As you’ve surely heard by now, the great Alex Chilton of Big Star, the Box Tops, and a long solo career died last Wednesday at his home in New Orleans of a heart attack at age 59. While Chilton’s songs have been stuck in many people’s heads over the past few days, so too has the Replacements‘ ode to the man, “Alex Chilton,” which appeared on the band’s classic 1987 album Pleased to Meet Me. For a while in the ’80s, Chilton was an associate of the ‘Mats, whose members (especially frontman Paul Westerberg) had cited him as a strong musical influence — Chilton played guitar on another tune from Pleased To Meet Me, “Can’t Hardly Wait,” and had also overseen some early sessions for the ‘Mats’ previous album, 1985’s Tim, though that album was ultimately produced by Ramones drummer Tommy Erdelyi (still, Chilton sang and played on Tim, notably on “Left of the Dial.”) Chilton and the Replacements also played some shows together here and there.
Over the weekend we caught up over the phone with former Replacements bassist (and for the past year a resident of Philadelphia) Tommy Stinson — who was in Chile performing with Guns ‘n Roses, of which he’s been a member for 12 years now (still weird to think of, we know) — to talk about Alex Chilton:
Thanks for taking some time to talk, man.No problem, it’s my pleasure.
Like a lot of people, I’m pretty bummed out about the death of Alex Chilton…Man, it came as a huge shock to me. I mean, it wasn’t even that long ago that [legendary Memphis producer] Jim Dickinson [who helmed Pleased to Meet Me] passed away, and yeahhh…it’s kinda strange that it happens so quickly.
How did you find out that Alex had died? Did someone call you?I woke up and both my manager and my girlfriend had e-mailed me right around the same time that he had passed away, and I quick checked it out and sure enough it was true. I had a friend tell me that he was gonna be going down to South By Southwest with Big Star and he was really excited. It’s just…weird.
What was your immediate thought when you heard the news?Just…fuckin’ bummer. How did that happen? And in the context of me traveling, I’m always listening to Big Star, I’ve always got all his shit on my iPod. I was listening to it, and then just to hear he was gone it was sort of a weird out-of-body, like, geez, how is that possible? I was just listening to him. You can’t make sense of it right off the bat.
Obviously you’ve suffered through the deaths of friends of yours, associates of yours, your brother [and original Replacements guitarist] Bob [Stinson]. How have you dealt with that over the years — the deaths of people you’re close to or worked with and so on?You know, I think there’s a time in one’s life when death starts to happen more often. I mean, I’m only 43 so I’m not, like, sittin’ around pondering being an old man all that often [laughs], but I fear that that day has come where people who were influential or were some part of my life, they start knockin’ off. You start thinking about it, and I don’t feel old, really, but it’s like, that day comes and it starts happening more often and I ain’t looking forward to that. And it’s really hard to be fuckin’ nine million miles away from family and friends when that shit happens.
You were a pretty young guy when you started making music, so yeah, some of the well-established people you worked with back then — producers and other musicians and people like that — they’re probably getting up there in years, I would imagine. And obviously a lot of your musical influences and so on. Yeah. The hardest one, and the one that made me really freak out, was when Joe Strummer died. That was like a fucking kick in the head. He was 50. You know? When I think in terms of that, Alex was 59 and Joe Strummer was 50. There’s not a great life expectancy for rock and roll to begin with, and I’m sitting here going, well, I’m only 43 but shit, that could be like 69 by regular age. It just puts things into a perspective that’s not real good. Like, I didn’t really sign up for that part of the rock n roll life [laughs].
I guess the lesson is not to take anybody for granted.Yeah, of course.
When did you first discover Alex Chilton’s music — his own stuff or Big Star or the Box Tops? Was it after you started playing, or when you were young?Oh no, it was after we’d been playing for a while. I think once the ‘Mats started traveling with [manager] Peter Jesperson and shit like that was when…a lot of stuff came from traveling around with him. He was always turning us on to new stuff.
What was the first thing that struck you about Big Star — Chilton’s songwriting or musicianship or whatever?Funny enough I think it was like, wow, how come no one’s ever heard this guy? How come he’s not big? What’s happening? The chiming guitars and the pop songs were so well crafted and so immediate and all-out wow, so it was like, how could it be that something this good isn’t popular? That was one of those things where it was like, it set the table for years to come of finding gems and you’re like, why is this not popular? Everyone that I know that’s in my circle thinks it’s good, so how can it not be? When I was really young it was puzzling to me that certain things were not mainstream and then you listen to the mainstream and you’re like, there’s so much crap! It didn’t make sense.
There’s a lot of people who when they discover music that’s underground or whatever, they hold onto it tight and they don’t want it to get popular because they see it as kind of their own thing, in a way. It doesn’t sound like you were one of those people, though.No, I wanted Big Star to be as big as the Stones. I was always like, fuck, man, they should be bigger than that, this shit is so good. During the Replacements we had many late night conversations pondering that theory. Like, there’s really great music here that’s doing nothing and really shitty music here that’s all on the radio that we can’t avoid when we’re in the van. At that time, when I got turned on to Big Star, what was on the radio was just some of the most heinous music. Like, fuckin’, the Journeys and the Foreigners and all that kinda crap. And the list goes on. You had the emerging alternative radio but you didn’t have anything going as far as mainstream success, just cult success. But then I got to an age where I was like, okay, well, that’s how that works.
Would you say that as a musician you learned anything in particular from listening to Chilton’s melodies or his playing or his ways of arranging a song?As a musician, if you listen to Big Star you can’t help but try to steal from it. You’re always playing a song or two when you’re just kinda sitting around playing your guitar and some of that stuff is so… it sounds easy to play on guitar but it’s really not. He was an incredible guitar player. There’s some bootleg stuff that’s gone around over the years that Big Star did on the radio, some of the stuff that was going on in, like, “Thirteen” — that’s a fairly straightforward song, but there’s subtleties that are happening in a lot of those songs that they actually played live and the guitar playing is really quite phenomenal. You can’t help but wanna try to get some of that in you if you’re a songwriter.
Do you remember what Alex was like the first time you met him?You know, the first word that comes to mind is “aloof.” He seemed somewhat aloof to me. My first instinct is to say he was somewhat aloof and in another place. He just seemed like … like [laughs], “What do you little shits think you’ve got!” Maybe that’s just me projecting. Like, “I’ll show you fuckers a few things,” and that’s when he came in and worked on Tim a little bit before we made that record. I kinda got that feeling a little bit like he was in another place and he knew it [laughs].
I guess the conventional wisdom about him was that he was this musical genius but that he sort of resented his own talent. And that he hated fame and all of that. How much of that do you think is blown out of proportion, and how much of that is true?You know, I think more so…he was always making records before fuckin’ everyone got their boner for him like later on for Big Star. I mean, we met him around, I wanna say just after [he was in] the Panther Burns and I think [1979's] Like Flies on Sherbert had just come out a couple years before or something. I think more than anything it was more like, “Yeah, that shit was good but the shit I’m doing now is better!” I think that’s the mindset of any artist that’s done something in the past. You could probably even say that about Paul [Westerberg]. There comes that time when people kinda revere you and you’re going, “Well, you revered me then but what the fuck’s wrong with the shit I’m doing now?” That kinda thing. I’m not saying Paul feels that, necessarily. But it is weird. I think a lot of people sit and talk about the greatest record was this or that or the other thing, and I think you’re still sitting there thinking you’re still viable to some degree and you’re still doing the thing you’ve done well and it’s hard to kinda, you know…at times, I think, to come to grips with…I don’t think anyone wants to think, “Well, I’ve done my best stuff already.” Most guys wanna think their best stuff is yet to come, you know? I would think. Unless you totally give up. Some do before they actually get to their best stuff. I’ve certainly seen that enough, but I think that was it. I think [Chilton] was like, “Yeah, well, Big Star was great but I’m also doing this stuff and this stuff’s great, too.” And you have to believe in that. You have to believe in what you’re doing, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.
I think maybe some people like me who didn’t know him personally, we’re just fans, I think maybe we’re upset that he died not only because he was responsible for some great music but a guy like him, he was only 59, he very well could have put out another great album. There may have been more greatness left in the tank. He wasn’t just some nostalgia act.Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
There’s a few artists who are like that, you know, everyone mentions Neil Young or Bob Dylan or Tom Waits where you think, okay, they still have something great in them, whereas other guys are just playing the nostalgia casino circuit.Yeah, I mean, Dylan for sure. But Bob Dylan had a period there of a good 10 years where I don’t think he was making very good records, and I think that Time Out of Mind came out and there was sort of a resurgence for the next couple records after that. The last 10 years or so my mind’s been in the headset of, I gotta be confident that the next thing I do is gonna be the best thing I’ve ever done. Everybody else might not really think that, but I’m gonna do it. And I think you gotta do it. At some point maybe something magical just kinda comes out of you that you’ve never done before, or it clicks in that certain way and people go, “Wow, this is his best stuff ever!” [laughs] “Best music he’s ever written, blah blah blah.”
I’m sure tons of people have told you they discovered Alex Chilton through the Replacements song. How does it feel to know that you guys turned on a lot of people to his music.You know, it’s great. I feel like we fuckin’ did him a service as well. I think through the hype and all the crap that happened due to us writing a song about him, it kinda helped his legend to some degree. I think he probably made some money getting gigs and shit from that. I think he probably, I dunno if he ever really appreciated it or gave a shit, but I’m sure there was some financial aspect of R.E.M. and the ‘Mats and others who spoke his praises and stuff like that… there must have been some benefit for him. I would think it turned a new generation on to him that would be willing to buy tickets to his shows.
Do you specifically remember writing that song?Yeah, the sessions were fun. That was a really dark but also a very good time for us. We’d just fired my brother and kinda got past that and picked up Slim Dunlap and went down [to Memphis] with like a bag of…Paul had a handful of already done songs and some shit that needed hashing out and the vibe down there was sort of like sink or swim. We were like, we could keep goin’ on and try to find a way to get to where we’re trying to go here, or we could just let it go. I think we were pullin’ up our bootstraps a little bit on that one and, you know, they were pretty magical sessions, I think. Magic happened out of those sessions, as opposed to forced magic. From the moment we walked into the studio down there, something came out that set the stage for what was to come, and that was that song “Election Day.” That song was fresh off the airplane.
Really?Yeah.
That album still kills me. It’s one of my all-timers. Did all of those songs come together that easily?Most of that stuff that made that record came together fairly quickly, from what I recall. I think Paul had a certain amount of…certain things he’d have fully written, and certain things he would leave for us so we could work ‘em up, whether he didn’t know quite how to finish them or get them where he wanted or whatever. I think he left a good part of stuff to magic, where it’s either gonna make itself happen or it’s not, and I think “Alex Chilton” was one of those that had a good amount of that. “Can’t Hardly Wait” was another one like that, because that song had been around for a couple years at that point. That song was always a work-in-progress [laughs].
Alex played guitar on that one — were you all in a room playing together, or was his part an overdub?You know, I don’t really remember exactly how that went down and I may not have been there for that. Yeah, I can’t remember. I don’t think he was…he wasn’t living in Memphis at the time, he was living in New Orleans at the time.
Did he like the song “Alex Chilton”? Had he heard it before the album came out?Yeah, because we recorded it during the Tim sessions, actually.
Oh, I didn’t know that.Yeah, I think he really liked that song. I think that was the one he heard where he was, “I think I should produce you guys.” I think, if I’m remembering the legend right, that was the first song of ours he heard [laughs].
So when was the last time you saw or talked to him?I think the last time I talked to Alex Chilton was years ago in Minneapolis. God, it’s gotta be 16 or 17 years ago because he was playing a show at First Avenue and he came up to me and was talking to me and whatever, he was just kinda, he asked if I knew where I could find him some weed. And I was like, “I dunno, I don’t smoke anymore.” [laughs] It was weird, surely. I hadn’t smoked weed since I was like 15, I just really…my brother and I used to smoke weed together when I was a kid but we moved on from it … or I did, anyway.
So this was the early ’90s, then.Yeah. He wasn’t doing the Big Star thing, he was doing some of his later solo stuff. It was right after the Replacements broke up. I think, if I remember right, I said to him, “No, I don’t have any weed but you might wanna talk to so-and-so over there.” And I don’t think I even knew who the so-and-so was, but apparently it worked — the next time I saw him later in the night he looked thoroughly baked [laughs].
You’ve probably seen and read some of the tributes to Alex in the wake of his death. Do you think he’s getting his proper due?Man, I really can’t think like that. That’d be really a shame…I mean, it’s great that people are remembering him and stuff, and it’s great that people are going out there and buying his music and stuff, but…I hate to say it, but I’d be bummed if suddenly he got more popular in death. That would just be a fucking travesty. Straight up.
You think so?Yeah.
Well, you know that sort of thing happens whenever someone famous or popular or influential dies.Oh yeah, yeah. Like, suddenly fuckin’ Big Star would have a hit record or something stupid. I guess it would be great to see it, but it would also be like, “Wow, where the fuck were you people while he was here?!”
http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/music/2010/03/22/mmm-exclusive-the-replacements-and-guns-n-roses-tommy-stinson-talks-to-us-about-alex-chilton/I will Mpve this to correct section in couple of days
