There are moments in the life of a music journalist that make you unbelievably grateful for the chances the job affords you. One of these moments occurs while I’m sitting in a pub in London with Ken Stringfellow. My mind starts to wander through the litany of amazing albums the man has created or contributed to and it’s difficult not to be awed; Big Star, The Posies, R.E.M, The Long Winters, Damien Jurado, his latest superb band The Disciplines. It’s one hell of a list.

I’ve been a devotee of Big Star ever since I first heard ‘The Ballad of el Goodo’ as a teenager and this interview with Stringfellow, his Posies’ co-founder Jon Auer and original Big Star member Jody Stephens became a labour of love.

The story of the band is one of rock music’s most legendary hard-luck tales. Despite being hugely talented and innovative beyond all imagination, Big Star failed to even make a dent on the charts when they released #1 Record in 1972 and Radio City in 1974. The extraordinary talent of frontman Alex Chilton was not enough to save the band from being tossed aside and forgotten, one of those bands that just never got the breaks. But then generations of songwriters began to discover what everyone else had missed.

The Replacements, R.E.M, Matthew Sweet, The dBs, Cheap Trick, The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, Buffalo Tom, The Lemonheads; none of these bands would have sounded anything like they did without Big Star. But the band was already no more. Guitarist Chris Bell left after the first album and had tragically died in a car accident before Big Star released their third album, Third/Sister Lovers. Bassist Andy Hamilton gave it all up for mechanical engineering.

Chilton had shied away from the limelight and was quietly releasing solo albums at his own pace. Then some college kids in Missouri decided they wanted Big Star to perform at their university.

“I think people had come up with the idea before,” says Stringfellow, “and Jody hadn’t even bothered telling Alex because he was sure he’d say no. But this time Jody said ‘Why don’t you guys call Alex? Because I’m sure he’ll say no and I don’t feel like dealing with it’ and they did and he said ‘Yeah, sure. I’ll need a band though’.

“So they had their wishlist and they thought maybe they should get some big names to fill out the line-up. They asked Paul Westerberg, they asked Matthew Sweet, they asked Chris Stamey, all of whom said no for various reasons. Jon was on that list as well. At that time, we’d (The Posies) recorded a couple of Big Star covers. Jody said ‘Well, these guys are more than capable of helping recreate our authentic sound. And that was it then. We got the gig. Of course it was supposed to be a one-off and of course it didn’t turn out to be a one-off. These things never are.”

Jody Stephens now works at Ardent Studios in Memphis, where Big Star recorded their albums in the 70s. He is an ambassador for the studio and its label, travelling around America, spreading the word. When I speak to him on the phone, his praise for Auer and Stringfellow is nothing less than glowing.

“They’re really amazing,” he says, “they pull off parts perfectly that even Andy and Chris had trouble reproducing live. They work so well together, they’re like Siamese twins. They’re definitely joined in some form or fashion, it’s uncanny. I don’t think there’s anyone who could have done as good a job as those two guys.”

For Auer and Stringfellow, joining the band that had so greatly influenced them was the stuff that dreams are made of.

“The funny part is that I remember it feeling mostly natural,” says Auer, “me being more excited than anything, and feeling super fortunate that things had worked out so supremely in my favor. There probably was a little healthy denial involved as well, but that’s what it takes to get on with the playing sometimes.”

Stringfellow’s viewpoint is almost identical. “We were young and dumb enough not to really worry about it,” he says, “We weren’t as freaked out as we should have been so that probably helped. We had to approach it as professionally as we could and not be overwhelmed by it all, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to function.”

With such a rich musical history between the three of them, career highlights are numerous. “You know, looking back, it’s the actual whole body of work that shapes my opinion,” says Stephens, “it’s really an audio snapshot of where we were at the time, musically and emotionally. But if I had to pick one thing, the one that always comes back to me is ‘The Ballad of el Goodo’. I can still remember coming up with that drum part. It was pretty much what I played the first time we ran through it. It was the most exciting thing to be a part of and, I mean, it’s just such a great song.”

“It always hard for me to pick,” says Auer, “I’m lucky there have been a lot of great times. I’d have to say playing the first show as Big Star reformed for the Columbia, Missouri performance was definitely a moment.”

“Well, I would say that the ability to hold my own on the same stage and the same studio as people like Alex, R.E.M and Neil Young,” says Stringfellow. “It was like ‘wow, I didn’t fuck up’. Not only that but I actually contributed something. Also, the records I’ve made as Ken Stringfellow are my babies. I’m the guy paying the mortgage on those and I feel like I didn’t fuck those up either because they’re actually really good. I think the fact that I’ve contributed to people’s musical lives, that they consider me a peer, is amazing.”In the wake of the Columbia, Missouri reunion gig, Big Star made a surprise return to the studio to record a fourth album In Space, a true meeting of the talents of Chilton and Stephens with the new blood of Auer and Stringfellow. The future, though, is a little hazy.

“I’d love to do a long Big Star tour,” says Auer, “but it never works out that way. The closest was when we toured Japan back in the early 90s. I think I’d settle for more than just two shows in a row at this point!”

“The great thing about being in this band,” says Stephens, “is that there is always a nice surprise around the corner. We haven’t recorded anything new but when we play, we play everything up to and including In Space. We haven’t played England since 2001 and I’m incredibly excited to play the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I saw AC/DC there in 1978.”
As for a new record, Auer says: “I know I’d be game, and I bet Ken and Jody would be into it. I would wager the question mark to be Alex.”

For all their hard luck and tough breaks in the 70s, it would seem that Big Star have finally found their time and place and are finally getting the recognition they have always deserved. “That’s true,” says Stringfellow, “there’s definitely been more than one festival where I was looking out at the crowd and thinking ‘You know, there are more people watching the band right now than if you added up all the people who saw the band at all of their shows before.’”

Stephens sums it up perfectly: “Kids come up to me now after shows, in their twenties, even teens, and say ‘I wasn’t around in your heyday’. I say, ‘You’re around now! This is our hey-day.’ We’ve got a much bigger fanbase now than we ever had back then. For me, right now, this line-up, this defines our heyday.”

Big Star play Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 28 August 2008.