2010-03-18: New York City

This is the short version. The longer version has been told and will be told again, I'm sure, in greater detail and with greater poetic dexterity.

When I was 20 years old I was so moved by the Big Star 3rd album that I found it absolutely necessary to jump on a Greyhound bus to Memphis merely to soak up the environment and maybe meet the man who could make such beautiful, vulnerable, transparent, honest music.

I not only experienced the city but also was welcomed by Alex Chilton himself. I spent a full week that summer in 1981, buying beers and smokes for Alex, talking about love and art and philosophy and life-everything but his actual music, as it turns out-over many late Memphis nights. We heard that week that Jerry Lee Lewis was on his deathbed in a Memphis hospital and parked across the street, drinking beer and toasting his health.

30 years later Jerry Lee is still here and now Alex is gone.

That night Alex invited me back to his parents' place where he was living at the time. I looked in awe at the gold records for "The Letter" and "Cry Like a Baby" as I walked in. What can I say?--I was a fan. And he made me some very tasty grits for breakfast the next morning.

Since then, I encountered Alex here and there. We played a festival together in Norway in 2007. The next day Linda and I met up with him at the Oslo airport and helped him find the gate for his flight Paris. He wanted to talk about our dates of birth, astrological signs and compatibility. His curiosity almost caused him to miss his plane.

Last year I saw Big Star play in Brooklyn. Alex and I talked for a while after the show. We exchanged phone numbers and I was looking forward to seeing him when we were in New Orleans for Jazz Fest next month. My hero had become my pal and that made me very happy. I've heard that was the last Big Star gig and I'm glad he went out on such a great show before a wildly appreciative audience.

In a very sad month when I have lost one of my oldest and best friends (Mary Herczog) and am still taking in the horrible suicide of another friend, Mark Linkous, I find myself shattered by the untimely death of a man I didn't know all that well, a man I wish I had had the chance to know a little bit better. I wish I could have seen Alex play a show when he was 90 years old (I guess I would have been approaching 80 if my math is right). He was a guy who had so much enthusiasm and talent. His passing is a great loss for his fans, for music and for people like me who drew so much inspiration and solace from the beauty and love that he chose to make so public to anyone who cared to look within.

As Alex said...take care