Alex Chilton : Hey! Little Child
In the fall of 1979 Alex Chilton released Like Flies on Sherbet, his first solo album. Enamoured with the way the punk scene churned out albums that sounded nothing like corporate rock, Chilton recorded an album that deliberately sounds like sloppy first takes by teenagers who can barely play or tune their instruments. Naturally the critics hated it, one calling it a document that "painfully confirmed the degradation of a once-major talent". It's true Chilton was in trouble, drinking heavily and indulging in coke, crystal meth and teenage girls from the neighborhood Catholic school where he lived in Memphis.
Producer Jim Dickinson would admit "Flies got away from me. It was Alex's revenge for the way we mixed (Big Star's) 3rd. The mix on Flies sounds like it's comin' through petroleum jelly."
Chilton would always be a fan of the album, saying later "My life was on the skids, and Like Flies on Sherbert was a summation of the period. I like that record a lot. It's crazy but it's a positive statement about a period in my life that wasn't positive.
This is video by William Eggleston who took the cover photograph for Like Flies on Sherbert and Radio City.
To learn more about Alex's life read A Man Called Destruction by Holly George-Warren.
No comments:
Post a Comment