thirty years later though, and most guitar bands in the world will admit a debt to Big Star and their three albums remain unqualified successes.

Drawing on interviews from surviving band members (including Andy Hummel's first interview for 30 years) and the major players at the Memphis based record label Ardent, Rob Jovanovic has written the definitive history of Big Star, the forgotten band.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Prologue
• 1 ‘Why do you come so far?’
• 2 ‘They took our tickets and we didn’t get to see the Beatles’
• 3 ‘He wore a black T-shirt, nobody wore those, and torn jeans’
• 4 ‘All the way to Philadelphia to play on top of a hot-dog stand’
• 5 ‘We just figured we’d all be killed anyway’
• 6 ‘Bob Dylan never had anything on John Harold and he knew it’
• 7 ‘It really does sound like Todd Rundgren, but that’s not a bad thing’
• 8 ‘Mississippi didn’t like guys with long hair’
• 9 ‘The beer bottles were dancing across the tables’
• 10 ‘We got fired after the first show in Michigan’
• 11 ‘He turned to me and shot Demerol down his throat with a syringe’
• 12 ‘The singularly most heavy moment of my life’
• 13 ‘Look straight up to the ceiling and pretend we’re German opera singers!’
• 14 ‘Another stray American in London’
• 15 ‘Alex Chilton, Rock Legend, Back’
• 16 ‘He was rather nonplussed to be sought out while wearing a paper hat’
• 17 ‘It sounds like gun shots’
• 18 ‘We toasted his health with cheap beer and snacks from Taco Bell’
• 19 ‘We had to have girls because we were entertaining the troops’
• 20 ‘Without being overly threatening, I pushed him into a corner’
• Postscript
• Timeline
• Discography
• BIG STAR: ALBUMS
• Concert List
• Cover Versions
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Thanks and Acknowledgements
• Index
• About the Author
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher