Music nerds love Big Star. It’s the law. They are a cult, a yardstick for taste, certainly a way of demonstrating that you know what you’re talking about. The story of the band is a strange, sad one. The lead singer, Alex Chilton, is the voice you hear on the Box Tops’ 1967 hit ‘The Letter’. He was sixteen, and it was the second time he’d ever sung at a microphone. His high school classmates found out he was a pop star because he wasn’t showing up to classes. When he came back to Memphis, his home town, after the Box Tops disbanded in 1970, he had money in his pocket, a gold record on his wall, and a yen to keep making music. Big Star was the end result: immaculate, rich, Beatles-y pop, made in a city that only really cared about R&B, in a country and a time that only cared about heavy rock. They fell between so many stools that they were like drunks in a bar. Rock critics loved them, though, not least because they played live at the first National Convention of Rock Writers in 1973, in front of Lester Bangs, Lenny Kaye, Nick Tosches and a 17-year-old Cameron Crowe. The band was good enough - and the free booze was flowing liberally enough - to make a lasting impression.