Almost Famous

He called it Cosmic American Music, and it was the perfect blend: for the first time, country tradition rode on the back of rock'n'roll's motorcycle, or if you prefer, the forbidden wine of white folk was secretly savored during soul's midnight mass.

He had pulled off that sensual, crackling fusion: his journey, his mission, was to carry listeners into that new dimension, take them higher, cradle them with his deep, passionate voice, and then bolt away at a hundred miles an hour on the long wave of a pedal steel guitar, an out-of-tune saloon piano, an electric guitar or a drunken violin.

He knew how to switch you on, how to get you fired up. But he also knew the secret strings of feeling, knew how to make them vibrate gently, resonating inside you. Without his teachings, I really don't know where many champions of "alternative country" would be today.

(Pamela Des Barres, Los Angeles's number one groupie)

"All it took was a look in each other's eyes, our understanding was instant. It was just the two of us, in the recording studio, the tape rolling, and the whole world contained within those four walls, in those four verses of a melancholy ballad. He sang and I backed him up, harmonizing in perfect sync. I'll never forget the first and only tour we did together: a wild ride, an epic, ramshackle on the road trip, dangerous, improvised, real Bonnie and Clyde stuff!

I owe him everything: he was the one (on Chris Hillman's advice) who discovered me, who came to hear me in some dive bar in Washington D.C. to offer me a move to Los Angeles, so I could sing on his solo album, 'GP'. I was twenty-five, disciplined, and I knew what I wanted.

And falling in love with that soul of his, so light and so deep at once, with that mysterious, dreamy spirit of his... well, that was the most natural, most spontaneous thing in the world.

Thinking of him I wrote 'Boulder To Birmingham' and 'The Road', two songs I'm especially fond of. He was too fragile to be a rock star, and he fell victim to his times. His presence, his smile, his kindness and sensitivity will stay with me forever."

(Emmylou Harris, singer-songwriter and musical partner)

"I remember him. No, I never actually met him. But I could feel he had something.

A rare talent, an enchanted touch. You could sense it from his music, even from the photos published in Rolling Stone. A shimmering aura in his eyes, a defiant look, the same one kids get when they know they've gotten away with something big and are, in a way, proud of it.

He was faster than everyone else: a far-west gunslinger, a pirate, a Southern gentleman. Back in the days of 'Harvest', when America lay at my feet... well, there were plenty of people shamelessly snooping through my explorer's backpack, dissecting my tricks, or those of David, Stephen, Graham. But eagles don't fly in flocks, they should have known that. And let me tell you something: amid all that junk country-rock, interchangeable, Korean-imitation stuff, there was still someone. Someone who really knew how to sing about love and then make you jump out of your seat with a wild, devilish beat. As far as I'm concerned, he was the equivalent of Elvis for Seventies "country rock". He changed the rules of the game, planted the seed of tradition in the heart of the hippies, and then he was gone. May the desert watch over his wandering soul."

(Neil Young)

"News of his death reached me while we were at Record Plant, working on 'On The Border', the record that was about to launch us internationally.

Needless to say, I was deeply shocked, wounded to the core. We were about to make the big leap, and I naturally wished the same for him — in fact, I knew he would have gotten there, sooner or later.

He had left his wife and gone off to Joshua Tree, as he had so many times before. And I knew he was clean: well, at least he had been, for those last few months.

To me he was like a brother, much more than a former bandmate. Unfortunately, he was also a spirit that was all too rebellious, one of those people who always run too much, too fast, even for his own time. And yet he knew how to move you: all it took was for him to touch the piano, or the acoustic guitar. And then you'd feel the wind through the trees of Waycross, Georgia, or Winter Haven, Florida, the towns where he grew up. You'd hear the song of the earth, of the sky. And you'd feel a pleasurable ache, the kind that hits you without hurting you. He could move himself to tears while singing certain songs, so that even the lowliest waitress in the room felt like he was up there just for her.

His emotions came from deep down, they gushed out with a sincerity, an honesty and a purity... beyond compare. I wrote 'My Man' stunned with grief over the loss, a song they later let me put on 'On The Border'. Looking back, I can say that plenty of others would go on to cash in after that, collecting royalties on records that were nothing special, cut by faithfully following some of the visionary instructions laid down by Gram Parsons.

Even my own band, and it pains me to admit it: we'd turned into a 'Boogie Nights'-style funfair, a jumble of oversized, capricious egos, sprawled out by million-dollar swimming pools, with all the standard trimmings of gaudy furs, moustaches, mountains of cocaine, smiling and willing blondes. That's why I left: I had no intention of wearing that mask indefinitely. I was there for the music. And so was Gram.

(Bernie Leadon, member of the Eagles from 1971 to 1975)

"I saw him for the first time one February day, right in the middle of one of those warm, golden winters that only happen in Los Angeles. I was at the bank, in Beverly Hills, standing in line.

This kid turns up in front of me, dressed in a flashy, eccentric way, with a hundred-and-two-tooth smile. He strikes up a conversation with me, tells me he plays guitar, and clearly he knows who I am, he knows the Byrds (like pretty much all of California did). He's there to pick up a monthly check, a sort of allowance his grandfather set up for him, a powerful and extremely wealthy citrus magnate. We start talking about our idols: Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, George Jones, and that kid became more and more interesting to me: the thing is, we needed to replace David Crosby, who'd left the group a few months earlier, so we'd set up a round of auditions. What we wanted was a pianist, a session man: we ended up instead with a fantastic singer who was also, at the same time, a rhythm guitarist/pianist. Naturally we brought him on board, we'd hit the jackpot! He brought with him the heart and soul of the American South, and turned 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo' into the musical manifesto it is, a milestone. Without him, without his drive, his charisma, everything would have been different.

I remember our show at the 'Grand Ole Opry' in Nashville, the consecrated temple of country music. If you got access to the Ryman Auditorium, you'd made it, it meant you were walking among legends, admitted into the pantheon of the founding fathers. If you could handle the tension of that stage, the whole scene was in your hands. We were the very first 'longhairs' ever to be let into that crowd of conservative, necktie-wearing purists, and we caused a real uproar. They glared at us from start to finish, they laughed at us, they booed loudly before we'd even played a single note! You should have seen them mocking us, it looked like a scene lifted straight out of 'Easy Rider'... The whole show lasted about an hour and was broadcast on the radio across America. Our performance was a disaster. The thing is, an institutional show like that one, which had been holding strong gloriously since the Twenties, well, it has ironclad, clear rules, just a few laws you have to respect.

One: each artist stays on stage for two songs and no dedications.

Two: you don't play your own songs, only covers of songs from the great tradition.

Well, it was fantastic to flip the whole thing on its head in response to that terrible reception, to that mass of hicks and bigots! And it all happened thanks to Gram's sheer nerve. When we got to the second song, the 'Grand Ole Opry' host announced that we'd be playing Merle Haggard's 'Life In Prison'. But instead, as if nothing was wrong, we launched into 'Hickory Wind', a song Gram had written, which he dedicated live on air to his grandmother. You should have seen their faces! The Byrds were banned for life, even though they were putting together an album that would soon change the history of the genre, blending it with folk and rock... what times those were!

I remember Clarence White's funeral as if it were yesterday, one of the most gifted, eclectic, astonishing guitarists in history. He'd been a member of the Byrds and other smaller country/folk outfits: he died tragically in the summer of 1973, just a few months before Gram, hit by a drunk driver after a show. I remember the funeral service, that white church out of town, under a scorching sun. All of us musicians were there, to say our final goodbye. Naturally Gram was there too, and he was more or less out of it, as usual.

He and Phil Kaufman, his road manager, made a point of staying outside for the entire religious service. Clearly they felt out of place, alien to that kind of 'proper' ceremony. But then, when the most heartfelt and solemn moment arrived, the lowering of the casket, everyone standing in a silent circle, it happened. Gram suddenly launched into 'Farther Along' and little by little the rest of us joined in, following him and harmonizing around his angelic voice. That sound was Clarence, but it was also Gram. There was nothing left to add.

I'll never forget the thousand afternoons spent at the shared little house in Laurel Canyon, up in the Hollywood hills, writing new songs for the Flying Burrito Brothers, smoking weed, having fun with the girls just before sunset, with California and the music business at our feet.

We were good-looking, we were talented, we felt invincible. And those were times, truly intoxicating, magical times. It was 1969 and we did our first tour traveling by train: a compartment all to ourselves, going from one stop to the next playing poker, strumming the six-string, drunk on Southern Comfort or stumbling around thanks to some Mexican hallucinogenic mushroom! You should have seen us: it was a truly Felliniesque odyssey, with people staring at us bewildered, as if we were aliens who'd landed from 'HippieLand', in our colorful outfits personally sewn by 'Nudie', Elvis Presley's tailor. Gram's was white, decorated with marijuana leaves, adorned with acid tabs, naked women, and a big gangster cross on the back. Unfortunately I also remember when I decided I'd had enough of indulging his quirks, his chronic lateness and, above all, his dependence on an assortment of illegal substances. It was destroying him, and that's how I ended up having to kick him out of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the band we'd founded together. No great loss: as soon as he bounced back, Gram went straight back into the arms of Keith Richards."

(Chris Hillman, founding member of the Byrds and many other bands)

“An instant, great friendship. He was like a little brother to me, the one I'd never had. We were truly inseparable, and together we could make sparks fly. Gram and I had a whole world to share — two, actually: music and drugs. I met him for the first time in May, in London. He was on tour with the Byrds (they'd just played the Blaises Club), while we were finishing what would become 'Beggar's Banquet'.

We spent an evening together, broke the ice, and it wasn't hard. A couple of months later he came back to London, played with the band at the Royal Albert Hall. According to the promotional plans, they were then supposed to fly to South Africa, to play Johannesburg and Cape Town. But by that point Gram was clearly sick to death of the whole situation — the band had become too small for him, and he wanted to stay with me.

That's when I suggested, as an excuse and an official alibi, that he tell the band and the press he was leaving in protest, because down there, in South Africa, apartheid was still in force and he wouldn't perform for an audience of racist whites. Of course it was a lie, and yet he delivered it so convincingly! We stayed together for the whole of that summer, between London and Los Angeles.

We could stay up whole nights playing and talking about our musical heroes: he was the one who introduced me to George Jones, Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard. He'd seen Elvis Presley live in '56 and the experience had changed his life. Without his good influence, songs like 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Let It Bleed' wouldn't have been the same, not to mention 'Sticky Fingers' and 'Exile On Main Street'... I'd loved the first album by his new band, the Flying Burrito Brothers: they were the first to reinvent country-rock, just as Dylan had once done with folk and electric instruments. I remember we invited them to play at Altamont, in December 1969, for what was supposed to be 'the Stones' Woodstock' and instead ended in tragedy, with that Black kid stabbed, the Hell's Angels on security duty, and all the rest. That day Gram's Burritos also played, and it was the one ray of sunshine on a truly dark day. Once our set was cut short, in the middle of all that tension, I remember we left the place by helicopter. Gram sat next to me, as always. Like I said, when we were together we were inseparable, a force of nature.

We saw each other again a couple of years later, in the spring/summer of 1971, on the French Riviera, at my villa, Nellcôte. In the meantime he'd been kicked out of the Burritos, because he was no longer reliable, and he was dreaming of a solo career — a project he did manage to pull off, if only for a short while. As for us, we were writing new material, a river of songs that would later end up on the double album 'Exile On Main Street'. There was plenty of room at my villa: Gram came to visit with his future wife, a little blonde named Gretchen. They stayed for a while, before being politely thrown out by Mick himself, who by that point could no longer tolerate any wasted time, since our work was moving pretty slowly and we weren't getting much done. With that guy I spent happy hours in the south of France, all we did was play, sing, get high, camp out in that exotic-forest luxury, a stone's throw from the sea. But you can't, you can't do that forever, you can't keep losing yourself. You have to find your way home again, if only for your audience, the one that got you where you are. Gram cared relatively little about that: he'd always had almost everything he wanted. He'd even spent a semester at Harvard, studying Theology, before meeting new musicians and recording 'Safe At Home' with the International Submarine Band.

The fact is Gram liked losing himself. He had a very hard past behind him, full of abuse and suicides, material worthy of a Tennessee Williams play! His maternal grandparents were like a kind of royal family: John A. Snively was a major landowner, with holdings scattered across Florida and Georgia, and he owned several companies in the citrus business. Gram grew up in one of these Southern mansions, surrounded by his mother's affection and the family money, which flowed in abundance and would keep supporting him financially for the rest of his days. That's partly why he was so fatalistic and fearless about the future: he lived day by day, knowing he could afford to.

All he had to do was ask and he'd have the best clothes; if he put a band together and felt like performing, his grandfather would buy him an entire venue (!) to play in front of his high school friends. And yet all that comfort, being able to ride around in a limousine, having a trust fund to rely on — well, none of it ever gave Gram real happiness or satisfaction.

There was always something that made him restless, unpredictable, uneasy. I felt there was something unspoken behind certain silences of his, and as soon as our friendship deepened, he revealed it. He'd lost his father at twelve: Major 'Coon Dog' Connor was an aviator, a decorated flying ace from World War II. He was one of the many who broke down from what they called 'postwar nervous exhaustion'. He was an alcoholic, and he shot himself in the head. His mother, Avis, was also a depressive alcoholic: the best she could do was remarry some guy from New Orleans, one Robert Parsons, an alcoholic too, and then die of cirrhosis when Gram was 18.

He'd rebuilt some kind of relationship with his stepfather, toward the end: later I learned the man had wanted to bury Gram in New Orleans, if only that madman of a road manager of his, Phil Kaufman, hadn't stepped in with that whole coffin-theft, desert-getaway stunt."

(Keith Richards)

"My client, Gram Parsons, was declared legally dead shortly after noon.

It was September 19, 1973, and what took him was an overdose of cocaine, morphine and tequila. He was only 26, and at the time he was staying at the Joshua Tree Inn motel, room number 8, a couple of hours west of Los Angeles. Whenever he was feeling good and wanted to celebrate, Gram always chose that stretch of desert, to get high for a while and breathe in the magic atmosphere, in communion with nature, the starry night sky, the great rock formations and all the rest...

The last time he went there was to celebrate finishing the recording of his second solo album, 'Grievous Angel', which would be released posthumously, on the Reprise label.

A few weeks later, the promotional tour was set to begin: the musicians were raring to go, the set was working great. Everyone was excited, couldn't wait to hit the road. He, for that matter, had even quit drugs — he'd been completely clean for a few months, he knew this was his moment of redemption, and he really didn't want to miss that train, believe me.

That last night he was in the company of Michael Martin, his personal assistant, of Dale, Michael's girlfriend, and Margaret, an old high school friend who around that very time had become something more than just a confidante. None of them, though, managed to do anything to stop it. They were there to party, and once that damn son of a bitch got an idea into his head, well, it became almost impossible to stop him — he turned into a loose cannon, a pinball racing along at supersonic speed. After a night of madness and excess, his heart stopped. The substances he'd taken would have floored addicts far more resistant than him: never mind someone who'd just gotten clean! The news leaked out, and I was the first to rush to the motel to get rid of the drugs and get the two girls back to L.A. I didn't want any trouble involving them, even though we'd already made sure the death certificate read 'heart attack' rather than 'overdose'.

As fate would have it, Gram's stepfather, a guy from New Orleans with whom he'd recently patched things up, intended to arrange the funeral and burial in Louisiana. His real, ugly motive was to get his hands on the inheritance: an enormous sum that, under New Orleans' old Napoleonic code, would go to the deceased's nearest male relative, provided the deceased was buried in Louisiana, thereby becoming an official resident there. Gram would never have allowed that. And I had to move, do something. I couldn't go back on our old agreement.

Yes, that's right: he and I had made a solemn pact a few months before he died.

We were together, drunk on beer, sitting in a bar not far from a church.

That guitarist, Clarence White, had just died, in such a tragic and senseless way.

Well, the two of us never much liked official funeral ceremonies, so we decided to stay out of it: the priest in there was droning on with his nonsense, surrounded by half of L.A.'s music community, while we stood outside and paid our own tribute to old Clarence, certain that if he'd had any say in it, he wouldn't have wanted some sterile, formal ceremony.

So, right in that moment, that day, Gram said to me: “Phil, whatever happens, promise me you won't let me end up like this. I don't want any of this when my time comes.” I told him no, I didn't want it either, and so we promised each other that whichever of us survived the other would make sure the other's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in the Joshua Tree desert, the place we both loved.

Of course, I never expected that day to come so soon.

But that's how it went, and I couldn't not keep that promise.

I was his road manager, damn it, one of his closest friends and confidants: his relationship with Gretchen had ended and he'd been living at my place in that last stretch of time, he trusted me, and I trusted him.

I decided to go through with it: at Los Angeles International Airport, together with Michael Martin, I stole Gram Parsons's coffin and took it out into the desert. And I have to say, it wasn't hard at all.

All it took was borrowing Michael's girlfriend's beat-up old hearse, one with no plates and several broken windows (the two of them used it like a van, or for camping trips), loading it up with beer, vodka and Jack Daniel's, driving over there and convincing whoever needed convincing that there'd been a change of plan, that the coffin would now be flying privately, on a charter flight.

We showed up at the Continental Airlines hangar with no license or forged papers, dressed in cowboy hats and boots: I was wearing a denim jacket with the Sin City logo sewn on the back, and I honestly have no idea how the guy at the airport bought our good intentions! Even a cop helped us load the coffin into the car, without batting an eye. Unbelievable.

There was no law against stealing a corpse, no one had ever, ever dreamed of pulling off something so absurd! We reached Joshua Tree National Park at sunset. We stopped the car near Cap Rock because by then we were too tired, too high and too drunk to go any further. Besides, we'd spotted a clearing that seemed just right.

The real mess started right after, when it was time to burn the body.

See, it's not like I actually knew what I was doing: I didn't know the first thing about cremation procedures! But I went ahead anyway. We opened the coffin, poured five gallons of gasoline over it, then tossed a match on it and... bang! A huge blaze shot straight up into the sky, Gram's body reduced to a fireball that burned and burned.

That's not how it was supposed to go. We were botching the whole thing with our inexperience, and on top of that we could see sirens flashing in the distance. It was the forest rangers, alerted by some 'fire alarm' inside the park. My buddy and I jumped straight back in the car and took off. No one noticed the theft until the plane the body was supposed to be traveling on landed in New Orleans. The next morning I read about our absurd adventure in the papers, about that 'ritual bonfire' that had gone down right in the middle of the desert.

I knew I was wanted by the police because someone in Gram's family had filed a complaint against me. So I turned myself in at West L.A. Municipal Court, to be judged. Ironically, the trial was held on his birthday, November 5th. We were found guilty of stealing the casket (since there were no laws punishing corpse theft) and sentenced to pay a $300 fine, plus another $700 to fully cover the cost of the destroyed coffin. Not even a single day behind bars, nothing at all.

As far as I was concerned, I was satisfied: one way or another, I'd kept our promise. The ballad of Gram Parsons now belonged to the earth and the sky."

(Phil Kaufman, road manager)

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