Alex Chilton — The Letter From The Other Side of Success
A musical enigma and a one-man rock encyclopaedia
How do you go from a #1 hit and being one of the most successful so-called blue-eyed soul artists and considered the progenitor of power pop by ecstatic critics, to never really making a success story out of it, to a patchy solo career and odd-jobs, then back to being a producer and musical encyclopedia of rock and roll, to almost fully rehabilitating your career by the end?
Well, you would have to ask Alex Chilton, the man from Memphis who went through all of that — that is, if he were still with us. He passed in 2010, leaving behind one of the more iconic and interesting musical careers you’ll ever find, full of hits, unfortunate misses, and strange and not so strange life stories. The closest you’ll get to hearing his life story straight from the source is with one of the best reads among musical biographies, aptly titled A Man Called Destruction (2014) by Holly George-Warren (named after an actual Chilton album from 1995), and the fantastic rock documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012). However, recounting Chilton’s path through life is one thing and doing the same with his music is a another.
