Of the many figures to have operated in infamy on rock & roll’s perimeters, there are few who occupied such a unique niche as Alex Chilton. Though he eventually garnered a following perhaps half a notch above the cult variety for the three albums he made with Big Star in the ’70s, he initially got his start as the voice of the Top 40 hit “The Letter” when he was lead singer for the Box Tops. Even that band, somewhat manufactured act as they were, was complicated. They were backed by some of the greatest songwriters to emerge from Memphis’ fertile grounds, and the records with the band’s name on them were more the product of the gritty soul, country, and rock & roll for which the city was known than the fluff usually associated with such an operation. Nonetheless, “The Letter” thrust the then teenage Chilton into the role of pop star, a position with which he was never comfortable, and the rest of his career was kind of downhill from there, at least commercially.

As such, Chilton’s story is a unique one, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into any sort of prescribed story line. With her biography, A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, from Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (Viking), Holly George-Warren should be commended for not trying to do anything other than tell Chilton’s tale—the good, the bad, and the otherwise. Starting by tracing his familial lineage, she shows Chilton to be a product of the South, albeit a liberal and cultured product. So much of Chilton’s story seems inextricably tied to Memphis, and George-Warren reveals how the city and its musical history influenced him and shaped his own music.

Similarly, the author also reveals how Chilton’s experience as a Box Top influenced his work with Big Star and everything else he would go on to do as a solo artist. While its easy to see the worth of those Box Tops sides now, until his later years, Chilton had a lot of disdain for the band, and it fueled his adventurous mindset with Big Star. Similarly, Big Star’s lack of success seemingly only propelled Chilton to go further down his idiosyncratic rabbit holes.

Chilton had approached George-Warren about writing his memoir, but the project never took shape before he passed away unexpectedly in 2010. Their acquaintance went back further, though, to when he produced her band, Clambake, but she was still able to approach her subject with plenty of objectivity to balance that intimacy. Combined with copious quotes from many of the people who drifted in and out Chilton’s life, she depicts him as a person with the kinds of hang-ups everyone has, and not just a rock & roll idol with the problems that come with being such, though he had those too. It is evident that a lot of time and care went into writing this book, and there’s no better tribute to Chilton’s legacy than that.