While watching a recent interview with Emmylou Harris, I was horrified when a member of the audience asked a rather personal question about Gram Parsons (“Why did Gram Parsons kill himself at such a young age?”). Ms. Harris handled the question gracefully and moved on to other, more pertinent topics (the sad state of commercial country music), but the question got me thinking. I’ve been a fan of Parsons’s music but don’t really know all that much about him as a person, other than he died young and there was some controversy surrounding his death. Can you fill me in?
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Gram Parsons has become something of a cult figure in the music business. He never hit it big, and few outside a small circle remember him now. But people who ought to know say he was one of the pioneers behind the country-rock phenomenon of the late 60s and early 70s. For a short time he was a member of the Byrds, and he was the creative force behind their 1968 country album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which many consider a classic. He went on to form the Flying Burrito Brothers and later invited the unknown Emmylou Harris out to LA to sing on his solo album, GP (1973), helping to launch her career. He hung out with the Rolling Stones (his influence can be heard on several cuts from Exile on Main Street) and had a big impact on Elvis Costello, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, and the Eagles. Remember New Riders of the Purple Sage and Pure Prairie League? They owed a lot to Parsons. He’s received many posthumous honors and musical tributes; Emmylou Harris is working on a tribute album now, 24 years after his death. Best of all, he was born Ingram Cecil Connor III (Parsons came from his stepfather), and you gotta love a guy with a name like that.
So far, your typical live-fast-die-young story. Then it gets strange. Before his death Parsons had said that he wanted to be cremated at Joshua Tree and have his ashes spread over Cap Rock, a prominent natural feature there. But after his death his stepfather arranged to have the body shipped home for a private funeral, to which none of his low-life music buddies was invited. Said buddies would have none of it. Fortified by beer and vodka, they decided to steal Parsons’s body and conduct their own last rites.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Slug Signorino.
