CULT HEROES: Even if you have never heard of Alex Chilton and his band Big Star, you have heard the sound he helped create in countless others. Teenage Fanclub, The Posies and The Replacements all borrowed heavily from Big Star's style and all sold a lot more records than Chilton ever did.
Not that it is an unacknowledged debt. Teenage Fanclub have recorded with him. Two of The Posies play as part of the re-formed, touring-only Big Star and The Replacements wrote a song called Alex Chilton.
Ironically, it all started hugely well for the Memphis, Tennessee, boy. He was barely 17 years old when, as singer for The Box Tops, he recorded The Letter, one of the biggest world-wide hits of 1967.
More hits followed, but record company problems arose when Chilton decided to handle his own career and play his own music. The Box Tops were dead, Big Star (named for a local supermarket chain - if they were Irish they would have been Big Spar) were born.
The first Big Star album, No 1 Record, was released 1971. Featuring the proto-power-pop of Don't Lie To Me and When My Baby's Beside Me, together with Thirteen - probably the greatest paean to teenage love ever written - and the achingly beautiful Watch The Sunrise, it was a stunning calling card. Chilton's voice, which had been very gruff as a teenager with The Box Tops, bizarrely softened with age.
Internal tensions led to the departure of the band's co-founder and co-songwriter, Chris Bell, in December 1972. Tragically, he was to die in a car crash in 1979, having left music, taken a job in his father's restaurant and suffered from depression.
The band continued though, and their second album, Radio City, saw them move onto a heavier, though still very poppy, sound. September Gurls is one of the greatest ever rock songs and was eventually to provide Chilton with his biggest payday when The Bangles covered it to great success in the mid-1980s. The last track on the album, I'm In Love With A Girl, harked back to the sound of the previous record, managing, as it brilliantly does, to break your heart in 106 seconds. They weren't selling well though and the third album, the haunting, mordantly beautiful Sister Lovers, was canned by the label. Recorded pretty much solo by Chilton, it eventually saw light of day in 1978, but didn't sell either.
Like Bell, Chilton became a dish-washer for a while and also worked as a lumberjack.
The Bangles paycheque and name checks from the likes of REM were, thankfully, soon to save Chilton from a life of drudgery and a new generation were able to discover his pop genius.