A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man by Holly George-Warren

and hugged one of the amps and started hunching back and forth like he was having sex with it, and it blew my mind. The girls were going nuts over the Doors.” At the Holiday Inn, where all the bands stayed and partied together, Morrison kept to himself and didn’t interact with others, though keyboardist “Ray Manzarek actually called one of our rooms,” according to Gary, “and said he really liked our record. I’ll always remember that, because we thought the Doors were so cool.”
    Among the hippies partying with the Box Tops at the Holiday Inn was a twenty-year-old, green-eyed redhead named Suzi Greene. “She looked kinda like Judy Carne, with bright green eyes and a pixie haircut,” Gary remembers of the petite Texan, who lived on a commune outside town with her former boyfriend, Marc Benno, a guitarist. “Suzi was a sweetheart,” Benno recalls, “a really artistic, cool girl. She had a look about her that was very desirable, sexy—just really a knockout. She went to all the rock shows—everybody knew Suzi.”
    “Suzi was part of the hippie commune in charge of showing us a good time,” Gary says. “They were around all the time. She was really pretty. She didn’t wear any shoes, and she had on an ankle bracelet; I guess she was the firsthippie girl I ever met. I liked her and stayed up all night talking to her. Then the next night, Alex stayed up all night
not
talking to her.” Alex had just met his future wife.
    In mid-September “The Letter” soared to #1, where it would stay for a month, knocking another Southerner’s debut single, Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe,” off the top spot. “I remember we were on the road, and in Virginia,” says Gary. “Buddy Alfonso was on the phone with our manager, and he got off the phone and said, ‘Hey, guys, ‘The Letter’ is #1 on the charts!’ We just couldn’t believe it. Like, this is crazy, this just couldn’t be true!”
    “The Letter” also entered the R&B survey, where it remained for nearly three months, reaching #30. As the song blared from still-segregated black stations, pop radio, and jukeboxes in soda shops, bars, and roadhouses, it also became a favorite on Armed Forces Radio, where the song’s message about racing home resonated with servicemen fighting in Southeast Asia. Marine armorer Chris Paul, stationed at Camp Pendleton in the fall of ’67, recalls the record being in heavy rotation on Wolfman Jack’s program on the Border Radio station XERB out of Tijuana (“50,000 watts of soul power, baby”). “This was my backdrop to ‘The Letter,’” the former Marine says. “The Box Tops were part of a select group of white acts—including Procol Harum and later Dusty Springfield—to get airplay on that station,” Paul recalls. “‘Give me a ticket for an aeroplane’ became the mantra for Marines getting discharged from the Corps, and I can’t remember any other lyric enjoying that much popularity until I got to Vietnam in ’68, where it was that song and the Animals’ ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place.’” Some twenty years later, when “The Letter” was the focus of an
Entertainment Tonight
segment, Alex concurred: “It gives you a feeling of immediacy and movement. I think a lot of people were in Vietnam and that was their fondest dream—a ticket to get out and back home.”
    In England a promo video of the Box Tops performing “The Letter” would soon be featured on the prestigious BBC music program
Top of the Pops
, alongside the Animals and Bobbie Gentry. “The Letter” hit #5 there, staying on the charts for three months.
    The Box Tops’ first stop as chart-toppers was Atlanta, where they played a venue called the Stingray Club, visited a black radio station (where, again, they surprised the DJ with their youth and skin color), and appeared on TV on the regional teen music show
The Village Square.
Though homespun and low-budget, the program was broadcast in more than fifty markets. Alex got