No Health Care for a Big Star.
This comes late to 99P. Mostly because I didn’t want to re-cover a story that many in the indie rock world were talking about non-stop (totally justified) a few weeks back. However, some new details emerged today that made me profoundly sad and I figured I’d share.
I’m not going to preach about who Alex Chilton was. If you know, you know. If you don’t, click some of these links and introduce yourself. He was the lead singer of The Box Tops and Big Star, the latter being one of the great tragedies of ’70s music. They should have been huge, but without proper love from their label, Alex, who only got better with age, was never more famous than when he was 16 singing The Box Tops‘ “The Letter”. That is until about a decade later, when music nerds everywhere started discovering those forgotten records. Not surprisingly, a massive impact was quickly made on bands from the ’80s and ’90s, and Paul Westerberg of The Replacements went so far as to write a song about him, simply titled “Alex Chilton”.
Ok, so I just preached. What? I’m a fan.
Anyway, the reason I even wrote this was to tell you that today, news arrived that one of the most influential voices in rock and roll history died of a potentially avoidable heart attack. His wife stated that Alex had been feeling a shortness of breath and chest pains while mowing the lawn for two weeks before his untimely death. He never went to the doctor, however, because he lacked health insurance.
Alex Chilton, dead at 59. Hopefully he’ll be the last life lost to the all too common illness known as “uninsured”.
