F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives and a resilient and lucky breed of Americans have been proving him wrong ever since. First heard from as the gravelly Memphis boy bluesman fronting The Box Tops, where he suffered rockstar burnout while making hit records even so crabbed an anticommericalist as Lester Bangs praised for soulfulness. His first band crashed and burnt in 1970 and Alex Chilton went back to Memphis, where he soaked up the twin Southern obsessions with Stax r&b and British Invasion pop, took on vastly talented new partners in Chris Bell, Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens and all four made ready to conquer the airwaves as a proto-power pop foursome called Big Star. That rock fans remember this once-obscure band more fondly than The Box Tops is certainly not the most curious aspect of Chilton’s long and eccentric career, since Big Star’s three albums contain some of the sweetest, most rewarding melodies of the Seventies. # 1 Record and Radio City moved little merch, but any FM-besotted teen lucky enough to hear “September Gurls” on some distant station never, ever forgot it. A historically minded rocker will know few difficulties drawing a line from those two LPs straight to today’s gold-plated trade goods like OK Go and the group’s last unreleased album, Third/Sister Lovers, contain so much of the winsome and eccentric origins of the indie rock species that few idle listeners believe the thing was recorded in the winter of 1974-75. Rolling Stone called it an “untidy masterpiece” and many believe this handful of spare and exhilarating songs are his finest work.

Chilton’s eccentric career kept going and was in full-tilt revival mode—with a SSW appearance with surviving members of Big Star scheduled for this Saturday—when he died on Wednesday of an apparent heart attack. The music biz there and elsewhere assembled is still grieving and encomiums continue to pour in from everywhere, even the floor of Congress, where Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) eulogized Chilton in terms any oldtimey rocker would lift a Bic to. All seem to mourn a part of themselves and they’re right. Along with Booker T. Jones, Ray Davies, and Roky Erickson, Alex Chilton was one of the last living links between the fabled past that made us and the raucous present we caper in now. Hipsters, charge your glasses, fire your bong and pound one down as our loud and lovely circle is shortened by one irreplaceable link. R.I.P.

—Ron Garmon