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Certain Songs #49: Big Star – “Thirteen”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972

. . .

And so, after the three-song opening gut punch of “Feel,” “The Ballad of El Goodo” and “In The Street” we suddenly hear an insanely well-miked acoustic guitar over which a totally vulnerable-sounding Alex Chilton inhabits yet another teenager.

Won’t you let me walk you home from school?
Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?
Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I’ll take you, ooh-oh

Unlike “In The Street,” which is chock full of verisimilitude and incident, I think that “Thirteen” is more a mystery. It’s basically a series of questions to Alex Chilton’s love object, but it’s unclear whether or not she ever answer those questions. Or that he ever even asked them of her face to face.

Won’t you tell your dad get off my back?
Tell him what we said ‘bout “Paint It Black”
Rock and roll is here to stay
Come inside where it’s okay
And I’ll shake you, ooh ooh

And really, what teenage girl is going to use the awesomeness of “Paint it Black” and the permanence of rock and roll as a reason for her father to hang out with a teenaged Alex Chilton? (I mean, honestly, using “The Letter” might be a way better strategy. “Dad, he’s going to get money from that song for a long time!”)

Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it’s so, well let me know
If it’s no, well I can go
I won’t make you, ooh ooh

So what ends up happening? We never find out.

And of course, the only reason that we’re even wondering about the words at all is because of how this song sounds, anchored by those amazing acoustic guitars.

One of the many things that makes #1 Record so special is the acoustic guitar sound.On “Thirteen” (and also “Watch The Sunrise”)  it feels like Alex Chilton and Chris Bell are sitting in your living room (or your car, or your bedroom, or wherever you happen to be when those songs come up) (which should be anywhere, because it’s Big Star), staring eye to eye, playing off of each other.

Add that guitar sound to the mysterious lyrics, Chiton’s tender singing, and the spacy backround vocals, and you get one of the more achingly gorgeous songs ever recorded. 

“Thirteen”

Certain Songs #47: Big Star – “The Ballad of El Goodo”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972.

I’ve told the story before about how Kirk & I discovered a two-disc reissue of the unheard but not unknown Big Star’s #1 Record and Radio City languishing in the Record Library in CSUF Speech Arts building, rushed back to our condo and put it on.

What sealed the Big Star deal for me — besides “September Gurls,” which was instant and eternal — were the three songs in the middle of side one of #1 Record, which for decades have drawn me into listening to the whole album, which was a combination of incredibly weird and amazingly tuneful. Or maybe it was incredibly tuneful and amazingly weird.

Like, for example, “The Ballad of El Goodo,” which is chock-full of ringing 12-string guitar, heavenly backing vocals, perfectly placed drum fills and the chants of:

And there ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Aint no one going to turn me ‘round

and later in the song

Hold on 
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on

In 1984, this was like discovering The Velvet Underground for jangly guitars. Clearly an influence on so many things I loved, and yet not sounding like an influence at all — like say, The Who or The Beatles or even Dylan — but rather completely out of the time and place from where it supposedly came.

Also: I have always thought that maybe one of the best ways to illustrate the endearing idiosyncracies of Alex Chilton as a songwriter was in the lyrics to this song.  In the first verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against unbelievable odds

And in the last verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against strong odds

This is so weird! Every other songwriter ever when writing words about a personal struggle would put “strong odds” in the first verse, and as the song went on, up the ante, until he was facing the “unbelievable odds” at the end. If’d I’d ever gotten the chance to interview Alex Chilton, my first question would have been about this choice.

Which probably also would have been my last question, I’m sure.

“The Ballad of El Goodo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever