Gram Parsons
Gram Parsons (born Ingram Cecil Connor III -
Parsons was his stepfather's surname) may not have invented
country rock but he was the first to perform country music with a Rock
& Roll attitude. With a voice that was haunted and almost
fatalistic, death became Gram Parsons as life never could. Largely
ignored until a cocktail of drugs and booze
spirited him away in September 1973, Parsons' influence and legend has
spiraled ever since. Death has been the making of
Gram Parsons.
Parsons' early life was straight out of a
Tennessee Williams play: privileged Southern gothic upbringing; a
father who committed suicide and a mother who boozed herself to death;
heck, even a wicked step-dad. Add to that little lot a debilitating
weakness for drink and drugs, his womanizing, his squalid death and
bizarre desert cremation, and you've got a story that's just waiting
to be told . . .
Parsons started this journey in his International Submarine Band,
continued it in The Byrds and almost, almost
shocked the world as one of The
Flying Burrito Brothers. His groundbreaking subject matter of draft dodging and drug
smuggling, his musical debates with God and his kaleidoscopic view of
a freewheelin' America as a cosmic jungle of hippies, truckers and
cowboy angels was all new to country music and to rock as well, and
neither knew what to make of him.
He died a squalid death at the Joshua Tree Motel
in the Mojave Desert after feasting on marijuana, Jack Daniels,
Tequila and heroin, with possible side orders of morphine, cocaine and
barbiturates. Little wonder the ice suppository his companions applied
failed to revive him.
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