Alex Chilton Tribute

11/06/2010

Songs of devotion for Big Star @ Mono, Glasgow

Alex Chilton Tribute Night
Mono, Glasgow
5/5

When Alex Chilton died in March this year, there were many who felt his loss but there were few places where it hit home quite as hard as Glasgow. Chilton’s links with the city were forged in the early 90s when Teenage Fanclub’s almost devotional zeal for his 70s band Big Star led to their three studio albums being reissued, a Big Star reunion and the forging of many enduring friendships.

Most, if not all, of those friends are here tonight. Jason McPhail was one of Alex’s closest friends and he reconvenes his old band V-Twin for tonight’s gig. They give convincing, heart-felt covers of ‘Hey Little Child’ from Chilton’s solo disc Like Flies on Sherbet and ‘In the Street’ from Big Star’s debut. But it is a cover of ‘Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta’ by Ernie K-Doe that is perhaps most resonant. McPhail introduces it by telling the audience of the time that Chilton took him to see K-Doe play in front of a dozen people in a New Orleans bar. A few years after K-Doe died his song ‘Here Come the Girls’ was used in a UK ad campaign and became a hit. Such is life. ‘In the Street’ itself has found new fame as the theme song for execrable US sitcom The 70s Show; there’s irony there, somewhere.

Duglas from BMX Bandits appears at intervals in his wide-eyed, day-glo, kiddies TV presenter mode to act as congenial host. Apparently he was hanging off a metaphorical cliff a couple of months ago. His friends saved him. Cue a combined Bandits/ Pearlfishers version of ‘Thank You Friends’ from Big Star’s Third/ Sister Lovers, a spectral cover of ‘Thirteen’ and a fittingly celebratory sing-along version of ‘The Ballad of El Goodo’.

It’s a night full of cameos and collaborations. Stevie Jackson from Belle and Sebastian flew back from the US where he’s mixing the band’s next album to give us his version of one of Chilton’s favourite songs, ‘Memphis in June’ by Hoagy Carmichael and Chilton’s own ‘Alligator Man’. Hot Chip send their contribution on film, delivering ‘The Letter’ (Chilton’s massive early hit as 16-year-old frontman for The Box Tops) and ‘My Rival’ via an onstage screen. Best of all is Chilton’s widow Laura’s version of The Shangri-Las ‘Past, Present and Future’; a song, she tells us, that Chilton had been singing around their house in the weeks before his death.

There may be no headline act as such but Teenage Fanclub are the obvious choice to close the night. Their versions of ‘Free Again’ and ‘O Dana’ are met with frantic applause but it is a cover of The Olympics’ ‘Mine Exclusively’ with McPhail on vocals that really highlights why Chilton cared for Glasgow and why he had so many friends here; a shared obsession for great music and it’s power to bring people together in celebration. It all ends, inevitably, with ‘September Gurls’, Chilton’s eternally breezy anthem to young love, delivered with all the passion and all the respect that such a song, and such a man, deserves.

By Derek Kennedy