Artist: Alex Chilton
Genre(s):
Other
Discography:
Alex Chilton's Lost Decade (CD1)
Year: 2004
Tracks: 8
In a business enterprise that reinvents itself at every turn, Alex Chilton has managed to live for three decades with a treble career as intimately -- his early recordings with the Box Tops, the trey albums he did with Big Star in the mid-'70s and the surge of cool, but chaotic, solo albums he's recorded since then. To some, he's a classic hit-maker from the '60s. To others, he's a genius British-style pop musician and songster. To so far some other audience, he's a unredeemed and desperate artist world Health Organization spent several years battling the bottle, delivering anarchistic records and performances spell thumbing his nose at all pretenses of stardom, a way-out iconoclast whose influence has spawned the likes of the Replacements and Teenage Fanclub.
For a guy wHO grew up in and around Memphis, in that respect isn't anything remotely Southern about Alex Chilton. Although amply aware of his environment and in tune spiritually with its most lunatic fringe aspects, Alex Chilton's South has more to do with cultured Southern intellectualisms than rednecks.
Chilton started playing music in local Memphis senior high combos, alternating between basso and rhythm guitar with a err vocal thrown in, at last working himself up to professional status with a mathematical group called the DeVilles. After acquiring a coach with recording connections trussed to Memphis hitmakers Chips Moman and Dan Penn, Alex and the radical -- new renamed the Box Tops -- recorded "The Letter," a record book that sounded White enough to go number one on the pop charts and yet Black enough to data track on R&B stations, also. Chilton was still in his teens, simply armed with a strong innovation of how crop up and R&B vocals should be handled. With the hand of vocal coach Dan Penn firmly in piazza, the hits unbroken advent, with "Cry like a Baby," "Psyche Deep" and "Sweet-smelling Cream Ladies" all showing visible graph action. The Box Tops were stars by AM wireless singles standards, simply tours in general opened Chilton's eyes to the world and what it had to volunteer. And what that globe seemed to offer to Alex was a portion more artistic exemption than he had as token drawing card of the Box Tops.
After a few errant solo roger Sessions, Chilton found himself in Big Star with singer/guitarist Chris Bell. Their blending of ethereal harmonies, kinky lyrics and Beatlesque song dynasty structure appeared to be radio-friendly, simply distribution for their label, Ardent Records, spelled disaster. With Bell gone and the label literally dangling on by a wander, Chilton went into the studio with producer Jim Dickinson and attempted to set together the third base Big Star album. These roger Huntington Sessions, now known as Sister Lovers, ar legendary in some living quarters. So much has been read into this recording, primarily the myth that Chilton became a pop creative person world Health Organization, in the face of critical succeeder but commercial apathy, suddenly rebelled against the system and became a "fated creative person on a collision course to Hell." Chilton himself dismisses all such romantic notions: "I mean that to say that it's a fairly druggy form of album that is the work of a disconnected person trying to find himself or find his creative direction is a honest statement about the thing."
Around 1976, Chilton started producing a wild cross section of solo outings for several strange and American independent labels, all featuring his love for isolated material, barbwire guitar playing, howling feedback and bands world Health Organization sounded barely familiar with the substantial. Plugging into the bohemian punk rock scenery of New York City, Chilton's lawless advance and attitude match the scene like a baseball mitt. In plus to his gigging and playing agenda, Alex besides produced the debut session by the Cramps, serving to realm their deal with I.R.S. Records. Chilton was getting legendary enough to end up having a song by the Replacements named after him. Through the late '80s into the early '90s, Alex split his time between recording, gigging overseas plugging his a la mode release and playing oldies shows in the U.S., reprising his older Box Tops hits. In the early '90s, Chilton -- resettled to New Orleans, his demons behind him -- began releasing a series of excellent solo albums on the new revived Ardent label and level participated in a couple of Big Star "reunions."
