The band played on

The Memphis-based band Big Star only ever released two proper albums. They split up over 25 years ago and never really sold any records. Despite that, their records are rightly regarded as classics and their influence on subsequent generations of guitar bands on both sides of the Atlantic is surpassed only by that of the Velvet Underground. To anyone who has ever held a guitar and tried to write a song, Big Star is a byword for creativity, a measure of what can be achieved with three chords, a red guitar and an interest in girls.

I came to them late in my music life and unfortunately some time after our guitar player in Something Happens. A cruel man, he would sometimes slip Big Star riffs to us in practice without telling anyone. I would then write vocals to suit and when you added bass and drums the Big Star influence would become lost in the mix. When I first listened to them I wondered how a band that had split up 12 years before we formed had ripped off our best work.

Listening to them then, I was chastened. They were exactly like us in terms of line-up and instrumentation, except when they combined those ingredients the result was awe-inspiring, heart-stopping genius. It was like listening to The Beatles but with The Byrds providing vocals. Further sobriety followed with the news that they had recorded these albums in 1972 and 1974 and that no success, commercial return or financial reward of any sort had followed.

This lack of success was further proof to us, if such were ever needed, that when making music, the music itself was all that mattered and if the end result was great but didn't sell, then so be it. We then took comfort in noticing both that attitude and their influence in the music of many of the bands we admired, from The Replacements to REM. This was an underground movement where the song was king. I even started making our guitar player play Big Star songs in practice so that I could further marvel at them.

Big Star had been based around the songwriting partnership of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. They had played together first in a high school cover band before Chilton joined The Box Tops and had a US number one hit with The Letter, when he was still just 16. Four years later as the Box Tops floundered Chilton quit and returned to Memphis, where he joined what was essentially Bell's band, taking their name from a supermarket opposite the studio.

The first album, Number 1 Record, was quickly recorded in 1972, but despite singles such as When My Baby's Beside Me, failed to make any impact. Bell, feeling overshadowed in his own band by the publicly more feted Chilton, then left and the band dissolved soon after. Later, reuniting for live shows, they decided to make another record. Despite the absence of Bell, Radio City (1974) actually managed to surpass the previous records' shimmering brilliance and contained probably their best-known song, September Gurls. Unfortunately this, too, was greeted with public indifference and having recorded an uneven, almost unfinished third album (Sister Lover) the band broke up.

This was the point at which the Big Star legend began. As the years passed, it seemed to become impossible to find a songwriter in a guitar band who, if pushed, wouldn't point to The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and both Big Star albums as defining moments in the evolution of pop music. Today their influence can be heard in the music of (wait for it) The La's, REM, The Replacements, Smashing Pumpkins, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, Matthew Sweet, The Supernaturals, Doves, The Gin Blossoms and Engine Alley.

Life was less kind to the band members themselves. Bell died in a car crash in 1979 at a point in his life when he was no longer in music, was depressed and was working in his father's restaurant. Industry legend has it that REM discovered Chilton working as a janitor in a college they played some years back. It seemed a cruel end for a band whose music offered such optimism and joy.

On a positive note, however, both albums are now available on one CD, often at a bargain price; and the pleasure they will bring you remains undiminished. Furthermore, the new Teenage Fanclub album, wearing its Big Star heart proudly on its sleeve, is also a joyous affair and should inspire yet another crop of young songwriters to seek out those early recordings and marvel at their genius.

Tom Dunne is the lead singer with Something Happens and presents Pet Sounds on Today FM, Monday to Thursday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Brian Boyd is on leave