Read Online A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man by Holly George-Warren - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Holly George-Warren
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come, but when Evans gave him Danny Smythe’s address for the tryout, Alex surprised the nineteen-year-old by saying, “Can you pick me up? I’m only fifteen, so I don’t have my license yet.” The next day John and Russ borrowed Mrs. Caccamisi’s Impala and drove to North Montgomery to collect Alex.
When they knocked on the Chiltons’ door, a slight young man with acne-spotted cheeks and long brown bangs and hair covering his ears opened it. Barefoot and dressed in cutoff blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt, Alex grabbed a denim jacket and wrapped a scarf around his neck, saying, “I’m ready to go!” and followed them down the steps. Alex Chilton looked nothing like the rest of the short-haired Devilles, whose normal attire was Gant shirts, pressed pants, and Bass Weejuns. “There was a dress code without having a dress code, and [what Alex wore] was not acceptable in those days,” John Evans recalls. “A blue jean jacket—no one wore those except farmers, blue-collar workers, or trailer park people.”
The boys set up their equipment in Danny’s family room. Alex made no pretense about liking their band or what he considered their schlocky material. “I didn’t care for [the Devilles],” he later said. “They had made a few records, and I didn’t like them. They were pretty lame, really bad ballads that might’ve had some country appeal. But they were one of the big bands around town that made some money.” “We were as much wooing Alex as we were auditioning him,” Russ remembers, “because we had three gigs booked, starting in a few weeks. We told him, ‘We’re gonna recast this thing and come up with a whole new set of songs, whatever you want to sing.’” Alex lit a cigarette and told them he’d give it a shot. When he opened his mouth and sang Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” Russ says, “he killed it! And he killed ‘Sunny.’ We worked up five or six songs that we all knew.” When they promised him a steady stream of paying gigs, Alex later recalled that he thought, “Wow! The Memphis big time! I can make $100 every weekend! You could support a family on $100 a week in 1966.” He broke the news to the Moondogs that he was moving on to the Devilles.
• • •
Alex had been in tenth grade at Central High for only a few months, but except for making some new pals, including a sultry eleventh-grader, Kokie Bechtold, he was miserable at school. “It was full of theseenormous macho guys, and I was constantly in fear of my life,” he recalled. “I was just hanging around, drinking, smoking grass, meeting girls, and looking forward to a very uncertain future.” Another eleventh-grader he befriended was Pat Rainer, renowned as local president of the Beatles Fan Club. When the Fab Four performed in Memphis in August 1966, Alex and Pat were there. She awarded the group the key to the city, though the Ku Klux Klan led demonstrations outside the Mid-South Coliseum and someone threw a firecracker onstage. John Lennon’s infamous statement earlier that year about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus had not gone over well in Memphis.
Pat, like Alex, hung out with the few hipsters at Central High. “There was probably a group of ten or twelve of us,” Pat says. “The guys had longer hair, and the girls had straight hair and bangs and wore short skirts. We were ostracized. I hated that place—it was like being in a fucking prison.” Alex told Bruce Eaton in 2007, “All that year of ’66 and ’67 I was in tenth grade I was just demoralized about school. I just more or less slept through about every class and failed every subject royally. Vietnam was going on and ROTC—I wasn’t going with the program somehow.”
After flunking some classes at Miss Hutchison’s, Carole Ruleman hadtransferred to Central, where she and another music fan, Dixie Thompson, hung out with Alex. “There were cliques, and we didn’t fit into them,” Dixie remembers. “We were
When they knocked on the Chiltons’ door, a slight young man with acne-spotted cheeks and long brown bangs and hair covering his ears opened it. Barefoot and dressed in cutoff blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt, Alex grabbed a denim jacket and wrapped a scarf around his neck, saying, “I’m ready to go!” and followed them down the steps. Alex Chilton looked nothing like the rest of the short-haired Devilles, whose normal attire was Gant shirts, pressed pants, and Bass Weejuns. “There was a dress code without having a dress code, and [what Alex wore] was not acceptable in those days,” John Evans recalls. “A blue jean jacket—no one wore those except farmers, blue-collar workers, or trailer park people.”
The boys set up their equipment in Danny’s family room. Alex made no pretense about liking their band or what he considered their schlocky material. “I didn’t care for [the Devilles],” he later said. “They had made a few records, and I didn’t like them. They were pretty lame, really bad ballads that might’ve had some country appeal. But they were one of the big bands around town that made some money.” “We were as much wooing Alex as we were auditioning him,” Russ remembers, “because we had three gigs booked, starting in a few weeks. We told him, ‘We’re gonna recast this thing and come up with a whole new set of songs, whatever you want to sing.’” Alex lit a cigarette and told them he’d give it a shot. When he opened his mouth and sang Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” Russ says, “he killed it! And he killed ‘Sunny.’ We worked up five or six songs that we all knew.” When they promised him a steady stream of paying gigs, Alex later recalled that he thought, “Wow! The Memphis big time! I can make $100 every weekend! You could support a family on $100 a week in 1966.” He broke the news to the Moondogs that he was moving on to the Devilles.
• • •
Alex had been in tenth grade at Central High for only a few months, but except for making some new pals, including a sultry eleventh-grader, Kokie Bechtold, he was miserable at school. “It was full of theseenormous macho guys, and I was constantly in fear of my life,” he recalled. “I was just hanging around, drinking, smoking grass, meeting girls, and looking forward to a very uncertain future.” Another eleventh-grader he befriended was Pat Rainer, renowned as local president of the Beatles Fan Club. When the Fab Four performed in Memphis in August 1966, Alex and Pat were there. She awarded the group the key to the city, though the Ku Klux Klan led demonstrations outside the Mid-South Coliseum and someone threw a firecracker onstage. John Lennon’s infamous statement earlier that year about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus had not gone over well in Memphis.
Pat, like Alex, hung out with the few hipsters at Central High. “There was probably a group of ten or twelve of us,” Pat says. “The guys had longer hair, and the girls had straight hair and bangs and wore short skirts. We were ostracized. I hated that place—it was like being in a fucking prison.” Alex told Bruce Eaton in 2007, “All that year of ’66 and ’67 I was in tenth grade I was just demoralized about school. I just more or less slept through about every class and failed every subject royally. Vietnam was going on and ROTC—I wasn’t going with the program somehow.”
After flunking some classes at Miss Hutchison’s, Carole Ruleman hadtransferred to Central, where she and another music fan, Dixie Thompson, hung out with Alex. “There were cliques, and we didn’t fit into them,” Dixie remembers. “We were
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