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Louder
Louder
Entertainment
Rob Hughes

"They were the inadvertent godfathers of the independent music scene." Power-pop nirvana met emotional baggage and personal tragedy in the story of Big Star, a band destined to fail

Big Star sitting on some steps.

‘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.

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