The Daily Swarm

Where are you coming from?
I was at the chiropractor. I got a little sore rehearsing for our upcoming show. We’re playing Hyde Park in London on July 1st. The Serpentine Sessions “hired” the park, as they say there. Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen are headlining. There’s a secondary stage with Big Star and the Tindersticks.

Were you practicing with the band?
No, the band will practice at sound check—just to add a little drama. I was rehearsing to a bootleg of our Chicago show. I just put in some ear buds and protectors and play along with the set.

You’re still playing with John Auer and Ken Stringfellow from the Posies?
At this point they’ve been a part of Big Star longer than the original band – since April 1993.

Didn’t Gary Gersh have a hand in bringing you all together?
My job at Ardent Studios was to help start a production company and develop artists and I worked with a lot of labels. Gary gave me a Posies single with “Feel” and “I Am The Cosmos.” I was going to CMJ and the Posies were playing and John and Ken were doing an acoustic set and I met them. When it came time for a Big Star show in 1993 we called John Auer not realizing Ken also played bass. It worked out amazingly well. They’re really talented guys.

Why are you putting out a reissue of Big Star’s #1 Record/Radio City after so many reissues?
It dovetails nicely with the box set [Keep An Eye on the Sky (Rhino)] coming out in September and we’re playing the London show. We added a couple of tracks. It helps establish our music with another generation, which allows us to keep doing gigs and grow our audience.

WATCH: AMAZING FOOTAGE OF #1 RECORD BEING RECORDED HERE:

The bonus tracks, remixes of “In The Street” and “Oh My Soul,” are incredibly different. Are those different takes or overdubs? Hardcore fans might consider them a bit sacrilege like those post-Beatles songs.
It’s the same takes but re-mastering can brings out different elements. I actually haven’t heard the reissue, but the mastering process can change things in extreme ways. I felt the same way about some of the Beatles’ remixes.

Is it true that Andy Hummel asked you to join Big Star after he saw you in a production of Hair at Memphis State?
Yeah, I was still a senior in high school — in February or March of 1970. I was in a band with my brother Jimmy and we all auditioned. Our singer auditioned for the role of Berger. I was 17 and didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance. Andy came up on stage during “Let the Sunshine In” that’s when we reconnected. I knew him in 7th grade.

Did you get caught trying to sneak into a Beatles show?
Yeah. It was August 16, 1966. My brother had a gig that night and we had Beatles tickets to the matinee. In those days they played matinee and evening shows, so we went to exchange our tickets, which they let us do. But then we tried to sneak back to the dock area, which we did for the Rolling Stones and got to watch them get out of their cars. But there was a lot more security because of the controversy with John Lennon saying they we’re “more popular than Jesus.” People took it way out of context. So there was all this extra security and my brother got caught and turned me in because the police had guns and he was worried the dogs would tear me up. I was 13 and they bullied us like we were snipers or something. I later heard a bootleg of the show where a cherry bomb goes off — it must have scared John Lennon.

Led Zeppelin recorded Zeppelin III at Ardent before the sessions for #1 Record began. Did you get to meet them?
No I didn’t. My recollection is that they would play a couple of dates and then use Memphis as the hub. I came close to asking John Paul Jones about it at a festival in Norway we played. I walked right by him but I was in a hurry to get to a shuttle van. I trailed him another time but he walked into a tent before I could get to him.

It’s interesting growing up in Memphis with Stax and R&B, yet Big Star were heavily influenced by the British Invasion.
It’s a pretty amazing heritage but we were also influenced by Stax. What got me into music was the Beatles, then the Rolling Stones, and then all the British Invasion bands. But then Stax came along Sam & Dave, Carla and Rufus, Bar-Kays and it was another great awakening – you just hear that stuff and your body responds. The music was being created in Memphis, but it might have been Liverpool. I didn’t have a car and hitchhiked a bunch, so I didn’t get to see a lot of Stax acts. Some of those bands would play high school dances – like the Bar-Kays and others.

Was Big Star really named after a grocery chain across from Ardent?
I have some recollection of Chris talking about it, stepping outside and coming up with the band name. There was Big Star the grocery store and that became our name. I’m not sure what the intent was, at the time it seemed pretty pretentious. Our first record was called #1 Record, which was a reference to the chart position.

Didn’t Fred Smith, who founded Federal Express, help start Ardent?
It was John Fry, Fred and John Keene who originally tried to start a radio station from John Fry’s garage. John Fry figured out the equipment could be used for recording. So with the addition of tape machines he started recording bands.

Did Ardent have and Big Star use the first Moog synthesizer and the first Mellotron in the U.S.? Wasn’t the Moog previously used by George Harrison?
I heard that story, not sure it was a Moog, might have been an Arp. That Arp appears on The Staple Singers “Respect Yourself.” Ardent bought a Mellotron, but we felt like we had to be secretive about it because we thought we might receive complaints from the musicians union who thought it would replace string sections. It doesn’t really though, it has its own sound. We used it on “India Song,” “Give Me Another Chance,” “O My Soul,” and some other songs. Andy probably played it, but on Radio City it would have been Alex.

Big Star was originally a trio for nine months before Chris asked Alex to join. Why did he want him in the band?
I’m not sure of the conscious decision. Ice House [from which Big Star was born] went to NYC. We stayed at the Chelsea Hotel – that was bizarre. I was 17 or 18 and it was my first trip to New York. Chris stayed with Alex. We went to a couple of labels and played music for them, but we didn’t have any success. We must have come back with the thought. I think Chris and Alex formulated the plan. Around that time Alex came to see us play at the VFW Hall in downtown Memphis and then we were a band…and now here we are 38 years later.

I read that after Alex Chilton left the Box Tops he spent time in L.A. around 1969 living with Dennis Wilson and supposedly moved back home when Charles Manson and the girls moved into Dennis’ house?
He never really talked about that. I think there was some encounter with Charles Manson, but I don’t really remember the details.

Your drum rolls and fills on songs like “Back of a Car” or “Ballad of El Goodo” make for some of the best air-drumming of all time. What are some of your favorites?
There’s a break in “When my Baby’s Beside Me,” a fill that’s pretty simple. I was only 17 or 18, but I’m pretty proud of that. The fill in “Life is Right,” this interaction between snare, tom and bass drum I was pretty proud of. In “Ballad of El Goodo,” the final chorus where it jumps and I play a roll through the anticipated beat. There’s some rolls in “Back of a Car,” which I make a point to do live. If I’m going to see a band, I really like them to play their songs as close as possible but it’s also good to be surprised from time to time.

How did you develop your drum style with the long rolls and fills?
It’s just the way I like to play. I tend to play off the rhythm guitar and the vocals, that’s the primary spark that influences my playing. I try to add color or life to it – it’s beyond just keeping a beat.

What do you think of Cheap Trick’s version of “In the Street” for the opening of “That ‘70s Show?”
Cheap Trick’s version is killer, it’s a great version. And it’s cool that it’s Cheap Trick doing it. I’m a Cheap Trick fan. I saw them perform it at Roseland in New York and it was incredible – great show. Back stage after the show, there’s Ken Stringfellow, Mike Mills, and Chris Robinson. Chris has been really incredible about our music. It’s because of musicians like him that we have an audience.

Chris Bell was something of a producer and legend has it something of a perfectionist sort of like Brian Wilson. Was he working on #1 Record at all hours of the night? Would you come in and find he had recorded new parts?
That’s probably the case. I was pretty young and wasn’t involved in laying down all the tracks. We did have that freedom at Ardent. John Fry was the engineer, but Chris would come in and engineer a thing or two himself. It was all magic going down. I would put my drumsticks down, walk in to the control room and listen to the playback in wonderment. Whatever sonic element John Fry would add and the placement, when it got mixed…I was really proud of that record, still am.

John Fry was like Big Star’s George Martin
His mixes were brilliant. Those mixes are as creative as anything the band played and he was brilliant at putting together our sound.

#1 Record originally sold only 4,000 copies, was that due in part because Stax didn’t know how to market a rock record?
Not quite sure how the chronology of how all that worked. I was recently reminded that Al Bell had negotiated a deal with Columbia’s Clive Davis, who left shortly after that. And when someone new steps in anything can happen. I don’t know if interest diminished because of that. Stax had a different kind of music, with different distribution channels and I would assume different publications addressing that – although, back then Otis Redding would be played next to the Beatles and the Supremes who would follow a Kinks song. It could have been Stax, this was a new area of music for them.

What was Al Bell’s involvement?
It was Al Bell’s intent to make Ardent Stax’s rock label – but the idea just didn’t work. John King who ran marketing and publicity was great at getting our music into the right journalists hands We developed an audience of music journalists’ — that’s where the slow word of mouth started. Musicians and journalists would write the nicest things about us. Other great bands being written about would be compared to Big Star. And then people would go out search for our records. To some extent our legend might be bigger than our commercial success, especially now with file sharing.

(Al Bell, John Fry and Jody Stephens)

How much of his heart and soul did Chris Bell pour into making #1 Record?
Chris was very thoughtful and focused on that record. He spent a lot of time on the harmony parts and the guitar sounds even on the way the guitars interacted. I think he even wanted one guitar to be a solid body and the other to be hollow body. They spent a lot of time nailing guitar parts and vocals.

There have been a lot of theories as to why Chris left after #1 Record from disappointing sales to the focus on Alex to a tension between him and Alex. What’s your take?
I don’t remember tension between Alex and Chris. I mean there was a normal creative tension that happens with any group of people who spend all their together in a creative pursuit. I just don’t remember anything between Chris and Alex. Chris did put a lot into that first record and the press did spotlight Alex because he had been in the Box Tops and journalists thought the public would make a better connection to the band. Chris was disappointed and wanted to get out from under that.

Was it devastating when he left?
I thought so. But Big Star as a band never really hung out together. We would get together and play record and then go out and do different pursuits. I had a girl friend, had a job waiting tables to make money and was taking some college classes. So after the first album we did a few gigs, but there wasn’t that day to day of being together. Big Star was always a delight, I just never though it would last very long. I was grateful for whatever we could do.

On a SXSW Big Star panel it was reported that Chris Bell went to Ardent to destroy the master tapes for #1 Record and that Terry Manning the engineer hid the masters and took them with him.
I heard that story too, but I’m not sure it’s true, but I have to confirm that with John Fry. We have those multi-tracks here and are working with them on this box set, so if they actually existed they would be here.

What led to you singing “Way Out West” on Radio City?
Andy wrote the song and didn’t want to sing it. I think it falls under the heading of “give the drummer some.” I heard Alex say that on stage – maybe not about that song – just “give the drummer some.”

The drumming on “Back of a Car” is amazing– how did you play all those fills and staggered beats?
I was just looking to do something to add a little character – not unlike what Chris would do to get something other than a mundane guitar line or sound. I try to play melodically.

Big Star didn’t play that many live gigs, but didn’t you play with Archie Bell and the Drells, Badfinger, and Carl Douglas (“Kung Fu Fighting”)?
I don’t think we played with Carl Douglas. We played with Archie. You can hear some of that on the box set. It was at the Lafayette Music Hall. We finish a song and you can hear one person clap – not our audience at all. We opened for Badfinger in Boston and had our equipment stolen. Someone stole our van but they unhooked the trailer that had all my drums. We borrowed equipment from the Sidewinders that included Andy Paley and Billy Squire. I heard a bootleg of the show, it’s not so bad.

What’s coming up?
The box set comes out in September and hopefully there will be a tour. The box set will have a lot of new stuff, or stuff I perceive as being new – versions of songs Alex, Andy and I did like “There Was a Light,” a song that wound up on Chris Bell’s record that Alex and I sing. A three-piece demo version of “Back of a Car” – some pretty cool stuff that will give insight into the band’s evolution.

Is there any pre-Big Star material?
I think “My Life Is Right” which we did prior to Alex joining as is “Try Again,” I think Alex may have come in and added to it. I’ve seen the list of songs and I’m looking forward to getting it and having a long listen.