From: Stu Khan (khan_s@chem.usyd.edu.au) Alex Chilton is playing in Sydney in two days from now! As a result the local press ran an interview....... I thought I'd share some of the more interesting quotes with you all (I know you'd do the same for me!) I like these ones: About Big Star: "With Big Star, all I was doing was joining Chris Bell's band and all I did was to fit in with his concept of the group. The things I've been doing since then are more me than Big Star ever was, which is something that disapoints a lot of Big Star fans." About the Box Tops: "There is a lot of pressure within show business when you're that young. They want you to do the usual show business things that mainstream stars do and it took a long time to learn to cope with that. I think what happened with me was that I was just a kid who fell into a group which in turn fell into having a hit record. I mean, I couldn't play at all at that time, but I could sing a little bit. After that, people wanted me to continue doing the same thing that I'd been doing with the group but it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do, because really, that thing with The Letter wasn't me. That was the problem with succeeding at such an early age and succeeding in the way that I did." About now: "There's a lot of rock'n'roll there and a lot of the rockabilly thing and rhythm and blues and country blues and gospel. All these things present a distinct cultural advantage to grow up around if you want to be a rock'n'roller." About childhood: "From the time I was seven or eight I was pretty much into music. My dad was a jazz musician and I started listening to a lot of his records by guys like Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Charlie Parker and people like that. Chet Baker was a particular influence on me. I started to sing along to Chet's records when I was about eight years old. Then the blues and rockabilly around the town was a part of the environment but I can't really say I was a big rock fan until I was about thirteen. The Beatles came along and that really grabbed me in a big way." About musical genious: "When it comes down to the skills of the craft of music, I'm really a mediocrity. I can hardly read music at all, although I do keep trying."