In mid-1975, Alex Chilton was down on his luck—way down. No record label was interested in issuing the third Big Star LP, so the album was shelved, and the band broke up. He was struggling financially, as Big Star had failed to make an impact on the charts, and it had been years since the pop success of his first band, the Box Tops. Drugs and alcohol weren’t helping matters, either. All the while, Chilton was still writing great songs, and he was looking for a new record deal, as his contract with Ardent Records was about to expire. A demo tape documenting this era made at Ardent with Chris Bell, his former bandmate and songwriting collaborator in Big Star, is about to be put out—and Dangerous Minds has the premiere of one of the tunes.
Due to a variety of factors—including musical and personal conflicts in and around the band—Chris Bell left Big Star in late 1972, but in 1975, while in Europe looking to kickstart his solo career, he told music journalists he was open to the idea of a Big Star reunion. When Bell returned to the States, he got in touch with Chilton, and soon Alex was at Ardent Studios, singing a lovely harmony vocal on Chris’s gorgeous, tender ballad, “You and Your Sister.” Ultimately, a Big Star reunion didn’t happen, and it’s been thought that the session for “You and Your Sister” marked the final time Chilton and Bell worked together in the studio, but the recent unearthing of the Chilton demo has essentially changed history.
The original Big Star (L-R): Andy Hummel, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, and Jody Stephens.
The 1975 demo engineered by Chris Bell at Ardent was discovered on a tape reel labeled simply “Alex Chilton.” The recordings, which exhibit Alex at the beginning of his charmingly ramshackle period, are of Chilton solo, just his voice and instrumentation. For the session, he tracked early versions of “My Rival” and “All of the Time,” as well as the rarity “Windows Hotel,” and “She Might Look My Way,” which was co-written by Tommy Hoehn and included on Hoehn’s 1978 LP, though a studio version hasn’t been included on an official Chilton release before. The demo has two stabs at the song, and on the second, Bell layers AC’s vocals to fine effect, contributing to the sweetness of the tune.
As off-kilter as these songs sound at times, Chilton’s melodic gifts can’t be obscured—in fact, the combination of chaos and songcraft is precisely what makes this material so appealing.
The recently discovered Chilton demo is about to be issued by Omnivore Recordings as My Rival, a 10-inch EP that arrives on November 29th—Record Store Day. A digital edition will be released on December 6th. The set contains liner notes penned by Rich Tupica, author of the essential 2018 book, There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of Big Star.
Here’s the premiere of “My Rival” from the EP:
It’s possible that Chris Bell, realizing that he and Alex Chilton were in very different places musically in 1975, never even brought up the idea of Big Star reunion with Chilton, though Alex later said if Chris had, he wouldn’t have been interested. Tragically, Bell died in a car accident in late 1978, leaving the ‘75 Chilton demo session as their final team-up. In the spring of 1993, Alex reunited with drummer Jody Stephens for a Big Star gig, with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies filling out the lineup. The unit continued to play on and off until Chilton’s sudden death in 2010.
We’ll bid you adieu with video of Alex Chilton and Sid Selvidge playing “My Rival,” circa 1975:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Downs’: A stoned and chaotic unreleased Alex Chilton track from new Big Star box, ‘Complete Third’
What’s Your Sign?: Big Star’s Alex Chilton and his obsession with astrology
The Baker Street Regulars: Obscure ‘70s band that featured former members of Big Star