The three CD examination and exhumation of the sessions which became Big Star's Third album, also known as Sister Lover's and at the time (possibly) intended to be called Beale Street Green, both enhances the music's intrinsic value and enables a more varied and deeper understanding of this stone classic. Intended originally as an Alex Chilton solo project 3rd is popularly seen as his paean to breakdown and dissolution, reflecting substance use and emotional chaos. That 3rd is such a superb record indicates, consensus tells us, that only a supremely talented and driven artist could wrench such quality from such disorganisation and disintegration. This is similar to the stance taken about Tonight's The Night, Exile On Main Street and Pink Moon, amongst others. This set provides evidence to support the view that, as suggested in Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis, for instance, that the sessions at times were bacchanalian and loose; I would contend that it is not at all paradoxical that the set also underlines the application and aforethought Mr Chilton and his collaborators put into their performances.
One of the knee-jerk tenets of rock criticism is that there is nothing as glorious as a wasted talent, whether that is wasted as in squandered or wasted as in dissipated and prone. Received wisdom is that we can apply both categories in parallel to Mr Chilton and there are recordings and anecdotes that can be cited. Take a listen to the November 1978 bootleg of Alex' appearance on KUT radio for an instance of this. I have yet to read the Chilton biography, which I'm sure would round this piece out nicely, but its appropriation of the later album's title A Man Called Destruction neatly sums up a prevailing view which is very much only part of the picture.
The set begins with a dozen or so acoustic demos - guitar and piano- which immediately undercuts the seductive myth of narcotic 3a.m. ennui. The majority of the songs which form the album's protean core are previewed as tight and focussed 2 or 3 minute sketches of acoustic perspicacity, melodic and glowing, much like side two of No 1 Record. There is a darker undertow to some of the songs - the piano demo of Holocaust is a fully-formed shiver, and Number 37 should be advised not to take a look at the demo of Femme Fatale - but most find Mr Chilton a mischievous choirboy, a sweet angel of discord hymning songs of lovelorn melancholy. If the sessions had ended at that point there was a great album that could have been compiled merely from the demo's and the performances of them, which as countless expanded editions of great albums have shown us is often, perhaps seldom, the case.
The set then runs through more filled out takes with Ardent's John Fry and some rough mixes with Jim Dickinson which do indeed echo with after hours excess, piano's tumbling downstairs, impromptu midnight choirs, guitar solos skidding off-piste. Alex's girl at the time, Lesa Aldredge, sings some cuts - The Velvets After Hours among them. The cousin of photographer William Eggleston and the subject of his famous pre-Raphaelite photograph, used on the cover of Lesa's Barbarian Women In Rock single. Lesa's untutored vocals will have appealed to Alex, though as their relationship deteriorated he is said to have erased some of them. If 3rd had become the double album that Jim Dickinson indicates had been considered the Lesa vocals and numerous covers would complement the core of Chilton compositions on which the records reputation largely stands. It is a considerable achievement that of the 70 cuts on the set there is nothing that is not enjoyable and eminently listenable. (For all its thoroughness, one listens to, let's say, The Pet Sounds Box with a different agenda).
Very little on the finished album is unstructured or unfinished, and some is as finely and innovatively arranged as on the two preceding Big Star albums. Thank You Friends has an upbeat, classic Big Star setting which counterpoints Alex's irony. The sparse apocalyptic setting of Holocaust is unerringly apt. Jody Stephens, the only other original band member involved, said, " He was going through a pretty dark period in his life. And I think he did a brilliant job of reflecting that on that album." I think Mr Stephens is accurate in supporting the view that be it Beatlesy pop or doomy ballads, the takes and the production choices serve the songs and their subject matter; to see the album as lost or the sessions as inchoate is to under-appreciate the craft and ability on display. Jim Dickinson said, " It's like a stage show. The musicians see one thing and the audience something else. I think Sister/Lovers is very definitely a case of that. I think that what is perceived is way different from what was conceived."
It has become commonplace to apportion to Mr Chilton a contrarian streak as wide as the Mississippi. He followed his muse with little attention to career afterwards, veering from label to label, tour deal to tour deal, often subsisting, sometimes going below that level. He had, of course, had success as the 16 year old vocalist with the Boxtops (and toured regularly with the Beach Boys, hence the inclusion here of Don't Worry Baby); the underbelly of the music business held no allure. 3rd is comparatively tight when considered against the follow up, also helmed by Jim Dickinson, Like Flies on Sherbert, which is the apotheosis of Chilton's primitive, Back to Basics style, also seen on The Singer Not The song EP, and his production work for The Cramps and Panther Burns. All these records are also towering achievements, with a continuing appeal to garage aficionados and all open eared cognoscenti. His subsequent work, sometimes skimmed over, showed a fealty to a certain R and B ideal and reverence for a finely honed song. It is said that Mr Chilton saw himself more in the mode of Chet Baker, covering classic songs, rather than the singer-songwriter-performer that is the common expectation of the modern music market. Nonetheless the No Sex Ep , High Priest, Black Market all have superb originals alongside covers. Even the Clichés LP, ten acoustic covers of classic songs, evidences a care and focus that is to be found throughout his career. We can see that attention to detail and quality in the six versions of Big Black Car on the set, a contender for the emotional heart of the album, a sleepwalking drive at below the minimum speed limit and as good a song about detachment as ever written.
My key exposure to the album, the 12 track Aura LP version released in 1978, did not include Big Black Car, though I bought the single of Jesus Christ of which it was the flipside (in all senses of the term). Much of the debate about "What should the Running Order be?" is not answered by the set, and not attempted. The question is as much a part of its mystique as that attached to the running order of Smile . Every reissue (apparently there have been ten) have scooped up additional cover versions, and now with 70 tracks to consider, 3rd becomes almost an analogue of Naked Lunch, where one is invited to dig in at random or favourite points to consider what one finds on the end of ones fork. I shall conclude with an attempt to suggest a track listing for an idealised 3rd/Sister-Lovers. I have stuck to the suggested 7 tracks per side of the original Ardent test pressing, which the third cd here also does, though have altered the choices and order. I've dropped Jesus Christ-always a bit Greg Lake for me- and all the covers bar Femme Fatale, which is part of the emotional undertow alongside Kangaroo and others. There is no place for the cover of Nature Boy, not added until the 1992 CD reissue, even though it is a marvelous song and performance, and its depiction of a strange, enchanted boy surely applies as much to Alex as the songs author Eden Ahbez. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn, Is just to love and be loved in return" may be the refrain which sums up the romantic yearning under Alex's songs on 3rd, but it is entirely in justifiable that this key song should be absent. Big Star's 3rd remains a work of Genius with a part of it forever unknowable.
Side One: Stroke It Noel, Downs, Holocaust, Femme Fatale, Blue Moon, Kanga Roo
Side Two: You Can't Have Me, Kizza Me, O Dana, Nightime, Big Black Car, Thank You Friends,
Take Care.
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