Rock City, Rock City (Lucky Seven, 2003)
The late sixties and early seventies were a time of enormous musical activity in the city of Memphis, Tennessee. Aside from Elvis in Graceland and the classic Stax soul recordings made by the likes of Otis Redding, the local scene featured a wide variety of promising young bands. The most famous of these bands is the Box Tops, a blue-eyed soul outfit fronted by Alex Chilton. Chilton's raspy vocals on "The Letter" helped make the song a major international hit and an enduring classic.
However, a number of aspiring young musicians in Memphis were more heavily influenced by bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Byrds than by the local soul music, and many of these players hung around the Ardent Studios, aggregating into a number of short-lived bands. One such band that recorded nearly a full album's worth of material at Ardent in 1969 and 1970 was Rock City. Although fronted by bassist Thomas Dean Eubanks and featuring Ardent co-owner Terry Manning on keyboards, Rock City has become noteworthy because of its other two members, guitarist Chris Bell and drummer Jody Stephens. Bell and Stephens continued to work together after Rock City folded, and Bell's long-time friend Alex Chilton started frequenting Ardent Studios after quitting the Box Tops. Chilton, Bell, Stephens, and Ardent regular Andy Hummel (bass) would form the legendary early seventies rock band Big Star.
Big Star were simply brilliant, but only briefly. Ardent's attempts to gain wide distribution for Big Star's albums through Stax failed miserably, as the band's fortunes became hopelessly tangled with those of a once proud label in dire financial straits. For three years, both Big Star and Stax continually teetered on the edge of disintegration. The unyielding tension not only prevented the band from ever expanding its following beyond cult status, but ultimately came to haunt its music. Still, 1972's #1 Record is a classic offering of power-pop gems, featuring tight harmonies and strong guitar interplay between Bell and Chilton. Radio City, recorded in 1973 without Bell, was even better, but shortly afterwards Hummel left the fold as well. Chilton and Stephens would record more material for a third Big Star album, but Stax finally went under in 1975, and Big Star burned out with it.
Interest in Big Star's music never died entirely, however, and after #1 Record and Radio City were re-released on CD, a lot of previously unreleased material from the Ardent archives started surfacing. Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, a tortured, dissonant depiction of Alex Chilton's entire world collapsing around him, finally saw the light of day in a complete, unbootlegged format. While innovative and compelling in its own way, the final Big Star album lacks the bright energy of the first two, and is definitely not recommended for the squeamish. I Am the Cosmos, an album of solo material recorded by Chris Bell before his tragic death in an auto accident in 1979, also was released publicly.
Now, thirty-three years after they were recorded, the songs of Rock City have finally been released for the first time. Not surprisingly, considering the established talent level of the performers, Rock City reveals a band with a considerable amount of promise. Given the sadly limited number of recordings featuring Bell's guitar playing, Rock City will no doubt become a collector's item among Big Star enthusiasts, but the album really does hold up on its own terms. In addition to the eleven songs recorded by Rock City, this CD also includes two songs recorded at Ardent by Thomas Dean Eubanks in 1974, and finishes with a song by Icewater, another short-lived Ardent band which included Bell, Jody Stephens, and Terry Manning.
Rock City opens with a straightforward breakup song called "Think It's Time To Say Goodbye." Big Star devotees will immediately recognize Bell's edgy but melodic guitar playing and Stephens' rock solid drumming on this catchy, upbeat rocker. "I Lost Your Love" is a bit more acoustic and contemplative, but it also features Bell's best guitar solo on this album. Manning's piano dominates the dreamlike "The Wind Will Cry for Me." Bell provides his first vocal and songwriting contribution to the album with "My Life Is Right." Like Bell's other songs which appear on this CD, "My Life Is Right" would later resurface on #1 Record. This version of the song has some slightly different words than the later version, and the piano is a bit more conspicuous in this arrangement, but the overall differences between the Rock City and Big Star versions are minor. Eubanks adds a positive love song of his own with "Lovely Lady."
After "Lovely Lady," Rock City takes on a decidedly spiritual and religious tone. On "The Answer," Eubanks asks the listener to "look with me for the answer, to understanding all mankind." Bell shines very strongly on this track as well, starting with some pretty acoustic picking before charging into Zeppelin-esque power riffs. The instrumental "Introduction" combines aggressive acoustic guitar playing, reminiscent of the Who's overture to Tommy, with a brief smattering of primitive Moog synthesizer. This is followed by the instrumental "Sunday Organ," composed and performed by Manning, and the Eubanks song "The Preacher." The call-and-response vocals of "The Preacher" hint at the approach to harmonies, heavily influenced by the British Invasion, which would become a Big Star trademark. While the preacher's boasts appear to be fraught with irony, "Shine On Me" is a perfectly earnest gospel-tinged appeal from Eubanks for the Lord's help. The Rock City portion of this CD closes with Bell's meditative, prayerful "Try Again." Alex Chilton makes a guest appearance, both as a co-writer and a backup guitarist and vocalist. Again, a few words are slightly changed relative to the Big Star version. The major difference is a steel guitar instead of a slide guitar, giving the song more of a country feel here than on #1 Record.
The two Eubanks solo songs, "Oh Babe" and "Try Harder," aim for the same basic guitar-dominated rock of Rock City, but lack the inspiration of the earlier material. While the session musicians are capable enough, Eubanks simply could not make up for Bell's absence the way that that Alex Chilton did on Radio City. The CD finishes with the one studio recording by Icewater, an embryonic version of the angst-ridden rocker "Feel." Bell re-used the guitar and saxophone tracks from this recording on the Big Star version. Once again, a couple of words are changed around, but the arrangement is essentially identical.
Chris Bell may have ultimately found a better foil for his talents in Alex Chilton than Thomas Dean Eubanks turned out to be, but Rock City still has plenty to recommend it. Obviously, this album will generate the most interest with hardcore Big Star fans, who will not be disappointed. Those not familiar with Big Star, but who are interested in some good old-fashioned guitar rock, will also like this. They should be advised, however, that even better material featuring two of these musicians is available. As for the other two members of Rock City, Eubanks and Terry Manning are shown to be capable, well-intentioned performers, who deserved to become something more than footnotes in the story of a band that in turn deserved a much bigger following than it ever obtained. Hopefully, they can take some solace in the quality of what they did together and the fact that, however late, the songs are finally being enjoyed by an audience beyond the Memphis scene that inspired them.
