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IVH: Chris Bell / I Am The Cosmos [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-28
After kicking around with several Memphis garage bands during the late ‘60s, Chris Bell formed Big Star in 1971 with Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel. Shortly thereafter, he invited Alex Chilton (the Box Tops — ‘The Letter’, ‘Cry Like A Baby’) to join the group. The group began writing and recording a very Beatlesque debut album.
Big Star’s debut, #1 Record, was released in 1972 on Ardent Records. It was a commercial flop. Discouraged, Bell left the group (which continued on until 1975 with Chilton as the primary singer/songwriter).
After leaving Big Star, Bell worked in his fathers’ restaurant while pursuing a solo career. He struggled with depression, drugs, alcohol and Jesus; all the while continuing to write and record majestic pop songs.
In 1978, tiny regional label Car Records released ‘I Am the Cosmos’ b/w ‘You and Your Sister’ as a single. Once again, the record was a commercial disappointment. Bell’s other solo recordings remained unreleased until the early '90s.
Early morning, December 27, 1978, Bell was driving home from band practice when he crashed his Triumph TR7 into a wooden light pole. The pole fell on the car, killing him instantly. He was 27.
I Am The Cosmos
Just when I was starting to feel okay
You’re on the phone
I never want to be alone Never want to be alone
Hate to have to take you home
Want you too much to say no, no
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah My feelings always have been something
I couldn’t hide
I can’t confide
Don’t know what’s going on inside So every night I tell myself I am the cosmos
I am the wind
But that don’t get you back again. We can sort these out pretty quickly from a pure lit analysis: some poor guy's had his heart blasted apart and can't get over his beloved, nor get the beloved back, nor even escape the beloved (you're on the phone). I'll here submit that despite earning an MFA in poetry and publishing stories and poems for the last 20 years, maybe the best lesson in concision I've ever gotten started with this song. I'm 43 now, married, father to three daughters, stable; I don't lead a jagged life of wild swings anymore. But the tempestuousness of these lyrics devastated me—their almost ruthless exposure, the absolute lack of bullshit. For a long time in my youth, I couldn't think of any lyrics more sad than the first two stanzas here: that no matter how great we think ourselves, we can't make anyone return our love, and that, no matter how much we're building ourselves back up and basically functioning, a phone call can crumble us. (It's worth noting that the music itself, the actual chord progression of the song, is as genius as anything anyone's ever written in the history of pop; it's a Perfect Song, musically and lyrically. Why's it so great? Start with the fact that Bell continues to come back to that shimmering D chord that serves as the song's beacon and opening. The musical echo, the fact that we keep returning that D, feels like a tormented but what about—at the darkest moments of the song, when the speaker's admitting he doesn't know what's going on inside, he returns to that early, hopeful, insane, foolish, pathetic, desperate claim: I am the cosmos. The oscillation between minor and major chords in this song should have led to dozens of theses by now, either doctoral or tacked to church doors a la Martin Luther). I lived that duality, of course; you probably did, too, when you were younger. And so the magic offered by the song was one of identification: Finally, I thought, here's someone who gets it. Sure, there were songs I'd resonated with, or felt to varying degrees; I'd been listening to pop music since I was a kid, and who knows, maybe as a ten year-old I felt Jon Bon Jovi's hold on to never say goodbye profoundly because one of my best friends moved away. Maybe, sure. But the truth was, the music I felt most in my teens felt intellectually and emotionally distant: I came of age chanting With the lights out / it's less dangerous, but I hadn't a fucking clue what that meant (nor what it meant to me, in 7th grade). Did I like to tell myself I deeply, completely understood [Paul] Westerberg when he sang On your mark / here I am / I'm your spark / runaway wind? Sure. Any truth to it? Not really. But Chris Bell? Fucking hell. I'd never heard anyone sing both sides of how I actually felt, inside my own ugly skin and ferocious trap of a brain. — No Ripcord
Speed Of Sound
Get Away
History is written by the winners, but in the case of Big Star it's the losers-- the quiet obsessives, the hopeless romantics "in love with that song" (to quote Paul Westerberg)-- who kept the band's legacy alive under the threat of perpetual obscurity. Certainly Big Star itself (current iteration aside) didn't really last long enough to bask in any belated good will. Alex Chilton's writing partner Chris Bell was gone by the time the band released its second album, 1974's Radio City, and by the next year Chilton had essentially pulled the plug on the group, leaving behind a few loose ends later collected as the once-abandoned, later-resuscitated masterpiece Third/Sister Lovers. Bell died in a car accident not long after that album's eventual 1978 release. Prone to serious depression and chemical indulgence, he began fitfully working on solo material as soon as he exited Big Star (though he reportedly participated in at least some of the Radio City sessions), and if there was every reason to expect good things from him, Big Star's own bad luck was indication enough he'd have just as much trouble getting people to hear it. In fact, it wasn't until Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers showed up on shelves (however haphazardly) that Bell made his solo bow: the single "I Am the Cosmos" backed with "You and Your Sister", songs coincidentally (or not) steeped in the same sense of sadness and loss that marked Big Star's swan song. That's all most heard of Bell's solo work until 1992, when Rykodisc compiled his extant studio material on I Am the Cosmos, which fittingly showed up alongside a spiffy definitive reissue of the scattershot Third/Sister Lovers and followed some renewed interest in Bell's writing (This Mortal Coil covered both "I Am the Cosmos" and "You and Your Sister" on 1991's Blood, the latter song sung by then-Breeders Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly). It turned out that Bell, between demo sessions, working in his parents' restaurant, gigging around Europe with various pick-up bands, and dealing with his ongoing depression, had amassed more than enough strong material to make him a cult hero, almost akin to an American analog of Nick Drake, another struggling songwriter lost too soon but unearthed and embraced later (thanks, in no small part, to his own reissues). — Pitchfork
You And Your Sister
It’s also important to note that Bell was moving far beyond a lot of the sound that gave Big Star so much acclaim. Befitting its title, “Speed of Sound” has a spacey, almost otherworldly quality, acoustic guitars anchoring down the recording while light percussion and an undercurrent of quiet guitar leads float all around before Bell’s interstellar Moog solo provides a sharp, elegant contrast. The title track is a lush, relaxed album opener with dense instrumentation that sounds inspired by some of Phil Spector’s best production work. “Every night I tell myself I am the cosmos,” Bell sings. “I am the wind / But that don’t get you back again.” It’s not surprising that these songs were recorded over a relatively extended period. The lengthy gestation period seems to have given the songs plenty of breathing room. Bell appears to be in little to no hurry while his muse guides him. Songs like “Fight at the Table” unfold in an almost desultory manner, beginning with some bluesy noodling before the piano-led boogie of the song gets underway. “Though I Know She Lies” also meanders through the different influences Bell soaked up through the years. Sounding for the most part like a mid-tempo Cat Stevens ballad, the song takes odd detours at about the halfway mark, complete with jazzy chord structures perfectly complimenting an unexpected yet welcome slide guitar solo. As far as Bell’s post-Big Star spiritual explorations go, it’s hard to pin down exactly how much it affects I Am the Cosmos, as the lyrics seem to avoid specifics. “Better Save Yourself” may serve as a cautionary tale from someone who’s experienced emotional — and chemically fueled — ups and downs. The gentle, emotional “Look Up” could indeed be interpreted as embracing faith: “Look up / Look up / You’ll see the sky / Look up / Look up / He’s the life / Waiting to love you / Wanting to reach you.” Then again, maybe he just likes the great outdoors. It’s hard to tell, nearly 40 years after his death, what exactly Chris Bell was searching for. The music provides clues, but nothing definitive. — Pop Matters
Look Up
Though I Know She Lies
WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
All repeats. Maybe new shows next week?
(I’m typing this on Monday, maybe that changes by Thursday)
LAST WEEK'S POLL: WHICH SUPERPOWER WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
Flight 27%
Invisibility 10%
Mind reading 6%
Teleportation 24%
Time travel 22%
Something else 4%
Pie 8%
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