Chris Bell – I Am the Cosmos

“Then time will tell just who fell and who’s been left behind, when you go your way and I go mine.”
-Bob Dylan, “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine”

Of all the bands that carried on the legacy of the three minute rock and roll song throughout the blues/progressive/metal/experimentation dominated early ’70s, Big Star are perhaps the most beloved, though maybe not as historically important as the New York Dolls. The Chris Bell/Alex Chilton songwriting team was one of the great tragedies of rock and roll, if only because it only lasted one (very glorious) album and then broke down into animosity and bitterness, crystallized somewhat by Chilton calling Bell a homosexual on a radio broadcast several years after Big Star’s dissolution (whether Chilton intended his comment as a slur on Bell’s manhood or whether he was outing him is still debated). Obviously, it wasn’t supposed to be that way, at least not so quickly; ever the Beatlemaniac, Bell purposefully modeled his creative partnership with Chilton after the famed Lennon/McCartney combo that inspired him to play rock and roll in the first place. Even the nature of the partnership was the same: like the masters, Bell and Chilton never actually wrote songs together, but rather collaborated on what form they’d take in the studio. And whilst the legendary Lennon/McCartney pairing achieved greatness in a broader cultural sense, few songwriters ever expressed the uncertainty of life during your early to mid-twenties as the Big Star team did.

Yet that talent heightened the music’s sadness; they never got to be The Beatles. Instead, Chilton spent the rest of the ’70s and much of the ’80s on a self-destructive streak. Legend has it that the man basically went on a decade long binge of drink and drugs before sobering up and trying to salvage his career. As for Chris Bell, he spent his post-Big Star years battling depression and trying to scrape together a proper solo album, the results of these endeavors making up the entirety of I Am the Cosmos. He ended up getting a real job managing his parents’ restaurant chain (DB’s drummer Will Rigby wrote a song called “Paper Hat” about an encounter with Bell during this period), releasing just one solo single (albeit one of the best unknown singles of the ’70s), and then tragically dying in a car accident. Thus identifying with Big Star’s music becomes kind of scary, as if that bleakness might rise from the pained melodies like an evil spirit and take hold.

These events also make I Am the Cosmos a daunting listen, if not intensely emotional. It’s half of a great songwriter’s and troubled individual’s artistic legacy. Also, these songs blur the lines between what’s just pop songwriting convention (most of these songs deal with relationship problems) and what’s intensely personal. It’s naïve to assume that every song had its genesis in Bell’s tortured psyche, but it’s too cynical to believe that the guy’s demons didn’t fuel his songwriting to a greater degree than his earlier Big Star material. These songs carry the weight of frustration and failure. The title track, which was the aforementioned single that was released in Bell’s lifetime, exudes regret and uncertainty; a power ballad in the truest sense, containing a gorgeously sad melody that’s made transcendent by loud, distorted electric guitars. The lyrics are pure depressive self-chastisement about how foolish hubris just leads to pain and loneliness, “I’m A Loser” taken to a greater degree of emotionality. Its coda is one of rock and roll’s best; a wall of guitars and mellotron supporting Bell as he howls in confusion “really want to see you again/never want to see you again.”

Its B-side is the harmony-laden folk ballad “You and Your Sister”, which features backing vocals by Alex Chilton, suggesting that not all bridges had been completely burnt after all. In the mold of Big Star ballads like “Thirteen” and “Watch the Sunrise,” Bell matches his ’60s idols in taking a standard love song and making it both heartfelt (“they say my love for you ain’t real/ they don’t know how real it feels) and a clever spin on convention (the narrator wants to convince his girlfriend’s sister than he’s good enough for her).

The rest of the material here is all posthumous and some of it is equally impressive. “Got Kinda Lost” and “There Was A Light” were both tentative Big Star songs before Bell took them upon leaving the band (similarly, Chilton got to keep “O My Soul” and “Back of a Car,” songs that Bell had a hand in). “There Was A Light” is just as pretty as Chilton’s “The Ballad of El Goodo,” but acts as its emotional inverse; once life mattered, but now all is hopeless. “Got Kinda Lost” rocks out and reaches for redemption. Yet the jangly propulsion of “I Don’t Know” probably sounds closest to Bell’s old band and stands as his liveliest solo rocker.

Bell’s spirituality is often talked about and it mainly manifests in two of the album’s most harrowing moments. “Better Save Yourself” bitterly references suicide attempts and concludes “you should have put your trust in Jesus/ It couldn’t do you no harm,” in a voice that comes off more desperate than pious. “Look Up” is perhaps the most bittersweet song here with its hopeful sentiment of “look up/ you may see the sky,” suggesting that perhaps a better life is just around the corner. This is the stuff of the finest sermons.

Of course, any overview of I Am the Cosmos would be an insult if it failed to mention the absolutely lovely “Speed of Sound” (which was recently and unexpectedly resurrected for the Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist soundtrack in 2008). Few lines have ever so painfully articulated a shattered, hurtful relationship; “I remember the first time you said you loved me/ I waited all weekend/ You never called me;” “So you find him attractive/ So what if he is,” “My love grows and yours is gone.” Morrissey ought to be envious.

The set of the album proper is concluded with “Though I Know She Lies,” a more skeletal acoustic song that’s the complete opposite of Chilton’s “I’m In Love With A Girl.” Whereas that song was hard earned elation, “Though I Know She Lies” is a more sadly common scenario, the desperate lover who will put up with any kind of abuse to keep the object of his desires. Tacked on after is some lesser bonus material that replaces alternate versions of “I Am the Cosmos” and “You and Your Sister” from the 1992 edition. Your money is best spent tracking down that instead.

More can be said about I Am the Cosmos; the massive debt it owes to the Beatles, how it helped turn Chris Bell into a Nick Drake-like figure, how the rockers prefigure Teenage Fanclub and how the sadder moments predict Elliott Smith. Ultimately, it was Bell coming to his music fruition. After all, Chilton’s key line in his first song on #1 Record was “Ain’t no one going to turn me round” and he carried that “fuck you” attitude throughout the rest of his career. Bell’s was “I feel like I’m dying”. I Am the Cosmos is, for better or worse, his elaboration, but few have ever nailed heartbreak and disillusionment so poignantly.

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