Big Star Bassist Andy Hummel Dies at 59
July 30, 2010 by Daniel J Russo
Filed under Announcements, Ardent Studios
Big Star drummer and Ardent Studios’ manager Jody Stephens was interviewed by Rolling Stone Senior Editor David Fricke recently about Big Star and the passing of bassist Andy Hummel. From the interview:
Four months after Big Star drummer Jody Stephens and I talked about his late bandmate, singer-guitarist Alex Chilton, who died in March, we talked again – about bassist Andy Hummel, whopassed away on July 19th of cancer at his home in Weatherford, Texas. Hummel was 59. His death leaves Stephens as the only surviving member of the original lineup of the legendary Memphis-born power-pop group; singer-guitarist Chris Bell died in 1978 in a car crash.
Born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and raised in Memphis, Hummel was an undercelebrated factor in the Big Star legend: instrumental in the formation of the group, as Stephens explains, and a gifted contributor as a singer, keyboard player and songwriter on the band’s back-to-back classics for Ardent Records, 1972′s #1 Record and 1974′s Radio City. Frustrated by Big Star’s inability to commercially capitalize on the critical love for their music – an ultimately influential combination of electric-R&B twang, modern romantic anguish and classic Beatlemania – Hummel quit the group just before the release of Radio City, getting a master’s degree in engineering and a job in Texas at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical while continuing to play bass as a sideline. His appearance at the SXSW tribute to Alex Chilton and Big Star in March, playing on his “Way Out West” from Radio City, was the first time he played with Stephens since 1973. It was also, sadly, the last.
Two days after we spoke, Stephens was in New York for a July 28th tribute show to Chilton at City Winery – an event that also became a celebration of Hummel. “Andy’s impact on my life was huge,” Stephens says fondly. “I wouldn’t be sitting where I am now and had all these experiences without him. I wouldn’t have been in Big Star.”
Becoming Big Star
How did you meet Andy?
I met Andy when I was 13, through a guitar player named Mike Fleming. Mike and Andy were a year older. They both lived in Midtown; I lived on Eastman [Road]. I used to catch bus into Midtown, or hitchhike, and hang out with Andy and Mike.
Then I lost track of Andy. We hooked up again in early 1970. I was performing in a college production ofHair, along with my brother Jimmy. Andy came to see one of the performances and said hello after the show. We talked, and he invited me over to jam with him and Chris and some other folks. That’s how that got started. Andy introduced me to Chris, then to John Fry at Ardent Studios.
For more of the interview, visit Rollingstone.com.
