Interview

Keep An Eye on the Sky (Rhino, 2009), a four CD, 98 track retrospective collects dozens of unreleased demos, mixes and alternate versions from Big Star's relatively short recording career at Memphis's Ardent Studios.  Beginning with pre-Big Star tracks like "All I See is You" and "The Preacher", Keep An Eye chronicles the psychedelic ballads that guitaris Chris Bell would pen before beginning his collaboration with vocalist Alex Chilton.  A jangle-pop masterpiece inspired by Bell's love of British pop, Big Star's first album, #1 Record, was released in 1972 to disappointing commercial results, though its critical success was never in question.  Contained on the disc are alternate mixes of gems like "Thirteen," "When My Baby's Beside Me," along with the mysterious "Country Morn".  The second disc focuses on the R&B-heavy sequel Radio City, including three important unreleased demos "There Was A Light," "What's Going Ahn," and "Life Is White," recorded by the new three-piece minus Bell.  With the failure of #1 Record, Bell began working on his own solo project (later titled I Am The Cosmos) which he would continue refining until his premature death in 1978.  For those who have not explored Bell's brilliant but limited solo output, tracks like "You and Your Sister", and "I Am the Cosmos", also included on the disc, confirm that Bell was every bit Chilton's equal as a true pop tunesmith.  

The third disc centers on Chilton and drummer Jody Stephen's extraordinary requiem to Big Star, alternatively titled Third and Sister Lovers.  Among the treasures are "Lovely Day,"–an early version of what would become "Stroke It Noel"–and Chilton dueting with photographer William Eggleston on Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy". The final disc contains highlights from a 1973 show at Memphis' Lafayette's Music Room with covers of T. Rex's "Baby Strange", Todd Rundgren's "Slut" and The Kinks' "Come On Now", all of which would become setlist regulars after the band reformed in the 1990s.

With the help of Southern raconteur Jim Dickinson and Anglo enthusiast/eccentric Terry Manning, Ardent Studios owner John Fry supervised much of the early production and engineering work found in the collection. He  Fry also provided a rehearsal space for the nascent group. While Bell had been working in groups like The Jynx, Christmas Future, Rock City and Icewater, local musician Alex Chilton, then struggling to liberate himself from the Top 40 albatross that was the Box Tops, was traveling between New York's West Village folk circuit and the bourgeoning Memphis Midtown scene.  Fate would intervene and the two songwriters would eventually meet at Ardent to form Big Star.

I recently contacted Fry and asked him about Big Star's humble beginnings and his memories of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell.

ERIK MORSE: Will you give me some background on these pre-Big Star bands, like Icewater and Rock City?  How exactly do they figure in to the first official recordings of what became #1 Record?

JOHN FRY:  Basically, there was a band called Icewater that preceded Rock City.  Rock City was a tourist attraction somewhere in the middle of Tennessee.  And you could up on this mountain and see seven states on a clear day.  There were road signs all over the south that said, "See Rock City."  Rock City wasn't really a band that went out and played but Icewater did go out.  And that was [drummer] Steve Rhea, Andy Hummel and Chris [Bell].  And they made a bunch of tapes and they actually went up to New York to shop them.  To A&R people.  And while they were in New York, Alex [Chilton] was living up there at the time.  He'd moved to New York and lived up there probably about a year and a half.  And so Steve and Chris and Andy decided they would go and visit Alex.  And that's when they talked to Alex about coming back to Memphis and forming the band that would become Big Star. 

EM: Do you remember how you first met Chris Bell?

JF: Well at first I didn't know any of those guys very much.  They would just start to turn up.  My first conscious memory of Chris Bell was this kid that was sitting in my chair with his feet up on my desk, smoking a cigarette.  And I thought,"Well this is cheeky."  

EM: Speaking of Chris specifically, what were his strongest musical interests in the studio?  What exactly did he bring to Big Star and what was his role in #1 Record?

JF: Chris was certainly the most interested in the mechanics of the music, the technical side of it.  I would show him what I could.  For the first record typically they would get two or three songs together and they set up in the studio as a four-piece band and they'd all get out there and play.  And we'd record some basic tracks.  And unless there was a problem or something special, they would usually do all of their own overdubs.  Vocals or guitars or mellotron or whatever.  And Chris was pretty intent on getting it right.  There was something that he was hearing in his head and he would kind of push you until he started hearing what was in his brain.  

EM: How would you describe Alex and Chris' relationship outside of the working environment?  Were they close friends away from the studio?  Alex lived in the city whereas Chris lived out in the suburbs with his parents, right?

JF: Outside of the studio they were together some.  But you got to remember Alex lived in Midtown in his parent's house.  And Chris lived in Germantown at his parent's house.  And back then Germantown seemed like it was out in the country.  So there was a group of them–Chris, Andy, Linda Schaeffer [Andy's girlfriend], Alex–that hung out together occasionally but the geography of that probably made that less frequent.

EM: After the release of Big Star's second album, Radio City, failed commercially and the band-members essentially went their own way, how exactly did Alex's Third/Sister Lovers even come to pass?

JF: Alex came to see and said, "If we're going to do this album, I want to get a producer.  I don't want to self-produce.  I want Jim Dickinson."  So I called up Jim and asked him if he wanted to do it and he said "Yeah, yeah, I want to do it."  And I always joke about it that it was probably the worst decision he ever made.  In terms of finances, for all the work he did, he probably earned 10 cents an hour.  

EM: I think there's a very interesting, and insidious, connection between Alex's musical output during Third/Sister Lovers and Chris' post-Big Star recordings, I Am the Cosmos.  Do you see a comparison, either methodologically or thematically?

JF: I don't remember hearing much of Chris' material–when he was still alive–other than "You and Your Sister".  It was funny, it was like there was no prearrangement.  Chris showed up at the studio one day and said, "I've got this song.  You've got some time to mix it?"  And I said "Sure, won't be a problem."  It was a simple song in a lot of ways but the string arrangements were beautiful and I really liked the song.  But it was kind of like one of those things that appeared without warning and then it was done and he went away.  All of Chris' material had the usual frustrations in terms of parallels with Alex's material, although Chris' material was much more conventional than a lot of the things that were on Big Star's Third.  Chris would write a letter while he was in England saying, "So-and-so seems interested in the recordings" and then nothing would come of it.  And Big Star's Third was more pronounced in that regard because we made this organized presentation.  We marched around to all the big record companies and talked to all the A&R people.  And we'd say "Are you interested?"  They'd listen to it and look at us like we were madmen.  And we wondered if they would call security and have us escorted out!