Alex Chilton Big Star REM wasn't asked by a doctor suddenly heart attack Replacements Alex Chilton wasn't asked by a doctor suddenly heart attack Alex Chilton March 17th.
Alex Chilton wasn't asked by a doctor
2010.04.13
suddenly heart attack
Alex Chilton
March 17th.
Although he led the legendary band that developed power pop rock, Big Star, there were many voices who regret their death as they left a
big influence on American alternative bands, such as REM and
Replacements.
Pitchfork and others have reported that they have come to
the forefront of this fact.
Alex hasn't had medical insurance, and it's becoming clear that his death could have been avoided if he had a doctor.
In particular, the Times Picayune newspaper recently introduced the life
style of Alex, who had been living in
New Orleans since the early
1980s, and the fact became clear.
Most of the articles introduce Alex's lifestyle, which is somewhat
self-sufficient, where he spends his time on the music while working on
things such as washing the restaurant when he needs to withdraw from the
line.
There is;however, at the end, also mention of health problems for which Alex did not seek treatment.
"About a week before he had his life-threatening heart attack, Alex had
been
suffocating chills at least twice during his lawn mowing. According to striking wife Laura, the main reason she
didn't go to the doctor was that she didn't have medical insurance. "
Alex Chilton's life in New Orleans was a mystery, and that's how the Big Star singer wanted it
Keith Spera, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Alex
Chilton on stage during the 2004 South by Southwest music conference in
Austin, Tex. He died three days before a scheduled appearance with Big
Star at the 2010 conference.
The ancient Creole cottage in Trireme sags. The paint peels. Dormer windows are boarded up. A vine sprouts from the roof.
But to Alex Chilton, one of rock’s great enigmas, this was the most precious house in the world. It was home.
As the teenage frontman of the Box Tops,
Chilton's preternaturally gritty voice sent "The Letter" — "gimme a
ticket for an aeroplane, ain't got time to take a fast train … cause my
baby just wrote me a letter" — soaring up the pop charts in 1967.
"American Idol" contestant Lee DeWyze recently covered it.
In 1971, Chilton co-founded Big Star.
Named for a grocery store chain in Memphis, Tenn., Big Star released
three albums, all commercial failures, then disbanded with little
fanfare.
But those three obscure 1970s LPs are now hailed as
timeless power-pop touchstones. Rolling Stone listed all three in the
Top 500 albums of all time. R.E.M., Wilco, the Replacements, the
Bangles, Matthew Sweet, Jeff Buckley, Cheap Trick and many more have
covered and/or borrowed from Big Star.
In the ultimate affirmation of an enduring legacy, Rhino Records assembled "Keep an Eye on the Sky,"
Even
as his legend grew and he flew off to Big Star and Box Tops reunions,
Chilton lived anonymously in New Orleans for 28 years.
On March
20, he planned to front Big Star for a high-profile showcase at the
South By Southwest music conference in Austin, Tex., cementing the
band’s relevance to yet another generation.
But three days before the show, Chilton died of a heart attack in New Orleans. He was 59.
The Austin showcase
morphed into a musical wake featuring Susan Cowsill, R.E.M. bassist
Mike Mills, M. Ward, John Doe and the Lemonheads' Evan Dando. On Easter
Sunday, local friends gathered privately in Chilton's memory. On May 15,
a previously scheduled Big Star concert in Memphis will serve as yet
another tribute.
Chilton would likely have mixed feelings about
such remembrances. His wife, the former Laura Kersting, says he was not
sentimental about death. In his view, it happens. Move on.
And
though he enjoyed recognition for his music, he did not crave fame. He
preferred to live quietly, just another character in a city full of
them. He liked that his life in New Orleans was largely a mystery to his
cult of fans around the world.
New Orleans, like the cottage in Treme, was his sanctuary.
By 1982, Chilton had soured
on the music business in general, and his native Memphis in particular.
Struggles with substance abuse didn't help. Hoping a chanwge of scenery
would reinforce his decision to quit drinking, he resolved to start
over in New Orleans.
“He definitely had his fill of trying to push
(his career), and feeling smothered,” said Iguanas bassist Rene Coman,
who befriended Chilton soon after his arrival. “Some air was needed. He
was looking to escape everything that had gone on in Memphis, and to be
away from negative influences. He wanted a clean start.”
In New
Orleans, Chilton recruited Coman for the revolving cast of Tav Falco’s
Panther Burns, a pseudo-rockabilly band founded in Memphis. In Chilton’s
garage apartment behind artist Bob Tannen’s rambling Esplanade Avenue
mansion, he and Coman played along to 45s on a thrift-store record
player. Big Star was not necessarily on the playlist.
“Big Star
was great, but that’s not how Alex saw himself,” Coman said. “To Alex,
his work with Panther Burns was as legitimate as anything else he did.
“Alex didn’t feel like he had to be defined by (his past). He was perfectly comfortable defining himself.”
During
those lean years, Chilton washed dishes at Louis XVI Restaurant in the
French Quarter and cleaned an Uptown bar called Tupelo’s. His most
hazardous gig? Working with a local tree clearing company, trimming tree
branches away from River Road power lines with a chainsaw, while
perched in a cherry-picker.
At one point, Chilton and Coman joined
a Bourbon Street cover band called Scores. During five-hour gigs at
Papa Joe’s, patrons called out requests for R&B standards from
printed song lists. “It was an adventure,” Coman said. “It was like we
were a human jukebox.”
With few other prospects, Chilton contacted
Frank Riley, the New York agent who booked his friends in the dB’s.
Riley subsequently arranged the tours that established Chilton as a solo
act.
Chilton, Coman and future Iguanas drummer Doug Garrison
barnstormed Europe, then criss-crossed America in a’73 Buick LeSabre
with a missing driver’s side window.
“There might not be many
people in the club, but the R.E.M. guys would be there,” Coman said.
“The caliber of fans was much higher than the numbers.”
By the
early 1990s, Chilton’s career had regained traction, aided in part by
two well-received solo albums and a Big Star reunion. Always fond of
decrepit houses, he bought a worn, inexpensive, 19th-century center-hall
cottage in Treme.
In August 2005, Chilton rode out Hurricane
Katrina there. The raised house did not flood, but high winds damaged an
exterior wall. Days later, with supplies running low and the city
descending into chaos, he flagged down a helicopter and escaped.
He
returned months later and reconnected with Kersting, a flutist and
librarian who shared his love for baroque classical music. They first
met in the 1990s when Chilton produced a record by her then-husband’s
band, retro-rockers the Royal Pendletons.
Kersting’s marriage disintegrated after Katrina. She and Chilton became a couple in 2007. They married in August 2009.
Associated PressAlex
Chilton in New Orleans in 1993, around the time Big Star reunited to
record a live album at a college in Missouri. Chilton's laid-back
lifestyle dovetailed nicely with a city nicknamed the Big Easy.
Chilton’s lifestyle dovetailed nicely
with
a city nicknamed the Big Easy. Treme, especially, agreed with him. “He
identified with black people more than white people,” Kersting said. “He
was very much a part of this neighborhood.”
As Chilton cut his
grass with a manual push mower, neighbors “would sit on their stoop,
silently watching, like we were a movie,” Kersting said.
During
long bicycle rides, Chilton engaged people from across the New Orleans
social strata. He regaled Decatur Street gutter punks with impromptu
astrological readings. “Everyone was equal in his eyes,” Kersting said.
“He gave everyone a chance.”
A high school dropout, he was
nonetheless well-read and well-spoken. He consulted an extensive
collection of reference books and engaged his wife in philosophical
discussions. Given his casually elegant sartorial sense, he was
occasionally mistaken for a college professor.
Dining out was a
nightly ritual. The couple frequented Sukhothai in Faubourg Marigny,
Maximo’s and Angeli on Decatur Street, and La Crepe Nanou Uptown.
Chilton loved the latter’s roast chicken, Kersting said, because it “was
just like his mother made it.”
Back at Chez Chilton, he smoked
cigarettes and pot. He tuned in to deejay Joe Hastings on classical
station WWNO 89.9 FM and stayed up all night watching television.
“Walker, Texas Ranger” and “Touched by an Angel” fascinated him; he
taught himself the “Walker” theme music on guitar.
“It was very
chill when you went to Alex’s house,” said Anthony Donado, a local
drummer. “Maybe you’d play a little guitar, or watch basketball.”
One
activity that didn’t interest Chilton of late was songwriting. “He
worked best under pressure,” Kersting said. “He wouldn’t write songs if a
record deal wasn’t in the works.”
When the spirit moved him, he
produced recordings by local musicians. Years ago, Chilton happened to
hear Donado’s old band, Soupchain. Days later, Donado encountered him in
a grocery store; Chilton offered to produce a Soupchain album. “I was
like, ‘Man, are you serious?’” Donado recalled. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll
come to your house.’ Alex laid on my couch, pressed ‘record,’ and said,
‘OK, boys, go.’”
In recent weeks, he worked with local rockabilly
veteran Johnny J. They met in the 1980s when Chilton sang “The Letter”
with Johnny J and the Blue Vipers.
“It took a long time to get to
know him as a person,” Johnny J said. “He played things close to the
vest. He was very reserved, and his sense of humor was very dry. But
once you got to know him, he was very funny.”
Chilton once loaned him $5 to get his power turned back on. “From then on,” Johnny J said, “he was my friend.”
They shared a fondness for early rock ‘n’ roll singer Freddy Cannon. A photo of Cannon hung in Chilton’s house.
“Alex
said, ‘Freddy Cannon’s shows always worked because he moved through
life with ease.’ That’s exactly what Alex was like. He moved through
life with ease.”
Thanks to his low overhead in
New Orleans, Chilton subsisted on periodic Big Star, Box Tops and solo
gigs, augmented by modest publishing royalties. Cheap Trick covered Big
Star's "In the Street" as the theme music for the Fox sitcom "That '70s
Show"; Chilton received royalty checks as a result. He saw little reason
to hustle additional work.
“He was kind of lazy,” Kersting said,
laughing. “He took it very easy. He’d say, ‘Why work when I don’t have
to?’ He wanted a very simple life. He was not interested in fame. He was
interested in money — he wanted enough to be comfortable and to
travel.”
In the mid-’90s, Chilton booked the occasional gig at the
Howlin’ Wolf; on Valentine’s Day 1998, he shared a bill with the late
Snooks Eaglin. More recently, his rare local performances consisted
mostly of benefits. In December 2007, he played at a block party for
longtime La Crepe Nanou bar manager Robert Strong, who was injured in an
armed robbery.
“He wanted other people to have those slots at the
clubs,” Kersting said. “And New Orleans was his oasis from his other
life as the musician Alex Chilton. Here, he wanted to be a person, a New
Orleanian. That’s why he did benefits. He didn’t want to gain from New
Orleans — he wanted to give to New Orleans.”
More than once, he
appeared as an anonymous sideman at the annual Ponderosa Stomp revue.
Strumming guitar behind the likes of Brenton “Oogum Boogum Song” Wood
and Alabama singer Ralph “Soul” Jackson “wasn’t about him making a
superstar appearance,” said Stomp founder Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos. “It was
the exact opposite. He didn’t want anybody to know he was there. He
didn’t want to be a distraction.
“He loved to play for the music itself. The more raw, stripped-down, minimalist it was, the more he loved it.”
Kersting
often traveled with Chilton to gigs in Europe and elsewhere. In
November 2009, the Box Tops performed in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Big
Star played a well-received show in New York City.
But Chilton’s
best performance of the trip may have been at a Buffalo bar called the
Sportsmen’s Tavern. The country band on stage called him up to sing
“Alligator Man.”
That sort of informal setting “was where he was
most comfortable,” Kersting said. “He was incredible that night. Finally
I understood what the big deal is about him.”
Perhaps fittingly,
Chilton’s final performance was not the much-anticipated Big Star
showcase at South by Southwest, but a hastily organized Jan. 24 benefit
for Doctors Without Borders at the Big Top, the funky art
gallery/performance space on Clio Street. Chilton declined to rehearse
or even discuss the set list in advance.
“He said, ‘We’ll wing it,’” recalled Anthony Donado, the benefit’s organizer. “He liked music on the edge.”
Chilton
hit the stage with Donado on drums and Trey Ledford as the last-minute
replacement bassist. They banged out a ragged 30 minute set of early
rock ‘n’ roll and New Orleans rhythm & blues, including Chuck
Berry’s “Maybellene” and Ernie K-Doe’s 1961 hit “Te Ta Te Ta Ta.” As 100
or so patrons looked on, Chilton called out songs and coached his
impromptu backing band. Donado tried out different beats — in full view
of the audience — until hitting upon one Chilton deemed appropriate.
“He’d scold me in his funny way,” Donado said. “But we had fun. It was very fast and loose.”
Chilton “thrived on that kind of stuff,” Kersting said. “He didn’t like glamour or fuss. He liked simple and spontaneous."
At least twice in the week
before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath
and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention,
Kersting said, in part because he had no health insurance.
On the
morning of March 17, she went to work. Chilton called her after
suffering another episode; she arrived home before the ambulance, and
drove him to the hospital. He lost consciousness a block from the
emergency room, after urging Kersting to run the red light.
That week, the health care debate dominated Washington D.C. But Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took time to memorialize Chilton from the floor of Congress. Chilton, an avid C-SPAN viewer, likely would have appreciated the moment.
Lingering
damage to his Treme house was an ongoing source of concern for Chilton.
Kersting hopes, in the coming months, to raise enough money to repair
the home her husband cherished.
“He loved this house more than he loved himself,” she said. “He really cared about New Orleans houses and people.
“A lot of people thought he still lived in Memphis. But New Orleans was his home. His heart was here.”
Click hereto read Rolling Stone's coverage of Alex Chilton's passing.
Click here to read a Los Angeles Times article about Chilton.
This happens because the medical system in the US is a free medical
care system, that is, in Japan, the "total burden" of patient
fundamental order, to avoid risk, to get medical insurance from
an insurance company, but of course it is impossible to get such medical
insurance without some income, and there are 40 million uninsured
population in the United States. It is said it will reach people.
It's not clear if Alex was still alive if he had been treated properly.
However, one week after Alex's death, the medical reform bill, which is
one of the highlights of President Obama's administration, was passed,
and at the same time the United States has also transitioned to a
universal health insurance system like Japan and Europe.
suddenly heart attack Associated PressAlex Chilton in New Orleans in 1993, around the time Big Star reunited to record a live album at a college in Missouri. Chilton's laid-back lifestyle dovetailed nicely with a city nicknamed the Big Easy.