Ever since Paul Westerberg asked the burning question, “if he were from Mars, wouldn’t that be cool?” in the song “Alex Chilton” (a tribute to the Big Star frontman) it has become in vogue to not only name check those Anglophiles from Memphis as an influence, but also to cover a song or two by them.

Sometimes it’s people you would never expect (ahem, Garbage) but most of the time it happens to be a great songwriter who is able to recognize good pop songwriting for what it is. And just to add to the list of reasons that show Westerberg has always been ahead of his time, it seems he started a trend that didn’t happen until the ‘90s; looking at the list of artists who have covered the group, it’s a veritable who’s who of hip artists of the post-grunge era: R.E.M., Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms, Elliott Smith, Matthew Sweet, The Posies (who went on to join Chilton in a Big Star revamp), Teenage Fanclub, Afghan Whigs, Wilco, etc.

It also seemed to be a trend to do very little to change or gussy the songs up. I would like to think it’s because one simply can’t improve on perfection, but it seems to be more than that. These versions seem like they were made in order to honor Big Star. It’s not hard to imagine these bands simply wanted to get the word out on the band, to shine some light on a forgotten band, and maybe to get Chilton some royalty checks—after all, the guy was washing dishes in New Orleans when Westerberg found him in the ‘80s. To say Big Star never hit it big is a colossal understatement, they never even came close—and these bands offered up a b-side or two to show their fans where their sound came from.

For example, Evan Dando’s cover of “The Ballad of El Goodo” from the Empire Records soundtrack has no aspirations beyond making a contemporary version of a song for which he obviously has great affection. And because of that, this track comes out a winner. He takes it down to its bare essentials, relieving the song some of the more Beatles-esque approaches Chilton and partner Chris Bell often took in the studio studio and letting the clean, simple guitar and beautiful (and not overbearing) harmonies do most of the work.

Jeff Buckley tried his hand at Third/Sister Lovers’ feedback drenched, arrhythmic classic “Kanga-Roo.” It’s basically a very good excuse for Buckley to show off his impressive vocal range. On the surface very little has changed from Chilton’s original, but what has changed is important. Buckley has slowed the pace to almost a crawl and relies on only a couple of electric, reverbed guitars and their amps in place of the original’s strong use of mellotron. But who needs a mellotron when you’ve got Buckley’s voice, which seemingly can hit all the same octaves as a piano. Towards the end, Buckley shows off, wailing and hitting notes only he and Mariah Carey could dream of hitting and in the process adding perhaps more mystique and creepiness to the proceedings than even Chilton dreamed up. With its eerie atmosphere and languid pace, it makes it all the more visceral and exciting when it finally begins to recklessly speed up, sounding like a train running off the tracks. (Note: this is the six-minute version; Buckley also recorded a far too long and self-indulgent 14-minute version).

It’s not hard to see Third/Sister Lovers as Chilton’s version of Neil Young’s own drugged out, tired-of-it-all album Tonight’s the Night. Jay Farrar of Son Volt obviously made this connection when covering “Holocaust” (a kind of straight-laced and more melancholy brother, (or maybe sister?) to “Kanga-Roo”), by far the biggest leap from the original of these three. He takes away the slight piano and weepy slide guitar and replaces them with loud, distorted Marshall amps and guitar solos that sound derived straight from the Crazy Horse playbook. Farrar couldn’t emulate Chilton’s overly medicated, comfortably numb singing voice if he tried, and luckily he doesn’t. Yet they keep the song slow and sad and in the end, it turns out to be closer to the spirit of the original than if they’d taken a more worshipful approach.

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