BIOGRAPHY:The tragic life of a country music legend who lived a rock and roll lifestyle
FALLEN IDOLS ARE a dime a dozen, but when Gram Parsons passed away in a desert hotel room in 1973, few realised the true worth of this grievously wounded angel in a sequined suit. Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix were already superstars when they died, but it wasn't until after Gram's death, aged 26, that the world slowly began to catch up on the cosmic cowboy with the heartbreaking country voice.
Born into a rich southern family in Florida, Parsons carried a sense of privilege with him wherever he went, along with a substantial allowance from his family's fortune. This gave him the freedom to indulge and explore his deep-rooted passion for country music, but it also gave him a cushion against the real world of hard graft and dues-paying.
He lived like a prairie butterfly, flitting from one band to another, and fluttering around the West Coast rock scene with little sense of direction save his own uncannily accurate country music radar. He could afford to waste time, to drop out of college, to go wherever his fancy took him, and he could well afford to purchase the class A drugs that eventually caused his downfall.
Parsons was an evangelist for pure country music at a time when everyone seemed to be chasing after the rock 'n' roll grail. But though he moved against the grain of contemporary tastes, he managed to plough a common ground between country, rock and folk, and though he never achieved the stardom enjoyed by his peers (and more often his lessers) in the music scene of the late 1960s, he is credited with kick-starting the back-to-American-roots movement that culminated in the massive global success of The Eagles. He turned The Rolling Stones on to the emotional range of country music, and when he joined The Byrds, he tried - despite the resistance of head Byrd Roger McGuinn - to steer the band away from the jangle of psychedelia towards a new horizon in country music.
He was born Ingram Cecil Connor III in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1946; his mother, Avis, was one of the Snivelys, a rich, highly influential and hugely dysfunctional southern gothic family; his dad, Cecil "Coon Dog" Connor, was a member of the 6th Night Fighter Squadron, known as the Flying Vampires, who shot down numerous Japanese planes in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
Drink and depression were part of the old-world atmosphere in Gram's family home, and when he was just 12, Coon Dog killed himself with a single shot to the head from a .38 calibre pistol. A year later, Gram's rich, beautiful, widowed mother was swept off her feet by a sharply dressed, smooth-talking friend of the family named Robert Parsons.
Despite the family's suspicions that Parsons was a penniless opportunist on the make, the couple were married within eight months of meeting and Gram was given his stepdad's surname.
He began playing and writing music in high school, inspired by his hero Hank Williams, and quickly distinguished himself as a gifted singer and musician. He played up the part of the shy but enigmatic loner, carrying his guitar everywhere with him and wearing his hair longer than was considered proper at the time, all of which only increased his appeal to the girls in his class.
He formed his first band, The Pacers, in high school and then played in The Legends before joining popular college folk band The Shilohs. He quit The Shilohs to enrol in Harvard, but subsequently dropped out of college to pursue his country music dream.
Author David N Meyer, whose previous books include a guide to film noir, has painted Parsons's story as a journey of sorts, a quest to uncover the essence of American music long-buried beneath the sheen of pop, rock and folk. Gram is the doomed knight in shining rhinestone, trying to reach the gilded palace of musical greatness, but beset with temptations, distractions and self-destructive urges. Meyer has also built up a detailed picture of the American music scene during these seminal years, mapping out the folkways Parsons followed in his youth, exploring the country roads that brought Parsons and The Byrds to Nashville, and tracking the rock 'n' roll trail that led, ultimately, to Parsons's death from a heroin overdose at Joshua Tree, California.
Putting together a complete picture of Parsons's life can't have been an easy task - his early years are pieced together from interviews with friends, family and schoolmates, while his music career is chronicled without the aid of the usual copious interview and archive material associated with your average rock star. But Meyer has managed to make a coherent story without leaving too many gaping holes in the narrative.
Where there are gaps in Gram's timeline, Meyer fills in with exposition about, say, the history of the Bolles school in Jacksonville, Florida, where Gram formed The Shilohs. But even the padding contains insights into the era, and most of Meyer's historical asides are useful in building up a collage of Gram's world. This is as complete a biography of Parsons as you're ever likely to get, but it also works as a cultural account of a time when - musically and socially - things were forever changing.
Gram's part in the Great American Music Story was small in comparison with other, more famous artists, but his influence has since surpassed many of his star-studded contemporaries. Along with the setbacks and knockbacks, there was also a sense that Parsons was a man before his time, who didn't live to see country rock completely dominate the landscape as it did in the 1970s.
His first album, with the International Submarine Band, was stymied by a falling-out between the band and their label boss, country star Lee Hazlewood.
When Gram joined The Byrds in 1968, singer Roger McGuinn felt threatened by this handsome interloper with the soaring voice - after the band recorded their Sweetheart of the Rodeoalbum, Gram's vocals were erased and replaced with McGuinn's. The reason given was that Gram was still contractually tied up with Hazlewood, but most believed McGuinn purged Gram's vocals out of professional jealousy. At Gram's urging, The Byrds played the Grand Ole Opry, scandalising country music purists who thought these long-haired rockers were making fun of the genre.
But Parsons was a true believer - and he was willing to risk all for the music he dearly loved. While on tour with The Byrds, Gram would often grab his guitar and head for the nearest country music bar and perform solo, sometimes getting challenged to a fight by rednecks who didn't know what to make of him.
When The Byrds played a UK tour to support Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gram befriended Keith Richards, and the two hung out together like old cowhands, Gram teaching Keith some of the rare old songs of his youth, and showing him some unusual guitar tunings. He would probably have joined the Stones if he'd been asked.
When the Byrds were setting off on a tour of South Africa, Gram refused to go, saying he could not support a regime that practised apartheid. Like children of many southern families, Gram had grown up with black servants in the house. "I learned at a real close level that segregation was just not it," he said in an interview. But though Gram's principled stand was laudable, some of his friends felt he was really motivated by a desire to stay in the Rolling Stones' inner circle.
PARSONS'S VISION OF A "cosmic American music" came very close to fruition when he formed the Flying Burrito Brothers with fellow ex-Byrd Chris Hillman. For the cover shoot of their debut album, Gram had psychedelic sequined cowboy suits specially tailored for the band by outfitter to the country stars Nudie Cohn. At the time, the standard country-rock uniform was jeans and cowboy boots, and Gram wanted to distinguish himself and the Burritos from the herd.
The trousers of Gram's suit had scarlet flames running up each leg and poppies on the front pockets, and the jacket featured marijuana leaves, pills, a naked woman and a flaming red cross. The suit now hangs in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
While the two flying Burrito Brothers' albums made with Gram, The Gilded Palace of Sinand Burrito Deluxe, are undoubted classics, the band's penchant for excess somewhat tarnished their reputation.
They seldom rehearsed, and were usually stoned or drunk onstage, so their live performances were mostly a shambles. Ever restless, Parsons left the band within a year.
His debut solo album, GP, broke new common ground between country and rock, and remains one of the most perfectly realised meshings of two often-mismatched genres. His second solo album, Grievous Angel, features then-unknown singer Emmylou Harris, and their duets on such songs as Hickory Wind, Hearts on Fireand Love Hurtsare some of the most sublimely beautiful ever committed to vinyl. Both albums have recently been reissued on CD.
Gram Parsons died of a heroin overdose at his favourite haunt, the Joshua Tree Inn hotel in Joshua Tree, California. Joshua Tree had become Gram's spiritual home, the place where he could always connect with his ever-retreating roots. He would often bring his friends out into the desert, armed with various drugs, to spend a weekend communing with this striking landscape (Mick Jagger saw it as an American version of Stonehenge).
There's a bizarre footnote to Parsons's death, and Meyer digs out enough information about it to satisfy the most avid gravespotter.
Before his death, Gram had expressed to his friends his wish to be buried in his beloved Joshua Tree. Instead, his stepfather, Robert Parsons, brought Gram's body back to the family seat in New Orleans for burial, and let the LA music fraternity know that Gram's drug buddies were notinvited to the funeral. Gram's road managers, Phil Kaufman and Michael Martin, took it upon themselves to steal the coffin containing his body, and drove out to Joshua Tree, where they poured petrol on the coffin and set fire to it, thus granting Gram his wish.
The tale of this escapade is dramatised in the movie Grand Theft Parsons, but Meyer's account of the theft and burning of Gram's body makes for a gripping finale to this very rock 'n' roll tragedy.
• Kevin Courtney is an Irish Timesjournalist
Twenty thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music. By David N Meyer, Bloomsbury, 559pp, £25
