Big Star: Nighttime

SONG: Nighttime

WRITTEN BY: Alex Chilton

PERFORMED BY: Big Star

APPEARS ON: Big Star: Keep an Eye on the Sky (Rhino); Big Star’s 3rd: Sister Lovers (Rykodisc)

Today’s post is rather a shift from my usual run of blues & old-time music—it involves a song that really possessed me twenty plus years ago, & an album that seemed to open into a strange, disturbing & fascinating world. The album: Big Star’s 3rd: Sister Lovers; the song: “Nighttime.”

For those of you who don’t know, Big Star was a memphis quartet of the early to mid 1970s, fronted by Alex Chilton & Chris Bell as vocalist guitarists & with Andy Hummel on bass & Jody Stephens on drums. Chilton had already had a taste of stardom when at age 16 he & his bandmates in the Box Tops had scored a number one record with “The Letter.” The experience was not a positive one for Chilton, as it appears—at a young age he grew mistrustful of the music industry’s machinations & marketing & control over artists.

Bell & Chilton were a sort of southern underground Lennon & McCartney; as Robert Gordon writes in the book accompanying Rhino’s hot off the presses box set: “The two bandleaders complemented each other. Bell liked softer, rounder curves, & Chilton was fond of the sharp edge.” With Bell & Chilton collaborating, Big Star recorded the critically-acclaimed but commercial train wreck, #1 Record, & then with Bell mostly out of the band, they released Radio City, which was again met with critical enthusiasm & disappointing sales. In the fall of 1974, Chilton & Stephens were the only remaining band members, & they went into Ardent Studios in Memphis to work on a new project. This is what later became known as Big Star’s 3rd: Sister Lovers (so called because Chilton & Stephens were dating sisters at the time). The album was considered too dark & eccentric to find a distributor, & wasn’t released until 1978 on PVC—that version contained 14 tracks. Rykodisc later released a 19 track version in the early 90s—by this time such alt rock luminaries as R.E.M. & the Replacements were acknowledging the deep influence of Chilton & Big Star, & the band’s work finally had a defined commercial niche.

I was brought back to Big Star’s music by the (very) recent release of Rhino’s box set, Big Star: Keep an Eye on the Sky (co-produced by our friend Cheryl Pawelski, who described the project as a labor of love). For a full review of that, please check out my post today on my Robert Frost’s Banjo blog. Here, I’m focusing on the song “Nighttime.”

When I first heard the demo version of “Nighttime” on disc two of the four disc box set, I was startled to find that Chilton didn’t sing the rather disturbing fourth & fifth verses (see the lyrics below). The demo is an incredibly sweet song—anticipatory of “going out” in all senses of the phrase, & with the air of new love saturating the sound. It’s just Chilton accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Also, tho I didn’t check this in any mechanical way, I believe the underlying tempo of the demo is slightly quicker than that of the released version.

So what happens between the demo & the release? All the sudden, this sweet love song seems to turn so very dark; in the fifth verse, Chilton sings:

Get me out of here
Get me out of here
I hate it here
Get me out of here

In many ways this twist incapsulates so much of what fascinates me about Big Star’s 3rd; there’s the sweet string-enhanced beauty of songs like “Blue Moon” & “Stroke It Noel” combined with the distorted darkness of offerings like “Holocaust” & “Kanga Roo”; there’s the hauntingly beautiful but extraordinarily depressed “Big Black Car” mixed with an upbeat rocker like “Kizza Me.”

Big Star’s 3rd always has seemed to me one of pop/rock music’s most compelling explorations of desire, with all its prismatic & contradictory aspects. The transformation of “Nighttime” from the sweet lover’s stroll of the demo to something more disturbing makes the song one that connects the album’s contradictory states—the heart in its nighttime idyll suddenly confronted by a disturbing reality—the air that had only gone “cool” at the beginning is now “freezing.” The fourth & fifth stanzas also re-shape the lovely lines:

Glanced in your eyes and fell through the skies
Dance in your eyes and fell through the skies

At the beginning of the song, this seems purely (in many senses of that word) a description of “falling” in love—after the darkness of “I hate it here/Get me out of here,” it suggests another type of descent altogether.

There is also the possibility of the song exploring the public versus the private—certainly Chilton's Box Tops' experience must have led him to be distrustful of public adulation as opposed to private passion. Is that the fall "through the skies"—a movement from public adulation to personal love? Or is it something more bleak? The album's exploration of these themes allows us to ponder this question; & as I pointed out in my Robert Frost's Banjo appreciation of the box set, the compilation really enriches our examination.

The setting of the released version is gorgeous; the slide guitar adds a sort of off-kilter lyricism that reinforces the song’s ambiguity, as does Chilton’s vocal, which grows slightly raspy & weary in the concluding lines.

Hope you enjoy the song in the clip below, & do check out Big Star: Keep an Eye on the Sky.


“Nighttime”

At nighttime I go out and see the people
Air goes cool and hurrying on my way
And dressing so sweet, all the people to see
They’re looking at me, all the people to see.

And when I set my eyes on you
You look like a kitty
And when you’re in the moon
Oh you look so pretty

Caught a glance in your eyes
And fell through the skies
Glance in your eyes
And fell through the skies

I’m walking down the freezing street
Scarf goes out behind
You said, get them away
Please don’t say another word

Get me out of here
Get me out of here
I hate it here
Get me out of here

At nighttime I go out and see the people
Air goes cool and hurrying on my way
Glanced in your eyes and fell through the skies
Dance in your eyes and fell through the skies