Alex Chilton, self-made Big Star

His band never sold millions, but his musical influence is too big to be measured

By Bruce Eaton

Alex Chilton of the 1970's rock band 'Big Star' performs at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, Friday, March 19, 2004. The Memphis-based group is currently working on a new album.(AP Photo/Jack Plunkett) (Credit: Associated Press)

Topics:R.I.P., Music, Rock and Roll

Interviewer: What would you like written on your grave?

Alex Chilton: “A Self-Made Man” sounds best to me.

– from a 1977 interview in Big Star fanzine

To me the definition of a great record is simple — when you finish playing it, you want to play it again. And again. And again. It’s really not more complicated than that.

Big Star made three great records during their four-year lifespan in the early 1970s: “#1 Record” (Memphis kids capturing the lightning of their English idols), “Radio City” (perhaps the greatest power pop album recorded outside the walls of Abbey Road Studios) and “Third,” aka “Sister Lovers” (a dark, turbulent, mysterious masterpiece). Big Star went three for three out of the gate like no other band in history — each one a record that has worn out the repeat button on countless stereos — and then vanished before they were barely even known. At the center of their recorded legacy is Alex Chilton, whose heart unexpectedly stopped beating on Wednesday night. But thanks to the music of Big Star and the thousands of artists that Big Star influenced — R.E.M., The Replacements (whose song “Alex Chilton” stands out among tributes), Jeff Buckley, the Bangles, Teenage Fan Club, Matthew Sweet and Primal Scream among them — his heart will never stop being heard.

The band’s records sold in the mere thousands upon initial release (lacking any initial interest, “Third” wasn’t released until years after the band broke up). But Big Star was a band whose influence far outpaced their album sales; nearly every single slab of vinyl found its way into the hands of a listener to whom Big Star became more than just a band – they became a consuming passion you felt compelled to share with the rest of the world. Like most Big Star fans, I discovered the band after its dissolution. Within hours after fishing a copy of “Radio City” out of a bargain bin in 1976, I was hooked. (I eventually called Alex Chilton at his home in Memphis three years later and asked him to play some gigs with my band backing him up — which, amazingly, he did. We remained friends.) “Radio City” sounded like no other to me – as if all of the best music of the ’60s had been sent into the future, transformed into something both fresh and yet familiar. Even on first listen, Big Star sounded like pure magic.

Like all great artists, Big Star didn’t map out that sound – they trusted their instincts. Alex Chilton was quick to dismiss the band’s lyrics as afterthoughts, often written by committee, he claimed. But it was precisely because Big Star didn’t overanalyze what they were trying to say that their work still connects with new generations of listeners. Their lyrics stayed close to home, never overreached. What they were doing? Hanging out in the street. What were they thinking? You get what you deserve. Feeling? Why don’t you come back? Combined, the three albums capture the painful slide from the energy and optimism of 18 to the wounded uncertainty of your early 20s. If you want to know how it feels to watch your life come unglued – just play the Big Star albums in chronological order.

Being a Big Star devotee in the secret society days was a lightheaded rush like an adolescent romance – a feeling, by the way, Chilton captured perfectly on “#1 Record” with “Thirteen.” What made your relationship with the band a bit more complicated was that there wasn’t anyone on the other side of the footlights who wanted to share that devotion. After founder Chris Bell left the band in 1972 (he died in a 1978 car accident), Big Star became virtually synonomous with Chilton, the former teen singer for the Box Tops who stayed on with Big Star to pilot the group through its last two records, increasingly pushing the sound and song forms until Bell’s Anglophile vision was all but a speck in the rearview mirror.

By the time the band’s cult gained significant traction in the late -70s – with a new band popping up every week wearing Big Star badges on their sleeves – Chilton was deep into personal chaos and exploring the anarchy of pure, raw rock ‘n’ roll. Fans earnestly expecting – even demanding – faithful renditions of iconic power pop were served up messy, unrehearsed covers of obscure rockabilly tunes. After a notoriously disastrous tour in 1981, Chilton disappeared into an anonymous life as a laborer in New Orleans. When he returned to performing a few years later, with a repertoire that included everything from New Orleans swamp rock to “Goldfinger,” he was sharp, sober and confident in his chosen musical direction, approaching his work with the understated professionalism of a lifelong jazz musician. Eventually fans came to understand what Chilton had been trying to get across: “Big Star was one thing … I was another,” he explained to me. Finally, he reciprocated all the adulation by reconstituting Big Star in 1993, performing a few dates each year and recording another album in 2005 (they were to perform this Saturday at the SXSW Festival in Austin). In recent years Big Star have reached new audiences via television (the theme song for “That ’70s Show”) and movie soundtracks (“Adventureland”). A Big Star song or reference carried with it a certain level of hipster cred. The 2009 release of “Keep an Eye on the Sky” – a four-disc career retrospective – cemented the band’s iconic status.

Alex Chilton wasn’t a completely self-made man – talented bandmates and mentors like the late producer Jim Dickinson and Ardent Records founder John Fry are integral to his legacy – but it was his commitment to music that rang true at the moment of creation that earned the love and respect of legions of listeners. No one else could have steadfastly honored that commitment like him. And so Chilton did leave us as he envisioned: “A Self-Made Man,” indeed.

Bruce Eaton is the author of “Radio City,” an in-depth look at Big Star’s second album and part of Continuum’s acclaimed 33 1/3 series. A writer and jazz concert producer, he lives near Buffalo, N.Y.

: Bruce Eaton is the author of the 33 1/3 book on Big Star's "Radio City." More Bruce Eaton

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The death of two pop powerhouses

Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford helped define American music -- and created the sound of strength

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford.

Topics:R.I.P.

In a strangely poetic bit of coincidence, the world lost two songwriting legends Monday, men whose tunes defined modern pop and whose collaborations have become classics.

In his lengthy partnership with composer Mike Stoller, lyricist Jerry Leiber helped invent the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll sound, penning the bluesy hits “Kansas City” and “Hound Dog.” The duo went on to write exuberant smashes like “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakety Yak” and “Love Potion #9,” among others, amassing a catalog of hits that’s still one of the recording industry’s most successful. Yet Leiber’s sound was far from brash. You can hear his style all over the achingly lovely “Stand By Me,” which he and Stoller co-wrote with Ben E. King; in the melancholy and determined collaboration “On Broadway”; and in the great Peggy Lee anthem to disillusionment, “Is That All There Is?” He and Stoller were also prolific producers, the masterminds behind the sweeping sounds of hits as diverse as the Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby” and Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.”

A Leiber and Stoller song may have a variety of melodic guises, but it’s Leiber’s intelligent, powerful writerly voice that distinguishes them. His songs don’t cower; they don’t mope. They shrug off the losers who ain’t never caught a rabbit, and the glitter that rubs right off your feet. They stand bare before you, defying you to accept the abundant riches of the singer’s love, in songs like “I’m a Woman” and “I Who Have Nothing.” In a musical landscape rife with knee-buckling heartbreak, a Leiber and Stoller song somehow always manages to stand supremely tall.

And that same kind of confidence can be heard in the majestic hits of Nick Ashford, who with his wife, Valerie Simpson, penned some of Motown’s most anthemic love songs. They were, most famously, a natural fit for the muscular vocals of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, bringing a world-rockingly spiritual element to romance in songs like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”

Maybe it was the strength of their own enduring marriage that inspired them. It certainly inspired their biggest hit as performers, the campy, sweet 1980s hit “Solid.” Maybe it was just a natural songwriting inclination and an ear for hits. Whatever the case, their music didn’t pussyfoot around the terrain of conflicted desire or jilted lovers. An Ashford and Simpson song is a song that knows goddamn well exactly where it stands emotionally, and considers no metaphor too grand to describe it. And when Gaye and Terrell swoon that “No other sound is quite the same as your name; no touch can do half as much,” their music can incite chills. These were the writers who insisted that “no wind, no rain, no winter’s cold can stop me,” who wrote that they didn’t just have love, but “determination.”

With Simpson, Nick Ashford created songs that had the melodic resonance of pop with a bold swagger that would permeate rap and hip-hop. You can hear it all over Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” a statement of exhilarating competence. “I ain’t bragging,” she sings, “but I’m the one,” delighting that she’s “got it got it got it.”

Both Leiber and Ashford’s songs retain contemporary relevance. You can hear bits of Leiber and Stoller’s “Stand By Me” in Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” and Ashford and Simpson’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry on Their Own.” One of the show-stopping moments of the current “American Idol” tour is Jacob Lusk’s soaring “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” It’s a testament to the enduring allure of their messages.

The canon is full of songwriting teams who knew how to conjure up a heavy heart. But few could speak eloquently about strength. And maybe because they so knew much about collaboration, both Leiber and Simpson helped make classics of songs about being unafraid, about standing by one another, standing by you “like a tree.” In music and in life, there’s pain in love. But as both men proved, with a prolific legacy for generations of listeners who can hear a tune on the radio and say, “That’s our song,” there’s stunning power in togetherness.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Winehouse family, friends attend singer’s funeral

Mark Ronson and Kelly Osbourne among mourners at the Jewish service held in London

By Jill Lawless, Associated Press

FILE - In this Oct. 25, 2007 file photo, British singer Amy Winehouse performs during her concert at the Volkshaus in Zurich, Switzerland. Winehouse was found dead Saturday, July 23, 2011, by ambulance crews who were called to her home in north London's Camden area. She was 27. (AP Photo/Keystone, Steffen Schmidt, File) (Credit: AP)

Topics:R.I.P., Amy Winehouse, Television

Friends and family said goodbye to Amy Winehouse Tuesday with prayers, tears, laughter and song at a funeral ceremony in London.

The singer’s father, mother and brother and close friends, along with band members and celebrities — including producer Mark Ronson and media personality Kelly Osbourne, her hair piled beehive-high in an echo of the singer’s trademark style — were among several hundred mourners attending the service at Edgwarebury Cemetery in north London.

Photographers and a few fans lined the lane outside.

The Jewish service was led by a rabbi and included prayers in English and Hebrew and reminiscences from Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse. The cab driver and jazz singer, who helped foster his daughter’s love of music, ended his eulogy with the words “Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much.”

It ended with a rendition of Carole King’s “So Far Away,” one of Winehouse’s favorite songs.

“Mitch was funny, he told some great stories from childhood about how headstrong she was, and clearly the family and friends recognized the stories and laughed along,” said family spokesman Chris Goodman.

“He stressed so many times she was happier now than she had ever been and he spoke about her boyfriend and paid tribute to a lot of people in her life.”

The service was being followed by cremation at London’s Golders Green Crematorium before the family begins Shiva, a Jewish traditional period of mourning.

The soul diva, who had battled alcohol and drug addiction, was found dead Saturday at her London home. She was 27.

An autopsy held Monday failed to determine the cause of the singer’s death. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests, which will take two to four weeks.

On Monday the singer’s father, mother and brother visited the house where she died, thanking mourners who had left flowers and cards.

Father Mitch Winehouse said “Amy was about one thing and that was love.”

“Her whole life was devoted to her family and her friends and to you guys as well,” he told fans.

Winehouse released only two albums in her short career — winning five Grammy awards for the second, “Back to Black” — and often made headlines because of drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, destructive relationships and abortive performances.

Since her death, her records have re-entered album charts around the world, and tributes have poured in from fans and fellow musicians.

George Michael called her “the most soulful vocalist this country has ever seen,” and soul singer Adele said she “paved the way for artists like me and made people excited about British music again.”

——–

Mesfin Fekadu in London contributed to this report.

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Creator of “Brady Bunch,” “Gilligan’s Island” dies

Sherwood Schwartz gave up a career in medical science to write for radio and TV

By Denise Petski, Associated Press

FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2008 file photo, Hall of Fame inductee Sherwood Schwartz, right, and actress Florence Henderson pose together at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences 2008 Hall of Fame Ceremony in Beverly Hills, Calif. Schwartz, who created "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch" died Tuesday, July 12, 2011. He was 94. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, file) (Credit: AP)

Topics:R.I.P., Television

Sherwood Schwartz, writer-creator of two of the best-remembered TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94.

Great niece Robin Randall said Schwartz died at 4 a.m. Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was being treated for an intestinal infection and underwent several surgeries. His wife, Mildred, and children had been at his side.

Sherwood Schwartz and his brother, Al, started as a writing team in TV’s famed 1950s “golden age,” said Douglas Schwartz, the late Al Schwartz’s son.

“They helped shape television in its early days,” Douglas Schwartz said. “Sherwood is an American classic, creating ‘Brady Bunch’ and ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ iconic shows that are still popular today. He continued to produce all the way up into his 90s.”

Sherwood Schwartz was working on a big-screen version of “Gilligan’s Island,” his nephew said. Douglas Schwartz, who created the hit series “Baywatch,” called his uncle a longtime mentor and caring “second father” who helped guide him successfully through show business.

Success was the hallmark of Sherwood Schwartz’s own career. Neither “Gilligan” nor “Brady” pleased the critics, but both managed to reverberate in viewers’ heads through the years as few such series did, lingering in the language and inspiring parodies, spinoffs and countless standup comedy jokes.

Schwartz had given up a career in medical science to write jokes for Bob Hope’s radio show. He went on to write for other radio and TV shows, including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

He dreamed up “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. It was a Robinson Crusoe story about seven disparate travelers who are marooned on a deserted Pacific Island after their small boat wrecks in a storm. The cast: Alan Hale Jr., as Skipper Jonas Grumby; Bob Denver, as his klutzy assistant Gilligan; Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, the rich snobs Thurston and Lovey Howell; Tina Louise, the bosomy movie star Ginger Grant; Russell Johnson, egghead science professor Roy Hinkley Jr.; and Dawn Wells, sweet-natured farm girl Mary Ann Summers.

Calling “Gilligan’s Island” a “family,” Tina Louise tweeted that “Sherwood Schwartz brought laughter and comfort to millions of people.” In her Twitter post she added, “He will be in our hearts forever.”

TV critics hooted at “Gilligan’s Island” as gag-ridden corn. Audiences adored its far-out comedy. Schwartz insisted that the show had social meaning along with the laughs: “I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications.”

He argued that his sitcoms didn’t rely on cheap laughs. “I think writers have become hypnotized by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character,” Schwartz said in a 2000 Associated Press interview.

“When you say the name Gilligan, you know who that is. If a show is good, if it’s written well, you should be able to erase the names of the characters saying the lines and still be able to know who said it. If you can’t do that, the show will fail.”

“Gilligan’s Island” lasted on CBS from 1964 to 1967, and it was revived in later seasons with three high-rated TV movies. A children’s cartoon, “The New Adventures of Gilligan,” appeared on ABC from 1974 to 1977, and in 2004, Schwartz had a hand in producing a TBS reality show called “The Real Gilligan’s Island.”

The name of the boat on “Gilligan’s Island” — the S.S. Minnow — was a bit of TV inside humor: It was named for Newton Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chief in the early 1960s had become famous for proclaiming television “a vast wasteland.”

Minow took the gibe in good humor, saying later that he had a friendly correspondence with Schwartz.

TV writers usually looked upon “The Brady Bunch” as a sugarcoated view of American family life.

The premise: a widow (Florence Henderson) with three daughters marries a widower (Robert Reed) with three sons. (Widowhood was a common plot point in TV series back then, since networks were leery of divorce.) During the 1970s when the nation was rocked by social turmoil, audiences seemed comforted by watching an attractive, well-scrubbed family engaged in trivial pursuits.

Schwartz claimed in 1995 that his creation had social significance because “it dealt with real emotional problems: the difficulty of being the middle girl; a boy being too short when he wants to be taller; going to the prom with zits on your face.”

The series lasted from 1969 to 1974, but it had an amazing afterlife. It was followed by three one-season spinoffs: “The Brady Bunch Hour” (1977), “The Brady Brides” (1981) and “The Bradys” (1990). “The Brady Bunch Movie,” with Shelley Long and Gary Cole as the parents, was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.

It was followed the next year by a less successful “A Very Brady Sequel.”

Sherwood Schwartz was born in 1916 in Passaic, N.J., and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His brother, already working for Hope, got him a job when Sherwood was still in college.

“Bob liked my jokes, used them on his show and got big laughs. Then he asked me to join his writing staff,” Schwartz said during an appearance in March 2008, when he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “I was faced with a major decision — writing comedy or starving to death while I cured those diseases. I made a quick career change.”

Besides his wife, Schwartz’s survivors include sons Donald, Lloyd and Ross Schwartz, and daughter Hope Juber.

——

Former Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas and AP Television Writer Lynn Elber contributed to this report.

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Former first lady Betty Ford dies at 93

The former first lady and co-founder of the Betty Ford Center passed away of unspecified causes

By Mike Householder, Associated Press

Topics:R.I.P.

A family friend says former first lady Betty Ford has died at age 93.

Marty Allen says Ford, whose battles with cancer and substance abuse inspired millions to seek treatment, died Friday. Allen did not say how Betty Ford died. He says he expects the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library to release additional information.

Her husband, Gerald, died in December 2006.

The couple married in 1948, the same year he was elected to Congress. She was thrust into the spotlight in 1974 when he became president after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks later and won acclaim for her openness and courage.

Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976. Mrs. Ford later was treated for drug and alcohol addiction and then helped found the Betty Ford Center to help others.

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Celebrated American painter Cy Twombly passes away

The groundbreaking artist was 83

By Associated Press

Topics:R.I.P.

Celebrated American painter Cy Twombly, whose large-scale paintings featuring scribbles, graffiti and unusual materials fetched millions at auction, has died. He was 83.

Gagosian Gallery spokeswoman Virginia Coleman said Twombly, who had cancer for a number of years, died Tuesday. Eric Mezil, director of the Lambert Collection in Avignon, France, where a Twombly show opened in June, said he died in Rome.

Twombly is known for his abstract works combining painting and drawing techniques, repetitive lines and the use of graffiti, letters and words.

In 2010, he painted a ceiling of the Louvre museum, the first artist given the honor since Georges Braque in the 1950s.