Alex Chilton
Alex Chilton
William Alexander "Alex" Chiltonwas an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for The Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an obsessive following among indie and alternative music musicians. He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth28 December 1950
CityMemphis, TN
CountryUnited States of America
Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.
When the Box Tops first started out, I couldn't play guitar much at all. Only after we had our first hit records did I start playing.
It's been like a bad dream I never woke from.
I guess that my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did was the biggest record that I'll ever have.
Fame has a lot of baggage to carry around. I wouldn't want to be like Bruce Springsteen. I don't need that much money and wouldn't want to have 20 bodyguards following me.
I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.
I never thought of myself as being a good songwriter. There are a ton of other people that are good songwriters, but I don't think I'm in the club. What I do well is perform, sometimes sing pretty good, and accompany myself well and arrange fairly well.
Drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor - I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.
Everywhere I go, there are all these Big Star freaks, and they’re nice little guys who are usually in college, and they’re kind of lonely and misunderstood, learning to play guitar.
If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.
The more alone I am, the more focused I can get. I've written things with people, some of which I liked and others I think are total travesties. Collaborating is trying to make a piece of music and get someone else to come up with the ideas. What's the fun of that?
I guess my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did, was the biggest record that I'll ever have.
You can't live your life being upset about things, but it's a lot easier to not be upset about it if you've got enough money yourself. If you're walking around broke and working a job from nine to five or seven to five, and you're really struggling to make ends meet, you start thinking about people who have ripped you off and getting pretty angry at them.
I probably write 10 things to every one that I want to use. It's easy for me to write something that's so poppy that it's wrong for me. If I was 22 years old... it's easy for me to write something that's less mature than I am or ought to be. I'm looking for something that acts my age.