
‘I’m goin’ to Memphis, where the beat is tough,’ Jerry Lee Lewis once sang. ‘It makes you tremble and it makes you weak /Gets in your blood…’
America took its very rhythm from Memphis: birthplace of rock’n’roll, hotbed of blues and gospel, crucible of southern soul and once home to Sun, Stax, Hi and American Sound Studio. Yet one strain of music, white-boy rock, seemed curiously absent from this busy corner of Tennessee, at least until the early 70s. Enter Big Star.