Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Page #8

Charles Raiteri

reports on the Rock and Roll

werewolves

from the Black Lagoon.

Alex saw the Cramps at CBGB's

and came back

talking about it the next day

and he loved it.

It was, you know, Memphis

but New York at the same time.

I had heard that it was

a performance art project

that had gotten

a following as a band.

They were ghouls,

you know, deliberately ghouls.

When The Cramps came here

in September of '77,

Lux and Ivy and Nick,

I mean, they stopped traffic.

People would go...

"What the f*** are you?"

For me that was Memphis

Rock and Roll 20 years later.

Not Rock music,

not retro-rockabilly,

not Punk Rock,

that was Rock and Roll.

Memphian Alex Chilton

well-known in the Punk world

is producing

The Cramps album,

not from this old board.

This is the board

which first recorded

the man many consider to be

the first rockabilly punk,

Elvis Presley.

Well, yeah,

I think it makes them

feel good to be in Memphis,

you know, down here

where all the music

that they have

collected for so long

and like so much came from.

I just love

those up-tempo waltzes.

You know, there were people

in several other areas

reaching for Punk Rock

and reaching for a new,

you know, aggressive,

cutting-edge

denial of the past

and we were too.

Yeah, Punk Rock

was different in Memphis

than it was in other places.

# Lonely days are gone

# I'm going home

# My baby just

wrote me a letter #

It was at the

Beale Street Blues Festival

that Memphis first realized

it had a Punk in its midst.

Alex, are you being

punkish on stage?

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

# Rock on

# Rock hard

# Ripples

# Rock hard

# Nipples

# Rock hard

# Purple

I think

the Memphis Pilgrimage

was just the natural thing

to do for us at that time

because

I had met Alex in New York

and then Chris Stamey,

of course, was playing with him.

It was summer.

We were like,

let's do something.

And the thing

we're gonna do

is instead of going to the beach

we're gonna go to Memphis.

We also had the idea

that we were going

to meet Chris Bell.

We were going to try to.

We were just

a little curious about him

and he was more mysterious,

'cause, you know,

he sort of disappears

from the Big Star

story early on.

It was like, you know,

kind of like hanging out

with the Beatles for us,

because those records to us

were as good

as any records on earth.

I guess we were probably

like every year

we got a little more

into them in a way,

like realizing just

how good they were,

thinking more and more about

how they did them and stuff.

And then, of course,

this picture

on the back is great,

because

they look pretty cool

and looks like

they're having a good time

and you have

to love Jody's jacket.

You cannot beat that.

We had

a bit of information about

which Danver's

restaurant Chris Bell

was working at and found it

and went out there.

Well, Alex told us

where to find Chris.

Did he?

Yeah, he said,

"Yeah, he works out

at this Danver's in... "

Germantown or something?

Germantown or whatever it was,

the suburb.

And sure enough,

we went out there

and he was wearing

the little two-corner paper hat

and didn't seem

particularly glad to see us.

Well, we passed a note back,

you know, through the person

at the counter, you know.

And he came out looking

completely bamboozled like,

"You want to see me?"

Yeah.

Alex had invited us

to go stop into the studio

because he was having

a listening session.

He was making

an album that became

"Like Flies on Sherbet"

and we kept like

bugging Chris Bell,

who was really reluctant to go.

He really did not want to go.

And we finally bugged him

long enough

that he agreed to go.

And Chris Bell sat in the corner

and was really, really uptight

and Alex just

kind of said hi to him.

But we did wind up

staying there

right after he beat it

out of there...

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chris left as quick as he could.

Yeah, it struck me

that those two probably

hadn't seen each other

in a long time

and it was perfectly cordial

but it wasn't

exactly comfortable

and so we were the enzyme there,

I guess.

Yeah.

And I felt a little bad

about it later

because I hate to have

thought that Chris

thought we just wanted,

you know, to get to Alex

because Alex was sort of the...

I mean, there was a little bit

of a Lennon/McCartney thing.

There was a magnetism

Alex always had

and I'm sure he felt that.

# Oh, little fool

# Oh, you know that

thing in school #

# Baby, you're my...

This is anti-music,

is that right?

This is

an anti-musical environment.

We'd like to do...

The Panther Burns

would like to do one more tune.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

But that may be the worst sound

I've ever heard

come out on television.

The loveliest pictures...

Thank you very much.

That's what you want though,

I'm assuming.

Well, the best of the worst.

You're really very bitter,

aren't you?

I'm not bitter about anything.

I get exhilarated

by this kind of music.

Why don't you introduce

the band members to us?

This band is Panther Burn.

And we have on synthesizer,

Eric Hill,

Ross Johnson on drums,

Rick Ivy on trumpet,

Axel Chitlin on lead guitar

and Gustavo Falco

on guitar and vocals.

We'd like to do one more tune

which is a rock and roll tango...

Gustavo, we're not quite

ready for it, okay?

Okay.

We're gonna take another

break here on "Straight Talk"

and we'll be to the studio

in just a moment.

There was Muddy Waters,

there was the Rolling Stones,

now there's...

The Panther Burns.

Oh, yeah, I mean,

we're obviously underground.

# Home of the brave,

land of the free #

It was art damage.

That was the concept to perform,

entertain, and to provoke.

I thought that part of rock

and roll was gone.

I didn't think really

you could do anything

that would truly be offensive

and sure enough, you could.

You still could.

I felt he had consciously

distanced himself from Big Star.

There was this

syndrome where,

when Alex is involved,

you create something

that's beautiful,

and then the next phase

is to destroy it.

So Alex told me that Chris Bell

had this crazy song

and told me he had mixed it

with Geoff Emerick

and I started hearing

something about it.

I don't know

if I got much of it.

It was mainly just Alex said,

"It's a great song,

you ought to put it out. "

Alex was just sitting here

and he said it goes like this,

"Every night I tell myself

I am the cosmos,

I am the wind but that don't

get you back again. "

And then Alex just,

like, laughed.

And he just thought

that was so much like Chris.

Like Chris had written

the perfect Chris Bell line.

"I Am the Cosmos"

would never have come out

without Alex wanting me

to put it out.

It was the song, you know.

It was

the perfect anthem to him.

It was a big deal to Chris.

# Every night I tell myself

# I am the cosmos

# I am the wind

# But that don't

get you back again #

# Just when I was

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