Fifty years of ‘Grievous Angel’: Gram Parsons’ cosmic country music

Over 1968-73, Gram Parsons shook up Nashville country music, wrote durable songs, made notable albums and then died. With an assist from Emmylou Harris, his reputation flourishes.

When Bob Dylan was pivoting from rock music to country, he recorded John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. In Nashville itself.

Los Angeles folk-rockers The Byrds, who’d covered Dylan so well, were completing their unexpected (January 1968) masterwork, Notorious Byrd Brothers.

Staying in LA, they, too, went country. With Sweetheart of the Rodeo (August 1968), brash Parsons introduced fresh influences and songs. The album alienated some Byrds (and country music) fans. But it has lasted, leaving its mark on music and musicians.

Just as quickly, Parsons quit The Byrds. As early as February 1969, his Flying Burrito Brothers had released The Gilded Palace of Sin.

This intense country-soul outing didn’t sell either, despite Dylan’s rave for it. Tracks like ‘Hot Burrito #1’ and ‘Do Right Woman’ still pack voltage.

Supposedly, Parsons aspired to cosmic American music, whatever that means. Like Dylan before him, he endured a motorbike accident retreat.

He rebounded with two albums. GP was released in January 1973 and the posthumous Grievous Angel emerged the following January.

Parsons came from a privileged, but ill-starred, Southern family. His air-ace father died by gunshot; his well-heeled mother from drink.

He loved Elvis Presley and admired Merle Haggard’s gritty Bakersfield country music. When Haggard declined to produce him, he hired Haggard’s recording engineer.

He also borrowed Presley’s top sidemen and lucked onto Harris, for winning duets. He produced Grievous Angel himself, which has more of a studio sound than Gilded Palace — a mix of his newer, revised and older compositions. Plus a few covers. But not lacking in depth and emotion. To borrow a cliché, his work would be weaker without it.

In Parsons’ songs, as in country music generally, good is struggling to go three rounds with evil. Have we bible or none, this is the predicament.

The title song is sometimes credited to Parsons alone. Poet Tom Brown wrote the original draft, with Parsons in mind.

This odyssey is as American as it gets, but in a knowing way.

The duetting voices take it to another level:

‘Cause I headed West to grow up with the country,

Across those prairies with those waves of grain.

And I saw my devil and I saw my deep blue sea,

And I thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee...

Talked about unbuckling that old bible belt and

Lighted out for some desert town.

Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels,

And a good saloon in every single town.

“Pick it for me, James,” Parsons calls out. That would be James Burton, hyper-accomplished guitarist for Presley.

It’s Burton’s wistful phrasing that leads into ‘Brass Buttons’:

Brass buttons, green silks, and silver shoes,

Warm evenings, pale mornings, bottle of blues,

And the tiny golden pins that she wore up in her hair.

Parsons’ favoured blue/green and silver/gold colours slot into a few lines, suggesting by omission a persistent portrait of the beloved. Said to be his mother — ‘her words still dance inside my head’.

Closing side one of the original LP, the enigmatic ‘$1,000 Wedding’ reads like a country music take on Southern Gothic literature. You could overthink it. Or just sing it.

The young bride’s gone away. In the recriminations, the groom’s so drunk, it’s “lucky” he survives. Swears the reverend, the ‘fiercest beasts could all be put to sleep the same silly way’. More like a “funeral” than a wedding.

Two slow-heartbreak country duets are ‘Love Hurts’ and ‘Hearts on Fire’. The first had been written some years previous, for the hit-making Everly Brothers, gentled along here by Burton’s sweet and supple lead lines.

Diverse artists have covered it since:

Love hurts,

Love scars,

Love wounds and mars.

Any heart not tough nor strong enough,

To take a lot of pain.

The second was a contemporary composition. Bernie Leadon, ex of Burritos and suddenly famous in The Eagles, guested on lead guitar. But what makes ‘Hearts on Fire’ memorable is its unusual blend of vibes, drums and rhythm guitar.

Parsons would have grown up hearing similar songs of forbidden or betrayed love:

Go out forget her lies,

But she’ll be there, and sparks will fly.

My love has turned to hatred,

Sleep escapes me still.

Opening side two of the original LP is an ironic ‘Medley Live from Northern Quebec’.

Here, a 1950s Louvin Brothers number segues into a 1960s Parsons number, ‘Hickory Wind’, his signature song and most frequently covered composition:

In South Carolina there are many tall pines,

I remember the oak tree that we used to climb.

But now when I’m lonesome I always pretend,

That I’m gettin’ the feel of hickory wind.

Typical Carolina trees — though Parsons grew up in Georgia. In the ‘faraway city’, the country boy finds out ‘trouble is real’.

Parsons had recorded this song for Sweetheart. Five years on, accompanied by Byron Berline’s mournful fiddle, the trouble sounds all too real.

With Harris, he composed the hymn-like album closer for deceased friends. In no time at all, he himself died of an overdose. Pals snatched the body from LAX airport and torched it out at Joshua Tree.

Too neatly, the song became his own epitaph:

Another young man safely strummed his silver string guitar,

And he played to people everywhere some say he was a star.

But he was just a country boy his simple songs confess,

And the music he had in him so very few possess.

Back in 1973, though the Rolling Stones knew and liked him, he wasn’t a big “star”. In 2000, Harris paid him an apt tribute, releasing a fine singer-songwriter album of her own.

These days, his Wikipedia entry bulges. Even Harvard University now claims a piece of him. Just last November, a rediscovered Parsons-Harris concert recording was reissued in LA.

Has he flipped from underrated to overrated? Overall, I’d say, his standout songs and albums justify his profile.

I still remember where I was when his death came over the radio. He was only 26. He would have kept on writing memorable songs. Haggard did.

Stephen Saunders is a former public servant, consultant and 'Canberra Times' reviewer. He is on the Sustainable Population Australia Executive Committee.