I am not a musician. Never been one. On a random day in fourth grade at the Catholic school I went to, my class was herded to an all-purpose room to see if any of us were interested in learning an instrument. This being 1985 or 1986 (I forget which year), when asked which instrument I was interested in, I said the saxophone. It would be easy to say that this desire was born out of seeing Rob Lowe rocking a saxophone in that memorable bar scene in St. Elmo’s Fire but, alas, that would be a lie because I had not seen the movie at that point. No, the reason I gravitated towards the saxophone was because the sax seemed to have (to me) a fantastic niche in pop music at the time. (And wouldn’t it be awesome to be a sax player in a band? I thought to myself.) The saxophone, along with the keyboard, which I was also interested in but our school didn’t use one, was enjoying some success as a go-to background instrument. I held the saxophone and attempted to unleash a money truck of awesomeness on the poor sixth or seventh grade band student who was volunteered for this annual musical experiment. I don’t remember what collection of broken notes and dying mallard noises came out of my saxophone but I was politely told that my hands were too small and therefore the saxophone wouldn’t be a good fit for me. Would I be interested in trying another instrument, the older kid asked me in what I am sure was a tone of please-say-no please-say-no please-say-no. I said no and thus ended my music career save for a keyboard that was given to me as a birthday gift a couple years later which quickly collected dust, and probably a spider or two.
Additionally, I am not now nor ever have been employed as a critic or journalist. I have never interviewed a band, let alone followed one around on multiple stops during at tour or during recording sessions for an upcoming album. I don’t know the difference between A# and G# and I am unaware of just about every intangible that goes into making an album or keeping your sanity during a tour. But in spite of these deficiencies I feel confident in writing that Big Star is a band’s band, comprised of musicians’ musicians. I feel confident in writing this because this is oftentimes the default way to describe a band that is legitimately great but failed to make a name for themselves on a wide mainstream scale. And to understand how great a band Big Star was is to understand the genre of power pop, and how it differs from pop.
Technically speaking, power pop is a genre defined by pop songs whose lyrics are more personal in nature cloaked in music that emphasizes melody and (typically) disregards guitar solos. Again, technically speaking, The Beatles are the progenitors of power pop (“Yesterday” is arguably their high watermark contribution) but my opinion is that Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is the first true start-to-finish power pop masterpiece. One can certainly delve deeper into the history of power pop and come up with all sorts way to describe it further but, to me, I think the best way it can be summed up is the way that Jody Rosen summed it up (I’m paraphrasing): power pop is music written by and for dorks, the vulnerable guys.[1] When seen through this prism, you can understand why I think Brian Wilson is the power pop Buddha and why a song like “I Know There’s an Answer” or “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” would stand out in bas relief.
Big Star’s first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, are filled with power pop classics[2] most notably “September Gurls” (according to most rock critics). Like many bands and artists on this site, you can make a case for a number of songs in the Big Star catalog. The one I’m going with is a track off of their debut album, “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” For the most part, power pop is a genre that mostly resides in England or on the coasts of the US; for a while it rarely had a southern tinge, or evoked thoughts of southern music. (If you were to play a music-based word-association game, I think it’s fair to assume that most people, upon seeing the word “south,” would think of “country music” “banjo” or “Lynyrd Skynyrd” before thinking of power pop.) Big Star forever changed that and in the process they unfurled a blueprint for contemporaries like R.E.M., Wilco, Ryan Adams, and countless others.[3]
Again, I could make the case for a number of songs here but for me what separates “When My Baby’s Beside Me” from the rest of Big Star’s catalog is the feelings that it evokes. This is a song that would be perfectly at home emanating from the speakers of a jock’s muscle car on an abandoned road while teenagers drink and curse the small town they had the misfortune of growing up in, or playing through the headphones that sit atop the head of a kid that is terrified of the potential embarrassment that resides in the hands of a pretty girl. “When My Baby’s Beside Me” has riffs that would tickle Dr. Johnny Fever and cause him to spin in his chair and then stand up and play air guitar, as well as a chorus that connects with every guy whose shyness causes him to daydream of the girl that singularly relaxes and levels everything for the singer. It is a rock song that feeds into the Cool Guy alter ego that resides in every guy while being rooted in a dorky kind of universality. It is power pop personified.
Big Star is notable for being the band that Alex Chilton was in—Chilton being the preeminent Musician’s Musician. Chilton’s musical career began in Memphis in 1967 with a band named The Box Tops, of which their release “The Letter” was a regional success and an overwhelmingly critical success. In 1971, Chilton, along with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel, formed Big Star and the rest is rock (and Memphis) history.
Big Star and Chilton and Bell and Stephens and Hummel are not big household names outside of the domain of rock writers and musicians upper-tiered music lovers. Some may say that this reality is a minor tragedy, or an indictment against the Top 40-ness of the typical American music consumer. I shy away from throwing that kind of contempt at an audience: shit happens and bad timing happens. Big Star never hit it big on the mainstream stage; there are other tragedies to concern ourselves with. If you have heard of Big Star then you are (most likely) familiar with this song. If you have never heard of Big Star before I would tell you that they are a band whose catalog is worth visiting. Their lack of a household name aside, they are one of the pillars that the music of the ’70′s is built upon. They are in the team photo of the most influential bands from that decade.
Or, to put it another way: if I were playing the role of the older band student from the first paragraph above and you were me trying to play the saxophone, I would lean in and whisper hey and then pass you this single and tell you to start with this first. You don’t need to be a musician or a writer or a producer to recognize its greatness.
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[1] Jody Rosen is a music critic whose writings have appeared on numerous sites and magazines. I know him primarily from his work on Slate.com, both as a writer and as a semi-frequent guest on the site’s Culture Gabfest podcast.
[2] Third/Sister Lovers does too but that album is a far more experimental type of power pop.
[3] The Byrds are usually the de facto band referenced when describing R.E.M.’s early I.R.S. years, but Big Star was just as big an influence on their sound.
