Flying Burrito Brothers

With Gram Parsons

Top left: Gram Parsons, Chris Ethridge, Sneaky Pete Kleinow & Chris Hillman

The Flying Burrito Brothers were a Californian rock band, best known for their influential debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969) that was a crossover of contemporary rock and traditional country music.  The Flying Burrito Brothers were founded in 1968 by former Byrds members Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, as well as pianist and bassist Chris Ethridge and pedal steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow.  The album contains originals by Parsons and Hillman, and two covers, Do Right Woman and Dark End Of The Street, by soul music writers Dan Penn and Chips Moman.  Though not a commercial success, Gilded was measured by rock critic Robert Christgau as an ominous, obsessive, tongue-in-cheek country-rock synthesis, absorbing rural and urban, traditional and contemporary, at point of impact. The album was recorded without a permanent drummer, but the group soon added original Byrd Michael Clarke on drums.  Embarking on a cross-country tour via train, as Parsons suffered from periodic bouts of fear of flying, the group squandered most of their money in a perpetual poker game and received bewildered reactions in most cities.  Parsons was frequently indulging in massive quantities of psilocybin and cocaine, so his performances were erratic at best, while much of the band's repertoire consisted of vintage honky-tonk and soul standards with few originals.

Posing in "Nudie suits" for the Gilded Palace of Sin

Their second album Burrito Deluxe (1970) was marred by excessive drug use with only a few original tunes.  Gram was spending his time with Keith Richards who, at the time of recording Burrito Deluxe, was touring North America with the Rolling Stones.  Gram's association with Keith and the Rolling Stones dates back to the summer of 1968 when the Byrds were in London enroute to South Africa.  Keith, very much anti-apartheid, convinced Gram of the evils of apartheid.  Gram immediately quit the Byrds and moved into Keith's home for a summer of partying and teaching Keith the difference between Nasville and Bakersfield country music.  An early result of this friendship was Country Honk, arranged by Gram, in exchange for rights to record the Jagger;Richards composition Wild Horses. Gram Parsons began to lose interest in the Burritos, and after missing too many gigs, or showing up too inebriated to play, Parsons was fired from the band later in 1970.  He accompanied the Rolling Stones on their 1971 U.K. tour in the hope of being signed to the newly formed Rolling Stones Records, intending to record a duo album with Richards.  Moving into Villa Nellcôte with the guitarist during the sessions for Exile on Main Street, Parsons remained in a consistently incapacitated state and frequently quarreled with his much younger girlfriend, aspiring actress Gretchen Burrell.  Eventually, Parsons was asked to leave by Anita Pallenberg, Richards' longtime domestic partner.  Keith suggests in his autobiography Life that Mick Jagger may have been the real driver for Parson' departure given that Keith spent so much time playing music with Gram.  Regardless of how it ended, it is clear that Parsons influence helped to make Exile on Main Street into a much more urban American sound.  Parsons attempted to rekindle his relationship with the band on their 1972 tour to no avail.

Gram Parsons

Gram Parsons born on November 5, 1946, grandson of Florida and Georgia, citrus fruit magnate John A Smiley.  Parsons attended Harvard University, where he studied theology but departed after one semester.  In 1966, he and other musicians from the Boston folk scene formed a group called the International Submarine Band.  They relocated to Los Angeles the following year, and after several lineup changes signed to Lee Hazlewood's LHI Records, where they spent late 1967 recording Safe at Home.  The album contains one of Parsons' best-known songs, Luxury Liner, and an early version of Do You Know How It Feels, which he revisited later on in his career. With the Byrds for only a short time in 1968, Grams influence can be heard on Sweethearts of The Rodeo.  However, Parsons was still under contract to LHI Records and consequently, Hazlewood contested Parsons' appearance on the album and threatened legal action.  As a result, Roger McGuinn ended up replacing three of Parsons' lead vocals with his own singing on the finished album.   However, Parsons is still featured as lead vocalist on the songs You're Still on My Mind, Life in Prison, and Hickory Wind.

Nudie Suit

Gram Parsons with his high-lone-some, melancholic voice could bring tears to the hardest of hearts.  Women cried a river of tears for him.  Gram teamed up with Emmylou Harris (background vocals) for his solo releases GP and Grevious Angel.  Having gained thirty pounds since his Burrito days from Southern food and excessive alcohol consumption, it came as a surprise to many when Parsons was enthusiastically signed to Reprise Records by Mo Ostin in mid-1972.  GP, released in 1973, used the guitar-playing of James Burton (sideman to Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson), and featured new songs from a creatively revitalized Parsons such as Big Mouth Blues and A Song For You, as well as a cover of Tompall Glaser's Streets of Baltimore. Grievous Angel, released posthumously in 1974, received even more enthusiastic reviews than had GP, and has since attained classic status.  Its most celebrated song is a Parsons-Harris duet cover of Love Hurts.  Notable Parsons-penned songs included $1000 Wedding, a holdover from the Burrito Brothers era, and Brass Buttons, a 1965 opus which addresses his mother's alcoholism.  Despite the fact that Parsons only contributed two new songs to the album, In My Hour of Darkness and Return of the Grievous Angel, Parsons was highly enthused with his new sound and seemed to have finally adopted a serious, diligent mindset to his musical career, eschewing most drugs and alcohol during the sessions. Gram Parsons died on September 19, 1973, in Joshua Tree, California, at the age of 26 from an overdose of morphine and alcohol.

Wanderin' Spirit
November, 2012
"Flying Burrito Brothers"

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