September 19, 1973—It wasn’t enough that Gram Parsons influenced generations of musicians with his hybrid mix of rock ‘n’ roll and country, nor
that he followed the pattern of contemporaries with an early death brought on
by intense substance abuse. No, the 26-year-old former member of The Byrds and
the Flying Burrito Brothers overdosed on a combination of morphine and tequila at
the Joshua Tree Inn in California –then his road manager engaged in a
serio-comic body snatching that one cop, challenged to cite what law was
broken, responded, “Grand Theft Parsons.”
Grievous Angel, Parsons titled his last, posthumously released solo album, and that neatly
sums up the promise and pain of this singer-songwriter with such a deep
affinity for country done-somebody-wrong songs--and such a lack of commercial success in his lifetime. Groupies fell in love with his
ethereal face even before hearing his equally mesmerizing voice. (His embroidered
Nudie tailored suits, in emulation of hero Hank Williams, didn’t hurt in the
eyes of female fans, either.) Hearing him play and listening to his lyrics altered
the career trajectories of musicians as disparate as Roger McGuinn, Chris
Hillman, Keith Richards and Emmylou Harris (who has probably done as much as anyone to keep his memory alive).
His real name was Ingram Cecil Connor III, but that
and the rest of his life changed when his father, a country music musician,
killed himself when the boy was 13. (Compounding the misery: On the day of the boy’s high-school
graduation, his mother died of alcohol poisoning.) In the following year, his
stepfather had the boy’s surname legally changed to his own, and the youth ran
away from home to ply his trade as a folk musician.
That attempt to break away failed; he was too young.
He was likewise unsuccessful at conformity: only a year at Harvard. But from
now on, when Parsons failed at his work, he did so in ways more innovative and
interesting than anyone else was doing.
Still only 20 years old, he founded what is often
considered the first country-rock group, the International Subway Band. A year
later, he was jamming with the whimsically titled Flying Burrito Brothers when
he made the acquaintance of Chris Hillman, bassist of The Byrds.
Over the years, the list of musicians influenced by
Parsons was lengthy: The Eagles, Elvis Costello, Ryan Adams, Wilco, Lucinda
Williams, Rodney Crowell, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, The Jayhawks, Marty Stuart,
Black Crowes, The Lemonheads, Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, and Tom Petty. (Oh, yes—and,
reminded now of the circumstances of his death, you’re sure to remember another
group—U2—and perhaps its most successful CD: The Joshua Tree.) But three musicians especially benefited from direct contact
with him:
*Chris Hillman.
Parsons’ meeting with Hillman was catalytic. Oddly enough, he’d been hired to
play jazz piano, as part of Roger
McGuinn’s project to release an album that served as a virtual history of
music. Parsons soon persuaded him and the rest of the group to junk that for a
country-influenced LP, Sweetheart of the
Radio. The wonder was not that it didn’t sell well, but that it was made
at all, at a time when true believers in both rock ‘n’ roll and country found
it impossible to think of any point of intersection between the two. Parsons’ decision to quit the band, just as
it was about to fly for concerts in South Africa, came at an awkward time for the
group, but it also presaged the rising concern of rock ‘n’ rollers with
apartheid. Shortly thereafter, Hillman followed his friend to the Flying
Burrito Brothers. (In the 70s, Hillman, in turn, would continue his own
explorations in country rock as part of the Souther Hillman Furay Band.)
*Keith Richards. Parsons’ growing drug abuse led to his dismissal from the Flying
Burrito Brothers. Getting wasted with Mick Jagger's songwriting partner didn’t
do much for his health (not that Parsons was innocent in this regard: Richards
remembered, “Gram could get better coke than the Mafia"),but it did much
for Richards’ art and, in turn, the Rolling Stones’ work. Nearly four decades after his
friend’s untimely death, in his autobiography Life, Richards recalled: “Gram taught me country music -- how it
worked, the difference between the Bakersfield style and the Nashville style.
He played it all on piano ... I learned the piano from Gram and started writing
songs on it. Some of the seeds he planted in the country music area are still
with me.” The flowering of those “seeds” are apparent in the Rolling Stones’ “Wild
Horses,” “Dear Doctor,” “Country Honk,” “Dead Flowers” and “Faraway Eyes.”
*Emmylou
Harris. She had only about a year to work with him, but that was enough to
change her life forever. "I didn't get his music; I didn't quite get his
singing either,” Harris recalled, in an interview with Fiona Sturges of the U.K.’s Independent. “I had always sung folk
music and I saw country music as kind of hokey. So at first I just saw what we
were doing as an opportunity to make some money singing on a record. But as we
began singing these harmonies it seemed like we sounded good together and I
began to appreciate what he was doing." He validated her talent, giving
the single mother the courage to continue her work when the music industry
seemed aligned against her.You can hear the piercing results of that collaboration in songs such as "Love Hurts."
The end for Parsons came predictably, as it did in
that era for others that the Eagles called, in “James Dean,” “too fast to live,
too young to die”: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. The mix of
morphine and tequila was insane, as if he yearned to be with his father and mother
immediately.
Parsons’ stepfather planned to transport the body to
New Orleans, the better to bolster his claim to Grams’ estate as the nearest
male relative. Road show manager Phil Kaufman also recalled the pact he had
made with Parsons that, in the event of death, he should take the body, transport it
to Joshua Tree National Park, and burn it.That is what Kaufman now tried to do—intercepting
the body at the airport, taking it out to the preserve, and setting the coffin
alight.
Kaufman and an associate eventually turned
themselves in and were fined $700. As for Parsons, his death was a real-life answer to
the climactic cry of Meursault in Albert Camus’ The Stranger, that it was better to burn than disappear. His
posthumous legend has only grown with each passing year.
(The image
accompanying this post is a publicity portrait of Parsons for Reprise Records,
1972)
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