Wednesday 03.17.2010 | 10:23 PM EDT

Big Star Fades to Black: Alex Chilton R.I.P

© Jim Newberry Photography

UPDATE:

Extremely cool that today on C-Span, during Health Care Bill deliberations, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi granted Tennessee House of Representatives Steve Cohen (D) one minute to pay tribute to “a great friend of mine… from my home town of Memphis.”

WATCH IT HERE

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Stellar songwriter Alex Chilton is dead at 59, of an apparent heart attack. Sigh.

Last December I passed up a chance to see a reunited Big Star at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple, opting instead to spend my dollars on the Bob Dylan shows also happening that week. I regretted it then, doubly so now.

Big Star was one of those bands that felt very much of my time, despite peaking 10 years before Sister Lovers and Radio City made their way into my record collection. I came of age in the keyboard-swathed 80′s, but something about that late 70′s sound and Chilton’s guitar/vocal combo felt instantly familiar–a members-only respite for those making the uneasy transition between high school and college. The defiant pop of “You Can’t Have Me” and “You Get What You Deserve” justified and fed our disdain for authority; the romanticism of “September Gurls,” “Thirteen,” “Back of a Car,” and “I’m In Love With A Girl” conjured rosy-glow memories of young love; and the eery strains of “Kangaroo,” “Holocaust” and “Big Black Car” gave many starry-eyed, angry young men cause to re-think the quest for rock n’ roll fame. All of this Chilton managed without maudlin sentimentality; without self-pity; without tainting earnest expression with irony.

But I’ll remember Alex Chilton most as the author of one my Top 5 Songs of all time. Joining the ranks of “Blackbird,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “Bird On a Wire,” Big Star’s “Thank You Friends” gives voice to a thought not expressed enough among us. So much so, it became the centerpiece of me and my wife’s wedding soundtrack and our ceremony’s general sentiment:

Thank you, friends
Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you
I’m so grateful for all the things you helped me do.

 Indeed, Mr. Chilton, thank you.