Sold Date: January 18, 2014
Start Date: January 17, 2014
Final Price: $19.66 (USD)
Seller Feedback: 7259
Buyer Feedback: 34

ARTIST: Big Star
TITLE: 3rd
FORMAT: LP
LABEL: 4 Men With Beards
CATALOG #: 4M-142

RECORD CONDITION: NEW
JACKET CONDITION: NEW

DESCRIPTION: After the commercial failure of Big Star's first two albums, (1972) and (1974), and returned to in late 1974—accompanied by what biographer Bruce Eaton describes as "a large and revolving cast of Memphis musicians"—to record, under producer , "a batch of starkly personal, often experimental, and by turns beautiful and haunting songs that were anything but straight-up power pop." Ardent's , producer of the first two albums and also involved with the third, recalled that the sessions were burdened by severe personal issues; Eaton tells how Fry "finally called a halt to the escalating madness" and the album was mastered by Larry Nix on 13 February 1975.

Different opinions exist regarding the categorization of Third as a Big Star album. According to Chilton, "Jody and I were hanging together as a unit still but we didn't see it as a Big Star record. We never saw it as a Big Star record. That was a marketing decision when the record was sold in whatever year that was sold. And they didn't ask me anything about it and they never have asked me anything about it." Stephens said, "I've seen it in different ways. To a great extent it is an Alex solo record ... It's Alex's focus, it's his emotional state of being but I brought in the string section for the one song I wrote and Alex hit it off with Carl Marsh ... and started using Carl and the string section for other things. What would that album have been like if it didn't have the strings?" According to Eaton, the mastering card identifies Chilton as the recording artist. Jovanovic, meanwhile, notes, "Whether the band was still called Big Star is debatable. The session sheets have the band name 'Sister Lovers' (Chilton and Stephens were dating Lesa and Holliday Aldridge at the time) clearly written on them. This may well have been a joke, although Chilton and Stephens did use the Sister Lovers name for a radio broadcast in early 1975." Lesa Aldridge, a cousin of photographer and album cover creator , contributed vocals and was, in the words of Dickinson, "a big, big part of the record". Dickinson said that Chilton, whose relationship with Aldridge was stormy, "reached a point ... where he started to go back and erase her—there was a lot more of Lesa on the album than there is now". During the sessions, Chilton recalled, "Jim and I did all sorts of weird things ... in off hours here and there". contributed guitar work to a cover of 's .

Third takes the original Big Star sound and abstracts it, with synthesizers, strings and saxophones emerging from the mix. The album deals with bitterness, loneliness and emotional devastation, but does so in a way that retains some elements of pop music, as on "Thank You Friends," which features female backing vocals reminiscent of those found on recordings of the late '60s. "Kangaroo" and "Holocaust" have often been compared to some of the raw recordings of and . "You Can't Have Me" is akin to a deconstructed song by , and the halting ballad "Dream Lover" contains the famous line about "Beale Street green." Although many critics regard Radio City as the definitive Big Star album, Third is perhaps the most innovative album the group ever recorded, and influenced many subsequent bands, including and . In addition, the album contains what are arguably Alex Chilton's finest vocal performances.

 



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