Though Alex Chilton gets the most attention, Big Star was always Chris Bell’s band. As Chilton explains, “Chris’s band was already in place when I joined. And they weren’t very big on R&B, or black music, at all. So I just sort of did what the original concept of their band was. I tried to present things that were compatible with the concept of this group that was already in place. When I say ‘they,’ I guess I’m really referring to Chris. I just tried to get with Chris’s stylistic approach as well as I could. And then, even after he left the band, I sort of stayed with the basic concept that he originated.”
The Beatles achieved worldwide popularity during Bell’s high school years, but in Memphis, the cradle of black American music, Bell could still wear British pop as a badge of his outsider status. There were frequent dances at Bell’s high school, the elite Memphis University School, but the local bands invariably played R&B and current chart hits. Thus, Christmas Future was born, and the brand of sweetened pop practiced by Bell’s high school group worked as an unlikely act of rebellion. “It was mostly soul music in high school,” Bell explained in a 1975 interview. “So we decided to start a kind of underground movement in order to get a group together; a group that would just play English music. The audience hated most of it really. They would come and ask for ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown and we would play ‘I Feel Fine’ by the Beatles.”
Bell’s anglophilia extended past his musical interests. He and his girlfriend, Carole Ruleman, spent “a lot of sweltering summer afternoons” watching British imports at the Guild, an art house cinema at Poplar and Belvedere. “We loved Morgan with David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave, and another favorite was Georgie Girl with Alan Bates, Lynn Redgrave, and Charlotte Rampling," Ruleman remembers. "We must have seen it five or six times. First we had to sit through these embarrassing trailers for this voyeuristic erotica called I, a Woman. The actress was nude and studying her body in a mirror to this grandiose voice-over that repeatedly boomed ‘I, a Woman,’ ‘I, a Woman,’ ‘I, a Woman.’ We were such kids. We were both embarrassed. Every time we saw the promo we’d crack up, and find ourselves sinking lower and lower into the seats. Then sliding deeper into the theater chairs was the joke, and we’d laugh and laugh until the trailer was finally over. Then Georgie Girl came on, and we were transported to England.”
(Jovanovic 66)
The Beatles and Stones grew up lonely in England, idolizing the South's black American blues, while Alex Chilton and Chris Bell grew up lonely in the South, idolizing the tune and whimsy of Britannia. They personified an inverted British Invasion. You could liken Bell’s disposition in 1960s Memphis to a kid in 1920s Harlem being obsessed with Italian opera, but don’t underestimate the importance of contrarianism to the formation of the adolescent identity. Or maybe Bell was just born into a loneliness that naturally guided him toward interests that left him in the minority. Either way, just as Big Star endure as a symbol for every band at odds with its time and place, Bell symbolizes every erudite youth who longs for culture beyond what his town can offer.
Like a lot of bright, restless kids who forge an identity in opposition to life in their hometown, Bell saw himself as exceptional, and felt certain he would make art to match his heroes. His tragic flaw was that he couldn’t enact the talent he saw in himself. Meeting Alex Chilton was Bell’s saving grace, and his downfall. Chilton germinated the great band that Bell desperately wanted but also decimated Bell’s image of himself as a genius-in-waiting.
Everything that Bell wanted seemed to come easy to Chilton. Bell had “Try Again,” Chilton had “Thirteen.” Bell had “My Life Is Right,” Chilton had “The Ballad of El Goodo.” Chilton was a better singer and a better songwriter. Plus, he was cooler. By age 18 Chilton had experienced the world as a rock star. While Bell was at the Guild, Chilton was laying chicks every night, jamming with Beach Boys and Doors, partying in Paris and L.A. Chilton had already tasted success. He didn’t have near as much to prove as Bell, and his wants weren't as clear or as potent. Where Bell was anxious and controlling, Chilton was carefree and self-destructive. For Chilton the art house titillation of I, a Woman would’ve been just another excuse to make it with his date.
Ostensibly Bell’s control freak tendencies and schizophrenic outbursts led him to leave Big Star in late 1972, but his combative behavior only masked the resentment and intimidation he felt in the face of Chilton’s effortless talent. #1 Record is a product of collaborative chemistry (just listen to “Feel” and “In the Street”), but its ingredients are uneven. There is exchange--Chilton gave Bell his band, and Bell enabled Chilton to find his natural voice as a singer--but ultimately it was Chilton that gave the group life.
Bell left the band to prove himself apart from Chilton but his absence only brought the lopsidedness of Big Star into brighter light. When Bell was removed from the equation, Chilton created Radio City and Sisters Lovers, by most accounts the best albums Big Star ever made. Chilton's theft of Bell's band wasn't malicious, or even intentional. The second and third Big Star albums illuminate Chilton's gifts as surely as they overshadow the sad fate of Bell, an architect unable to build his own house, let alone inhabit the designs of his dreams.
