Influential musician Chilton visits St. Andrew's Hall tonight By Christian Hoard For the Daily While bands like Badfinger and the Raspberries tried in vain to live up to their "new Beatles" hype in the early '70s, Big Star, the Memphis group led by Alex Chilton, did as good a job as any of reviving the Fab Four. Granted, Big Star's version of the Beatles was a bit '70s-centric: There's plenty of Bowie-esque glam rock to be found on "#1 Record" (1972) and "Radio City" (1974). But if you've ever heard a Chilton-penned classic like "Back of a Car" or "September Gurls," you realize that what really made Big Star tick was the same stuff that Lennon and McCartney did so well: Perfect harmonies and gorgeous melodies - the sort that stick in your head for days. Big Star's penchant for charming pop songs somewhat disguised Chilton's Memphis roots. With the Box Tops, Chilton's first group, those roots were more apparent, as hits like "The Letter," "Cry Like a Baby" and "I Met Her in Church" (all sung by Chilton) blended Brit-pop tunefulness with healthy doses of soul and R&B. This half-pop, half-R&B amalgam has also bled into Chilton's more recent live performances and solo recordings, with mixed results. "Stuff" (1987) and "A Man Called Destruction" (1995) combined Big Star-style songs with some decent rock and R&B covers, while albums like "Bach's Bottom" (1975) and "Like Flies on Sherbert" (1979) sound like half-hearted throwaways. Still, it's for his work with Big Star that Chilton is best known nowadays. Chilton has, in fact, become an icon of sorts for critically-lauded, commercially-ignored pop music, with countless post-punk bands - everyone from power-poppers like Teenage Fanclub to alternative-rock groups like R.E.M. - having cited Big Star as a primary influence. Paul Westerberg even paid his respects via song with "Alex Chilton," a track from the Replacements' "Pleased to Meet Me" album on which he claimed that he "never travels far/without a little Big Star." In recent years, clamor among Big Star fans has led to a few reunion projects, including "Columbia," a live album culled from a concert that featured Chilton and original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens performing with members of the Posies, and "Nobody Can Dance," which pulls together a series of studio demos as well as a bootleg of a 1971 live show. "Set," due out Feb. 15, is Chilton's first release since 1996's "1970," a collection of previously-unreleased solo material recorded just after the Box Tops' demise. Originally on page 8A in the 1-19-2000 issue of the Daily.