7. Big StarThird/Sister Lovers
If it was Desert Island Discs and I could only choose one record to keep, it would be this one. Alex Chilton was a mess at the time he made it, and it has all these different aspects to it in terms of different kinds of music, songs that are finished and other songs that are fragments. As a teenager and in my early 20s, I was always attracted to the wayward genius-type album and this completely demands my attention if I want to listen to it. The songs ‘Dream Lover’ and ‘Big Black Car’, songs that even Big Star fans dismiss, are two of the greatest songs ever written. One of the things that attracts me to this and similar records is the fragility, that it’s gloriously loose and in danger of falling apart at any moment. It was records like this that I aspired to make when I was young.
Chilton was well known for neglecting his muse and his abilities, but when you would see him play or hear the solo records, Like Flies On Sherbert or Bach’s Bottom, it’s just so effortless and brilliant the way he does things. For a while I moonlighted as The Pastels’ tour manager and they played at the Reading Festival in the same tent as Big Star once. I took a Third/Sister Lovers CD with me to get signed and I caught him as they were coming off stage, and it’s like, “What the hell you got this one for?”
