From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest, writer, author, Holly, George Warren, has a gift for affinities as a writer on pop

and pop culture. I know I work from Rolling Stone and her terrific book on Gene Autry from a few

years back, Public Cowboy Number One. Her newest book on The Myth and the Man that, Alex Chilton,

is a man called Destruction. First of all, Holly, thanks so much for being here.

Well, thank you for having me.

It's great to be here.

One of the things I just find so fascinating about your work,

and specifically in his book,

I mean, there's one line at one point about me,

a little more than halfway through the book when Alex sort of says,

I was just frustrated with everything, which is the through line for the entire book, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

I mean, he was a very, very creative person and had this incredible luck of becoming a huge

star at the age of 16.

The first time he stepped foot in a recording studio, he sang this song, the letter written

by a then-Unknown songwriter, produced by someone

who had never produced a record before, Dan Penn, and it was just the stars aligned, which Alex

being an astrology nut would definitely probably agree with. And the box tops his band, which didn't

even have that name yet. I mean, it was just some teenage kids who had this band that played parties, had this massive

successful hit, number one in the country for a month when he was 16 years old in 1967. So he spent

about three years having this successful group, but really developing as an artist, even that young,

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