Chris Bell

Chris Bell ranks among the overlooked figures whose contributions shaped American pop. Throughout a brief life marked by personal struggles, the music he created with Big Star attracted only a small circle of devotees, while his lone solo single passed almost unnoticed at the time. Years afterward, however, the recordings he made with Big Star earned recognition as among the strongest and most influential pop statements of the 1970s. Posthumous collections of his earlier and later work further revealed his abilities on guitar and as a composer, underscoring the central part he played in a band long credited chiefly to Alex Chilton.

Born Christopher Branford Bell in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 12, 1951, he came of age in a city renowned for soul and R&B through the extensive catalog of Stax, yet his earliest passion centered on the British Invasion. At age 13 he picked up the guitar after hearing the Beatles, soon absorbing the sounds of the Kinks, the Who, and the Yardbirds. By 1965 he had assembled the Jynx, a group modeled on those British acts, in which another local teenager, Alex Chilton, sometimes took the lead vocal. When Chilton joined the Box Tops, a teen-pop outfit steeped in soul, Bell began composing original songs and playing alongside Memphis musicians Richard Rosebrough and Terry Manning.

During the late 1960s Bell became a regular presence at Ardent Studios, the facility operated by Memphis native and British-rock enthusiast John Fry, where he served as assistant engineer and tracked demos during off-hours. He also performed in the psychedelic group Christmas Future before attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Upon his return to Memphis he wrote and recorded with the informal ensembles Rock City and Icewater, whose rotating membership included Rosebrough, Manning, Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummell. Numerous demos from those sessions later surfaced after his death. When Bell and Chilton renewed their acquaintance following the Box Tops’ dissolution, Bell asked his former bandmate to join the new project. The resulting quartet, eventually named Big Star, featured Bell and Chilton on guitars and vocals, Hummell on bass, and Stephens on drums. Collaborating on much of the material and overseeing most of the engineering and mixing, the pair completed the debut album #1 Record at Ardent; the studio’s own label, distributed by Stax, issued the LP in 1972. Distribution changes at Stax limited its commercial reach, and although reviews were favorable, sales remained minimal.

Bell departed Big Star by the close of 1972, reportedly uneasy with Chilton’s greater public profile within the group. He also contended with clinical depression and turned to drugs and alcohol for relief. Although he briefly returned to contribute uncredited performances on the band’s 1974 album Radio City, he soon focused on solo work. With his brother David Bell acting as manager and advisor, he recorded at Ardent and Shoe Recording in Memphis; David additionally secured sessions for a planned album at Château d’Hérouville in France, later mixed in London by Geoff Emerick, the engineer long associated with the Beatles. No label offered a contract despite the quality of the songs, so the tracks remained unreleased until Chris Stamey issued the single “I Am the Cosmos” backed with “You and Your Sister”—the latter featuring Chilton on harmony vocals—on the small Car Records imprint. The record attracted scant attention. Bell continued to play locally with the Baker Street Regulars while grappling with depression and questions of faith, supporting himself by managing his father’s restaurant. On December 27, 1978, he lost control of his car after band practice and died after striking a telephone pole; he was 27.

At the time of his death Big Star’s catalog had fallen out of print and largely faded from memory, yet throughout the 1980s numerous alternative-rock acts began citing the band as a formative influence. As members of R.E.M., the dB’s, Game Theory, the Replacements, the Posies, and Teenage Fanclub voiced their admiration, #1 Record and Radio City were reissued first in the U.K. and Europe and later in America, introducing the music to new listeners. In 1992, as part of a broader Big Star reissue campaign, Rykodisc released I Am the Cosmos, the first full-length collection of Bell’s recordings, comprising both sides of the Car single plus previously unheard demos and studio tracks that approximated the album he had been unable to complete. The release drew strong critical praise and prompted a reassessment of Bell’s contributions to Big Star, previously viewed as essentially Chilton’s endeavor. Subsequent anthologies of unreleased Bell material followed, among them Rock City, Rockin’ Memphis: 1960s-1970s, Vol. 1, and Looking Forward: The Roots of Big Star.