Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ‘round’

                        
A faithful reader, seeking to share her memories of having been following my work for the last 20 years, has kindly -- if unintentionally -- given me a great gift; that is, a place to start this week’s message. As it turns out, she sometimes is turned off by the music references I use and, in that regard, she is hardly on an uninhabited island. Many, many times I’ve heard from readers sharing the same sentiment. And I get it. Completely. The music that moves me isn’t necessarily the music that moves you. This is as it should be. But when I write about the Stones or the Turtles or the Cowsills or the Black Crowes or the Temptations -- not to mention Mick Ronson or Mick Taylor or any other Mick you care to remember -- it’s not to be proprietary. It’s to share. And that’s what my correspondent -- who shared her thoughts with a pen in her hand and a stamp at the ready -- did. She shared, too. Turns out, her favorite artists are Perry Como and Dean Martin. I think that’s very cool. Now, are they among my Top 10 performers of all time? No. But they are to my faithful reader and the fact that she took the time to let me know what singers made her life better has made me smile. Perhaps she knows that Perry Como passed away on May 12, 2001, and that Deano met his maker on Christmas Day, 1995. That wouldn’t surprise me. It’s what fans do. They remember. And that’s important. It’s at the heart of everything that makes a four-minute song something you will take to your own grave. Alex Chilton died on St. Patrick’s Day. He was 59. And I will miss him. I will never know how it feels to be as talented, as gifted and yes, as cursed as Alex Chilton, but I’m hardly alone in that regard. Most of us won’t ever know that sense of exhilaration he felt after writing a song like “13” or “September Gurls” or “The Ballad of El Goodo” ... and maybe that’s for the best. After all, genius like that would smash a lesser mortal’s mind. Were there any justice in this world, Alex Chilton’s name would be among those that music lovers listed when it was time to call the roll of the best songwriters who’ve ever lived. Certainly the argument could be made. Now, before you get all weird and say something like, “Hey, what about the Beatles?” or “I never heard of this guy!” -- let me set you straight. Alex wasn’t Lennon and/or McCartney, though there are those who will tell you, with a straight face, that he got as close as anyone to reaching that height. But his timing was worse than his luck, which is saying something. The reason you might never have heard of him is that the record company never understood that there was a significant audience just waiting for the kind of music Alex and his band, Big Star, was creating in the early 1970s. At that time, the Beatles were gone and in their wake was a chasm. Nature, which abhors a vacuum, filled the space with all manner of musical elements, including Ohio’s own Raspberries who, as you might recall, enjoyed a pretty substantial string of hit singles, bookended by “Go All the Way” and “Overnight Sensation.” Now, I liked the Raspberries, even bought Eric Carmen’s first solo LP, which I thought was harmless and full of infectious hooks. But through all that time, Big Star was making music that was so much better suited to my sensibilities ... but they were never able to get on the airwaves. I was a high school kid then, a long-haired know-it-all who believed that if a band’s music was on AM, it meant they were rich, but if they got it across on the FM dial, they were important. Big Star couldn’t find a way to storm either bastion and, at least in my experience, that makes them rather unique and more than a little neglected. Alex Chilton was 16 years old when he paved the way for a group called the Box Tops to Top 40 immortality with amazing singles like “The Letter,” which many listeners can still recall by the way he sang, “Give me a ticket for an aeroplane.” That smash was soon followed by “Cry Like a Baby” and, the one that meant the most to me, “Soul Deep.” Alex Chilton was in high school when he made it. I was four years younger. I’m 55 now and he’s gone. He was soulful, smart and cynical enough to realize that when the Opportunity Train passed through the station and he could hear the whistle as it vanished around the corner, that there were better things than to be the next big thing. Big Star made great, lasting, important records. Three of them. I advise you to do all you can to enjoy the music that Alex and his bandmates have left behind. My wife and I were lucky enough to see a concert that featured the Goo Goo Dolls and the Replacements, back in the late ‘80s. The Replacements -- another group that has never been as universally accepted as it ought to have been -- were led by an Alex Chilton admirer named Paul Westerberg, who wrote a song that includes the following words: “I’m in love ... with that song. I’m in love ... what’s that song?” No one can tell you, faithful readers, what music should matter to you. It’s inappropriate and, worst of all, arrogant. My Lou Reed is your Nat King Cole. Your Billie Holiday is my Bob Marley. My Dusty Springfield is your Taylor Swift. Your Dean Martin is my Bob Dylan. My Alex Chilton is your Perry Como. Big Stars ... all. And, as the song says, Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round. Mike Dewey can be e-mailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.


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