Alex Chilton, who passed away yesterday at age 59, was a Memphis Man with pure power pop instincts. He came on to the scene as a teen with the Box Tops and served up several delicious slices of AM Gold, most famously with "The Letter" and my personal favorite, the electric sitar-heavy"Cry Like A Baby."
His next band, Big Star, is perhaps the greatest cult group of all time, with the greatest inverse ratio of album sales to influence. Even the Velvet Underground can't touch them in this regard. R.E.M. and The Replacements, to name two of many great bands, are unimaginable without Big Star's marriage of pop and classic song stylings.
It should also be noted that Alex Chilton possessed one of the coolest-sounding names in rock history - to say you worship Alex Chilton sounds much more street-cred than to say one worshipped, for example, Pete Ham of Badfinger. Mr. Chilton and Big Star were slated to play a high-profile reunion show at the SXSW festival this weekend. They will be missed. But something tells me his influence and posthumous appreciation will only grow in the coming years, until children by the millions scream for Alex Chilton:
"I'm in love/What's that song?/I'm in love/With that song."
R.I.P. and TCB Mr. Chilton.
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