It's the New Past/It's the New Past
Nostalgia used to be an old man's racket; the inevitable product of aging, of reaching a point in your life where you have more past to look back on than future to look forward to. I'm not about to suggest that Alex Chilton was the one who changed that, but it's still amazing to hear Chilton, at merely 21 years of age, as steeped in the sadness of nostalgia as he is in his defining song, "Thirteen."
Chilton was an old 21, of course; he'd first found fame as a 16-year-old, when, as the frontman of the group The Box Tops, he'd had a #1 single with "The Letter." By the time The Box Tops had broken up, the '60s were over; and rock'n'roll —the defining force of Chilton's life— was seen as being on the wane. He was jaded from his experience as a 'star,' and harkened back to a simpler time.
Thus, came "Thirteen," Chilton's tender lament for the simple joys of youth. He was 13 when The Beatles came through Memphis, when he and his friend Chris Bell decided to start writing songs of their own. The song's key line is "rock'n'roll is here to stay," but this rallying cry of youth culture is now steeped in the irony of hindsight; the line delivered not as rousing chorus in a rock anthem, but lament in a sorrowed ballad of innocence lost. Chilton, at a world-weary 21, already sensing the power of rock'n'roll as empowering cultural force is wilting.
The nostalgia on the also-ironically-titled #1 Record isn't just personal, but cultural. By 1972, no one was interested in what Chilton and Bell —the leaders of Big Star— were. They were still working in deference to their heroes, The Beatles and The Byrds; still wanting to preserve the purity of pretty melodies, soft harmonies, and perfectly-constructed pop-songs. The world had moved on, they had not. In the subsequent years, the 'golden age' of pop Chilton and Bell were devoted to would become its own cult; the bands in the years since out to summon summery '64 impossible to count.
But, merely two years after The Beatles broke up, the world wasn't interested in nostalgia. Only Chilton, that casualty of the era, that child star struggling with innocence-lost, could so romantically harken back to a time not even a decade before. With that, Big Star were the first-ever retro pop band.
In Search of Lost Time
Upon its release, the album received naught but glowing critical praise, but generally dismal sales. Audiences, it seemed, weren't as interested in harkening back to rock's salad days as Chilton and Bell were. But, if there'a anything musical history should teach you, is that albums of true, lasting impact are often perceived as dismal commercial failures in their day. The years have, since, been incredibly kind to #1 Record, with the list of those who drew influence from its collection of bruised ballads, jangly pop-songs, and bruising glam-esque rockers long and ever-growing (ie. REM, The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, Weezer, The New Pornographers, Yo La Tengo, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Evan Dando, Wilco, etc).
Listening to Big Star's debut album, with four decades of hindsight, that sense of cultural alienation, of lonely revivalism, doesn't come across. Instead, #1 Record sounds a lot like a missing link, the LP that bridged the classic guitar-pop bands of the '60s with the alternative rock scene that grew in America in the '80s. With one record, you can connect The Left Banke to REM, can draw a lineage over decades.
The work of Chilton and Bell persists because they were students of songform, practitioners of hook and melody. #1 Record is loaded with glorious pop-songs; tunes like "The Ballad of El Goodo" that sound like lost classics, #1 hit records that should've been, whose instant melodies give way to reveal lyrical and compositional complexities, whose initial giddiness, over time, gives way to lingering sadness.
Time is, for men, the enemy; its inexorable march a constant reminder of our mortality. That was made all too evident when Chilton died in 2010, aged 59. Chilton, though, knew all too well that the march of time could be arrested by art; that in memories, and in legacy, music could linger on, could live eternal. He was right when he wrote it: rock'n'roll is here to stay. Especially his.
Record Label: Ardent
Release Date: April, 1972
