A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man by Holly George-Warren Read Free Book Online

the teenage bands immediately gravitated toward the Beatles. That was where the itch began, seeing the Beatles and suddenly saying to myself, ‘Gee, I wish I could do that!’” Thirteen-year-old Alex started growing out his hair and combing his bangs down, going for his own Beatle ’do.
    In 1964 makeshift rock & roll bands began sprouting in Memphis like mushrooms after a summer rain. “There were maybe half a dozen high schools in Memphis, and there were probably fifteen or twenty garage bands in each one of them,” says Russ Caccamisi, who played bass in several of the groups. “In Memphis in the mid- to late ’60s, if you weren’t in a band, you weren’t breathing.” In backhouses and garages, according to one published account, more than five hundred bands formed there in the 1960s.
    After school and on Saturdays, Alex began spending much of his spare time at Poplar Tunes, Memphis’s best record shop, either alone or with friends like Calvin Turley, Dale Tuttle, Paul Jobe, Carole Ruleman, and Louise Leffler. “We’d usually walk to Pop Tunes from Alex’s house,” Dale recalls. “It was a local institution about a mile away on Poplar at Danny Thomas Boulevard. Back in those days, you could listen to records before you bought them.” (Vinyl could be popped onto one of the store’s many turntables.) “My musical taste and knowledge all came from Alex,” says Paul, whose friendship continued over the decades. “I had very limited taste, but Alex and I would sit around for hours and listen to music. Alex would introduce me to different music, as well as various musicians and bands. And a lot of it I still listen to.”
    Sidney was not taken with rock & roll and made no bones about it. “He was a bigDuke Ellington and Count Basie fan,” Alex said. “But he was also a big fan of Ray Charles, and I began to love those records. The first record I ever bought was the
What’d I Say
album.”
    Alex spent much of the summer of 1964 hanging with friends, most of whom lived in the upscale Central Gardens district. His parents had become friendly with a widow whose children, Donovan and Day Smith, joined her at the Sunday afternoon gatherings at the Chiltons’. “When I was twelve or thirteen,” Alex said, “somehow my set of friends began to be people who went to the private school in Memphis—Memphis University School—and the girls’ school that was just across the athletic field, Miss Hutchison’s. That group of people were kind of wealthy.”
    Alex would frequently start the day at Louise Leffler’s Harbert Avenue home. He was her first love. “Mother would call upstairs, ‘Alex is here!’” Louise remembers. “I felt close to Alex, and he sort of looked after me and stood by me like he was ‘my guy.’ . . . We would wander aimlessly, or go to Barksdale Sundry to buy Alex’s cigarettes.”
    Alex gave Louise gifts, including an autographed photo of Little Stevie Wonder that he’d bought at the fourteen-year-old Motown star’s concert at Ellis Auditorium. “It said, ‘Love and Kisses to Louise from Stevie Wonder,’” Louise recalls, “and at first I didn’t believe him. I asked Alex how Stevie could write if he’s blind. Alex insisted he signed it.” (Wonder used an X as his signature, so Alex or someone else must have forged it.) Alex also got her a present from his mother’s gallery: a clunky handmade ring. “It was very crude in design and made of iron,” Louise remembers. “It was
huge
, a glob of iron in the shape of a ring. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember wearing it very much.”
    Much of Alex’s time at Louise’s house was spent in the basement family room. “We’d sit on the couch and listen endlessly to pop songs on George Klein’s radio show,” she recalls. “I would watch Alex’s face as he listened so closely to the music. He wouldn’t say much, but you knew he liked all the songs. He was consumed with music.” He rhapsodized about listening