BIG STAR:  Third/Sister Lovers/Beale St. Green  (CD)

Liner Notes

As a lifelong resident of Memphis, I've always felt very lucky to
have lived in the breeding ground of some of the greatest musical talent 
to come out of America in this century.  I remember, as a child, hearing 
Memphis music nightly on the local AM Top Ten countdowns.  A lot of the 
music was only successful locally, but to me, that regional sound was 
everywhere.

        We were full of ourselves.  Even if Elvis was in Hollywood
cutting B-flicks, his music was still great.  Graceland was here, so he
was still ours.  Stax/Volt, Willie Mitchell, Chips Moman, and a host of
others were cranking out hit after hit.  It was a golden age for Memphis that
ground to a halt as times changed and greed picked at the bones of what
remained.

        While the party was going on, another local music lover,
John Fry, would start up Ardent Recording in the middle Sixties.  Fry's
studio became a Mecca for eccentrics and oddballs who didn't fit in musically 
with the popular perceptions of Memphis music.  These kids, a number of whom 
came from the soulless suburbs, though excited by all the local energy, were
nurtured on the British Invasion.

        Fry became a patron saint for all these young disenfranchised 
Anglophiles, and for a few years he allowed The Scruffs, Tommy Hoehn, and Big 
Star, among others, to spend loads of time perfecting their accents and sounds 
in his studio.  It is still interesting to me, after all these years, to 
listen to a bunch of Memphis boys trying so hard to sound British and be so 
devoid of any obvious indigenous musical elements.

These guys weren't part of the party, so they would start their own
ground rules that would fly in the face of any notion of a birthright.

Of this school of local artists, Big Star (composed of ex-Box Top lead 
singer Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel) was 
unquestionably at the top of the heap.  Beginning in 1971, under the 
excellent production and engineering guidance of John Fry, Big Star 
created music on Ardent Records (Fry's in-house label) that was a brilliant 
blend of Beatles, Badfinger, Kinks and Byrds.  The ethereal yet strained 
upside-down harmonies and angular playing that accompanied the self absorbed 
lyrics created a tension that was unlike anything done previously, at least 
in Memphis.

#1 Record, their debut effort.  presented an energetic first
impression with the explosive opener, "Feel," but by the end of
side two, the dominant spirit was one of melancholy, depression and
longing.  Throughout #1 Record, Big Star demonstrated an impressive
display of songwriting, arrangement and performance skills, ranging
from the delicately acoustic "Thirteen," to the snarling attack of
"Don't Lie To Me." John Fry's approach to production (particularly
recording acoustic guitars) was as unique as the band's material,
being dense and crystalline at the same time.

Ardent released a couple of singles that promptly (and sadly) got
lost in the shuffle .  Meanwhile, intense conflicts over group
direction and leadership between Bell and Chilton, compounded by #l
Record's commercial failure led to Bell's departure for a solo
career.  At that point, Chilton reconsidered pursuing a solo
project, but somehow Big Star managed to hang together long enough
to enter Ardent as a trio for their second release, the recklessly
vibrant Radio City.

     The performances on Radio City were far more assertive and
disjointed than #1 Record but that didn't take any away from the
load of gems scattered throughout, particularly "September Gurls"
and "Back of a Car".

     Still, the overall feeling of Radio City was one of unspoken
dissatisfaction that gave out clues to the mounting inner darkness
behind the band's vision.

     In spite of great critical praise, bad distribution deals with
CBS/Stax had successfully undermined Big Star's chance ot ever
becoming a household word.  Personal problems and tensions between
Fry and Chilton, accompanied by the accelerating decadence of that
particular scnee provided a fertile situation for the next album
to develop.

     Chilton probably felt a need to work with someone who
understood his feelings and could help him blow them out of his
system.  Producer Jim Dickinson already was very adept at venting
lunacy in a perversely Southern fashsion.  In Dickinson, Chilton
would wage his rebellion on the classic power pop image Big Star
had attained.  3rd, also known as Sister Lovers, was that darkness
rendered full blown.  There is nothing celebratory going on here,
Chilton's senses of faith in the salvation of rock, the redeeming
value of critical praise, or commercial success, probably seemed
like "oh so much crap" at the point of this recording.  As a
result, he performs the music on Sister Lovers as if he had nothing
to lose.

From here out, Chilton's career has been marked of a hardheaded
determination to play the game his way, no matter how spotty the
results.  When it has worked, he has produced music that has been
frightening and exhilarating.  When it hasn't worked, he has
sounded contemptious of his audience.

     By the way, the name Sister Lovers referred to the fact that
Jody and Alex were dating twins, Lesa and Holliday Aldredge.  At
one point, it was even discussed that Big Star consider changing
its name to Sister Lovers, an idea Fry didn't seem too keen on.

     (Though no one has substantiated this, I wouldn't be suprised
that the term "sister lovers" was lifted from David Crosby's
"Triad", a song he cut while with the Byrds.)  During the course of
researching this release yet another title surfaced.  Jim
Dickinson's notes from the recording refer to the album as Beale
St. Green, a lift from "Dream Lover".

     On the surface, Sister Lovers appears to be a lot more
mindlessly lackluster than I believe it is at heart.  The seemingly
cavalier performances have a disjointed druggy feel that do a poor
job of hiding the numb rage, concerning the personal and professional
disappointments Chilton and Big Star had encountered.  Just like Neil
Young's classic "Tonight's The Night", Sister Lovers is high drama
played with the intensity of a game of Russian routette.

"People have their own image of what is going on," stated producer
Jim Dickinson " It's like a stage show.  The musicians see one
thing, and the audience sees something else.  I think Sister Lovers
is very definitely a case of that.  I think that what is perceived is
way different from what was conceived " 

Sister Lovers's sound mix imbues the music with a hollow spooky quality,
full of wasted echoey vocals weaving in and out, while the band is on the 
brink of falling apart.  Nevertheless, even at its most altered 
moments, Sister Lovers is more inspirational than not.  The ballads, 
particularly the beautiful "Nightime,"are chillingly desolate.  Carl 
Marsh's string arrangements are unsually right on the money, oscasionally
sounding like "Eleanor Rigby" on downs.

One song, "Stroke It Noel," actually was given a new set of lyrics, due
to the atmosphere created by the string sessions.  "It originally had
a whole different set of lyrics.  After we put the violins on, Alex
came up with new lyrics, which were far superior," said Dickinson.
''Noel' is Noel Gilbert, one of the string players, and a friend of 
Alex's father.  Alex was really enjoying the string sessions, when we 
finally got around to doing them, because he was just being the naughty
little boy, and really getting off on it.  That's where the lyrics
came from.  I think that's one of his best songs and it's one of my
favorites on the record." On "Downs," like a number of the tracks on
Sister Lovers, Chilton would deliberately wreak havoc on the performance.

"I think that Alex's reason, subconciously, was that he had been
exploited so much," stated Dickinson.  The money from his success had
gone to somebody else, so he was determined tbat if things were going to be 
fucked up, he's going to be the one who fucked them up."

"That's definitely what happened to 'Downs,'' Diekinson continued.
"Fry thought it had pop potential, and as I said, his relationship
with Alex had deteriorated, so Alex destroyed it.  We used a basketball
for a snare drum on the version that was released.  I remember the
look on his face.  If Fry had just not said how good he thought it
was, it would have been entirely different, which you can't blame him".
The disconcertingly ethereal "Kangaroo" provides Sister Lovers
with some of its most wildly transcendent moments.

"Alex went into the stedio late one night, with Lesa (Aldredge,
Chilton' s girlfriend) as the engineer, and recorded the vocal and
the twelve-string guitar on the same track, so there was no possibility
of separation," said Dickinson.  "Alex defiantly played it for me the
next day and said something to the effect of, 'If you want to be a produeer,
do something with this.'  I did the Mellotron part first, and when I got into
the feedback, Alex kind of lost his attitude and started participating again.
He said later, during the forty-five minutes it took us to do that song,
that was the first place he ever trusted me, and he felt like it
took his career ten years forward into the future.  Anyway, 'Kangaroo'
is really where the record started to work."

Of tbe album's rockers, "You Can't Have Me" is a great angry
Wbo-style rave-up where Chilton states very convincingly what has
become a career credo, "You can't have me! Not for free!"

You know from listening to Sister Lovers that that statement
wasn't arrived at without great personal cost.

Even though Sister Lovers has been previously available as an
import CD, it has never truly been released in its entirety, or
witb tbe proper sequence.  This Rykodisc release is the closest
Sister Lovers will ever get to that sequence, as Chilton and Dickinson
were only able to agree on a running order for four songs (the first
three and the last one).

"The whole thing made sense, at one point, on paper," stated
Dickinson. "It was very cyclic 'Thank You Friends' is supposed to
be first, and 'Take Care' is supposed to be last.  That definitely, I
think, makes a big difference, because tbe way it has been sequeneed,
heretofore, is that the end of the record is very dark.  In fact, one
of the versions ends with 'Holocaust, ' which was never the point.

"I honestly don't know who made the choice of what went on the
record, because the thing has never been truly released," added
Dickinson. "The other subsequent releases of the reeord, basically
are bootlegs, because it has never heen released in the right sequence."

"At one point everybody talked about making this a double album,"
explained Dickinson.  "We all knew that Stax was going out of
business, so we just kept recording, hoping things wouldn't go
away, but we never truly finished.  Things had deteriorated to the
point that we couldn't go any further.  'Dream Lover' is, in reality,
the last thing we recorded."

Sister Lovers, as well as the first two albums, have proven to be (far
beyond their commercial success) highly influential to a whole
movement of aspiring writers and musicians R.E.M, The Replacements,
The Bangles, The dB's, The Posies, Game Theory, Chris Stamey and
many others have been vocal about their debt to Big Star's vision.

Unfortunately, Big Star's work, particularly the decadent airs of
Sister Lovers have been embraced in itself by a number of fawning
Chiltonphiles who find something noble in sowing the seeds of
creative self-destruction.  Ncvertheless, Sister Lovers should
not be faulted for the way some people have chosen to perceive it.
Its uncompromising presentation and its profound effect on much
of today's talent justly gives it the right to be designated as
a true classic.


- Rick Clark