Alex Chilton is Gone

Is it a needless redundancy to say that Alex was an artist, and a different sort of bird? Of course it is. But he was.
Alex was working with Chips Moman and Dan Penn when he was barely old enough to drive. The band was the Box Tops, and another group of Memphis kids changed music, again. The Letter and Cry Like a Baby are the most enduring cuts. They stand up to this day. The lead vocalist is a big part of the reason why. (The Box Tops went through several incarnations, one including a drummer named Thomas Boggs. He would later take his TGI Friday's experience and open a restaurant in his home town, and then a series of them, called Huey's. And he gave additional generations of Memphis musicians a place to play.)
After the Box Tops went their separate ways, Alex bounced around before landing in Big Star with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. There would have been no alternative music movement without Big Star. Period.
Where did Peter Buck's jangling guitar come from? Big Star. Where did Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder find their inspiration as lyricists and lead singers? Big Star. Or, more specifically, Alex Chilton. Where did the model for records lost as record companies went to pieces or turned on their own artists? Big Star.
#1 Record changed music. Third/Sister Lovers blew music up. By that time, the band was a conspiracy between Chilton, Stephens, Jim Dickinson and a lot of Memphis musicians, the great Richard Roseborough in particular, but Richard's another story.
Everything that would arise in Rock and Roll for the next 40 years has its roots in Third/Sister Lovers. That's not just my opinion. Michael Stipe said so. Peter Buck said so. A Who's Who of the alt rock generation agreed.
Alex had a third career as a solo artist. Like Flies on Sherbet is the pick here. It is weird. And brilliant. And free. Like Rock is supposed to be. Alex got it. Or it got him.
Chilton managed to keep the relationships alive no matter how the artistic temperament affected him and his colleagues in the various bands through the years. He and Stephens picked up Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow to perform and record as Big Star off and on for 15 or 20 years. Several versions of The Box Tops have appeared at the Beale Street festival and other settings recently.
Big Star was set to play a benefit for the Overton Park Shell (corporate name ignored intentionally) on May 15. I hate like hell that we won't get that show.
Thanks, Alex, for keeping the faith. Thanks for bearing witness to the truth that still lives and breathes at this weird, funky, inexplicable doorway to the Delta. Thanks for everything you shared with us. And thanks for that moment you shared with me at the Beale Street Festival, when the sound wasn't set up to suit you, so you jumped down off the stage and signed autographs, posed for pictures, talked and laughed until it was brought to your liking.
Rest well, brother, even if it is far, far too soon.