Alex Chilton Dead at 59 | Alex Chilton dies of heart attack
The first notes of the first official shows of this year’s installment of the world’s best music festival had barely been played when the word started spreading through the crowd, from iPhone to iPhone, via Facebook status update and shocking Tweets: Alex Chilton, the often reclusive godfather of jangly pop was dead. Felled by a heart attack in New Orleans at the age of 59.
The 16-year-old boy who led the Box Tops to the top of the charts with 1967’s “The Letter” (”Give me a ticket for an aeroplane, ain’t got time to take a fast train”) and grew into the founder of the incomparably influential Big Star was no more. It hit especially hard in Austin where the reformed Big Star was to play the final set of the final night of South By Southwest 2010.
But even if he hadn’t been on a lot of music lovers’ schedules this week, the news would have hit just as hard. Big Star was the band often atop lists of “Greatest Bands You Never Heard Of,” even though virtually every rock musician was aware of the contributions of the Memphis quartet. It was often said of the Velvet Underground, “Almost nobody saw them, but everyone who did formed a band.” And what VU did in inspiring punk and new wave, Big Star did for guitar-based pop.
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