Gram Parsons
Retrospective: Igniting the flame of inspiration
»
 |
S'funny -- if he were really God's own singer, you wouldn't think he'd need to commandeer an airplane to get to Heaven. But somehow it appears fitting for Gram Parsons, a man who literally went out in smoke, to be buried here: caught between the big "aeroplane to Heaven" and the original "Sin City." Quite fitting indeed.
Essentially, Gram Parsons was a living, breathing paradox, from his rich, Southern youth right on down to his almost unbelievable death. The man ran as far as he could from his turbulent family life in Georgia, yet he was drawn to the South's mystic gothic imagery and -- most importantly -- its music. And while the actual moment of his demise was rather routine, as far as rock stars go (an overdose in a hotel room), the nearly unfathomable scheme his friends plotted to keep Gram's corpse in California is the stuff folklore is made of.
As you've probably guessed by now, it didn't work. He ended up buried off some forgettable street, in some forgettable piece of land, in one of New Orleans' hundreds of cemeteries.
But like the paradox of his life, Gram's music left him anything but forgettable.
Before I delve into the meat of Parsons' enigmatic and groundbreaking career, it should be pointed out that he probably didn't invent so-called "country rock." Hell, Johnny Cash did it years before him, and if you don't consider "Folsom Prison Blues" a rock and roll song at its heart, than you don't know a damn thing about rock music. At the same time, Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield were toying with electrified folk rock, and Bob Dylan certainly played around with the genre too.
But what Parsons did was different. Where Cash wrote country songs that flirted with rock and roll and Young and Dylan merely dabbled with "country" styles, Parsons threw himself headlong into both arenas. Had he lived longer than his 27 years, he may just have ended up as influential and legendary as the aforementioned Man in Black. But where Cash brought a rock and roll rebel attitude to country music, Parsons took the sad, drown-in-your-beer mentality of country and indelibly applied it rock and roll.
"[A]n important dimension is the innuendo supplied by Gram's voice and delivery," a reviewer wrote about his 1972 solo album GP. "He might not be old enough to be a [Merle] Haggard or a Cash, but he gets another kind of worldliness, a quieter kind of strength out of his singing. That amazing voice, with its warring qualities of sweetness and dissipation, makes for a stunning emotional experience."
Parsons' influence and ideas made heads spin in his day and bands form years later. In his prime, Parsons was never appreciated by the country or rock crowds he sought to win over, but almost 30 years after his death a whole legion of bands taking his vision of "Cosmic American Music" keep cropping up. Want an example? Take a look at the line-up on 1999's Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons and you'll find influential and important contemporary acts like Wilco, Beck, the Pretenders and Gillian Welch teaming up with such luminaries as Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello and David Crosby -- all for the sake of paying tribute to Parsons.
Even more recently, Rhino Records released an anthology of all his material in a simple, concise 2-CD set. Released in May 2001, Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels: The Gram Parsons Anthology is only the latest in what has been a whirlwind of re-releases and re-issues since the 1999 tribute album came out.
Ironically, Gram didn't want to be a country musician when he started making music. His earliest recordings were heavily rooted in folk rock, and his childhood idol wasn't Haggard or Cash, but Elvis Presley. Born and raised in the Deep South -- first in Waycross, Ga., and later in Jacksonville, Fla. -- the presence of the King was all around Gram, and he soaked it in as much as possible.
"Elvis influenced me tremendously," Gram once told a reporter. "If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have strayed into country music."
The Presley effect can be felt in one of Gram's earliest recordings, 1967's Safe At Home -- the one and only album by his first major band, the International Submarine Band. Often pegged by critics as the first country-rock record, Safe At Home really doesn't contain anything revolutionary. Parsons originals like "Blue Eyes" and "Luxury Liner," while impressive, showed he still had learning to do.
But flashes of genius appear throughout the record, especially in the medley of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" and Presley's "That's All Right." The song begins as an upbeat - but not spectacular - cover of the quintessential Cash tune about love, regret and murder. However, toward the end of the tune, it effortlessly slides into the jangly "That's All Right," with such grace that the average listener probably wouldn't even notice it was a medley.
Again, not brilliant, but the spark of Parsons's talent was beginning to shine.
Safe At Home didn't sell much, it hardly made a splash, truthfully. Parsons was convinced the band, based in Boston, needed a change of locale, and a makeover. After moderate success in the Northeast, including semi-regular gigging in New York City, it was clear this new-fangled "country rock" was not taking off in the region. It was time to move out West.
Los Angeles, more precisely.
“California was…home for a healthy country music scene, and had been since the thirties, when Okies by the thousands migrated to the West Coast from the Oklahoma dust bowl, along with refugees from Texas and New Mexico,” Ben Fong-Torres wrote in his 1991 Gram biography Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons. After his frustrations in Boston, Gram headed West in search of an audience for his new music, and he decided to try his chances in L.A.
His International Submarine Band scored a minor break soon after arriving, when a friend of a friend -- who turned out to be actor Peter Fonda -- needed a band to play in a party scene in an upcoming movie called “The Trip.” Though the group was incorrectly billed, and its music was overdubbed, the experience opened the door for Parsons to meet the Hollywood elite, and cross paths with a Byrd.
In 1967, seminal ‘60s rock hippie band the Byrds had just polished up its folk-laced fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Singer/guitarist David Crosby left/was fired during the album’s tumultuous sessions, and the band was looking for a replacement.
Though Gram appeared content with the Sub Band, fate changed all that for the better. While standing in line at a bank, he met Byrd bassist Chris Hillman. Turns out Hillman knew of the Sub Band, as the groups shared the same business manager. After a quick try-out, Gram was offered the gig in place of Crosby, and the decision to leave his obscure little country group for the established rock band was easy.
“We just hired a piano player and he turned out to be Parsons, a monster in sheep’s clothing,” Byrd leader Roger McGuinn’s famous quote goes. “And he exploded out of his sheep’s clothing. God! It was George Jones! In a sequin suit!”
With new member in tow, the Byrds took the country-folk leanings of Byrd Brothers to a completely different level. Parsons’s love of country music brought out the same in Hillman, who was an experienced mandolin and bluegrass musician.
“When Gram came into the group I had an ally in country music, somebody who understood it and who grew up with it,” Hillman told another Parsons biographer, Sid Griffin, in 1985. “He helped it and sparked it some more and did help us into a direction of a full-out attempt at doing country.”
Though McGuinn hoped the next Byrds album would be an expansive double LP that would serve as a living “history of music,” mixing genres from Appalachian folk music all the way to spacey, keyboard-drenched mood music, Parsons and Hillman never let the album leave the country. Sweetheart Of The Rodeo certainly stands as a history of roots rock, from early gospel numbers like “The Christian Life” all the way to the group's version of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”
Sweetheart also included two Gram originals, the soothing “Hickory Wind” and the rollicking “100 Years from Now.” The latter became a Parsons staple, and the Byrds even performed it -- unscheduled -- when they became the first rock band to play Nashville’s legendary Grand Ole Opry.
The album proved to be a watershed for both Parsons and Hillman, but was not a hit with the Byrds’ core audience. Critically acclaimed, it proved to be a little too heavy on the country and light on the rock for mainstream tastes. That, and contract issues from Gram’s Sub Band days forced the Byrds to re-record a number of tunes that Parsons sang lead on, resulting in a rushed production to get the album out without legal hitches.
The legal fiasco did nothing to endear Gram to his new bandmates, and neither did his newfound friendship with the Biggest Rock Band on the Planet: the Rolling Stones.
Parsons met the Stones when Mick Jagger caught a Byrds show in Europe during a 1968 tour. The two bands shared the stage a few times, and Parsons struck up a quick camaraderie with Jagger and especially Keith Richards. As a fresh-faced 21-year old, becoming a peer of the Rolling Stones certainly was a feather in Gram’s cap, but it also spelled the end of his short time with the Byrds.
When the Byrds announced a South African tour, Parsons immediately objected and refused to play, claiming his opposition to that nation’s apartheid culture. But his bandmates knew better: he’d been listening to the Stones, and, especially, Keith Richards.
“They were filling his head, I’m sure, with stories of South Africa,” Hillman said in Hickory Wind.
And for his part, Richards is just as blunt: “I was instrumental in his leaving the Byrds,” he told Fong-Torres. “Because I said, ‘nobody goes to play South Africa’.”
With that, Parsons was back in L.A., without a band, but with connections that would later result in one of the most influential rock bands of the era: the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Parsons left the Byrds on acrimonious terms, to say the least. His closest compatriot in the band, Hillman was furious that Gram bailed on the tour, even confessing to one reporter that he wanted to “murder” him. But when the band returned from what proved to be an ill-advised tour, Hillman and Parsons made peace and rekindled a musical partnership that, for at least a year or two, would prove to be as productive as other great songwriting tandems like McCartney-Lennon and Jagger-Richards.
“Parsons didn’t go to South Africa, hence he left the band,” Hillman told Sid Griffin in Gram Parsons: A Musical Biography. “Then Gram and I put together the Burritos. I was ready to murder him but then we did make up and became friends again.”
The two ex-Byrds quickly regrouped and formed a five-piece outfit to continue experimenting with country music, but Parsons – who as a Southerner grew up around gospel and true R&B music – wanted to expand his bounds even further. The band’s first album, 1969’s The Gilded Palace of Sin, is still probably the truest representation of Parsons and Hillman melding country, rock, gospel and R&B into the “Cosmic American Music” Parsons famously said he wanted to create.
Aside from straight-up rockers like “Devil in Disguise” and country laments like “Sin City,” Gilded Palace’s most engaging moments are the covers of two R&B classics: “Dark End of the Street” and Aretha Franklin’s (gasp!) “Do Right Woman.” “We were aware we couldn’t try to be two black soul singers and try to do ‘Dark End of the Street’,” Hillman told Griffin. “Not like Percy Sledge would do it anyway. So we did our own interpretation.” (That line, “we did our own interpretation,” would be trotted out seven years later when, in 1976, punk band The Clash covered the reggae tune “Police and Thieves” to an equally perplexed crowd.)
While Gilded Palace won critical acclaim, the rock audience it appeared geared toward wasn’t quite ready to buy in just yet. This despite Gram’s burgeoning relationship with Richards and the Rolling Stones, which was again becoming a source of discontent for the rest of the Burritos. Parsons appeared seduced by all the charms and perks hanging out with rock’s biggest band had to offer, and more often than not, he would blow off Burrito practice sessions and performances to hang out with – and be seen around – Keith Richards.
“He was enamored with the Stones at one time,” Hillman said. “They were the living end, could do no wrong.”
With Gram’s time split not-so-evenly with the Stones and Burritos, the Burritos follow-up to Gilded Palace, 1970’s Burrito Deluxe, never really took off. Hillman, in the liner notes to Sacred Hearts, called the album “a joke,” and while that assessment may be a little facetious, it is clear that Burrito Deluxe was a haphazard affair, with only a few diamonds in this collection of rough material.
Much of the album feels forced, almost as if the heart and soul that went into the first album were just too tired and distracted to make a second appearance. The album is not bad, with catchy rock numbers like “Older Guys,” rootsy rave-ups like “High Fashion Queen,” and the Byrds-esque “Cody, Cody,” but overall, it appears flat and -- given the promise shown in Gilded Palace -- can only be described as a disappointment.
“At this point Gram wanted to be a rock star a la Mick Jagger,” Hillman later recalled. “So he started to drift musically and spiritually.”
Ironically, though, Gram’s connections with the Stones brought out the album’s high point, a cover of “Wild Horses” which was actually released before the Stones’ version on Sticky Fingers. Gram told reporters at the time that the song in and of itself represents “a logical combination between their music and our music. It's something that Mick Jagger can accept, and its something I can accept. And my way of doing it isn’t necessarily where it’s at, but it’s certainly the way I feel about it.”
On Burrito Deluxe, the song is slower and tamer, and somehow the lyrics seem so much purer when heard through Parsons’ sweet-sounding, innocent voice. “Chiiillldhood living / is eeeeasssy to dooooo / the thiiings you wanted / I give theemm to youu.”
But unfortunately, Gram’s penchant for ditching his band, trying new drugs and hanging with the Stones cost him his job with the Burritos. Not long after Burrito Deluxe came out, Hillman booted Parsons, and Gram more or less retreated from performing and writing altogether for nearly two years.
Of course, when you're friends with the Stones, you're never looking for things to do. Parsons quickly took up residence with Richards over in England, while the Stones were recording the legendary double Exile On Main Street. Though many, including Hillman, questioned whether Gram's friendship with the Stones was indeed a two-way street, Richards credited Parsons for introducing him and the band to country music, and even said they likely would not have dabbled with songs like "Sweet Virginia" on Exile and, later, "Dead Flowers" on Sticky Fingers had Gram not been around.
"Gram's knowledge of country music was awesome," Richards said in Hickory Wind. "Country and blues. That's what strikes a chord in me, and always has. And Gram taught me an awful lot about the music."
Parsons hung around throughout the recording of Exile, Richards said, and likely sang backup on more than one song. But ultimately, after more than a year of standing on sidelines as a Stones lackey, Parsons decided it was time to get back and record his own music.
Through the help of Hillman and, interestingly, his Burritos replacement, Rick Roberts, Parsons met the female vocalist who would change his life, and ultimately retrieve the magic he possessed when he recorded Gilded Palace. Hillman and Roberts happened to be in the audience of a Washington, D.C., night club where struggling folk musician/single mother Emmylou Harris performed. Having already been told by Parsons to look out for a strong female vocalist, Roberts and Hillman knew they had to tell Gram.
"We asked Emmylou to sit in with us and she came and sat in the next couple of nights," Roberts said in A Musical Biography. "We proceeded to tell Gram about her and hype her to him. Hype may not be the right word because we gave her a build-up which was deserved."
Roberts and Hillman dragged Parsons from Baltimore, 50 miles up the road, to hear and be introduced to Harris. After her first set, Gram was stunned. The two met backstage and worked out a couple vocal arrangements to everyone's delight.
"[Harris] sang like a bird, and I said, 'Well, that's it'," Parsons said at the time. "And I sang with her the rest of the night and she just kept getting better and better."
For her part, Harris recalled an instantaneous connection with Gram, almost as if they had been singing together for years. "Gram and I seemed to sing together," she said in Hickory Wind. "I wasn't aware that I was following him; at the same time, I was. It was real natural."
With Gram convinced he found a partner, he flew Harris out to L.A. to sing on his first solo album, 1973's GP. The year or so away from the business appeared to do wonders for Gram's voice, and he seemed to be at least controlling his dabbling with drugs, which now included a slightly-more-than-casual use of heroin.
Hillman recalled that Parsons "sort of cleaned up" upon returning stateside and to the studio, and he was armed with a hefty batch of new material that may not have been as musically expansive as his Burritos work, but lyrically contained the most beautiful, sad, breathtaking and complicated tunes of his career ? sometimes all in the same song.
GP opens up with the standard country rave-up "Still Feeling Blue." No rock whatsoever in this tune. In fact, on GP and his final record, Grievous Angel, Gram more or less gave up on bringing more rock to country and, as one reviewer noted, came up with "something more pure." While the result can't truly be catagorized as true country either, Gram's writing had indeed taken a significant departure from rock and roll.
For one, the tune "A Song For You," a song one critic opined as the "saddest song I've ever heard," stands out on GP as the hallmark of the album. The first of four biographical "hymns," as Emmylou Harris called them, on his two solo albums, "A Song for You" finds Gram waxing biblical about his life, his music, his friends and, of course, true love.
"Oh my land is like a wild goose / Wanders all around, everywhere / trembles and it shakes / till every tree is loose / it rolls the meadows and it rolls the nails," Gram croons over a gentle acoustic guitar.
On "She," his ode to a slave girl whose singing voice won her attention and, ultimately, freedom from her slave master, Gram continues to use the Christian imagery laced in traditional country music by the pros: Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash.
"She had faith / she had believin' / she led all the people together in singin' / And she prayed every night to the Lord up above / singing hallelujah."
Gram's finest piece on vinyl came on his second and final solo album, 1974's Grievous Angel. With Harris in tow for another run, Parsons put together three songs more musically and lyrically powerful than anything he'd done before. Like all great artists who live fast, hard and lonely, Gram knew his lifestyle would ultimately catch up with him, and in some songs on Grievous Angel, he appears to know what is coming.
"Grievous Angel is Parsons' most serious album," Rolling Stone said at the time. "His firmer-than-usual (but no less plaintive) voice, Emmylou's buoyantly lovely singing?all contribute to the music's sense of solemn purposefulness."
Musically, the album picks up where GP left off in that a Parsons-standard country tune, "Return of the Grievous Angel," kicks off the record. But quickly, the album turns serious with tender, heart-wrenching covers of both "Hearts on Fire" and "Love Hurts." On those two songs, Harris is the star. Her harmony vocals take the tunes to new levels.
The central focuses on Grievous Angel are death, regret and loss. In the simple, melodic "Brass Buttons," Gram mourns the loss of a young lover, but in the tune -- the lyric of which he wrote in high school -- he admits that not even love lasts forever. "Her words still dance inside my head / her comb still lies beside my bed / and the sun comes up without her / it just doesn't know she's gone / oh, but I remember every word she said."
Grievous Angel's highest point -- and Gram's crowning achievement on record -- is "$1,000 Wedding," an unbearably morose and complicated song referencing a wedding to his first true love that never took place. The song mixes metaphors and even reaches into his childhood memories of an abusive stepfather and alcoholic-yet-proud mother to create what this writer considers the saddest song I've ever heard.
"It was a $1000 wedding supposed to be held the other day / and with all the invitations sent / the young bride went away / when the groom saw people passing notes / not unusual, he might say / but where are the flowers for my baby / I'd even like to see her mean, old mama / and why ain't there a funeral / if you're gonna act that way."
To top it off, the album closes with the epitaph "In My Hour of Darkness," in which Gram laments the loss of a close friend, but seems to predict his own demise as well. "In my hour of darkness / in my time of need / oh lord, grant me vision / oh lord, grant me speed," Gram and Emmylou belt out in gospel fashion.
And sure enough, Gram was dead before Grievous Angel was released. How ironic, that though Gram appeared to be finding religion and attempting to clean himself up, his last night was spent with a groupie and a fatal mix of alcohol and morphine.
So ends the life of a legendary musical innovator, but so begins one of the craziest post-mortem tales this side of the Bible.
This part's complicated, so pay attention: Gram's stepfather Bob had moved the family to New Orleans after Gram's mother died. Under Louisiana's Napoleonic Code -- history lesson, folks: Louisiana was once a French territory -- male survivors are entitled to any estate. Gram had a healthy trust fund set up by his mother's wealthy parents, and stepdad Bob wanted to make sure he got his hands on it.
Gram's friends recalled an earlier wish by Parsons to have his ashes spilled over his favorite get-away spot in Joshua Tree, California. But Bob Parsons already made funeral arrangements in New Orleans, and the body was scheduled to be flown out of L.A. International Airport. Aware of stepdad Bob's intentions, Parsons' friends Philip Kaufman and Michael Martin commandeered a friend's hearse, drove to the airport, and convinced the baggage handlers that they were to deliver Gram's corpse to a private plane -- at the family's request, of course.
"Gram wouldn't want this," Kaufman said in an interview, about stepdad Bob's plans to bury him in New Orleans. "He would really be pissed off. He wouldn't even go to his own funeral if he knew what they were doing."
Kaufman and Martin, with Gram's corpse in the hearse, proceeded to drive to Joshua Tree, find a secluded spot, torch the coffin, and run off.
Gram may not have burned to ashes, as policemen put it out and he was eventually shipped to New Orleans anyway, but his after-death experience was more than fitting. "His exit was perfect," Parsons fan Elvis Costello said in Hickory Wind.
Well, half right. Had it truly been perfect, his remains would have been spread all throughout the barren desert of Joshua Tree. But, as his short-but-brilliant career proved, perfection wasn't Gram's best quality; innovation was.
RODEO ROB | An expert on all things "alt," Rob spends his days covering the energy industry and his nights covering the DC-area bars. Raise yer glass especially high to this man, for he has contributed to this site constantly since its creation four years ago.