Alex Chilton once stated that he was merely a singer, never planning on successfully crafting songs that mean much. The last thirty years begged to differ.

Photo By: Philippe Brizard

Chilton, legendary front man of Tennessee rock band Big Star, began recording with the group in the early 1970s. Big Star, under Chilton’s discretion, found a niche in almost every reviewer’s heart with their first release, the ironically titled #1 Record, an album that played with the style of rock that arrived with British Invasion groups like The Kinks and The Beatles. While Big Star found fame within their own time, their true phenomenon came in the eighties rock scene, when groups like REM and Elliott Smith started to cover Big Star hits and mention their influence in liner notes. With the help of their mentees, Big Star reached not only critical success, but also mainstream musical greatness.

Big Star’s most revered album, 1974’s Radio City, has been defined as a cult classic by thousands of musicians, artists, and listeners alike. Most recently, it was featured in the 2009 film Adventureland, as well as careening its way through the pages of national bestseller Love Is A Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. The presence of Big Star, much like those British bands they tried to simulate, is palpable within today’s rock scene. Big Star and Chilton are undoubtedly timeless acts that have a special space in musical history.

Last week, the world of rock and roll was reminded tragically of Big Star’s allusiveness, with the unexpected death of Alex Chilton at the age of 59. Artists and fans alike reunited for what felt like a communal listening session, playing the tunes of Chilton’s solo career and hits off of the Big Star repertoire. For a few days, it was a musical global movement; fans spoke their praises of Chilton with artists at the annual SXSW festival, while MGMT took to the London stage with a word on the impact Chilton had on every group within the scene.

I myself took the news with a great deal of nostalgic sadness. I used to roam the halls of my high school with my ears clogged with headphones, listening to the sweet whine of “I’m In Love With A Girl,” praying that someone, someday would say the same of me. I held on to the hope that others would realize how great of a virtue it is to have that innate sense of simplified beauty, the ideal that love can be wonderful and quiet and careless all at once. While it’s been a few years since my romanticized past, the death of Chilton proved to mean much more within my own world than I thought it would. I look around and realize that the globe is sometimes as sweet as a song in the ears of a fifteen year old.

The death of Alex has brought out a charming, softer side in everyone that had the same aspirations with each listen.

It’s a wonderful thing, to realize that, with the help of a musician or two, the world can become what you wished it to be not so long ago. That’s the true power of music, a power that the entire scene seems to be clinging onto as we all pay respects to the man, the myth, the Alex Chilton.