The music world lost one of its true greats on Wednesday (March 17) as Alex Chilton, the mastermind of Big Star and an inspiration for most of the alternative rock revolution, died of a heart attack. He was 59 years old. Formed in Memphis in 1971, Big Star began as a group that channeled British Invasion sounds and filtered them through American recording traditions, creating a spectacular brew that borrowed elements from dozens of different genres but kept the hooks at the center of everything.
Chilton essentially invented power pop, and though Big Star didn't get the credit they deserved at the time, their records (especially 1974's Radio City) informed hundreds of bands that followed. They say that only a few hundred people bought the first album from the Velvet Underground, but every single one of them started a band. The same could be said for Big Star's debut #1 Record, often cited as a favorite among alternative rock types like R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and the Replacements' mad genius Paul Westerberg (who immortalized Chilton with the song "Alex Chilton," possibly the finest tune in the Replacements' catalog).
Alex Chilton's musical legacy goes way beyond Big Star and a name check in a Replacements song, though. He scored his first hit when he was 16 years old as the lead singer of the Box Tops, a blue-eyed soul group who struck it big with "The Letter." Following the break up of Big Star in 1974, Chilton moved to New York and got interested in punk rock, playing shows with a number of different combos at CBGB and producing music for a few different bands. He later got into jazz and and toyed with a number of different solo projects before reforming Big Star in the early 1990s (augmented by members of Seattle power pop combo the Posies).
Of course, perhaps Chilton's most notable legacy is as the writer of "In the Street," a Big Star tune that served as the theme song for "That '70s Show." But you can hear Chilton's influence everywhere, in the big hooks of Fountains of Wayne, in the twitchy genre-bending of Weezer and even in the crossover hooks of Taylor Swift. R.E.M. probably owe Chilton the biggest debt of gratitude, as Chilton's influence is in the DNA of many of their early hits, including "Radio Free Europe."