The Music of Big Star Gets What it Deserves

Rock’s history is filled with success stories, both the gradual kind and the so-called “overnight” varieties. But that history also has stories of richly deserving artists who saw their path to success cut down by forces outside their control. As chronicled in Dan Matovina’s authoritative history, Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger, the Welsh/British quartet was undone by greedy management that roped the band into an untenable record deal and then absconded with the advance money. Sixto Rodriguez couldn’t get his albums properly distributed domestically. Sure, those acts were championed by critics and the musical cognoscenti, but didn’t reach the big-time exposure and success they deserved.

Another group that belongs on that grim, fateful list is Big Star. Initially fronted by two major talents, guitarists Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, the group made a little-heard debut album, 1972’s #1 Record, before Bell left. A second album was every bit its artistic equal—1974’s Radio City. But the group’s label, Memphis-based Ardent, was distributed by Stax Records, then on the verge of collapse. As a result, record shops were unlikely to have copies of either Big Star LP for sale.

And as the group crumbled further, Chilton (with drummer and dark-horse talent Jody Stephens) made a last-gasp effort, 1978’s Third/Sister Lovers. This independently (and belatedly) released album sold even fewer copies than the first two.

By 1974, Big Star—having played a total of only seven live shows—had burned away to nothingness.

Many artists who followed in Big Star’s wake would praise the band’s slim but impactful body of work. “We told everyone who would listen, ‘There’s this great band; you need to buy their records,” says R.E.M.’s Mike Mills. The dB’s’ Peter Holsapple recorded with Chilton post-Big Star, and a label run by the dB’s’ Chris Stamey released singles by both Chilton and Bell. The Replacements wrote a song called “Alex Chilton.” The Bangles recorded an ace cover of “September Gurls” from Radio City. But Big Star’s records were out of print for many years, and the group was all but forgotten.

Alex Chilton soldiered on with an often-dissolute string of releases. But in the same way that he had turned his back on his early success fronting the Box Tops (best known for their single “The Letter,” a 1967 hit), he all but disavowed both the style and substance of Big Star. Maybe, some said, he was bitter about the band’s failure to launch and wanted to forget it all.

Ultimately, the details didn’t matter: He left Big Star behind.

Until, that is, he didn’t. Nearly 20 years after the release of Radio City, Chilton re-activated the group. Getting together with Stephens (who by this point was a well-respected executive at Ardent Studio in Memphis), he added two musicians, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. Their critical-darling band the Posies owed a stylistic debt to Big Star. The new group made a low-key live debut in April 1993.

Meanwhile, Big Star’s “In the Street” was repurposed (in a remake by kindred spirits Cheap Trick) as the theme of the popular TV sitcom That ‘70s Show. Big Star began to earn its long-withheld due, with reissues and previously unheard material getting released. Rhino compiled an exhaustive boxed set, the four-CD Keep an Eye on the Sky in 2009, and Grammy-winning label Omnivore released a number of Big Star-related titles. Thirty-plus years after the band’s original run, the music of Big Star was finally getting a measure of the recognition it deserved.

But three days before Big Star were scheduled to play a high-profile date at the 2010 South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Chilton suffered a fatal heart attack. What had been planned as a Big Star triumph instead became an all-star Alex Chilton tribute. Nearly three years later, the documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me finally chronicled the saga of this influential but overlooked band from Memphis.

After Chilton’s death, Stamey organized another all-star project, Big Star’s Third. Featuring a massive and rotating cast of musical luminaries, the shows even featured brass, windwoods, and a string section. These shows marked the live debut for much of the material: Chilton had never toured in support of Third/Sister Lovers, and his reactivated Big Star had a tight (and rarely changing) set list that focused on the best-known tunes from the first two LPs.

“Chris was kind of the mad scientist behind the project,” says Jon Auer. “He got it going and kept it motivated. It was a massive and beautiful undertaking with a lot of moving parts.” Big Star’s Third mounted performances to rapturous reviews and—in an irony Chilton may not have found amusing—brisk ticket sales.

Eventually the project added the entirety of #1 Record to its repertoire. But the expense and logistical challenges meant that it couldn’t go on forever. All the principal participants had musical careers of their own too.

The passion for Big Star’s music has endured. And so once the Third dates concluded, Jody Stephens reached out to Auer about the idea of putting something new together, but something different. “I just said, ‘Hey, let’s do a five-piece,’” Stephens recalls. “’It’ll be portable. It’ll be a rock band. It’ll be fun. We won’t have guests; it’ll just be the five of us presenting #1 Record.’”

And the five that Stephens had in mind would be himself on drums and Auer on guitar, plus Stamey (guitar), R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills on bass, and Wilco keyboardist Pat Sansone. A much smaller group than Big Star’s Third, but every bit as super.

“It was Jody’s instinct,” says Sansone, “for the songs to be played by a band, in the spirit that the records were made.” Sansone describes his participation in the Quintet as a dream come true: “The material continues to have a life,” he says. “It continues to grab people by the ears and by the heart.”

Chris Stamey says that the Quintet’s goal is a bit different than the Third project. “We want to bring the same kind of focus to making the material shine,” he says, “but in the spirit of the first two records, instead of taking our cue from the sprawling sonics of the Third record.”

The Big Star Quintet played a run of dates in Spain, a country long receptive to both the power pop that Big Star helped create as well as underappreciated American bands in general. “All those dates were sold out,” Stephens says, with pride. “And they were fun. So we thought we’d keep this thing going.”

Auer agrees: “We put the priority on us enjoying ourselves.” And the 50th anniversary of Radio City taking place in 2024 provided an opportunity to focus on the music from that record.

For listeners who’ve discovered it, the music of Big Star connects on a deeply emotional level. Stephens says it’s not at all uncommon to see audience members holding each other and sobbing during certain numbers. “It’s an amazing experience,” he says. “And you can imagine how we all feel on stage. I love the emotion that we all share.” Auer concedes that a group like this can’t please everyone. “But so far, it seems like we have come close to doing just that.”

Several of the songs on this Radio City tour have never been played live by any previous Big Star configurations. “There are so many songs that Alex wasn’t interested in doing,” Stephens says, mentioning “Morpha Too,” “I’m in Love With a Girl,” and “She’s a Mover,” from the second LP. “I used to play the ‘Mod Lang’ riff at soundchecks in the ‘90s, hoping that we would actually do it,” Auer says with a chuckle. “But that never occurred. It’s nice to finally include it now. Hearing the records, you think, ‘It’s just a fun little rocker.’ Then you play it live, and you realize: This is what it was designed for.”

Asked what they think Alex Chilton would have thought of the Big Star Quintet, each musician has his own answer. “I don’t know,” says Stephens. “Alex was predictably unpredictable.” Mills believes Chilton would have scoffed at the idea while secretly being pleased, suggesting that late-period Chilton “might have admitted that he liked it.”

“Like most creative folks,” Stamey suggests, “Alex would have been much more interested in whatever he was doing right now, this very second,” than in looking back at his previous work. With a laugh, Auer opines that Chilton would have hated it. “But I think he would have hated Big Star’s Third too,” he adds. “He’d be like, ‘Why?!’”

Stephens says that the Big Star Quintet “takes great pains” to deliver the songs the way one hears them on the record. “I went to see a show recently,” he says, “and the artist had reconfigured their songs; it was really disappointing to me. I just wanted to feel those feelings that I felt for those songs originally. And that’s what a lot of people are looking for.” Auer believes that the Quintet faithfully recreate the original sound without wheeling out musical carbon copies. “We’re injecting a bit of rock ‘n’ roll energy with this five-piece,” he says. “We’re making it more high-octane by virtue of our enthusiasm and our love for the songs.”

Chris Stamey notes that the Quintet takes some inspiration from the Wondermints, the California group that was absorbed into Brian Wilson’s band to re-create classic and sophisticated Beach Boys songs for modern-day audiences. “They took a lot of care to put the notes in the right place for the audiences who mostly know exactly where the notes should go,” he says. “And we do our best to do the same.”

Stephens emphasizes that it’s the music that has connected with listeners. “I think the five of us in the Quintet really capture that spirit well because we’re all coming from the right place, and that’s the heart.”

“Big Star is arguably the greatest example of the best music that you’ve never heard of until much later than it was originally released,” Auer says. Stamey adds that the music’s quality augurs well for its long-term durability. “That it just seems to work in some mysterious and magical way for most everyone who hears it makes me think that this can continue to be true,” he says.

Mike Mills reflects succinctly upon Big Star’s legacy: “They wrote incredible songs, got incredible sounds, and made incredible records,” he says. “That’s the legacy any band wants to leave.”

50th Anniversary Full Performance of Big Star’s Radio City (& More):

August 21 – Cat’s Cradle, Chapel Hill, NC
August 22 – White Eagle Hall, Jersey City, NJ
August 23 – Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA

August 24 – Union Stage, Washington, DC
Oct. 1 – Crosstown Theater, Memphis, TN
Oct. 4 – Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA
Oct. 7 – The Lodge Room, Los Angeles, CA
Oct. 24 – Auditorio Mar de Vigo, Vigo, Spain
Oct. 26 – Sala Apolo, Barcelona, Spain
Oct. 27 – La Riviera, Madrid, Spain
Oct. 29 – Folketeateret, Oslo, Norway
Oct. 31 – Hackney Church, London, UK

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.