"Years ago my heart was set to live on
And I've been trying hard against unbelievable odds
Gets so hard at times like now to hold on
Guns they wait to be stuck by
And at my side is God" - Alex Chilton

Just over a week ago, a singer/songwriter whose name might be vaguely familiar to some of you, Alex Chilton, died at the age of 59 of a heart attack. As a songwriter and artist, Chilton was a huge influence on me and having been turned onto his work (particularly with Big Star) by the likes of Teenage Fanclub, Cheap Trick and Peter Buck from REM, I am aware that his musical influence was felt far and wide by fans of gloriously unabashed pop music.

What made Alex Chilton the enigma that he has most assuredly become, will forever be his position on the sidelines of music history. Becoming a bona fide pop star with the Box Tops at the age of 16 following the success of their #1 hit 'The Letter', Chilton dropped out of the spotlight with his solo projects and the ludicrously overlooked Big Star in the early 1970's and remained an outsider for the rest of his career.

Through record company indifference and the failure of their first two albums to chart strongly, Big Star had dissolved by 1974, almost as quickly as they had formed. It wasn't until the late 1970's that their work was again made commercially available, following the release of the first two albums as a double and the belated release of the third recording project, titled 'Third/Sister Lovers' and Big Star moved beyond cult status, to what can only be described as "slightly above cult status", where they have since remained. Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens reformed in the mid-90's as the level of attention in the Big Star story grew, due no doubt in part to the heavy referencing of disciples of their particular style of garage pop including The Posies and The Afghan Whigs, who were just some of the artisits name-dropping them at any available opportunity.

To me, what makes this story all the more remarkable is the level of influence that Chilton and Big Star have had on popular music, with very little acknowledgement outside pop music geekdom. Chilton all but turned his back on the industry that he felt had chewed him up and spat him out and embarked on a career dictated by his own choices for the next three decades. Like other artists including Jeff Buckley and Badfinger, his music is destined to be discovered posthumously by the next generation of pop music aficionados who will likely be drawn in as much by the dramatic back story as by the music itself.

There is an unfortunate tendency for those artists who go without the widespread recognition of others for their entire career, to be appreciated only after their death. The brilliant, troubled painter Vincent Van Gogh must surely be the best example of this. We can only imagine the soul-destroying effect of being wholly dedicated to art that very few others care to validate. Unlike the tragic figures of Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger, Chilton did not take his own life, but his untimely death may well have been contributed to by his lifetime struggle with fame/success/validity in an unforgiving industry well-known for it's often harsh and ruthless treatment of musicians and artists.

The lyric I have quoted above is from a song from the first album, '#1 Record', 'The Ballad of El Goodo' (a song subsequently covered by Evan Dando, Counting Crows and Matthew Sweet amongst others) and one of the crowning achievements of Alex's work. It is a beautiful epitaph for a singer who tried so hard against unbelievable odds to create and perform the music that may, in his death, reach the audience he fully deserved.