The Byrds’ album “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” is fifty years old this year.
Gram Parsons, the visionary behind that trailblazing record, didn’t even come close to that life span. He died five years after the release of “Sweetheart,” at the age of twenty-six. Bandmate Chris Hillman compared Parsons’ brief life to “a classic Tennessee Williams play, about Southern money and alcoholism. Just a tragedy.”
Parsons was a walking contradiction. He discovered Merle Haggard at Harvard. Born into vast wealth, he was a passionate evangelist for shitkicker music. He was natural charmer and a notorious asshole. In his brief career Parsons showed flashes of a strong work ethic—he wrote dozens of stellar tunes, started a musical movement, and recorded six albums. But he squandered opportunities and shunned gigs because he lived off a family trust fund that enabled him to spend long periods neglecting his career in favor of hanging out with the Rolling Stones.
Parsons was born and raised in Florida. His father, Ingram Cecil “Coon Dog” Connor, was a country boy with PTSD from World War II and self-esteem issues, primarily due to the fact that he married Avis Snively, heiress to a multimillion dollar orange juice fortune. Coon Dog shot himself just before Christmas when Gram was 12. Gram’s mother remarried a man named Bob Parsons, and Gram took his last name. Parsons pulled out all the stops when it came to ingratiating himself with his stepson. When Gram formed a folk group, Bob Parsons bought Gram a teen club so he would have a place to perform.
The teenaged Gram Parsons was a good-looking kid who always had the best musical gear, the best clothes, and the best-looking girlfriends. He went to the best prep schools and, even though he was an indifferent student, was admitted to Harvard. Gram only lasted a semester in Cambridge, but he put a band together and the guitar player, John Nuese, turned Gram onto the Bakersfield sound of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and from then on Parsons was a committed student of—and a zealous advocate for—country music. After a stint in New York, Parsons arrived in Los Angeles in November of 1966. On his first day in town, Parsons’ stole David Crosby’s girlfriend away from him.
Lee Hazlewood signed Parsons to a recording contract. A country album, “Safe At Home” by the International Submarine Band, was released but went nowhere. In 1968 Parsons met Chris Hillman, the bass player for the Byrds. The Byrds were looking for a keyboard player and Parsons, a competent piano player and organist, auditioned and got the gig. Byrds leader Roger McGuinn had no idea that Gram was into country music when he hired him.
Chris Hillman had begun his career as a bluegrass mandolinist and had recorded some country-tinged tunes with the Byrds, and he and Parsons bonded immediately over their love for country music. The next thing McGuinn knew he had been convinced by Parsons and Hillman that the Byrds should book time in Nashville to record a real country album.
Commercially, this seemed daring and suicidal. The Byrds’ were the best-known American rock group, but their record sales had been slowing. 1968 was the height of the violent culture battles over the Vietnam war, and the rock and roll audience associated country music with pro-war rednecks.
“Sweetheart of the Rodeo” predictably kicked off with another trademark Byrds cover of a Bob Dylan tune, but this one—”You Ain’t Going Nowhere”—was pointedly introduced by the buoyant sound of Nashville studio legend Lloyd Green’s pedal steel guitar. (Honky tonk pianist Earl Ball and the brilliant guitarist Clarence White also joined the group in the studio.) Hillman and Parsons certainly succeeded in recording a legit country album. The original mix had Byrds leader McGuinn singing three tunes and being overshadowed by newcomer Parsons, who crooned twice as many. Parsons brought two great original tunes (the now-classic “Hickory Wind” and the prophetic “One Hundred Years From Now”), a Merle Haggard tune (“Life in Prison”), a George Jones cover (“You’re Still On My Mind”) and a countrified version of William Bell’s soul ballad “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”
After the “Sweetheart” sessions were over, Parsons joined the Byrds on the road. But tensions between him and McGuinn grew, and Parsons quit the group the night before they were to leave on a tour of South Africa, enraging Hillman and McGuinn. While the Byrds figured out how to perform as a trio, Parsons stayed in London to spend time with new found friend Keith Richards.
Roger McGuinn re-entered the studio as soon as he got back to LA. He had decided that he had surrendered far too much of “Sweetheart” to Parsons, so he replaced Parsons’ vocals on three tunes with his own. (Today you can buy a version of the album with Parsons’ original vocals restored. If you’re not familiar with the album and are interested in checking it out, get that version.)
“Sweetheart of the Rodeo” got predictably mixed reviews from the critics and did not sell well. I saw the Byrds play a schizophrenic set of their big hits and their new country stuff at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle after the album came out, and the crowd enthusiastically booed the new material. But “Sweetheart” left an imprint with the rock fans who had grown tired of psychedelia and who related to Dylan’s latest—the ultra-sparse “John Wesley Harding” album—and the Band’s rootsy debut release, “Music From Big Pink.”
Back in LA, Parsons reconciled with Chris Hillman and convinced the bassist to leave the Byrds and join him in starting a new group that would go all out behind a new kind of country-based sound. The pair rented a house and began writing songs every day. They recruited the third leg of their creative stool, Sneeky Pete Kleinow, a Hollywood animator (he worked on the Gumby show) and brilliant pedal steel guitar player who took his infernal instrument into uncharted sonic waters with the help of distortion pedals and other effects.
A&M Records came knocking and Hillman, Parsons, Kleinow, bass player Chris Etheridge, and a revolving cast of drummers closeted themselves in the studio as The Flying Burrito Brothers. The result was even more trailblazing than “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” which was a wild shift in direction but a pretty standard country record. The album by this new group—“The Gilded Palace of Sin”—was a big step toward Parsons’ vision of a country-based sound that he called “cosmic American music.”
All but two of the songs on “The Gilded Palace of Sin” were written by Parsons and/or Hillman, and they brilliantly transplant country music sensibilities to the seamy world of the LA record business. Groupies, drugs, corrupt attorneys, earthquakes, political protests, assassinations, and other big-city pitfalls weave their way through the tunes. “Hot Burrito #1,” written by Parsons and Etheridge, may stand as Parsons’ masterpiece both in terms of the songwriting and in his ability to deliver heartache vocally. The two covers on the record are both by soul-music legend Dan Penn—Parsons’ vision included a marriage of cowpunk country with Southern soul. Musically, the group’s sound is based heavily on the harmonies of the Everly Brothers and the multitracked layers of Kleinow’s soaring pedal steel. The marketing and the presentation was right in line with Parsons’ bold style. The album cover showed the Burritos in the desert adorned in the rhinestoned Nudie suits favored by traditional country artists, but these outfits were different. Hillman’s sported peacocks, Sneeky Pete’s boasted a gold pterodactyl in flight, and Parsons’ jacket featured marijuana leaves, naked women, Benzedrine, and, on the back, a large cross.
But the band stumbled out of the gate. They had come up with the idea of touring behind the record by train (Parsons was afraid of flying), and the result was the ingestion of massive quantities of drugs and alcohol during the day and sloppy, under-rehearsed shows each evening. A&M lost their shirt and a lot of confidence in their new act. “The Gilded Palace of Sin” peaked at #164 on the charts and quickly sank out of sight. A single, produced by rhythm-and-blues legend Johnny “Guitar” Watson, flopped. Chris Etheridge quit. They tried recording an album of country standards, but those tapes were kept in the vault. An album of second-rate original material was rushed out. The Burritos appeared at the disastrous Altamont festival, and Gram Parsons essentially dropped the Burritos in favor of Keith Richards’ company. After Gram showed up for a gig unable to play or sing, Hillman smashed his guitar in a fury and fired him from the Burritos.
Parsons slid into a solo deal with A&M Records and recorded most of an album (the tapes have never surfaced) with Beach Boys producer Terry Melcher before taking off to live with the Rolling Stones in the south of France. Parsons was a full-blown heroin addict by this point, and he was eventually asked to leave.
Mo Ostin signed Parsons to Reprise Records, a move that surprised many given Parson’s dissolution. But Parsons rallied to write a six fine new songs, and Parsons went into the studio with Elvis Presley’s Vegas band and a new singer named Emmylou Harris who Chris Hillman had discovered singing in folk clubs in Washington, D.C. The result was “GP,” a very solid offering that mixed Parsons’ unique, moody originals with country music covers, and proved that the singing duo of Parsons and Harris was a match made in hillbilly heaven.
But history repeated itself, and the tour in support of “GP” had flashes of brilliance, but many of the shows were like the one I caught at Max’s Kansas City in New York. The band was embarrassingly unprepared and sloppy. Parsons was pasty and flabby, his hands trembled, and he was completely unwilling or unable to assert any control over the show. Bizzarely, given Parsons’ catalogue, much of the set consisted of hoary old rock and roll tunes, and Parsons didn’t have the voice for that kind of material.
But Reprise stuck with him and a second album was recorded, again with Elvis’ band and Emmylou Harris. Parsons only offered a couple of new originals, but those were augmented with older tunes by him and by a carefully selected group of tunes by other songwriters beautifully arranged by Glen D. Hardin. What makes “Grievous Angel” a classic is the now fully realized duet singing of Parsons and Emmylou Harris, which ranks among the greatest vocal partnerships.
Parsons’ friend Clarence White was tragically killed in July of 1973. At White’s funeral Parsons elicited a promise from Phil Kaufman, his friend and road manager, that when Parsons died Kaufman would take his body out to the desert near Joshua Tree—a favorite spot of Parsons’—and set fire to it. Parsons was scheduled to start another tour in October, and a few weeks before hitting the road Parsons and two female friends rented a motel room in Joshua Tree. Parsons spent the afternoon of September 18 drinking tequila and taking barbituates, and as dark fell he was visited by someone who sold him some morphine sulphate. He injected a large quantity and overdosed. His companions spent a half an hour trying to resuscitate him before finally calling an ambulance. Parsons was declared dead at a nearby hospital a few minutes after midnight.
In death, Gram Parsons exceeded anything that Tennessee Williams could have devised. Bob Parsons made arrangements to have Gram’s body flown to New Orleans, but Phil Kaufman showed up at LAX in a borrowed hearse with phony paperwork claiming that the family had changed their plans and wanted the Parsons’ body released to Kaufman. It was a completely insane ruse. And it worked. Kaufman and an accomplice drove Parsons’ coffin to Cap Rock near Joshua Tree, poured five gallons of gasoline on it, and lit it. As a fireball rose in the desert sky, the two rock-and-roll-star arsonists took off for LA, where they later paid a $750 fine for abandoning a corpse. The “Grievlous Angel” album was released posthumously.
Gram Parsons never had a hit record and played a stadium, much less sold one out, but he made an indelible mark on a great many young musicians. A young Glenn Frey, later of the Eagles, absorbed many lessons watching Parsons’ performances at the Palomino Club. Richie Furay of Poco, a friend of Parsons, wrote a song about him. The Rolling Stones allowed Parsons’ to release his cover of “Wild Horses” before their original version hit the market. Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch are all Parsons devotees. Parsons Nudie suit hangs in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The musician who has done the most to establish and maintain the Gram Parsons legend is Emmylou Harris, whose “Boulder to Birmingham” speaks of her devastation after his death. Emmylou regrouped, convinced James Burton and the Elvis show band who had played on “GP” and “Return of the Grievous Angel” to record and tour with her as well. Emmylou had a #4 country hit on her first solo album and never looked back.
“It’s impossible for me to talk about my music, or myself as a person, without talking about Gram,” Harris has said.
I bought “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” after seeing that Byrds show when I was in high school. I grew to love it and still return to it often. I was reminded of the initial controversy it caused and of its chilly reception when last month Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, and Marty Stuart headlined a Sweetheart of the Rodeo Fiftieth Anniversary tour that performed before rapturous crowds.
I saw Parsons perform five times, which is pretty good for a fan who never lived in LA. The first time was at the Seattle Pops Festival in the summer of 1969, when Gram and the Flying Burrito Brothers played what many claim was their best live show. A month later I went to the second Sky River Festival in Tenino, Washington, and the Burritos performed all three days. I made crude cassette tapes of one of their sets and took some home movies of Parsons on stage in front of a huge American flag, stripped to the waist and wearing war paint. Those were all lost somewhere along the line. And I was in the audience when Gram and Emmylou played Max’s Kansas City in New York.
I’ll pay it back as best I can this week when I take part in the ninth annual Gram Parsons tribute at the Conor Byrne in Seattle organized by the great Country Dave Harmonson, who is an even bigger Parsons freak than I am. (Which is saying something.) It never fails to be a remarkable night, my favorite gig of the year. Four solid hours of Parsons music—a first set consisting of his tunes from his stints with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers followed by a second set in which Dave and his great band guide the singers through the entirety of the “GP” and “Grievous Angel” albums, performed in sequence. That’ll be me singing “Hickory Wind,” that beautiful Gram Parsons song I first heard fifty years ago.
(If you’re not familiar with Gram Parsons, the “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” “Gilded Palace of Sin,” “GP,” and “Grievous Angel” albums are required listening. No less than seven books have been written about Parsons’ life and music—the best, by far, is David N. Meyer’s Twenty Thousand Roads.)
