A Thousand Words on Gram Parsons

Photo by Michael Ochs

Gram Parsons died on September 19th, 1973, in room eight of the Joshua Tree Inn, at the age of 26. His body was taken to Joshua Tree National Park (then a national monument) and was partially burned in its casket by Phil Kaufman and Michael Martin, later being reported to authorities and being sent to Louisiana for a proper burial. Now, with having a death as strange as that, you would think Parsons would be better remembered, but unfortunately he has faded into obscurity in the fifty odd years since his death. 

Now, I was particularly fascinated by Gram Parson’s death for a while, which in terms of morbid curiosity wasn’t the worst thing in the world to be fixated on. There is a large amount of mystery surrounding the incident, with the more specific details remaining fuzzy and debated to this day. And of course, being fascinated by the death of a famous person usually leads to wanting to learn more about that famous person’s life, especially when they are known for being surrounded by so much mystery. Uncovering that mystery was never something you’d expect to be let down by.

Famously, Parsons had the habit of dropping the shoe on the bands he was in right when the going got tough. 

He was in a folksy band called The Shilos throughout high school, but once the British Invasion happened, as it inevitably did, Gram realized safety wasn’t in the cards for his band anymore. The man was sure if he went out and got new guns instead of sticking to his old ones he’d be as big as Bob Dylan. That never happened, obviously.

After an attempt at an album that got good reviews but never sold, Gram decided to leave his first real group, The International Submarine Band, to crawl around in the dust right before a tour was to be started. This was after he practically forced them to move to California, because struggling to get their footing playing country and western in front of long-haired hippies who circled the coffee house circuits of Greenwich Village and were more attuned to people like Phil Ochs and Joan Baez just wasn’t cutting it anymore. 

 He was a member of the Byrds for all of four months before he quit. 

The presence of Gram Parsons got rid of any ideas that Roger McGuinn had for the future of the band. He bought whatever pitch Gram had given him to take a hard right out of psychedelia and folk and into the limited expanse of what country music is on the next album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. As one would expect, the album didn’t do well commercially.

When The Byrds decided to perform in apartheid South Africa, Gram decided it would be better for him to stick it out with The Stones for a little while. 

Generally, there seems to be two opinions on this story: Either Gram was genuinely bothered by the idea of playing to segregated audiences or he was so struck by Keith Richard’s stardust that he really just told everyone a white lie so he could slum it around with him instead. Keith Richards had a bigger window into the world of earthly indulgences and Gram happily climbed through it, and he thought it would finally give him that long sought-after popstar trip.

So now you’re out of two bands that had decent prospects for success. Of course, this naturally means you start another one. 

The Flying Burrito brothers were a mess, one that Parsons felt the need to vacate after two years. After having hoardes of managerial issues, botched records, and a strange merry-go-round of poker games all thrown at them, the Burrito Brothers fell apart without much noise. 

Throughout the history of all of these bands, Gram was taking all the indulgences available to him and neglecting many of his earthly responsibilities in favor of making a fool of himself. 

Parsons died the way he lived: taking as many indulgences as he could and, usually, not giving anything worthwhile in return. He couldn’t successfully see through anything he did, including his own life, instead opting to drop out when things slowed down. He wanted the fast-paced ups-and-downs that came with being a true rockstar, and he never got to achieve that. Even if he did, he probably would’ve gone out the same exact way: dying from a drug overdose in Joshua Tree. But this is considerably run of the mill when it comes to rockstars. So, what exactly is my problem with this guy? 

For the most part, Gram Parsons never came off as a troubled artist. To me, he came off as a spoiled kid who was inept at handling any real-world difficulty, mostly due to his own merit. 

Parsons did not have to become a rockstar to get by like so many others did. He had a trust fund set aside for him, as all children of the rich do, which, according to Hickory Wind by Ben Fong-Torres, could range “from about $30,000 to $100,000 a year”. While other up-and-coming musicians struggled to even have a semblance of financial stability, he lived in worlds apart from how they did. When he wasn’t living in his mansion of an apartment, he was splitting time between Chris Hillman’s home and the Chateu Marmont. 

The man morphed from a larger-then-life piece of musical history to an insufferable brat the more and more I learned about him. By the time I got around to the part in his chronology about The Flying Burrito Brothers, I was shocked anybody in their right minds would even want to entertain the man’s fantasies anymore. 

Gram Parsons is like a square from a film strip: There is one interesting thing that makes a faint imprint on it, and it could be wonderful, but that one interesting thing is a farce, and when you take it away all you have is a thin, flimsy piece of garbage.

Whether he was deserving of his limited fame and cult status in the time since his death is up to the viewer. There are plenty other artists who died young from drug overdoses who have yet to be immortalized as he has, but whether or not they’ll get their day is yet to be seen. Either way, he saw the pantheon with his own two eyes and was going to earn his place in it one way or another. 

This year, Parsons would've been 79 years old. Happy birthday, Gram.