
Gram was a privileged, wealthy, and very damaged son of the south who formed one of the first Country Rock bands, the International Submarine Band, while at Harvard (no dummy, that boy!), then went on to pretty much hijack the Byrds for one album, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
First of all.....sorry, Gram. I promise we'll write more about the music in the future and less about that ugly little episode that happened at the occasion of your demise.
What's that? You say you LIKE this stuff?
I think it was Roger McGuinn who said it, but it could have been any musician who knew Gram Parsons. "Gram sure would have dug it knowing he was gonna be this hot after he died." Most everyone who knew Gram agrees on the fact that while music was the vehicle and Gram wanted to play, what he really wanted was to be famous.....um, mission accomplished! OK, well there was that early departure thing... maybe that wasn't the best idea!
Gram would have dug it? No kidding!! Based on what I've read about the man, and that's pretty much everything, he would have loved the entire way he achieved fame.
"If Gram was here today, he'd still be dead..... he was heading in that direction".. Phil Kaufman in Fallen Angel
Gram would have loved the whole story about the coffin burning, he would have dug that stupid movie, Grand Theft Parsons
One if the funniest parts of the entire myth for me rests on the fact that Gram fans have for years placed wreaths and tributes at a certain spot next to Cap Rock, where the "cremation" of Gram Parsons was assumed to have taken place. Kaufman, ever the realist...and some would call him a few other names, featured a map in his book, Road Mangler Deluxe
There's another thing you have to realize before becoming absorbed in the story of Gram Parsons, which is easy enough to do. Tennessee Williams could not have written the story in his wildest dreams. Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Wealth, Death. All the elements are there for a Southern Gothic Epic. But we go to deeply into it, I should tell you this one thing you have to realize about Gram Parsons.
No romance, no glory, flat out, for the last year or two of his brief life, Gram Parsons turned into a junkie! His death was, as becomes increasingly clear as the years go by, a junkie's death. A mistake. A miscalculation if you will. If Gram was here, he might still be dead, but he'd be saying "never, ever, ever take a second hit!"
Coming up in Part II: We hear some words from Emmylou Harris and Chris Hillman and try figure out exactly who was there and what might have happened the night Gram checked out!