Sweethearts Of The Rodeo

GRAM PARSONS was already nearing the end of the lost highway when he and Emmylou Harris first met, harmonising all night after one of her club shows in Baltimore in October 1971. At that point, he had been ousted from the Rolling Stones inner sanctum at Nellcote in the south of France, due to a combination of his own drug-addled behaviour and that of his 16-year-old partner Gretchen Burrell, deemed a drag by the band s entourage.
However, jealousy may also have been a significant factor in his banishment: Keith Richards had become such fast friends with the country singer that onlookers often remarked that the two were morphing into each other, sharing clothes, make-up, songs and drug stashes ( Gram gets better coke than the Mafia, Keith once testified), and Mick Jagger wasn t too happy with this interloper taking his place as his lieutenant s soulmate. According to Gretchen, Jagger s way of getting revenge on the young pretender was to come on to her.
Anyway, Parsons was so crushed by the Stones rejection, he attempted suicide by overdosing on heroin when he returned to London with his wife-to-be. From there, the pair flew to LA, where Gram licked his wounds in the Chateau Marmont, attempting to kick drugs by replacing them with alcohol. He put on 30lb and became a cowboy hipster version of the Fat Elvis he so adored, squeezing into the now-tattered Nudie suits that had been designed for a much lither model of himself.
Incredibly though, the work this pioneer would become most famous for was still ahead of him, even though he was without a record deal, and the only thing he had to offer Emmylou was his trembling, frail tenor, an instrument seemingly tailor-made to partner her angelic soprano.
An extraordinary voice, Harris concurs now. But it was very subtle, a very interesting fragility to it. I didn t even really know who Gram was. I was kind of this myopic folk singer and didn t really have a great sense of what was going on out there in rock n roll. I was obviously a great fan of The Band and I sort of had heard of the Flying Burrito Brothers and the name Gram Parsons, but it wasn t until I got right in the thick of working with him and touring with him that I figured out what a hell of a great singer he was.
Furthermore, she had no inkling that their work together would continue to inspire country-rock mavericks almost 30 years later.
I was just on fire with that poetry of country music that had kind of eluded me before, she remembers. I didn t really get or understand what the big deal was with George Jones until after I worked with Gram and I started really singing that music and understanding the restraint, the passion that is in the restraint, the economy of phrasing, the economy of words and melody. That s just so powerful and beautiful, and it appears to be very simple, but people don t realise how difficult it is to do well and to do it with soul.
But I felt what Gram was doing had enormous potential he was back with a solo career and he seemed so focused and that s why I suppose his death surprised me so much. I didn t really know how much trouble he had been in before and how much damage he had done to himself.
Of course, by the time Emmylou met him, Gram had already instigated The Byrds accidental reincarnation as honky-tonk longhairs on Sweethearts Of The Rodeo, and also the Burrito Brothers The Gilded Palace Of Sin. Indeed, the latter record fused gospel, country and soul in a way only Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles had managed in the past. And accusations that Parsons was a trust-fund brat who d bought his way into the Stones favours (or more accurately, was moneyed enough to keep up with them in terms of chemical consumption and jet-setting), were more than balanced by what Gram taught Keith about George Jones and Waylon Jennings.
Certainly, tunes like Sweet Virginia , Torn And Frayed , Dead Flowers , Wild Horses and Country Honk would ve sounded a hell of a lot different without Gram around. As Say It One Time For The Brokenhearted author Barney Hoskyns put it, From Keith, Gram acquired rock n roll style; from Gram, Keith imbibed the sacred laws of country soul .
However, Emmylou Harris reckons that the idea of the angel-faced Parsons being corrupted by their satanic majesties is a little too simplistic to hold water.
Obviously there s lots of speculation, but I think we are all the captains of our own souls ultimately, she avers. I think Gram would be the first one to say that he was responsible for his slide.
Would she agree that he was a huge influence on several of the Stones best tunes?
All I know is he was certainly responsible for a lot of mine! she laughs. That s the only person I can speak for.

Parsons family background was once described as pure Southern Gothic by Burrito brother-in-arms and former Byrd Chris Hillman. The singer was born Ingram Connor III on November 5 1946, in the town of Waycross, Georgia (also the birthplace of Stones biographer Stanley Booth), a spit from the Okefinokee Swamp in the heart of the deep south. Many men have walked into the Okefinokee, where even the pretty little plants eat meat, never to be heard of again, Booth wrote in his 1969 review of The Gilded Palace Of Sin, describing Waycross as a place governed by a devoutly puritan ethic, a town where tobacco was frowned upon long before it was deemed bad for the health, simply because it gave pleasure. Once, when Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records was trying to come up with a down home song for Wilson Pickett, he suggested to Bert Berns that they write one about Waycross, the asshole of the world .
Gram s father was Coon Dog Connor, a colourful character who married into the filthy rich Snively dynasty, one of the largest fresh fruit shippers in Florida. In time though, the combined pressures of a demeaningly token job with his in-laws plus the strain of being married to the unfaithful, heavily drinking and drugging Avis Snively drove Coon Dog to suicide when Gram was 12. Avis remarried after what was deemed an indecently brief period, and Gram s stepfather Robert Ellis Parsons was widely regarded as a silver-tongued gold digger who shrewdly had the youngster and his sister Little Avis legally adopted in order to copperfasten his hold on the family money.
All the same, master Parsons had a highly privileged upbringing: servants, toys, musical instruments, chauffeurs, the works. Gram caught the rock n roll bug at an early age, idolising Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers and Ray Charles, and wrote his first song, Gram Boogie , at the age of nine. After his father s suicide however, the handsome adolescent began cutting up rough, and was expelled from the Bolles School military academy.
By 1962, Gram had already served time in combos like The Pacers, the Legends, and The Rumours, before glomming onto the folk movement, fronting The Shilos and The Village Vanguards. When he entered Harvard in 1965, majoring in Theology, his mother was dead, having suffered cirrhosis of the liver. The next year became a haze of music and acid, and Gram began associating with a young firebrand actor by the name of Brandon de Wilde, a running buddy of Peter Fonda s and Dennis Hopper s. Around this time, Parsons formed The Like (later renamed the International Submarine Band) and was listening closely to records like Ray Charles C n W Meets Country Music, as well as Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, huge influences on the young man s vision of white soul, or Cosmic American Music as it came to be known.
In November 1966, when Gram lit out for Los Angeles to join de Wilder, he was introduced to David Crosby, and promptly fell in love with the Byrd s girlfriend, Nancy Ross. He soon sent for the Submarine Band, and with his $30,000 a year trust fund, put the lot of them up in Laurel Canyon.
The ISB got their first real break on the West Coast when de Wilder hooked them up with Fonda, who subsequently recorded and released Gram s November Nights on the Chisa label, and recommended the group to b-movie kingpin Roger Corman. They were promptly hired for a club scene in Corman s acidsploitation movie The Trip (although their song Lazy Days was later replaced with the rather more out-there sounds of Electric Flag).
As the Submariners began scoring small gigs in LA, Gram had them all kitted out by Nudie s Rodeo Tailor s in North Hollywood, although the sight of the singer in his rhinestone suits emblazoned with images of naked girls and marijuana leaves did little to ingratiate the band to hard-ass country fans. The struggle was getting the better of them, and by July of 67, Gram never one to stay with the same line-up for too long had already befriended most of the musicians who would eventually make up the Burrito Brothers. Nevertheless, having attracted the attention of producer and cult songwriter Lee Hazelwood, the International Submarine Band completed their debut album Safe At Home that November, with Hazelwood s singer girlfriend Suzi Jane Hokum in the producer s chair.
It was a solid, if unremarkable, debut, featuring covers of tunes by Johnny Cash and Porter Wagoner alongside originals such as Luxury Liner and Blue Eyes . But compounding Gram s dissatisfaction with the record was the fact that Nancy had become pregnant. Parsons manager tried to convince her to terminate the pregnancy, but she refused, and the couple s relationship soon disintegrated.
Ironically enough, the singer got another break when The Byrds asked him to try out for the position recently vacated by none other than David Crosby. They were merely looking for a jazz piano player, not some kind of space cowboy Hank Williams fan, but Gram found a kindred spirit in Chris Hillman, and the two gradually conspired to steer Roger McGuinn in a more C&W direction.
In March of 1968, they recorded the classic Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, which located an unlikely link between redneck fundamentalism (songs by Merle Haggard and The Louvin Brothers) and mellow protest songs (Dylan s You Ain t Goin Nowhere , Woody Guthrie s Pretty Boy Floyd ), as well as showcasing Gram s own achingly melancholic Hickory Wind . In his liner notes to the 1997 re-release, David Fricke described the album as the kind of country that s as pure as Appalachian spring water, as sweet as a chaste kiss stolen under a harvest moon, as swinging as a Kentucky barn dance just hitting the midnight hour. (It was) a counter-revolutionary act. Not to mention career suicide.
Roger McGuinn originally envisioned Sweetheart as an ambitious attempt to document 20th century music, from Okie folk to old-time country to raga to five-dimensional space-rock, but was soon persuaded by the other Byrds to settle for recording a collection of faithful honky tonk hymns. However, Lee Hazelwood, believing Parsons to be in violation of their contract, insisted that his vocals be replaced by McGuinn s on much of the record, and Roger can t have been all that reluctant to comply, fearing that he was being ousted from his own band.
In time, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo became regarded as one of the most significant developments in country/rock cross-pollination, having a huge influence on the likes of Poco and The Eagles, and even securing The Byrds a spot at Nashville s Grand Ole Opry. However, it was received poorly on its release, with neither the urban cowboys nor the furry freak brothers getting the point. And yet more turbulence was to come.
After bonding with his new buddies the Stones in London that May during a drug-fuelled excursion to Stonehenge, Gram was persuaded to opt out of a tour of apartheid South Africa by Keith and Mick (although his refusal to go probably had more to do with wanting to hang out with this anti-aristocracy, rather than any overriding political conviction). Either way, it was the end of Byrdland for Parsons.
Still, after that South African tour turned out to be a segregated farce, Hillman and Gram gradually began talking again, sharing a house in Resada and working on material for what would become the first Flying Burrito Brothers outing, The Gilded Palace Of Sin.
Recorded and released in double time, that album was a near-masterpiece. Boasting a version of Aretha s Do Right Woman that compared more than favourably with the original, not to mention originals of the calibre of Sin City and the unbearably tender Hot Burrito #1 , the record only made 164 on the chart, but far surpassed the retail figures in terms of influence. By now, The Brothers were becoming well known in clubs like The Troubadour, albeit as much for their singer s flamboyant dress-sense as the grain of his voice. In the words of roadie Jim Seiter, Gram was getting faggier by the day .
But the arrival of the Stones in LA for the mixing of Let It Bleed that October again resulted in Gram s abdication: all he wanted, it seemed, was to be the third Glimmer Twin, even to the detriment of his own career. He began drinking heavily, doing coke and failing to show for Burrito gigs, preferring instead to participate in spaced-out sorties with Keith to Cap Rock in the Mojave desert, scouting for UFOs, talking to natives, taking mescalin and peyote, all in the name of research for a flying saucer flick entitled Saturation 9, in which Gram was due to appear. Hillman and Jagger meanwhile, both took an equally dim view of their respective musical partners bizarre elopements.
Soon, Gram took up residence in the spooky Chateau Marmont with his teenage queen Gretchen Burrell, got wiped out on booze and downers, and only secured a spot for the Burritos at the ill-fated Altamont gig in December 69 as a favour from Keith. Worse, the band s second album Burrito Deluxe was a flop, remarkable only for an early version of The Stones own Wild Horses . Nevertheless, through the intervention of Doris Day s son, producer Terry Melcher (who was sheltering from Manson Family fallout at the time), Gram managed to get a solo deal with A&M, but the sessions for his first album fell apart in a hail of pills and white powder. The record company threw their hands up in despair, and plans for the tapes to be released on the Stones own label also came to nothing.
After an abortive year, Gretchen and Gram quit LA to be with Anita Pallenberg and Keith on the last Stones tour before Exile. The latter three even attempted to detox in London, using two nurses recommended by William Burroughs. That July, Parsons and his girlfriend flew to Nellcote to become the latest in the coterie of hangers-on and time wasters that swarmed around the Exile On Main Street sessions like flies on a turd. Which is where we came in.

As we ve established, by the time Gram was preparing to record his first solo album, he was no ingenue. All the same, it was with cap in hand that he approached Reprise Records for a deal (Mo Ostin had wanted to sign The Burritos in 1968, but A&M, desperate to rehabilitate their unhip reputation, had snapped them up first). And according to Gretchen, when Merle Haggard declined to produce Gram s album, it was one of the greatest disappointments of the young singer s life. To rub salt in the wound, The Eagles (whose Glenn Frey and Don Henley had been watching Gram closely for years), had scored their first hits with Take It Easy and Witchy Woman , essentially watered down versions of Parsons sound, described by the singer himself as bubblegum with too much sugar in it .
After several months of sitting around Chateau Marmont getting wasted on tequila and listening to tapes of revival meetings, Gram began co-ordinating the GP sessions. In August of 72, he went to see Elvis play Las Vegas, and was hell-bent on hiring the King s band guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen D. Hardin and drummer Ronnie Tutt. He secured their services, but had to pay the fees out of his own pocket. The line-up was completed by Emmylou Harris, whom he flew into LA, also at his own expense.
Harris, who was the product of a service family, had been in love with folk music since she was a teenager, once sending Pete Seeger a 14-page letter asking him for advice on songwriting and performing. While in drama school, she supported herself by playing the bars at night, which is where Parsons first sought her out, on the recommendation of Chris Hillman and Rick Roberts.
After a shaky start, the GP sessions gathered momentum, with the musicians exerting some control over the fading Gram, resulting in the record that many argue is his magnum opus, bettering even its more widely lauded follow-up Grievous Angel. Certainly, the most striking qualities about the performances on GP are the frailty and vulnerability in Gram s voice. Many of the songs shudder with the sound of a man hanging on for dear life, his trailing tones ministered to by Harris bright shadow. It s almost as if Emmylou was the vehicle for Gram s resurrection, Barney Hoskyns wrote in Mojo last year, an angel of mercy hauling him from a slough of despond.
After the recording of GP, Gram hit the road with Emmylou and a band of seasoned road-dogs christened the Fallen Angels (Gram s inheritance did not stretch to hiring the Presley band for live dates, and Reprise again refused to stump up the money). The tour, documented on the posthumous album Live 1973, which included a rather fine version of Gram and McGuinn s Drug Store Truck Drivin Man , was largely a success, even though Parsons was still burning the candle at both ends. Furthermore, his relationship with Gretchen had begun to deteriorate, a state of affairs hardly helped by his musical love affair with Harris, manifest in the sparks flying from the infidel s pledge We ll Sweep Out The Ashes on GP.
Over the years, many have hazarded guesswork as to whether or not Gram and Emmylou were lovers, making them the Mulder and Scully of country rock legend. Harris herself has never really come clean either way, but road manager Phil Kaufman insists that there wasn t a physical consummation. For sure, if the two had gotten it together, Emmylou s influence may have gone some way towards stabilising the singer. In 1997, when BP Fallon asked Emmylou if she d been in love with her co-star, she only responded with a sad smile. It s all there in Boulder To Birmingham , is BP s verdict, referring to the near-transcendental hymn to Gram, which surfaced most recently on her live album Spyboy.
By the summer of 73, work had begun on Grievous Angel, again utilising the GP line-up. Kicking off with the title tune (based on lyrics submitted to Gram by a Boston poet, Tom Brown), cutting through the sinful glitter of $1000 Wedding , Love Hurts and Ooh Las Vegas , and culminating in the prayerful In My Hour Of Darkness , Grievous Angel alongside Little Feat s Sailin Shoes and The Band s second album came to be regarded as an essential artefact of post-Woodstock Americana.
Then, in late July 1973, a fire destroyed Gram s Laurel Canyon Boulevard home, and he split up with Gretchen (who was pregnant at the time, but subsequently had an abortion). Homeless and isolated from his idols, his spouse and perhaps his own muse, Gram lit out for Joshua Tree on September 17, 1973, accompanied by roadie Michael Martin, a groupie by the name of Margaret Fisher, and Martin s girlfriend Dale McElroy. The following day, Gram and Margaret scored some heroin and/or morphine and shot it up in Room 10 of the Twentynine Palms Motel.
Accounts differ as to what exactly happened during Gram s last night on earth. According to Dale, at one stage Gram OD d and had to be roused by Margaret pulling his pants down and shoving two or three ice cubes up his ass. To my astonishment, in a matter of seconds, he had regained consciousness, had made some joke about what we were doing with his pants down, had gotten up and was walking around the room.
Another version holds that Alan Barbary, the son of the motel owner, had spent the day drinking tequila and smoking pot with Gram, and when he called to the singer s room at about 10pm, found him in bed, being fellated by one or other of the girls, who was desperately pleading with the singer to wake up. When Gram was admitted to the Hi Desert Memorial Hospital in Yucca Valley shortly after midnight on the 19th, he was pronounced dead. Coke, speed, morphine and alcohol were found in his system, and the county coroner s report noted what may have been track marks on Parsons elbows and the back of his hand.
Keith Richards later diagnosed it as the classic junkie s mistake: having cleaned up, Gram had been seduced one last time, and his body couldn t take it. Bob Parsons meanwhile, wasted no time in getting to LA to claim his stepson s body, in the hope of burying him in New Orleans, establishing him as a resident, thus strengthening his claim on Gram s estate.
And that s it, apart from one last legendary incident. Some months before his demise, at the funeral of musician friend Clarence White, Gram had confided to Phil Kaufman that he didn t want a conventional burial, but that his remains should be burned in the desert. Keeping his promise, Kaufman and Michael Martin commandeered a hearse and persuaded a Western Airlines official to release Parsons body to them. The two then drove the hearse out to Cap Rock, doused the coffin in 5 Star gasoline and torched Gram s remains.
Kaufman and Martin were later charged with the theft of a coffin (the body was deemed to have no value), given 30-day suspended jail sentences and were fined $300 each. To pay the legal costs incurred by what Kaufman termed Gram Theft Parsons , he hosted a macabre funeral party, whose attractions included sets by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers and Bobby Boris Pickett singing Monster Mash amidst papier mache tombstones and souvenir bottles of Gram Pilsener .

After his death, Gram s work would have an untold influence on artists such as The Black Crowes, Primal Scream, The Lemonheads, Elvis Costello, Uncle Tupelo, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Wilco, Whiskeytown, Son Volt, Lambchop and just about every No Depression/Alternative Country act you care to mention. Keith Richards still finds his own tunes haunted by Gram s weeping willow spirit and Emmylou has long acted as curator of Parson s musical legacy.
It was just a natural thing, she maintains. I was holding on for dear life, because I felt like I had just started to figure out what this whole business of singing was all about. I really hadn t thought about a solo career, I just wanted to sing with Gram. I was a young girl with a pretty voice who didn t know what to do with it. It was going through that very hardcore, washed in the blood, traditional country door, combined with the visionary poet that Gram was, that made me understand how I should use my voice.
So when I found myself not only losing a very good friend, but sort of like, What am I supposed to be doing now? , I was just trying to pick up every piece I could. I gathered up the band that he used on his records, (started) doing songs that we had sung together, or that he had turned me on to, or written. It was almost like gathering sentimental things around you, things that might have some presence of him. But it would be lovely if more people heard Gram, because I think that his music is very special, a gift to people, and I want them to have an opportunity to respond to what his particular music was.
And now, that opportunity is partially afforded by The Return Of The Grievous Angel A Tribute To Gram Parsons featuring artists as diverse as Chrissie Hynde, Beck, Sheryl Crow, The Cowboy Junkies, Gillian Welch and The Mavericks, as well as many of the aforementioned New Country cadre for which Emmylou acted as co-executive producer.
I wanted people that were really inventive and kind of work outside of genres, the way Gram did, she explains. I mean, it was very important for Chris Hillman to be part of it. I purposefully stayed away from making it kind of a Nashville record, cos really Gram was never a part of Nashville, and if you listen to what s going on the radio right now, it doesn t really have anything to do with him. I gave up years ago waiting for the messiah to come and take Gram s place. I sort of expected everyone to get Gram s message, that it would infuse people s music, especially country music, and it just fell completely flat.
But now, you ve got people out there that you don t know how directly they were influenced, whether it was just something that went into the air and then drifted down like pollen, subliminally. I mean, country music came out of a tradition that s just not there anymore, there s nothing rural anymore. So we have to be aware of the past and be influenced by it, but trying to recreate it is a waste of time. I think it just has to ring with truth. n
The Return Of The Grievous Angel A Tribute To Gram Parsons is out now on Almo Sounds.