The Illiterate

As much as I love Big Star and a lot of his solo material (not to mention the Box Tops, who many of his fans tend to write off), I have never been an Alex Chilton cultist. Partly because he was too eccentric to ever be consistent, but also because too much of his audience accepted his eccentricity as his genius. He was the ultimate insider who became an outsider, a sixteen-year-old who went to number one on his first record, and then intentionally walked, or stumbled, as far away from fame as possible, leaving a handful of brilliant albums and tracks in his wake. But for me his cult too often epitomized everything I disliked about the alternative and indie scenes; the idolization of anything wide and outside; the tendency to take intention for achievement; the misguided belief in mental illness as a wormhole to satori. None of that is Chilton’s fault, of course, and I may be missing something I shouldn’t, but it also may explain why one of my favorite Chilton tracks is “Dalai Lama”, in which he dryly skewers mindless adoration and belief, even while possibly indulging in a bit of it himself. Whatever the case, I’m sorry to see him go so young.