“At last, all of a sudden, we stumbled into this thing. So it’s going to be interesting, to see how people react to that.”
Van Duren is reflecting on the corner his life and performing career have turned since he received a call a couple of years ago from Australia. It was from Wade Jackson, a musician based down under who had only recently discovered Duren’s debut album, Are You Serious?, long since out of print.
In 1977, when the record came out, its combination of Beatle-esque songwriting and hard-hitting hooks and harmonies stoked hopes for career-making acclaim. The interest expressed by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ original manager, didn’t hurt either. But by then, disco had already nudged Duren’s type of music out of the limelight. While he’s made a decent career in music, it’s been more low-profile than he once hoped.
Van Duren
Cut to the current era, when Jackson’s discovery of the album led him to recruit Greg Carey as the co-director of a documentary about Duren. Their final product, titled Waiting: The Van Duren Story, had its world premiere at last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it won the Hometowner Feature award. Mixing contemporary footage of the filmmakers’ quest to find Duren with archival images that chronicle the making of the album, the film goes a long way in recreating the ’70s milieu of Memphis power pop.
“Jody Stephens and I were friends since 1970, before Big Star,” Duren recalls. “John Hampton and I went to high school together. I graduated with his older brother Randy, and the three of us had a band together for years, Malarky. Maybe the best band I’ve ever been in. Those two brothers, man — extremely talented and smart.” Malarky occupied Duren while Big Star’s fortunes rose and fell, after which he played for a time with Stephens and Big Star founder Chris Bell.
“Chris was no angel, but I enjoyed the short period of time I got to work with him. It was me and Jody and Chris and Randy Hampton. We called it the Baker Street Regulars. That lasted about 6 months.”
Van Duren in the 1970s
Duren continued to play around Memphis with others, culminating in his move to the New York/Connecticut area to record his debut and tour professionally in the Northeast. But with the musical tides shifting, his record failed to gain traction — a tale, with some twists and turns, detailed in the film. The music has lived on in increasingly rare reissues, and now, thanks to the new documentary, on this year’s Omnivore soundtrack compilation of the same name, which has several of the debut album’s tracks. Like Big Star, the Hot Dogs, and other Memphis bands defying all Southern rock expectations of the time, the songs are pure rock and pop magic.
“When Emitt Rhodes’ records came out, the thing about him playing all the instruments, including all the drums, fascinated me. And Todd Rundgren. Huge influence from the first Runt album. This is when I started really trying to figure out how to play piano. As a result, when we get to ’77 and cut the first album, about half the songs are piano-generated songs. So that was my path.”
Ultimately, Duren returned to Memphis and has been a fixture in the region for years, beginning with his band Good Question. “That band went for 17 years,” he recalls. “We did really well in the ’80s for a few years. And we played all the time. That was my re-connection to Memphis.”
Now, he and his longtime musical partner, singer Vicki Loveland, are set to explore wider horizons, as the film begins screening more widely. This Wednesday, it will be shown at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and at London’s Soundscreen Festival on Friday. Soon after, a series of screenings in Australia will fuel some live shows there. “There’s quite a buzz in Australia. Several people have asked me, ‘Are you worried about playing these songs from 40 years ago?’, and I say, ‘Well, the truth is, I’ve been playing these songs all this time, but nobody’s been listening.’ That’s the only difference!”
By now, the ever-growing fan frenzy for all things Big Star is a familiar riff in Memphis. Indeed, given that the band’s initial popularity was either overseas or among critics and collectors, the fact that they are actually popular in Memphis may be the final signpost in their march to immortality.
But the man who actually founded the band, having died in a car wreck in 1978, never had the time to retell his version of events. In the history of Big Star, the life of Chris Bell has long been a cipher of sorts. We heard tantalizing snippets of his story in the documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, but nothing as detailed as the reams of copy written on the diverse Alex Chilton catalogue. That’s changing, first with last year’s release of five LPs of pre- and post-Big Star material by Bell, and now with the publication of There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of Big Star by Rich Tupica.
A biography of an artist 40 years gone is a tall order. Tupica works around this by creating a Rashomon-like tapestry of quotes from those who knew him best. For those who are not already fans of Bell’s music, this can make for a challenging read, but it is a time-honored approach to the rock biography (cf. Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain). As sheer storytelling, it only works if you have a stack of records beside you to whet your appetite. But you owe it to yourself anyway.
Tupica, a Michigan-based entertainment writer who’s contributed to Record Collector, Uncut, and American Songwriter, has done his homework — and his legwork. Though he writes very little as an author, except a few explanatory notes to create the context, his five years of labor on this volume yielded interviews and archival quotes from dozens of people, requiring four pages to list them all at the end. The final product is an encyclopedic compendium of sorts, illuminating Bell’s life from a thousand angles. One byproduct of this is the light shed on the interviewees themselves, many of whom, like John Fry, John Hampton, and Richard Rosebrough, are now gone as well. As such, the book serves as a worthy remembrance of these musical luminaries, too.
Once the reader begins to connect the dots, what can we learn of Bell’s life? He was clearly a scion of his restaurateur father’s hard-won wealth, with a family beach house in the Caribbean and a sports car, but in some ways this made his life more troubled than his peers’. Inner conflict shaped most of his brief life: a rebellious soul who still sought acceptance; a bit of an airhead (e.g., repeatedly losing vintage gear to thieves when left in his car) who was nonetheless a meticulous musician, engineer, and photographer; a driven visionary who’s very art conveyed (at times inaccurately) his own fragility.
As for the persistent speculation about Bell being gay, the book addresses the topic more straightforwardly than previous histories of the band, but fails to arrive at anything definitive. If Chilton and others claim that “I never knew anything about his gayness,” others might say, “We all knew it but didn’t go on about it.” Rosebrough details Bell’s emotional heart-to-heart on the subject, but the only romantic interests from his life mentioned are women. Yet the very ambiguity of the topic speaks to the repressed nature of Southern culture at the time.
One definitive point is that Big Star was very much Bell’s project. Chilton himself notes that “I just sort of did what the original concept of their band was … I just tried to get with Chris’ stylistic approach as well as I could.” It’s ironic, as the association of Chilton with Big Star is so fixed in our minds that even this volume devotes whole chapters to his post-Big Star career.
And, despite speculation that Bell’s car wreck was a suicide, Tupica’s research reveals how unlikely this is. Though he still lived with the disappointment of Big Star’s initial failure, Bell seems to have worked through his worst demons by 1978 and was looking forward to new musical projects. Reading of John Fry bolting out of bed at 1:30 a.m., when the accident happened, or Jody Stephens driving by the crash scene, not knowing it was his friend, lends an eeriness to Bell’s death, evoking the thin thread from which life and art hang suspended.
The Posies in 2018, not dressed for summer in Memphis
The Posies, masterminded by Bellingham, Washington’s Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer, are an unlikely band to connect the Seattle alt-rock boom of the 1990s to Memphis, but by now no one can deny they’ve laid down roots here. It’s a wholly unpredictable alchemy. Certainly, their harmony-soaked alt-pop, while sporting some fine sonic guitar, always ran counter to the grungier sounds that put Seattle on the map in those days. In a sense, they were playing against type, much the way Big Star did in their time. Perhaps, at heart, the Posies and the unique sounds that blossomed in 1970s Memphis share that hope of transcending time and place through pop perfection. Ultimately it’s the hope that binds them to this town.
It’s hard to believe that the 90s are a quarter century behind us, what with so many of that era’s bands continually proving their relevance. Fans recently thronged to see David Byrne, the Flaming Lips, Erykah Badu, Cake, Alanis Morisette, and other aged ones at the Beale Street Music Festival. Surely the Posies stand on an equal footing with all of the above, especially with their classic mid-90s lineup that yielded such hits as “Dream All Day,” “Solar Sister” and “Definite Door”. That’s exactly the band that the Posies have once again become, thanks to the recent reunion of Stringfellow and Auer with original drummer Mike Musburger and bassist Dave Fox. Celebrating the band’s 30th Anniversary, they’ve recently embarked on a tour of the U.S. and Europe that will bring them to Lafayette’s on Tuesday, June 5th.
Stringfellow, Auer, and I settled in to what turned out to be a revelry of music nerddom, at times descending into a Tape Op-level appreciation of good gear and great sounds. The results offered up some interesting details from their many years in the second coming of Big Star and their own evolution as songwriters and sonic explorers.
Big Star Becomes Them In 1993, you joined the reformed Big Star at a festival in Columbia, Missouri. In hindsight, you guys joined Big Star pretty early in the Posies’ career. That must have been a watershed moment.
Ken Stringfellow: Yeah, it was probably the first major project that we did outside of our own band. The first time playing with people, not only at a professional level, but who were fricking icons. We had no real experience in that kinda thing. We were pretty green. And it was great that Jody [Stephens] took that chance on us. He really believed in us.
It’s interesting to note that that first Big Star show, in Columbia, Missouri, was the same weekend that [the Posie’s third album] Frosting on the Beater was released. In fact we flew on a red eye from the release show in Seattle to Columbia to play the gig. So things were about to go up to another level, ‘cos Frosting on the Beater did have much more success than the album before it.
When they were putting that show together, after Alex [Chilton] unexpectedly said yes rather than no, the DJ’s from KCOU who proposed the show were trying to make it a bigger event, and they had hopes to get all these big names in there, like Mike Mills from R.E.M., Paul Westerberg, Matthew Sweet, etc. And for various reasons, none of them would do it. Jon and I were begging and pleading to get the gig. And I think what was cool about it was that we were a little bit known, but not really known. It allowed the focus to be on Alex and Jody. The Replacements sold a lot more records than Big Star ever did, so if Paul had been in there, it would’ve been like, “Paul sits in with one of his favorite groups” in the headline. And instead it was “Big Star reunites.”
Jon Auer: Yeah, there was a short list of better-known names for who might become the new members to supplement Big Star. But if you think about it, and this is not to discredit them, I think they might have stuck out a little too much. As great as Paul Westerberg is, I can’t imagine him fitting in as well to the Big Star sound as we did. Even if Ken and I had been more famous at that point, I don’t think that would have been a deterrent. I think we had the sound in our voices and also in the way that we played, and that gelled with what Jody and Alex were doing. I really think we were the perfect people for the job. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way at all.
Also, Big Star never put on that many shows back in the day. They never really had those harmonies live. But Ken and I could do them. Plus, I was a massive Chris Bell fan. We had already done versions of “I Am the Cosmos” and “Feel,” that Jody Stephens ended up hearing eventually.
So it was Jody who initiated bringing you guys in?
KS: Well, I think he’d been pushing for us all along in a way, since the time we first met him. We had a major label budget to make our second album, Dear 23. And we looked, naturally, into recording at Ardent, because so many of our favorite albums had been done there. Big Star, but also Pleased to Meet Me by the Replacements, Green by R.E.M.. The studio was part of the legend. And then, to our shock, we got this brochure and a cover letter from Jody Stephens. It’d be like, you know, contacting Abbey Road and calling them up, and you hear “Hello, this is Ringo, just running the desk today.” You know, it was like, “What? Jody works there?”
We didn’t end up working at Ardent for that record, but we got on Jody’s radar, and eventually we met him. He knew we were huge fans and was very flattered. We gave him a copy of our single with “Feel” by Big Star, and “I Am the Cosmos” by Chris Bell, which not a lot of people knew about at that point. He was totally blown away, despite the fact that I fucked up the lyrics on “Feel.” We didn’t have the Southern R&B influence that people from Memphis would have, but the glorious, chiming, vocal harmony-laden pop was our thing. All those vocal harmonies, which even Big Star didn’t do live back in the day. It’s not like Paul Westerberg or whoever were gonna be able to do that so smoothly, and sound like young kids. Which Big Star basically were when they started. So, we were the right age for the role.
At the time it was a big deal, and people flew in from all over the world to see the show in Missouri. And it got a review in Melody Maker: “Alex saunters on and spends some time twiddling with his guitar, blah blah blah, and they start to play and the most remarkable thing happens: they sound like Big Star.” That was the quote. And I thought, that’s exactly how it should be.
When did you guys first get into Big Star?
KS: My first contact with Big Star would be seeing them referenced in interviews with R.E.M.. And going “I wonder what they’re talking about?” It’s not like I could get the records in Bellingham, WA. Alex Chilton was releasing albums in the mid 80s. And there was a little bit of press around that, and then came the Replacements song. So that started to fill in the story, but we still hadn’t heard the damn records. They just weren’t anywhere.
So we put out our first cassette in 1988, and right as it was getting known and getting on the radio, older guys at the record store were like, “If this is the kind of music you’ve been making, then you’ve got to listen to Big Star, because you’re going in that direction.”
#1 Record era Big Star
As fortune would have it, the CD reissues of the Big Star albums happened right then. Basically it was love at first listen, with the first chunky guitar notes of “Feel,” and then when the band kicks in, it doesn’t sound like anything else from its time. I mean, the songs are amazing, and there’s this clear lineage from the Beatles and the Byrds, and there’s all this cool soul-influenced bit, like “When My Baby’s Beside Me”. It’s just such a great mix. The “cool” sound of that era, the early 70s, was more frumpy, you know, a little rounded off and a little muffley in a way, and that was considered a cool aesthetic. Like it was less corporate sounding that way. And Big Star recordings were just jaw-droppingly crisp and hi fi and amazing. It’s like the Beatles, where the studio they are in just happens to be the greatest studio in the world and it’s this perfect blend. Big Star at Ardent are that.
JA: We’d kind of exhausted our options in Bellingham. So I moved down to Seattle and crashed on Ken’s couch for a while. I got a job at this record store in the University District. And we ended up jamming with Mike and Arthur “Rick” Roberts at that time, and that turned into the band. So I’m working at this record store, and I had a kind of mentor there who was in an older band in Seattle, and he liked our first cassette, Failure. And his logic was that if I was making that music, I must be into certain things. So of course he would mention people like Elvis Costello or Squeeze or XTC and of course I would say yes, I knew their stuff.
He would try to stump me, and one day he said, “Hey, have you ever heard of this band, Big Star?” Then he said, “Look, I”m gonna do something for you here.” And he went to the vinyl section of the record store, which at this point was very small, because CDs were the thing. He said, “I’m gonna do you a solid here, I’m gonna buy this record for you, I’m gonna let you get off work early, and I want you to take it home and I want you to put on this song called ‘September Gurls.'” I’m like, “Well, okay. I get to get off three hours early and I get a free record and I get to go home.” I did what he said. I followed instructions and dropped the needle, and without sounding too corny about it, it was like hearing something that was already part of me or something. It sounded like the greatest song I’d ever heard at that point. I couldn’t believe this song wasn’t a massive international hit. It’s probably at the top of the list of songs that should have been hits but never were. It has all the components, and it has soul too. It’s not just a piece of craft. There’s something that’s beyond the sum of its parts.
That’s a great boss.
JA: Yeah! And you can imagine how it was in the future, when we got to join that band and play with them for 17 years. Talk about hindsight, when you’re looking at your life in reverse: you don’t really see these moments until you look back at them. It’s pretty remarkable.
KS: By 1993, I’d listened to those records, but I’d never tried to play the bass lines. Yet I’d heard them so many times, when I started rehearsing, I was like, “I already know these bass lines!” I had listened to it so many times, I even had the bass lines memorized by ear. We’re like, Illuminati level nerds on Big Star.
Greetings from Beautiful Bellingham! So your self-released cassette album, Failure, was your entré into Seattle radio, and later was released as an LP. I must say I’m pretty impressed, revisiting it now, as something put together in a home studio. I understand the recording of that was largely your doing, Jon.
JA: Oh yeah, it’s 99.99% me. [laughs] Yeah that was my job. In hindsight, you don’t really realize the actual fortune you have in your life while it’s occurring. In hindsight, I can’t believe how lucky I was and that my father was into music. I had a working recording studio in my house before this was a common thing. In this era, everyone has a laptop and can record on it, but then it wasn’t so usual. So I’d do the normal things as a teenager. I had girlfriends and we’d go out and try to get people to buy us alcohol and other recreations, and we would have fun and party, but there were also times when I would spend all weekend in this studio space by myself. I would stay up late. I’d work until the sun would come up and then I’d crash and wake up and keep going. Nobody told me how to do it or taught me how to do it. I just had these tools here. My dad showed me a few things and I learned by watching others and asking questions. Mostly it just came from trial and error. And there was a lot of trial, a lot of just messing around.
So I was a 15, 16 year old kid recording all the bands in town. And I was working in a record store. My manager was a very good friend of mine. He turned me on to a lot of great records. But he heard what I was doing, and suggested I listen to things like Odessey and Oracle by the Zombies. This wonderful man named Henry Szankiewicz. We formed this little record company called Jon Henry and we put out this thing called The Bellingham Complication. It was the first compilation of Bellingham bands, basically. This is pre-Failure. And we made a limited run of cassettes. And the deal was, the bands would come up to my house, and they each had two hours. We did side one, five bands in one day, and side two, five bands the second day. It was just like an assembly line. And I was the engineer and we were the producers on all that.
Early Posies
So that led to me being the guy responsible for all things audio in the early years of the Posies. Failure was really made out of necessity. Ken and I were a little awkward, maybe, and we also were going through many different phases. musically and also in terms of fashion. In this era of Failure, we were listening to a lot of pop music. But there was also a big Goth streak in us. In fact, if you look at the artwork on Failure, the picture of us, you can see us still in our Goth phase. So you can imagine how weird it would be to try playing in a band where you look like you were in a Goth band but you wanted to play these 60s influenced pop songs. It didn’t make sense to people, they were like, “Who are these weirdos?” So eventually Ken and I were like, “Fuck it, let’s do it ourselves.” So I played all the drums on the record, and Ken played all the bass to keep it equal. And we just made this record on weekends. Ken was already in Seattle at the University of Washington, and I was going to Western [Washington University], which was the school in Bellingham where my father taught, and we would just knock the stuff out. I think we spent 90 hours making that record.
One more nerdy thing for you about this recording: I didn’t have any great tape deck or DAT machine to mix down to, so I actually mixed everything to a cassette. The CD and vinyl masters are all made from that master cassette, which I still have. My father’s deck had dbx noise reduction on it. So I mixed the instruments on cassette, put that mix back onto 8 track analog, did the vocals, and then mixed that back onto a cassette. And I think it sounds pretty damn good considering that. Whenever I hear people talk about how they’ve gotta have the best this or that, I’m like, “You know what, it just has to sound good. It doesn’t matter what you use.”
And that led to me engineering on [Posies’ second album] Dear 23. The track “Apology” was my 24 track demo in the studio. And I would go to the mastering sessions too. That’s why I have all the backups, all the DATs and CD refs.
Frosting on the Beater and Beyond
KS: Frosting on the Beater is kind of like a Dinosaur Jr.-ized Big Star in a sense. We actually asked J Mascis to produce it; he wasn’t really doing that at that time. But we ended up working with Don Fleming, who’d worked with Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. And it certainly is true that the guitars are a little tweaked on Frosting on the Beater. But the way that we write and sing is still so sweet that I think Frosting is the perfect balance of the salty and sweet aspects.
JA: You can imagine how for me the current tour rekindles that kind of lead guitar interplay, that guitar/drum interplay that I have with Mike Mussberger from that era. That’s kind of what Frosting on the Beater was about. That’s also the record where I felt that we started to deliver something that could be called our own sound. It wasn’t as much wearing the influences on our sleeves, as we were doing on Dear 23 and Failure. I really feel like we came into our own. Besides the vocals and the songwriting, a lot of the guitar sounds are very unique. And that’s kinda what that record’s about, the incredible drumming and the awesome guitar sounds.
My guitar sound just kind of happened accidentally in my basement, late one night. I was recording “Coming Right Along” as a four track cassette demo. We tried to do a full band version of that, which is on the re-release. But in the end Don Fleming deemed the demo version better. So we took my harmony off the demo and added Ken’s and that was pretty much it.
Frosting on the Beater era Posies
Hearing that guitar sound for the first time was exciting. And I think that really influenced the rest of the record. It was all pretty much this one guitar, which is a very cherished item to me: a 1973 cream colored, three-pickup Gibson SG Custom. And I would use the rhythm pickup. And my father was a musician and he had this amp, a Fender Super Champ. It was a Paul Rivera design, with these high gain stages and this pull pot and this incredible spring reverb in it. I didn’t use my father’s, but I stumbled onto one in a pawn shop, and it was pretty beat up and worn. Someone had replaced the grille cloth with a bandanna. It looked horrible. But I plugged it in and turned the gain and the reverb all the way up. And that was the sound. Instantly. And I was like “Whoa!” Everybody who’s heard it, wants to know what the sound is on Frosting on the Beater.
Frosting was also the first record with extensive touring, and the first era of the band when we really became a good live band. If you saw us back in the day, on the Frosting tours, we were on fire, man! We were young, we were into it. But we also had the experience of touring on Dear 23 and working out a lot of the kinks and the awkwardness. We kinda knew more what we were doing at that point. Of course we had Mike, and then Dave came into the picture. The chemistry occurred, and that was that.
The Current Tour I think a lot of people are gonna be psyched to hear the old line up again in this 30th Anniversary Tour. How is that working, after playing for many years with other side men?
KS: Things were fairly volatile back in the day. No one was very secure in their role, or our role in music. We were striving to establish something, and also to become grownups. And it wasn’t very smooth.Jon got married at that time, I got married at the time of Frosting, but we didn’t have successful first marriages. So the kinds of things that give you stability and maturity hadn’t really come into the picture. And there were often times when we certainly didn’t appreciate each other the way that we should have.
So all of that, of course, is long gone. Now we’ve done different things, realized what a great moment that was and what a great opportunity that was, and that we didn’t totally blow it. I don’t see the story of our band as a tragedy. I see it as, we did pretty good. We didn’t bust into the upper echelons of the million sellers, which would have been nice, but it certainly wasn’t the Big Star story, where they had bad deal after bad deal that basically left them selling like couple thousand records. You know, we sold more records the day that Amazing Disgrace came out than Big Star sold in their whole career, until later. Anyway, I think everybody’s just really happy to be here, and we’ve got kids and marriages and we’re grown ups. It’s as simple as that.
I’m sure that’ll come through in the playing also.
KS: Yeah, I would say that the old Posies were a great live band, most of the time. But you throw in twentysomething partying and all the personal stuff, and though we had a kind of magic, we really didn’t know how to direct it and control it. Now, I think we’ve got magic that’s completely in control. Like, you’ve got the wizards going now. We put so much focus onto the show, and we don’t do stupid stuff that would imperil that, and we can handle our liquor. So when we get onstage it’s bangin’.
I have to say, one other thing I’ve been noticing: Basically everybody is working together. We have a lot of quirks. We make quirky music. And I think back in the day we might have found someone else’s quirks annoying, and I think people also didn’t rein it in. Your personality shouldn’t extend so far in the van that it takes up another seat, you know what I mean? We’re working together, is what I’m trying to say, and it makes everything easier. Back in the old days, it felt like making progress was like pulling a 500 ton sled through a fucking field of mud, and here I feel like, even with these hefty drives, it’s like skiing through fresh powder. It’s a dream.
Do you foresee future music-making with the reunited quartet?
JA: I kinda just have to focus on the now moments. And many of them are great. Personally, I’m very happy that this lineup is together again. For me, the Frosting on the Beater lineup of the Posies is my favorite lineup of the band that ever existed. I gotta qualify that by saying I’ve had pretty deep relationships with everybody that we’ve played with. These are all people that consider close friends, really. And some I see more of over the years. I made a record with Joe Skyward, for instance, who was on Amazing Disgrace, and I’ve toured and made records with Brian Young, who also played with Fountains of Wayne before coming on to Amazing Disgrace.
But as far as the actual playing, this is the best lineup. Dave Fox, the way he plays his bass, he’s got this feel that I like, and he’s not overly muso about what he plays. And then you couple that Mike Musburger, who, without sounding too much like a gushing schoolkid, for me he’s one of the great drummers of all time. I was gutted when he was no longer in the band. That was a big blow for us. As a musician, you must appreciate the value of a good drummer. A great drummer can make a good band great. You’ve gotta have that foundation there. And not only do we have that foundation with Mike, but he provides a lot of the window dressing too. ‘Cos he’s the kinda drummer that other drummers bow down to. Hey audience, if you’ve never seen Mike Musburger play drums before, it’s a sight to see.
Given your time in Big Star, coming back to Memphis must mean a lot to you both.
JA: Oh yeah. And Memphis has been so good to Ken and I. In a way, we’ve been adopted by Ardent and Memphis and that whole scene. I mean, even when Big Star received a Memphis Music Hall of Fame award, they put Ken and I in the hall of fame as well, for our contribution to propagating Big Star. We weren’t expecting that and were very touched by that.
I would count Jody Stephens as one of my dearest friends at this point. He’s just such a warm human being. Anyone will say that about him. I’m just glad that we have that relationship and those experiences together. Louis D Graflund
Big Star at New Daisy
And Alex Chilton. I got to hang out with the guy a lot. He was a really interesting man. Some of my favorite times were just hanging out with him with a guitar and telling stories and just playing whatever. He was almost better when people weren’t looking. Yeah. To quote Alex, “it’s a gas.” It’s always a gas to come back to Memphis.
Here’s a slice of the band in their heyday:
The Posies Chime In On Power Pop, Band Chemistry, and Big Star
Indie Memphis’ ties to this city, and all the musical history that comes with it, give music a place of honor in what is ostensibly a festival of film. Many documentaries on local music have premiered here, from Big Star: Nothing Can HurtMe to Antenna, which memorialized the local club that hosted so much post-punk rock-and-roll. This year is no different, with perhaps more musically oriented content being offered than ever before.
Speaking of Big Star, Thank You, Friends: Big Star’s Third Live … and More (already released on DVD) documents a unique assemblage of A-list musicians who come together periodically to celebrate the band’s music, especially its enigmatic and haunting third album, first released in 1978. Those who frequent the concert series at the Levitt Shell will recall the 2014 performance of Big Star’s Third, complete with members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, where the band’s drummer Jody Stephens was joined by Mitch Easter, Chris Stamey, Ken Stringfellow, and others in a re-creation of Big Star’s sound.
The ever-shifting group reached its apotheosis last year at the Alex Theatre in Los Angeles, where the ensemble was filled out by Jeff Tweedy and Pat Sansone of Wilco and Robyn Hitchcock, to name a few. It’s breathtaking to see and hear the songs gain new life in a live setting, yet some of the material leaves one longing for a bit more of the anarchy that always lurked behind even their most polished recordings. The music does take flight in a more chaotic way as the band leans into the latter day material. One only wishes the guitars were louder.
Meanwhile, another kind of Memphis beat is honored in Mr. Handy’s Blues, a new documentary about W.C. Handy by hometowner and longtime television producer/director Joanne Fish. Ten years in the making, it explores the intriguing combination of insider/outsider status Handy embodied, being well-versed in orchestral music even as he turned a sympathetic ear to that then-obscure folk form known as the blues. Woven into his roller coaster of a life story are testimonials from musical heavyweights on Handy’s impact on American music. Especially compelling is the footage of current-day big bands playing his arrangements, captured with the clarity of high fidelity techniques.
Another hometown documentary overlaps with Handy’s influence. Furry Lewis & The Bottleneck Guitar Story is a musicological appreciation that dips briefly into Lewis’ life story. This is a labor of love by local director David Brian Guinle, as he guides us through the crucial historical details suggesting that Lewis was the first to record and popularize the sound of bottleneck guitar.
Starting with the parallel influences of U.S. soldiers bringing slide guitar techniques to the mainland from Hawaii, and W.C. Handy’s embrace of the blues, the film picks up Lewis’ story when he finds his first broken guitar. “It was time for him to be set in his place,” says Guinle. “Not just put a note on the street. Because he played a more important part in our music.”
Guinle’s story ultimately settles into the director’s 1977 footage of jazz saxophonist Fred Ford interviewing Lewis and setting up several performances by the guitarist in his last years. It is here, and in footage of Lewis and young Lee Baker playing together, where the film really shines. Lewis plays his unique electric Martin GT-70 with aplomb and Ford chimes in with brief, learned observations. Unlike so many music documentaries which offer mere samples of live performances, this one lets Lewis’ playing go on for the bulk of the film, and it’s a treasure.
Beyond these histories of local visionaries and their performances, there’s a lot more music to be found. The documentary Sidemen focuses on the players behind the distinctive ensemble sounds of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Another, A Life in Waves, tells the story of synthesizer pioneer Suzanne Ciani. Beyond documentaries, the narrative features Barracuda, Flock of Four, and The Golden Age all spin dramatic tales around musical performers and their circles. And there will be special screenings dedicated only to music videos, including outdoor screenings at the Indie Memphis block party. Dozens of local bands will be featured.
But it will be the ultimate local band — Booker T. and the MG’s — that will shine out above the others, in a screening not even listed under the festival’s music-related fare. Up Tight! was an obscure offering in the early days of what some call “blaxploitation” film. A dramatic political allegory in its own right, it is especially notable for the soundtrack, composed by Booker T. Jones and performed by the MG’s. Unlike classic MG’s fare, it goes beyond funky instrumentals for more introspective and moody gospel flavors, including “Johnny, I Love You,” sung by Jones himself. And of course, the centerpiece is an extended version of their masterpiece, “Time Is Tight.”
If you’re like a lot of Flyer readers, you’ve been wondering about an ad that has appeared on the back cover over the past few months. At first glance, it’s the familiar logo of legendary Memphis band Big Star. But upon closer inspection, the lower loop of the “B” is missing. It’s caused some chuckles, confused emails, and online speculation. But what is Pig Star?
The short answer, says Jonathan Pekar, is that Pig Star is a band. The longer answer is, well, longer, and more complicated.
“My dad [Ron] and mom [Carol] lived with Alex Chilton. My father created the Big Star logo, and actually made the neon,” explains Pekar.
According to legend, Chilton came up with the name when the band stepped outside the original Ardent Studios for a smoke break and saw the sign for a Big Star grocery store across the street.
“It was my dad who said, ‘Why don’t we do it like this so we don’t get sued?'” says Pekar.
Pekar grew up immersed in the punk rock and skateboarding scene that emerged around the Antenna Club in the 1980s. At 14, he joined Distemper, a hardcore band started by future filmmaker Mike McCarthy that became the first band to play an all-ages punk show in Memphis at the Antenna. Pekar then became an actor, getting parts in such Playhouse on the Square productions as Torch Song Trilogy, where he was discovered by a talent scout. He moved to Los Angeles and landed a part as a surfer named Eric on Beverly Hills 90210.
“When I went out there, Memphis was already known as a punk rock town. When I told them I was in Distemper, they took me to the park, put the [Distemper] tape in the boombox, and told me if I couldn’t sing along to it, they were going to kick my ass.”
Pekar fell into the L.A. comedy scene, and standup proved to be a natural outlet for his manic energy.
“Professional skateboarders would come to my shows because I was a skateboarder comedian who was in a punk band.”
He was working promotions for SST Records when he started the band Are You A Cop with Gone drummer Gregory Moore. Then, his life took another abrupt left turn.
“As soon as they painted my name on the legends wall at the Comedy Store, next to Eddie Murphy’s, I went to film school.”
Following in the footsteps of George Lucas, Pekar got a degree from the University of Southern California’s Cinematic Arts program. Then, in perhaps his greatest contribution to the larger culture, he became a producer of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
“I’m a skateboarder and punk rocker, but my day job is as an actor, producer, and entertainer,” he says.
Pekar returned to Memphis four years ago to open the film division at Ardent Studios.
“Pig Star was not the name of a band at first. I did some commercials for [Central BBQ owner] Craig Blondis, and we wanted to say how connected they were to Memphis. I just covered the bottom of the B and made it Pig Star. [Ardent Studio founder] John Fry thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. And he walks off, and I was like, ‘Wow!'”
But his tenure at Ardent would prove to be short and tumultuous, and he left shortly after the death of Fry amid a storm of corporate infighting.
“A Southern person who has nothing good to say doesn’t say anything at all,” he growls. “I one day will write a book.”
Pekar went across town to American Recording Studio where he and drummer Andrew McCarty banged out some songs to release under the name Pig Star. (“…because it’s funny,” he says.)
Once the bass tracks were laid down, Steve Selvidge, an old friend from the Midtown rock scene, added guitars, and Lucero keyboardist Rick Steff added atmosphere.
“I’m real proud of them,” he says of the nine pop punk songs that make up Number 2 Record. “They’re fun and they’re neat, and I just want them to be entertaining.”
Number 2 Record is now available at Goner and Shangri-La Records. Pekar has gathered a Pig Star live ensemble that includes Distemper’s George Cole and percussionist Jimmy Crosthwait. He says Pig Star plans on playing regularly in the new year.
“I think everyone in Memphis should be in a band. I mean that sincerely.”
Tomorrow night (Thursday, October 20th), Big Star drummer Jody Stephens will be at the Brooks Museum to celebrate the launch of the Big Star’s new book Isolated in the Light. Also on hand will be photographers Michael O’Brien, Maude Schuyler Clay and David Bell.
The limited edition photography book features over 200 photographs that track the career of Big Star, and includes photographs from William Eggleston, Michael O’Brien, Maude Schuyler Clay, Carole Manning, David Bell, Stephanie Chernikowski, David Godlis, in addition to historic images from the vaults of Ardent Records.
Big Star Book Launch at the Brooks
The event begins at 5:30 p.m, at the Brooks Museum, and a book signing will take place. If you can’t make the launch party but are interested in the book, grab a copy here.
This Friday, the Hi-Tone will host an all-star concert in tribute to one of Memphis’ most revered underground heroes, the late Chris Bell.
Bell is best known as a founder of the legendary power-pop group Big Star, and one-half of the songwriting partnership (along with Alex Chilton) that spawned the outfit’s magnificent debut album #1 Record.
After its release in June of 1972, #1 Record garnered positive critical reviews but ultimately flopped from a sales perspective due in part to both shoddy distribution and promotion. This disappointment led to dissent in Big Star’s ranks, and Bell left the group – which would go on to record two more influential studio albums, Radio City and Third, in the ’70s.
After his departure from the band, Bell spent the next several years working on solo recordings during off hours at Ardent, the local studio/label that was also home to Chilton and Big Star. However, only two of those recordings would see the light of day in his lifetime. In December of ’78, Bell was tragically killed in a car accident, thus silencing one of Memphis’ most transcendent rock-and-roll voices.
After Chilton’s untimely death in 2010, Big Star’s status rose again, and there have since been numerous tribute concerts staged around the world to honor the band. Until now, none have been focused primarily on Bell, who is often overshadowed by his more famous counterpart. That changes on Friday when a powerhouse group of local musicians (Jody Stephens, Van Duren, Vicki Loveland, Keith Sykes, Rick Steff, Stephen Burns, Richard Rosebrough, Paul Taylor, and many more) organized by Michigan-based journalist Rich Tupica and Ardent producer/engineer Adam Hill will take to the Hi-Tone stage to celebrate the entire Bell catalog. We sat down with Tupica and Hill to find out more about the show this Friday.
Flyer: How did the idea for a Chris Bell tribute show come together?
Rich Tupica: The idea was hatched, I think in January or February 2015. I had been planning a May 2015 trip to Memphis for quite some time, and the original plan was to have John Fry (Big Star producer/Ardent founder) give me a tour of Memphis. Fry was going to show me locations vital to Big Star or places we’d discussed over the phone for the past couple of years. Then, as we all know, sadly John passed away. That’s when the idea for a Chris tribute came to mind. I figured if the John Fry tour wasn’t going to happen, I would somehow still make this a Bell-centered trip and honor a songwriter I’ve been heavily researching since May 2012, when I started the book. The concert is a way to bring together Chris’ fans, family, and friends. I’m really looking forward to it.
How did you put the band together?
Tupica: The musicians were chosen mostly by Adam. But we did decide early on to try and include friends of Chris Bell – musicians he actually played with at some point. There are other musicians I would have loved to have, but with a limited budget, we stuck close to Memphis for this one.
Adam Hill: Dan Shumake [drums/guitar], Chris Gafford [bass], and I had been playing with Stephen in the Scruffs, so I knew those were the guys to help me with this. Rick was a must as well.
Is Chris Bell underappreciated within the legacy of Big Star?
Tupica: I think Chris Bell is usually a footnote in many of the magazine articles, and that’s due to the short amount of time he spent in Big Star. Bell may have founded the band and its sound, but he left after the first LP, which makes it easy to write him off early on. But, for me, Big Star’s fourth record is that I Am the Cosmos LP. That’s his post-Big Star body of work, and, no matter what, I think Chris was always intertwined in the Big Star saga. Chilton, Stephens, and [bassist Andy] Hummel were even featured on some of the Cosmos tracks – they were still palling around. Sadly, though, Bell died very early. I think him not being around to take advantage of the Big Star resurgence didn’t help matters. He died young.
Hill: Maybe so, Alex repeatedly stated that he joined Chris’ band.
What are you hoping to accomplish with Friday’s show?
Tupica: This show is an out-of-pocket, labor-of-love project. Both Adam and I are huge fans of Chris’ sonic abilities and also his life in general, so it’s been great to put together an event that will bring together like-minded fans.
Hill: We hope to do the material and Chris’ legacy justice. I’m honored to have gone from a fan of the music to actually sitting next to John Fry and remixing some of Chris’ work with him.
What songs are you most excited about hearing in a live setting?
Tupica: I am excited to see all of them live. There are no live recordings of Chris Bell’s solo material, only studio versions and the outtakes. I’ve always been curious about how much energy his songs would have on a stage. He played very few shows and most of them were acoustic. He did perform some of his solo material with the Baker Street Regulars (a mid-’70s Memphis band that featured Bell, Stephens, and Duren), but they never recorded any gigs. In fact, this tribute show will probably cover more of Bell’s catalog than he was able to do while he was on the planet. I hear the Bell family might attend, and I hope this set brings about happy memories for them.
Hill: All of them, this has never really been done before to my knowledge.
The Levitt Shell’s summer concert season starts tomorrow night with a tribute show honoring John Fry and John Hampton. Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer, Jody Stephens and guests will be playing classic Big Star songs, and Tora Tora and Gin Blossoms will also be performing. Fry and Hampton worked on some of the biggest albums recorded in Memphis over the last few decades, and both passed away last December.
Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton (3)
As the founder of Ardent Studios, Fry created a hub for artists ranging from Bob Dylan to B.B. King to create some of their most memorable work. Fry joined the music business at the young age of 14 when he decided to operate a radio station in his bedroom, and later would go on to produce three albums for Big Star. John Hampton was also a hit-maker at Ardent Studios, and worked with the Gin Blossoms and Tora Tora, in addition to winning two grammy awards for his work with Jimmy Vaughn and The White Stripes. The show is free and all ages, so get to the Shell early tomorrow evening to honor two legends of Memphis music.
Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton (2)
Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton
Sigh, sigh, SIGH. I remember writing on this page not so long ago that I usually handle another person’s death pretty stoically, knowing that it’s just a natural part of life and that it’s going to happen to us all eventually. I was having a tough time reconciling the passing of Memphis singer and my much-loved friend Di Anne Price, because I knew the world would never be the same without her. It was really an odd and painful feeling.
And now, a few weeks after the passing of Ardent Studios founder John Fry, it’s a testament to him that so many others around the world still can’t seem to accept the loss. So much has been written about John in the past few weeks and shared on social media, and so many beautiful memories and thoughts about him have been included in donations made to organizations in his memory. The themes are universal: John was kind, talented, humble, the voice of reason, and, more than anything, someone who was always giving to others, sharing his knowledge and time, and always giving others credit and encouragement. All of that couldn’t be truer.
Courtesy of Stax Museum
Huey Lewis with John Fry of Ardent Studios
I don’t know that I can add much more than what has already been expressed, except that John was a dear friend and a massive supporter of the Soulsville Foundation (where I work) and a member of our board of directors. For those who don’t know, the Soulsville Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School. His past relationship with Stax Records is well documented, and John’s Ardent Studios was a sister studio of sorts to Stax back in its heyday, with many of the Stax artists recording at Ardent when the Stax studios were booked up, and for other reasons. And John loved the Stax Museum and loved bringing musicians, and producers, and others there to give them his unique tour.
Soulsville Foundation CEO Calvin Stovall said, “John served on our board of directors for many years and played an integral role in the Soulsville Foundation. He was emphatically committed to everything Stax — the music, the kids, and the Memphis community. His presence and contributions to our organization will be sorely missed. A couple of weeks ago, I had the fortunate opportunity to have John himself give me a tour of Ardent Studios. It was truly one of the most memorable learning experiences I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget it.”
Stax Museum Director Lisa Allen added: “I can’t imagine that anyone else has given a personal tour of the museum more times than John Fry. He was passionate about sharing the history of our music and making sure that current musicians from around the world experienced Soulsville. John became more than a music icon and board member to me; he transformed into a friend. He understood both my professional and personal struggles. Often he would email me with simple words of encouragement that meant more to me than I could ever express.”
But as much as he loved the museum, John probably loved our young people more than anything. It didn’t matter if it was Huey Lewis, or other high-profile artists recording at Ardent, or an up-and-coming young band from Belgium he brought for a tour, he didn’t bring anyone into the museum until he explained what goes on with the young people at the Stax Music Academy and the Soulsville Charter School. He would proudly reel off details about the students’ rate of improvement in mathematics and explain how studying music helped them achieve that. And this started long before he joined our board of directors.
Another thing I loved about John was his very dry sense of humor and how hilariously cantankerous he could be at times. One of his pet peeves was getting caught up in an email thread about something usually pretty mundane, like a meeting date and time, and everyone chiming in by replying to all in the thread, thereby leaving dozens of messages in his email inbox. Drove him nuts. I laughed out loud at my desk so many times when he finally couldn’t take it anymore and relayed his feeling about that to everyone. In one of the last such threads, which involved lots of people congratulating each other on something that had gone really well, he finally conceded and wrote, “Okay, if everyone is going to keep ‘replying all’ in this, then Bravo Zulu! If you know what that means you’re way cool. If not, search it on Google.”
Bravo Zulu is, of course, an old navy signal for “job well done.” Bravo Zulu, John. You’ll be missed.
Chris Shaw was our idea. Noisey was in Memphis. In addition to rolling through the usual suspects, they broke script and spoke to our official intern/actual music writer/lead singer of Goner Records’ media darling Ex-Cult, Chris Shaw. We’re damn glad the big-time, protracted-adolescence media is catching up. Ex-Cult is on a tear. Wait and see what happens as they head out west over the next two weeks. Watch this video for some great quotes from Project Pat, Jody Stephens, Nots, and Peter Buck. In the comments, please discuss who would win in a music showdown between Chris Shaw and Andrew VanWynGarden.
Louis D Graflund 
Courtesy of Stax Museum