Interview: Jody Stephens From Big Star
The last living member of the '70s power pop icons will be performing the band's notorious final album, Third/Sister Lovers, at the Sydney Festival in January.
Big Star fans are a peculiar cult. The perennial band badge on my coat collar recently scored me a discount on a laptop at JB Hi-Fi (“I’ll give you the Big Star discount,” said the friendly salesperson, which amounted to about $70). Besides sparing my pockets, it says something of the enduring impact of the ’70s power pop icons, a band whose classic first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, inspired the likes of The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub, and many other rockers with a love of crunchy chords and sticky melodies.
The band’s 1974 swansong, an album with no official title or tracklist, is a completely different beast from the first two, though. Recorded in a boozy, druggy haze after half the band’s original line-up split (including co-writer Chris Bell), Third/Sister Lovers has by turns been described as “an album that sounds as if it was being demolished even as it was being recorded” and frontman “Alex Chilton’s nervous breakdown captured to tape.” Only 250 copies were pressed at the time and its release was shelved when producers couldn’t drum up any major label interest, and the band subsequently broke up later that year.
In recent years, Jody Stephens — Big Star’s original drummer and last living member — has been travelling the world, bringing the album’s rich chaotic detail to life with the help of power pop luminaries, Chris Stamey from The DBs, Mike Mills from R.E.M., Mitch Easter from Let’s Active, and Ken Stringfellow from The Posies. This January, they’ll be bringing the show to the Sydney Festival, with a whole string of guests who’ll be dropping by for the festivities including Cat Power, Kurt Vile, Edwyn Collins (Orange Juice), and Tim Rogers (You Am I).
Jody Stephens playing Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers in Central Park [image: Chris Sikich]
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Junkee: Take us back to 1974 for a bit. What kinda mood surrounded the band as you went into the studio to record Third/Sister Lovers?
Jody Stephens: Well… Chris (Bell; guitar/vocals) left after the first album, and Andy (Hummel; bass) left after the second. That left Alex (Chilton; guitar/vocals) and me, and we got started on the third album because it just seemed the thing to do. I always had a lot of respect for Alex and was kinda grateful to still be a part of the process, especially working with not only him, but Jim Dickinson (producer) and John Fry (Ardent Studios founder). There were kinda dark moments during that period of recording Third, and then there were very light, beautiful moments as well, certainly with delivering tracks like ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Take Care’.
When Alex Chilton came into the studio with something kinda crazy, like ‘Holocaust’ , for example, what was the general reaction?
“I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone say anything quite as biting about anybody…”, is what I think most people thought. Boy, he achieved what he wanted to achieve with that line (“You’re a wasted face, you’re a sad-eyed lie, you’re a holocaust.”). It’s a statement that I think would be quite devastating to hear about yourself.
There’s been a lot of talk in hindsight of the commercial failure of #1 Record and Radio City, and how they should’ve made Big Star the “biggest rock band around”. Were you aware of that kinda talk at the time? Was the morale low going into the making of Third?
You know, I can really just speak for myself, and my morale was always high while walking out of the studio at the end of a session, because it was always such an amazing experience for me. I’d never been in an all-original band before, I’d never had the opportunity to work in a studio like Ardent or with folks as creative as Alex, Andy and Chris. I was pretty fulfilled! Once we got the album mixed and we’d sit back and listen, that was pretty much it for me — I’d done what I wanted to do, and was amazingly happy with it.
The narrative that’s come out of the album over the years has been of someone having a nervous breakdown and kinda scratching away at their own recordings. Were the sessions as loose as the end result ended up being?
I remember them being pretty focused; Alex had a particular way that he wanted the record to sound and the performances to be. I mean, he’d notice an upright bass being slightly out of tune, or he’d hear a string arrangement that wasn’t what he wanted it to be and he’d then spend six to seven hours re-working it. There were many things like that… I don’t know, what have I always thought about Big Star records? They’re a good reflection of where everybody was at the time, like, it’s more of a reflection of Chris for #1 Record and Alex for Radio City and certainly the third album.
The lineup for the live show — including the confirmed guests (Cat Power, Kurt Vile, etc) — is quite great. Have any of you been practising together?
No! What we’ve done before is we’ll have a rehearsal the night before, for like six or seven hours, and then we’ll get together on the afternoon of the gig, at say about 1pm, and we’ll rehearse ’til about 5 or 6 and then perform the show at about 8. But, you know, I sit down and play along with Big Star’s Third CD and I’m pretty well-versed in it anyway, but I’ll run through it like six, seven, eight times. It’s a long way to go, and you wanna make a good impression!
What’s been the best thing you’ve learned doing these tours? Have your thoughts on Third/Sister Lovers changed over the years?
They’ve definitely changed. At the time that we were recording Third, like I said, there were those really beautiful moments but then there were all the odd ones like ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Kangaroo’ and ‘Downs’, but, you know, the further I got away from it, the more I appreciate it. It really is a brilliant reflection of where Alex was at that moment.
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Jody Stephens’ picks
New music: The Greyhounds
“They’re a great Austin band I’m working with here at Ardent at the moment. We’re also working with a band called Star & Micey from Memphis who are just fun and soulful and folky.”
Documentary: Good Ol’ Freda
“I just watched the Produced By George Martin documentary and that was pretty remarkable, but oh man, Good Ol’ Freda is really fun. It’s a documentary about The Beatles’ fan club secretary; she was a pretty lovely person with an inner view of what was going on, and they go back and she tells stories. That’s coming out on Magnolia who also did the Big Star documentary.”
YouTubes: The Replacements reunion @ RiotFest
“I was just looking at some YouTubes of The Replacements doing the RiotFest, those reunion things. The Replacements did Pleased To Meet Me here at Ardent, right when I came back here on the business side of things in ’87. They were were in Studio B here with Jim Dickinson; I didn’t see much of them ‘cause they usually didn’t come in until after 6:30pm or later in the evening. Paul Westerberg is such an amazing writer, I like to think there’s a bond there, aside from that brilliant song ‘Alex Chilton’ which is obviously a big part of that bond.”
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Catch Big Star’s Third at the Sydney Festival on Thursday January 23. Head here for further details.