REAL GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

NB: This story first appeared in the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, 21 September 2003 and has since been slightly revised.

Three decades after Gram Parsons’ death at the age of 26, his star is on the rise, writes Jason Walker

‘His exit was perfect’ – Elvis Costello

It is now thirty-seven years since Gram Parsons slipped quietly from view, his soul exiting without fanfare from Room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn. It was 1973, and in that year the music of this one-time member of the Byrds was unknown to the music buying public whose attention Parsons desired and deserved. With the plane crash death of chart-topping singer Jim Croce the following day, it appeared that fate wished to ensure Parsons’ death, like his life, would be overshadowed by those not necessarily as talented.
“I didn’t expect him to die young,” says Emmylou Harris, Parsons’ one-time duet partner. Now in her 50s, Harris remains a gracious and commanding presence as she reflects upon the death of her friend and mentor. “In fact, it was totally the opposite… because he was so important to me and I was so enthusiastic at learning from him and working with him. The music seemed to be really healing for him.”
The sadness is palpable in Harris’s eyes despite the years that have since elapsed.
Of course, as the frankly terrible film Grand Theft Parsons illustrates, for event management, intentional or not, there was – and is – none better than the late Gram Parsons. In 1969, he was Hollywood’s premier Southern dandy, an unstoppably glamorous combination of Elvis Presley and Keith Richards. Although he was considered by some of his peers to be a minor celebrity, women and men were all smitten with the handsome Floridian who dressed like a household name, drank like a sailor and sang lovelorn, heart-ripping ballads with a voice that could handle R’n’B, country and rock. When you live your life as though every day is geared toward maximum entertainment value, something must give. By 1973, something did give. After all, Gram Parsons was nearing 27 but feeling 50.

Gram Parsons (left) shown alongside Bernie Leadon in the Flying Burrito Brothers, around 1969.

The story of how he came to be slumped, unconscious and dying from a combination of drugs and alcohol on a bed in a chintzy motel while two women attempted to resuscitate him is quite a journey, and one that might have taken much longer than it did. In fact, the whole story of Parsons’ life reads like a Tennessee Williams play: Southern Gothic melodrama set against the backdrop of familial wealth and in-fighting, alcoholism and suicide. Appropriately, it is underscored by some of the most beautiful music ever written.
Born Ingram Cecil Connor III in November, 1946, Parsons entered a world of privilege, and did not want for much – except family stability, the only luxury ever denied him. His father’s life was blighted by trauma suffered during military service in the Second World War. He committed suicide when Parsons was 13. By 16, he lost his vivacious socialite mother, Avis, a victim of alcohol abuse, a hereditary condition that would also mark her son. She died the day he graduated from high school.
During those years, Parsons relied on music more than people for sustenance. He led Carolina folk group the Shilos perilously close to fame once they’d hitched their wagon to his star, and the few months he spent loafing around Harvard Yard were preoccupied with forming a band. Parsons thrived on associations with more famous names, although he was never injudicious with his connections. His gift for music was what made him a desirable companion to Keith Richards during the troubled months the Rolling Stones spent making the miraculous Exile on Main Street album in the sun-bleached south of France.
“The reason Gram and I were together more than other musicians is because I really wanted to learn what Gram had to offer,” says Richards. “Gram was really intrigued by me and the band. Although we came from England, Gram and I shared this instinctive affinity for the real South.”
Death can do great things for a musical career, and retrospectively speaking, history has been kinder to Parsons than many of his living contemporaries.
The proof of this lies partly in the fact that he is still name checked by the biggest names in rock, ‘alternative country’ and even mainstream country music decades later. For example, Gram counted the influential John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas as a personal friend, and reclusive folkie Fred Neil passed all kinds of knowledge to him during a long and sometimes destructive acquaintance. But the core of Gram’s reputation is built on a subtle talent, evinced by the music he produced.
Between 1967 and 1973, he hustled producers and worked his connections. In that time, Parsons catalogued seven albums, mostly recorded in typical fashion – a flash of energy and commitment followed immediately by creative flux, boredom and eventual disillusionment.
He recorded as the International Submarine Band for one album, Safe At Home, then joined the Byrds at the personal invitation of founding members Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn. The album emerging from this brief and brilliant union was Sweetheart of the Rodeo, a work that is acknowledged as the blueprint for the alternative country movement which began in the early 1980s and continues to this day.
With Chris Hillman beside him, parsons recorded two albums with the Flying Burrito Brothers, and in the most sustained burst of his career, he produced two solo albums – GP and Grievous Angel – which have since cemented his reputation.
“Gram’s first solo record was an ‘event’ in my little circle of musicians,” recalls Steve Earle, who hitchhiked to Houston to see Parsons play there in February, 1973. “It was loose but it was tough. I saw and heard Emmylou Harris for the first time and left a little bit in love and absolutely certain of what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
He came close to having Merle Haggard produce his first solo album although it was, like so many of the opportunities that came Parsons’ way, derailed at the last minute by the intervention of chance. His music, his dress sense, frosted hair and painted fingernails were all appropriated later along the way by other artists whose willingness to commit to commercial viability far outstripped Parsons’ – a man who always did things his own way, sometimes with his own money and always on his own terms.
The focus of the world has finally fallen on Gram Parsons, a far cry from the 1980s when people struggled to pronounce his name correctly. Often his death overshadows all other achievements, and it is of course the central premise of the film Grand Theft Parsons – based on the book Road Mangler Deluxe, written by Phil Kaufman who was once the best friend and ‘executive nanny’ of Parsons, and who was the man who stole Parsons’ body. The film of course bears little relation to the truth, but the essence is there.
Yes, it can seem like a grubby little tale – two shadowy figures intent on honouring a man’s final wishes, hijacking his corpse from Los Angeles Airport and spiriting it into the desert where they unceremoniously burn it.
This and the many other legends and outright lies that have proliferated since that day in 1973 will forever propel the myths – the Rolling Stones, the drugs, the girls. At last count, there are at least three more biographies pending with several others in the works, at least three tribute albums, not to mention a growing list of contemporary artists who cite him as a major influence on their own work. Despite this, there is still something elusive about the man. Years of research investigating studio logbooks and dusty collections of audio tapes fall frustratingly short in the attempts of many, myself included, to explain exactly who the real Gram Parsons was.
As the man himself once wrote in a short note to a music magazine – “Dear Sir, There is no Gram Parsons. Yours truly, Anonymous.”