Original subtitles

I dream of souI, country...

of cosmic-- what I caII cosmic American music.

He couId touch a core in peopIe. We caIIed it ''high Ionesome.''

And it's a certain meIanchoIy, and it's a sort of beautifuI pain,

but he had that to the max.

Very IittIe is reaIIy known about him,

considering how much has been written about him.

He was kind of a mysterious guy.

It adds up to kind of a Iegend.

Any accoIade I've been paid, and any kind of acknowIedgement of my success,

is an acknowIedgement of Gram Parsons'.

If he had Iived, today I think he wouId be a very big star.

Gram was rock and country.

He bridged those two worIds.

Just see him standing in the middIe of these two worIds,

bringing them together, uniting them.

And that was his purpose.

He was very aIive, IoveIy guy.

He just had this dark side, and reaIIy sort of a death wish.

Gram considered himseIf the faIIen angeI.

I said, ''If Gram was here today, he'd stiII be dead.''

He was heading in that direction.

He was reaIIy a victim of the times.

He wasn't doing anything anybody eIse wasn't doing.

He just didn't have the constitution

that it took to be a rock and roIIer.

In that respect, he was definiteIy more the country boy.

It's a story that is so extraordinary.

I mean, Graham's Iife and his death

is something that might be in a movie,

but you don't think of it actuaIIy happening in reaI Iife that way.

Our famiIy background,

even with sIight pieces of truth in it,

is an intense background.

It's a series of tragedies.

It's Iike the Kennedy curse.

We're taIking about a very cIassic

Tennessee WiIIiams pIay here:

Southern money and aIcohoIism.

Just a tragedy.

They were one of the pioneer famiIies in Winter Haven,

and they were probabIy the biggest citrus peopIe in the worId,

and probabIy the weaIthiest.

And so, they were the royaI famiIy of Winter Haven...

with Iots of money.

My grandmother's famiIy were very powerfuI in Winter Haven.

She had a Iot of puII,

and she was very friendIy and outgoing.

But she couId push peopIe around,

and I think she did quite a bit of that--

in a nice way, but she stiII couId get her way.

Coon Dog's famiIy, they're just a reguIar country famiIy

from CoIumbia, Tennessee. They hunted and fished.

During the war, he was stationed in the South Pacific.

And he was a bomber piIot on P-39s,

and he fIew over 50 combat missions.

He was very changed by the war,

because he may have had post-traumatic stress disorder.

And back then, they didn't diagnose that.

They wouId have to find other reasons to get you to go home.

There's a picture of Coon Dog in here, which was Gram's dad.

He was married to Gram's mom. We caIIed her Big Avis.

And he was a war veteran.

I think Gram got a Iot of his storyteIIing from Coon Dog,

because I hear he was quite a character, just a reaIIy great guy.

They sent him to Georgia to buiId the fruit boxes.

And so he went up there and ran the pIant.

You know, when he was given this deaI and sent up here,

this is--

This kind of pIace couId drag you down after a few years.

Then you've got the SniveIys on top of him,

and aIways Ietting him know they had the money and not him.

He was aIways Iet known that.

I think it was hard to work for his father-in-Iaw,

but I think he was just an unhappy person,

and couIdn't deaI with Iife.

Lots of times during the day, he wouId bring his son out there, Gram.

Gram was a reaIIy knowIedgeabIe feIIow around there.

He said, ''You know, one day, I might own aII this.''

I said, ''Yeah. That's why I am treating you so good.''

Coon Dog drank quite a bit and wouId have to go

to a hospitaI to kind of dry out every once in a whiIe.

And they both had drinking probIems.

I don't know how that affected their reIationship, but I know it did.

They didn't reaIIy fight,

but I don't know that they were reaI happy together.

But he Ioved the chiIdren, and he pIayed with the chiIdren.

You see the front stoop there?

The front stoop is where Gram used to perform for the neighborhood kids.

He wouId stand on the stoop, and I think he had Avis in his band too.

He ??frowned on the guitar and did EIvis imitations.

This was after the city auditorium event, I think.

When Gram was 10 years oId, it wouId have been 1957,

here was his first reaIIy rock and roII infIuence,

was this buiIding here, watching EIvis PresIey.

And he got to meet EIvis after the show as history says.

They say that it changed his Iife to the point

the next day he was a different kid.

Coon Dog had taken my mother, Gram and my Grandmother Avis

to the train station to send them home to Winter Haven,

to have Christmas with her famiIy.

And that night, after he dropped them off at the train station,

he went home and shot himseIf in the head.

He committed suicide.

He actuaIIy Ieft a taped message,

and the onIy thing that was Ieft on it

according to my mother was, ''I Iove you, Gram.''

My mother was seven and Gram was 1 2.

They went back to Winter Haven

and Iived with my grandmother's famiIy.

Gram became part of my mother's support system.

He repIaced my mother's father as the maIe roIe in her Iife,

and they became very very cIose.

He reaIIy stepped up and became her guidance and protector.

It was a burden.

It was a big burden for Gram to be the man of a famiIy,

for both his mother and his sister.

Bob Parsons was from New OrIeans.

And he came to visit, and he met Avis SniveIy.

And they feII in Iove and got married.

AII the SniveIys never Iiked Bob,

because they feIt that he had married Avis for her money.

Gram was a Iost kid.

And then when Bob married Avis, Bob sort of took him under his wing.

And I think a Iarge part

of his psychoIogicaI success was because of Bob.

And Gram just adored Bob.

He Iived very comfortabIy on Gram's mother's money,

but I think that he Ioved Gram and Avis

and feIt that they were his chiIdren.

And he did adopt them, which is why they have his name.

They started Iiving Iife a IittIe faster than they used to.

They weren't just a weaIthy, Southern famiIy.

They stopped driving OIdsmobiIes

and started driving Jaguars.

Avis was a reaIIy hopeIess aIcohoIic

Iong before she died,

and I don't think Bob knew how much she drank.

Bob did have a probIem with aIcohoI,

and at the same time compIained because she was drinking too much,

but he was drinking as weII.

But there were definiteIy

bIow ups and fights over her drinking.

and it became very scary for my mother,

and I assume Gram as weII,

when the fights wouId occur.

He was used to nice things.

He aIways had better cIothes than anybody eIse,

just hot cIothes. ''Where did you get those cIothes, Gram?''

He was just aIways rather enigmatic about it.

We were a meat-and-potatoes rock and roII band.

Gram wouId sing whatever standards were accessibIe

to someone who onIy knew a few chords.

Even back then, he knew what he wanted to do.

He wanted to be a ceIebrity more than anything eIse, I think.

Perhaps that had something to do with his priviIeged upbringing.

His stepdad and mom had bought him

a cIub to perform in when he was 16,

and that's-- boy, that's something.

I am his sister.

I was the chiId that his mother and Bob Parsons had.

I was too IittIe to remember the home in Winter Haven

with aII the musicaI equipment and the derrydown.

A Iot of what they did was to promote Gram and his music.

And we had the piano,

and we IiteraIIy had what was caIIed the music room downstairs,

and the piano wasn't far from it. That was aII for Gram.

This photograph is of Gram...

in his sophomore year

at Winter Haven High SchooI, 1962.

I have a coupIe of inscriptions from Gram.

''Perhaps someday we'II both find out what we want.

If so, we can't heIp but get it.

In the meantime, we must suck knowIedge

Iike cyanide from an oId peach pit.

See you in the pIayground of the stars.

UntiI then, sound as ever, Gram.''

By this time, Gram was at a prep schooI caIIed BoIIes in JacksonviIIe.

He was a charismatic guy when we were kids.

A Iot of us knew that Gram was

probabIy going to wind up having

some kind of a career, some kind of success.

He just exuded it. He was driven.

He sort of stuck out from the pack even then, you know.

Oh, he was so pretty.

He wore his hair a IittIe bit Ionger than boys did then,

perfect manners

and just so sure of himseIf.

When he toId me he was going to be a rock star,

when he toId me he was going to be Iike EIvis PresIey,

I saw no reason to disbeIieve him.

He got me in a coupIe of fights.

He was one of those characters who get in a barroom or somewhere

and get some peopIe riIed up, and then step back and watch them,

watch the troubIe start.

He wouIdn't mind pIaying with your mind

and teIIing some Iies maybe once in a whiIe, and things Iike that.

I have a recoIIection of him going off for weekends

and doing shows when were were there.

He was invoIved in a group caIIed the ShiIos.

When he met us, he knew a Iot of foIk music.

He Ioved Josh White. He Ioved Fred NeiI.

He Ioved The Kingston Trio, aII these groups Iike this.

Gram, you couId teII, had a different kind of upbringing.

He said, ''You're a musician.''

He said, ''You don't have to worry about what other peopIe think.''

He said, ''You're different. You're different than they are.''

He said, ''You can do a Iot more with your hair. Grow your hair out.

Don't have that short hair.''

And aII of a sudden, there was no doubt we were going to make it.

Miss Parsons drank, but she used to come whenever we wouId pIay,

if she was around. She was very supportive of Gram's career.

She Ioved Gram very much. You couId teII the Iove that she had for him.

The day she got iII and had to go into the hospitaI,

they had taken her off of aIcohoI and she had gone into convuIsions.

They just-- totaI, coId turkey,

and it aImost kiIIed her.

The next day she died. Her Iiver ceased to function.

And it was after Bob had visited the hospitaI.

On his Iast visit after he Ieft the room,

aImost immediateIy she died,

and I think hence

the rumor circuIated

that Bob had done something to her.

And I think that's pure fiction

of the highest order.

Whatever reIationship he had with Avis,

he wouIdn't have kiIIed her.

I mean he wouIdn't have done that

to, basicaIIy, their chiIdren he adopted.

''September 26, Cambridge.

Dear Avis, I am now officiaIIy a Harvard freshman.

This schooI is reaIIy fantastic.

I never dreamed that coIIege couId be so interesting.

My advisor's name is Jet,

a Baptist minister. Don't get excited.''

It was cIear to me from the start that going to Harvard University

wasn't the primary reason that Gram was there.

Getting admitted to Harvard and coming to Cambridge

got Gram out of the South and somewhere eIse,

and put him in a position where he couId

pursue his reaI interest, which was music.

At the time I met him, during the summer of 1965,

he was pIaying strictIy foIk music.

We pIayed some foIk music, we pIayed country music,

and at that time I toId him about MerIe Haggard...

and he Ioved it.

He couIdn't beIieve it. He Ioved it.

''This is great. This is great stuff.''

I toId him about these country singers--

Buck Owens. He reaIIy Iiked Buck Owens.

That is reaIIy sort of essentiaIIy, musicaIIy,

some of the primary and initiaI

music ingredients that started the whoIe thing.

He wouId spend aImost every evening

at some time or another in my apartment right next door.

He'd get very depressed, and he wouId come to my room

and be especiaIIy worried about Avis, his younger sister,

who was sort of aII by herseIf down there in the South.

And we spent a Iot of time taIking about that.

And he was probabIy the reaI famiIy that she had Ieft.

''November 8th, Cambridge.

Dear Avis, I thought it time I finaIIy got around to writing again.

The best thing we can do is Iearn from the past

and Iive our Iives the right way.

We wiII be reaI peopIe, not sick or haunted

by what Iife has done to us. We have the advantage of seeing

definite exampIes of what can happen

when peopIe permit Iife to tangIe them so badIy that there is no escape.

For us, there is time.''

After my grandmother died,

Bob married Bonnie, their babysitter,

and the reIationship started faIIing apart with Bob.

He was a phiIanderer.

He was guiIty of a Iot of things, but he wasn't guiIty

of negIecting Gram and Avis.

By the end of that semester Gram had faiIed every course,

primariIy because he didn't go to any of them,

or very seIdom went to the cIasses.

I recommended that Gram be dismissed,

which I had to do because he fIunked everything.

Christmastime, 1965,

we aII Ieft and went to different pIaces for Christmas,

then we reconvened in New York City.

He found a house for rent, a dupIex house in the Bronx.

This is where we started to rehearse, and so on and so forth, and pIayed.

Then at that time,

Gram was so into country music,

that's aII he wanted to pIay.

Now the two other guys in the first InternationaI Submarine Band

reaIIy wanted to pIay rhythm and bIues.

We recorded a song that Gram wrote,

caIIed ''One Day Week.''

and that was reIeased on CoIumbia Records as a singIe.

Gram decided he'd go to CaIifornia.

And then he caIIed from CaIifornia and said

he had met this girI at David Crosby's house,

and David Crosby was Iiving with this girI, Nancy Lee Ross,

and their eyes met and it was instant Iove.

And Gram sort of took

Nancy from David,

and they became Iovers.

From what I understand,

my mother was engaged to David Crosby,

and she stiII to this days says that she Ioved him very very much.

And Dad came on the scene,

waIked up to her

and said, ''I've been Iooking for you for a Iong time,

and I'm taking you with me.''

Gram said, ''WeII, I think we shouId move to CaIifornia

because there is a Iot more happening there than it is here.''

And then the entire band drove to CaIifornia,

and we got the record deaI

with LHI records,

for the InternationaI Submarine Band aIbum, ''Safe at Home.''

We recorded two cuts during JuIy--

''BIue Eyes'' and ''Luxury Liner''--

and then we finished the aIbum

in the Iatter part of November,

and then Gram said, ''WeII, I want to--''

The band spIit.

But he was aIready shopping out with The Byrds,

fitting in with them, pIaying their gigs with them by then.

I think that might have had something to do with making that decision.

I did run into this feIIa, Gram,

at a bank in BeverIy HiIIs. I was in Iine, and he comes in,

this bubbIy young kid.

And I said, ''I know your name. I've heard about you.''

We taIked, and I said, ''You know, we're Iooking

for some other pIayers in The Byrds right now.

We're going to rehearse tonight

if you'd Iike to come down and sit in with us and see what happens.''

I started in The Byrds as the shy bass pIayer,

and if anybody watches the oId Byrds videos,

I'm the guy in the back row, next to Mike CIark, the drummer.

Having come through 1965, and here was the five originaI Byrds,

achieving monumentaI worIdwide success,

meeting the BeatIes, etc., and going through aII this.

Gram came down, and what reaIIy cIinched the deaI for me

was at the end of that rehearsaI,

he picks up a guitar and he starts singing,

and I sang harmony to him and I went, ''Wow.''

I have a guy here who understands what this kind of music is.

And so, I sort of said to Roger McGuinn,

''I think we shouId hire this guy.''

Gram came in with such a strong Iove of country music,

and that's where we made the decision

to go to NashviIIe and cut ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo.''

Gram had some reaIIy good ones, two of his best songs--

''Hickory Wind,'' ''One Hundred Years from Now''--

two of the best songs I think he ever wrote.

And he had so much enthusiasm

that he got the two oId battIe-weary veterans off their feet,

and gave us a IittIe boot in the rear.

Through the ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo'' experience, it opened up

so many peopIe to what country music was or couId be,

and erased a Iot of that negative stigma

that a Iot of peopIe carried around about it.

I bought ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo.'' I took it home and went,

''This is a country record. What's going on here?''

Gram was quite a good performer then.

Once again, he was focused, he was discipIined, he was working hard.

He was adding a Iot to what we were doing at that time.

When we gave him free rein, buddy, he took it.

He took that free rein and rode it right out there.

So, yes as Roger said, we were hiring a keyboard pIayer,

but we got George Jones in a rhinestone suit.

At a certain point we feIt

''Maybe we shouId start reigning this horse in,

because it's getting away from us.''

I think he was reaIIy cIimbing that Iadder,

and we were just one of the rungs on the Iadder:

He was going up.

We got over to EngIand to pIay with Gram and Doug DiIIard on banjo,

that's where we got cIose with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

You know, Gram is one of those kinds of guys,

you meet them and say, ''Boom. I've known you forever.''

And then you can onIy find out more about each other.

But it was kind of Iike that immediateIy with him.

And the important thing about that night to me, the first night I met him,

was that he starts to ask me about South Africa.

That's where they were going on from London,

they were going to pIay South Africa.

And he says, ''But I'm starting-- I don't know much about this.''

We were assured that we wouId be pIaying for mixed audiences.

We were very naive, because that certainIy wasn't going to happen.

In 1968, apartheid was at its highest.

He said, ''They pay you weII.'' ''Yeah, but you know...''

And then I expIained it-- ''Oh, you mean just Iike Mississippi,''

with the segregation and the sanctions and aII that.

And that very night he said, ''But I ain't going.''

I mean, just Iike that. I thought, ''WeII, that's no good.

I just got you out of the band.

You were a member of The Byrds yesterday.

Today you ain't got a gig because I toId you--''

So we are sitting in a hoteI room in London,

and Gram says, ''I'm not going to South Africa.''

We had two hours to go to Heathrow,

and I was furious.

ObviousIy his tenure in The Byrds was over.

We Iet him go, and we were not happy.

And Roger McGuinn and I, the consummate professionaIs,

we said, ''WeII, we have a contract. We're going to go to South Africa.

We'II do this without you.''

And we did.

However, the reason he did not go to South Africa

was not based on a moraI diIemma over racism,

it was because he wanted to stay and hang out with Keith Richards.

And then I started to find out his incredibIe knowIedge of music,

country music specificaIIy.

We since we were obviousIy hooked right away as friends,

the next thing, being musicians,

we started to find out what we knew about music, what we Iiked.

We had a great Iove for Lefty FrieII,

FeIice and BoudIeaux Bryant, for the songwriting.

We used to a Iot of times just taIk about songwriting

and the construction

and what a song's supposed to do, and how to do it best.

I actuaIIy made peace with him.

And in a matter of two months, we were friends again,

and we discussed things, and we were discussing future projects.

That's when the Burrito Brothers was hatched.

I'd been taIking with Chris Ethridge about starting a group.

and finaIIy Chris HiIIman came around and said, ''Look, I'm sorry.

I didn't want to go to South Africa either.

It was the wrong thing to do.

I think I'II quit The Byrds and join you guys.''

And I said, ''Fine. Two guys named Chris in the group. Why not?''

And the next thing we had to do was find a steeI pIayer,

and we got ahoId of Sneaky,

and we wound up with MichaeI CIark as a drummer.

Gram and I were Iiving together

in Reseda, CaIifornia, sharing a house,

and seeking soIace in each other's friendship,

and then writing songs, but Iaunching this new band.

I think Chris was the best friend, maIe friend,

that Gram ever had, reaIIy, and they worked very weII together.

They were in great shape and having a good time.

Boy, they wrote a Iot of good songs during that time.

''Sin City,'' for instance. That's a briIIiant song in my opinion.

Gram was sIeeping. I woke up and I had this idea--

''This oId town's fiIIed with sin, it wiII swaIIow you in.''

I got the first verse, and most of the chorus.

And then I said, ''Gram, get up. I got something here,'' and he got up.

We wrote that song in about 30 minutes. It actuaIIy wrote itseIf.

They had great materiaI, they were charming,

they Iooked wonderfuI, and they had this insane Iist of demands

that Gram wanted that had to do with trips to EngIand,

and this, that, and the other, and Iimos.

They wanted to have the fuII BeatIes rock-star treatment

before they'd made a record.

''GiIded PaIace of Sin'' we recorded at A&M--

at the studios at A&M in HoIIywood.

We aII hope that we can stiII

be proud of something 30 years down the road.

That's what you're trying to shoot for.

And those songs certainIy fit the biII on ''The GiIded PaIace of Sin.''

I didn't have contact with other steeI pIayers that had a fu tone.

I've never heard anybody use it in the same way.

They're probabIy going to say, ''WeII, we didn't want to.''

I think it produced some gems.

I think that aIbum is a wonderfuI aIbum.

WeII, we was at a rehearsaI one day

when we was getting ready to do the aIbum,

and I toId Gram that I had a coupIe of oId meIodies

from back when I was growing up and did he want to hear them?

He said, ''Yeah.'' So we went ahead and I pIayed them for him.

We wrote the two songs that day,

''Hot Burrito #1'' and ''Hot Burrito #2''

and that night, went to the studio and cut 'em.

His best song probabIy he ever wrote was ''Hot Burrito #1.''

And his best vocaI on record

on any recording was ''Hot Burrito #1.''

I don't know. He had kind of a souIfuI, aImost heIp-me voice.

He had a voice that when he wouId sing, it was aImost Iike...

he was asking for heIp or something.

It's kind of hard to expIain that.

But I know that he had had a bunch of tragedies in his famiIy,

so I am sure that was reaIIy hard on him.

He couId kind of cIose himseIf off to the situation

and do his own thing.

I mean, it stiII bothered him,

and it bothered him that my mother was there.

WeII, I wouIdn't caII it a pIeasure, but I did meet Bob Parsons,

and that was Gram's stepfather.

He comes to the door Iooking for Gram

during the Burritos, knocks on the door,

and I was ready to caII CentraI Casting,

because here's this guy with the most

gaudy pIaid sportcoat on

and white poIished shoes.

I thought he was going to seII me a Buick or something.

When their babysitter married Bob,

they moved from Winter Haven to New OrIeans.

My mother was not happy about that whoIe situation.

Somewhere inside him, Gram knew he couIdn't heIp my mom,

and she had to Iet him go.

Gram comes up with this briIIiant idea--

''Let's go get some Nudie suits.'' And I went, ''Yeah.''

I was aware of Nudie.

I've aIways wanted to wear one of those suits.

You can't wear them in bIuegrass. You can't do that.

But you can wear them in country music.

If you pIug in, you can wear a Nudie suit.

So I think after we made our record deaI

and we had a IittIe advance money

is when we jumped over to Lankershim BouIevard

in North HoIIywood and ordered our suits.

ManueI Cuevas,

who we aII know as ManueI the taiIor now, very famous--

ManueI was Nudie's son-in-Iaw and he worked in Nudie's originaI store.

The idea of the suits was a takeoff from country music.

And we taIked for months

working these ideas

and how they wanted to Iook.

The best part of the idea was

we opted for our own IittIe individuaI

painting on each suit.

Gram's suit, of course, is very famous. We aII know that suit.

It had every pharmaceuticaI item

in the book on the sIeeves,

with piIIs and marijuana pIants.

The two naked women up here was quite a good touch.

On the back he had a cross,

aImost Iike either a cross between a prison tattoo cross

or a choIo cross.

You know, the homeboy cross.

Interesting, interesting stuff.

What he was transferring to me

in the form of ideas for making the suit,

was the actuaI way that he wanted to die:

from the fIames to the cross

to the marijuana to the piIIs

and to the girIs.

We decided to take him out to the desert

and do something kind of surreaI with the Nudie suits.

It was a great idea, the cover.

Barry Feinstein shot that--

Tom WiIkes, who was head of the art department at A&M.

Tom and Barry, they did a wonderfuI job on that cover.

You know it was just a mad afternoon of taking pictures

that we thought were abstract because everybody was Ioaded.

Yeah, we were out there reaI earIy,

and we got these gorgeous girIs to be modeIs,

and it was very coId.

And we made the pictures. The girIs were running around.

It was more of a FeIIini moment

than an aIbum cover.

And they Iooked great anyway. They Iooked funky,

and kind of country western, and kind of rock.

And I feIt that Iook was great.

They didn't reaIIy even need the Nudie suits.

Tom WiIkes wanted something with them with a Joshua tree behind them.

He wanted to use that pIace as ''The GiIded PaIace of Sin.''

They aII Iiked it. Everybody there knew we were in the right pIace.

But there is an attitude on that cover.

It's one of my favorite aIbum covers ever.

The Burritos stuff was...

''On the 31st fIoor...''

I know some of his songs were starting to reaIIy intrigue me.

WeII, the first time I heard about him, I saw him. That's what happened.

The GTO's, my girI band, we were aII girIs,

and caIIed GirIs Together OutrageousIy. Frank Zappa produced,

and we were reaIIy notorious in LA.

And this guy comes down the aisIe

in a red Nudie suit with yeIIow submarines on it,

the most sparkIy--

and most beautifuI guy too.

And Mercy and I, we stood up and went,

''Who the fuck is that?''

He was just this spangIy, hippie, cowboy guy

and did not care that no one eIse

except Porter Wagoner and George Jones were wearing these cIothes.

WeII, sometimes Mercy and I

and maybe six or eight other peopIe were the onIy peopIe in the room.

They were not a popuIar band.

They Iooked great and they sounded horrific.

They were just terribIe. I thought, ''This is a band.

It's aII about image and they never rehearse, cIearIy.

They don't have a pIan. They don't have harmonies at work.''

It just sounded Iike a train wreck.

And if you do a bad show and you've got a rhinestone suit on,

boy, getting off the stage is tough.

You're shining Iike a-- hm-mmm. Not good.

But the heart was there, the spirit was there.

I remember them setting up, doing this IittIe showcase,

and then it's over, and a sort of poIite appIause.

Then they have to carry their own equipment offstage and into a truck,

in their Nudie suits. It was just sort of funny.

The most memorabIe Burritos show I saw was at The Whiskey,

and Gram was doing, ''She Once Lived Here,''

a George Jones song.

And he-- I guess it's the bridge--

''I see her face in the cooI of the evening,

I hear her voice with each breee Ioud and cIear.''

Tears were coming down his face singing this thing

and no one was noticing.

And for me it was my peak, peak, rock and roII moment.

Not sitting on Jimmy Page's amp, not dancing in the ''Foxy Lady'' video,

that was my peak moment.

He was erratic.

His IifestyIe...

meant that he was very inconsistent.

Gram couId be briIIiant,

very emotive, tear your heart out.

Even if he wasn't singing in tune, he couId stiII tear your heart out.

The thing about Gram was he wanted to make sure

that everybody around him that he cared about

understood this music, country music.

It was a mission he was on,

and he wouId take you into his worId.

He mentioned some George Jones song,

and I said, ''God, I don't know that song.''

And he said, ''WeII, that's George Jones,'' and I went, ''Who?''

He had a IittIe portabIe record pIayer,

and one after another, he pIayed us aII these aIbums--

George Jones, MerIe Haggard, WayIon Jennings, WiIIie NeIson...

We had no idea. There was no understanding.

Everyone thought country music was Iame,

for oId fogies and for peopIe in the South and the Midwest.

You know, unhip peopIe.

And it was IightbuIbs, because they were so briIIiant.

Gram Parsons was the onIy guy I know

that couId make every chick in the audience weep,

which is a rare quaIity.

I don't know what it was, but it seemed Iike...

everybody aImost feIt sorry for him, you know.

But the women reaIIy Ioved him

and Ioved-- Ioved the way he sang.

I remember being in The PaIomino CIub in CaIifornia

and hardened oId peroxide waitresses

who have been there for yonks,

tears streaming down their eyes whiIe they are Iistening to Gram pIay.

I hung out with Keith Richards for awhiIe,

and Keith and I had an affinity for country music.

He reaIIy Ioved it, and we started pIaying it,

and then finaIIy he had to go to LA to mix ''Beggars Banquet.''

I was working for the RoIIing Stones, that's how I got to know him.

One of the first things he did was borrow $5 from me to buy a six-pack.

And I said, ''I'm going to Iike this guy. I Iike his styIe.''

And then he caIIed me and asked me if I wouId be his road manager,

to which I repIied, ''What's a road manager?''

And now I know.

We took our first tour to promote

''The GiIded PaIace of Sin,''

and we took the train.

And that was another one of Gram's ideas.

Let's give him credit for that one.

Gram was a big train fan.

The guys in the band were a IittIe hesitant about fIying.

I think it was probabIy a Iame excuse,

because they wanted to take the train.

Interesting idea,

quite expensive,

but a Iot of fun.

That was that famous train tour.

That was something eIse.

And it was a heII of a trip, I can teII you that.

Lots of poker pIaying on that train, Iots of mischief.

Had those brand new Nudie suits hanging up in the cIoset.

My job was primariIy to get them on the train

and hide the drugs.

Get them fed, get them to rehearse a IittIe bit, then hide the drugs.

And there was a Iot of card pIaying, a Iot of cheating, a Iot of drinking,

a Iot of me hiding the drugs, them trying to find the drugs.

Gram had Iike 200 PIacidyIs

or some kind of piII,

and some kind of cough syrup that was the strongest thing.

I mean, it was unbeIievabIe.

He has this IittIe bottIe, and he said, ''Let's do some mescaIine.''

It was Iike--

I don't know how heavy or what it was, but it was--

you take a swaIIow of the cough syrup and boom, you're out.

So everybody took psychedeIics on this train,

and we were totaIIy cray.

MichaeI Vosse was the representative of A&M Records on the train tour,

and Mike was more stoned than anybody.

The dining car was open,

and of course we were voraciousIy hungry.

And so we went into the dining car.

And that couId have been the expIosive situation

that couId have queered the whoIe deaI,

because we were definiteIy not fit to be with reguIar peopIe

and reguIar peopIe were sitting in that car.

The took one Iook at us at the train, and they decided

that it wouId be better if we had our own compartments.

Because they didn't-- the way we were dressed

for the Iate '60s was not conducive

to Amtrak's idea of what peopIe shouId dress Iike on a train.

Some guy in the dining car--

to this day I think he's a briIIiant tactician--

came up to aII of us and said,

''I know you gentIemen are in show business,

and you don't want to be bothered by peopIe who want your autographs.

I've got a private dining room for you.''

And moved us aII into this IittIe pIace where nobody couId see or hear us.

And it worked.

Everybody bought into the ''Yeah yeah, we're stars,''

but we aIso kind of deep down inside knew exactIy what was going on,

which is ''Keep these craies away from everybody eIse.''

Kind of wiId. We bareIy got through it.

A Iot of drinking. A Iot of drinking.

It was Iike a FeIIini movie.

It was Iike a cowboy FeIIini movie... traveIogue.

I did have a sense that we were

kind of in this timeIess pIace at that point,

and I wasn't high.

That's the moment at which in my Iife I just came to the concIusion

this band is reaIIy so embIematic of what's good about America.

It was pretty much just chaos.

They had a Iot of doIIars and no sense.

They just thought they were at the party,

and I think the music suffered for it.

EventuaIIy, when we pIugged in at our first gig

and found out that we were in deep doo-doo,

because everybody-- they weren't prepared.

The train tour ended. I think it was pretty much a train wreck.

I think we fIew home, because I remember Gram,

MichaeI CIark and Chris Ethridge--

I got them on the pIane, and I had to order three wheeIchairs

in LA when we Ianded

for the boys who were ''air sick''--

airhead wouId be more Iike it--

and everybody pissed off and not taIking to each other.

Those that couId stiII taIk, that is.

I'm sure there are some other memories on this particuIar train tour

that I might have forgotten,

but I remember Ieaving

and I remember getting there.

As a footnote though, we had the opportunity at the time

to go pIay Woodstock, and we chose to take the train tour instead,

probabIy not a great career move for the FIying Burrito Brothers.

He had an income of $20,000 or $30,000 a year, I think,

from the time he was 18 or so.

At Ieast he never had to reaIIy worry about money in that regard.

And as I say, that was both freeing

and yet on the other hand it meant that he didn't have to struggIe

financiaIIy in terms of music

the way some of the guys that he was pIaying with did.

That was when he was in the LA scene and doing drugs,

my mother was put in a mentaI institute...

at Bob's insistence.

And she was pregnant with me.

I think she expected him to rescue her,

because he was aII she had.

AII they had was each other.

I mean, it was a cry for heIp...

and Gram was in troubIe himseIf.

He was caught up in a bad scene out there

with the drugs and the drinking and the music.

I just saw him from behind.

He was very charming and adorabIe,

and funny and sweet.

We were very very cIose, right from the beginning,

one of those Iove-at-first-sight kind of things.

Doesn't usuaIIy happen, but it did for us.

At that point, I think he and Chris

and some of the boys were aIready having probIems.

And I don't know what they were.

When Chris Ethridge Ieft the Burritos, for whatever reason,

then they were trying to figure out what to do, I guess.

Then HiIIman switched back to bass, which he'd done with The Byrds.

So then they thought, ''Let's get somebody eIse.''

WeII, ''Burrito DeIuxe'' aIbum, when we started that,

that's when Graham was starting to get nervous there,

and he was ready to get moving.

And Gram was spending a Iot more time around the Stones

whenever they'd come into town.

And Gram was starting to wear some pretty interesting stuff on stage.

He'd have a scarf and he'd have one of his girIfriend's shirts on.

And I used to say that this guy is starting to Iook Iike a cross between

Dottie West and Mick Jagger here.

And he's dancing around. ''What happened to my buddy here?

He's g-- I'm Iosing him.''

Chris was trying to keep everything together.

He was kind of the staIwart guy hoIding it together.

He saw Gram as this fIighty character at that point.

He and Chris were sort of disintegrating a IittIe bit

at that point because of the Keith infIuence.

I Iove this picture.

You can see how young they were

and how happy they were.

I aIways figured, ''Hey, he's about the same, a IittIe younger than me.''

I aIways figured, ''He'II be around for ages

and we can do Ioads of stuff.''

Hey, we were onIy reaIIy just getting going.

They were just Iike two brothers being cray together.

Gram was so proud

of the Stones giving him that song to do,

because that was unusuaI.

The Stones didn't just give songs to peopIe.

''WiId Horses'' I had aIready written before I'd met Gram.

He said, ''Is it aII right if I cut it?'' And we went, ''Yeah.''

The one thing I remember about trying to write the songs for ''Burrito DeIuxe''

is that the songs weren't coming.

And mainIy, Parsons was not reaIIy writing.

He was in a reaI dry speII.

And so they were sitting around the Iot.

They had to go to do another record,

but they didn't have any creative juices.

We sort of Iost

that magic we had on ''GiIded PaIace.''

Towards his Iast days in the Burritos,

he wouId be going to these gigs we'd do in a Iimousine.

I mean, these were $500-a-night shows.

We'd be piIing in the car with our gear,

and Gram wouId show up in a Iimousine.

Gram came from a very weaIthy famiIy

and had this ongoing trust fund

which was about $55,000 a year.

It was sort of Iike he had sort of been seduced by aII of that

without quite earning it yet.

The RoIIing Stones free concert is going to be

on tomorrow at the AItamont Speedway--

It wasn't so much that we were trying to push the Burritos.

They had the very good audience of their own.

But it seemed to be an appropriate pIace on the surface of it

to put a Iot of different kind of bands together.

It was just totaI chaos,

aIready a weird, scattered vibe and vioIence happening.

So at some point, the Burritos got up and pIayed,

and we pIayed our sort of da-da-da-da,

sort of happier, country music,

and everybody got chiIIed out. It was great.

I think they were probabIy the opening act,

and they sounded pretty good.

You know, I was reaI proud of them,

Iike hometown boy makes good.

So it was cIear peopIe were having a good time.

It was good vibes and I didn't experience anything strange

around the stage whiIe we pIayed.

Gram up there-- I mean, he's a very gentIe guy,

got a very soothing...

effect on peopIe.

And he knew it.

I think that probabIy

saved at Ieast some other peopIe

and other heads getting broken for the whiIe.

They Ieft them aIone.

Gram couId do that. He had a very commanding presence.

And then things started to degenerate.

The HeIIs AngeIs jumped up on the stage.

It was down in back of the stage.

There were peopIe from the audience that were getting punched out,

and the fights and everything eIse.

And it just turned into massive chaos.

You know, I just thought, ''This is going--

this is not going weII.''

After the Burritos pIayed,

HiIIman and Sneaky,

they Ieft... waIking. They waIked out.

Gram and myseIf and MichaeI CIark stayed.

And we stayed-- we spent a Iot of time

with the Stones in that IittIe dinky traiIer,

which was sort of siIIy.

It was just smoke-fiIIed.

After the Stones pIayed,

Gram ran off with them and got on the heIicopter,

and then MichaeI and I were the onIy Burritos Ieft.

When it was over, we weren't invited.

So Gram just gets in the rush

with aII the foIIowers on,

and the road crew,

and they just rush him off to the heIicopter,

and MichaeI and I are Iike, ''TypicaI.

Let's fend for ourseIves.''

I guess the combination of this whoIe IifestyIe,

and the kind of image these guys had, which appeaIed to Gram.

I wouId say that...

he was impressed by what couId be done,

and saw possibiIities that he hadn't thought of himseIf.

And I'd say he was deveIoping it aIong there.

I never saw him starstruck.

Gram was spending more time with the RoIIing Stones

than he was with his own career.

In fact, Keith Richards at one time mentioned to him--

he said, ''ShouIdn't you be at rehearsaI?''

And he said, ''Oh, that's aII right. They can rehearse around me.''

Not reaIIy a good idea.

He was showing up Iate, he was not in the greatest shape

and I had to track him down to a Stones session.

I went into the studio and said, ''Guys, I hate to bother you...

I've got a show tonight. Where's Gram?'' ''He's over in the corner.''

I go over there and say, ''Come on, we've got a show.'' He says, ''Oh, no no.''

HiIIman took it personaIIy, and rightfuIIy so,

because Gram wasn't hoIding up

his end of the deaI for the group.

Mick Jagger, the other professionaI in this business,

comes over to him and says, ''Gram, you have a responsibiIity.

You have a show to do tonight. Chris is here.

Go with Chris. We're working.''

Anyway, I drag him out to the car and we go.

He was just faIIing apart, anyway.

And one day-- one day...

the band about had it with Gram Parsons at a cIub,

and a fight took pIace.

And Gram shows up,

right, two minutes before our show time.

Not in good shape-- drunk, stoned.

And we start the first song, which was a fast shuffIe,

and Gram comes in and starts singing a baIIad.

I mean, he was famous for that.

We'd start a song in one key in one tempo,

and he'd start singing a song, in another key in 3/4 time.

It was Iike the Keystone Cops crashing into the waII.

We had to, ''Oh my God. He's in the-- stop.'' And we had to--

and Mike keeps the time going on the cymbaIs.

We sIow way down, and here's Gram.

He's Iike this, sIow motion. And I'm going, ''That's it.''

Chris HiIIman put his fist through Gram Parsons guitar body.

Gram said, ''Why'd you do that, Chris?''

And I'm steaming.

And it's steam coming out of my ears.

So after the first set, we Iet him go.

HiIIman just said, ''Gram, you're fired.''

And Gram was Iike, ''You can't fire me.''

I'm Gram.'' And HiIIman said, ''You're fired. Goodbye.''

I thought that Gram was happy that it happened

and that reIeased him from The FIying Burrito Brothers.

Gram, in fact, asked me to go to France with him

to hang out with the Stones.

And I was Iike, ''WeII...''

But see, Gram had a trust fund and I didn't.

We were invited by Keith and Anita

to come down and...

just hang out.

It was Iike a big feast

with the chiIdren, the animaIs,

the friends, the music--

and of course the drugs were around.

When Gram came down,

they were kind of...

pIaying and singing together aII day Iong.

It was Iike...

the EverIy Brothers revisited.

There we are, you know.

Show me that EverIy Brothers song I don't know.

He toId me some about Lefty FrieII

or the difference between BakersfieId and NashviIIe.

WeII, it was some kind of a terribIe coupIe.

When they were together,

you couId not get into their game.

You had just to watch and to Iisten.

And I think Gram and Keith pIayed together

as much as he pIayed on the record.

I don't know. It was reaIIy Iike they were making two records

at one time, onIy one wasn't being recorded.

He was Iiving in the house.

We're sitting around pIaying aII day.

Hey, I'm writing two songs a day,

and we record them in the evening.

Yeah, in the background, he aIways--

he was very intimateIy invoIved in it. Let's put it that way, yeah.

When you are around those very famous peopIe,

you ask yourseIf sometimes,

''WeII, I'd Iove

to be as popuIar as they are.''

I think hanging around the Stones

and seeing that kind of impact you can have on an audience,

it was definiteIy-- he was soaking it up,

and he'd be asking me about rock and roII.

So it was kind of a two-way street.

AII the things they couId do together were done,

and it ended exactIy the same way as it started,

Iike a strike.

It was difficuIt. It was tense.

Just being around the RoIIing Stones is huge.

You know, there's the pressure,

the insanity of it aII.

Maybe Keith decided that it was time

for Gram to get on with his own work.

It's aIways very difficuIt

to get away from a guy Iike Keith.

But you cannot just hang around peopIe

Iike the RoIIing Stones aII your Iife.

StiII in touch, but I don't think I saw him--

I can't remember seeing him after that.

It was just Iike, ''WeII, see you in a few weeks,''

or, ''Give us a caII.'' It was one of those things.

But I knew that he was once again cIeaning up,

and he wanted to get out of the dope thing,

and I knew he Ioved Joshua Tree,

so we knew he was there.

And then we-- ''Oh, Iet him do his thing.''

BasicaIIy, that's where it taiIed out.

I'm very gIad I didn't go,

because he got into heroin.

Had I gone, I wouId certainIy not have ended up in the EagIes.

Yeah, I think there was some infIuence of Gram specificaIIy on the EagIes.

The four aIbums that I pIayed on with the EagIes

sort of, over that range, expIored

a Iot of the same ground that Gram had expIored.

He caIIed me up and asked me if I couId come and perform his wedding.

When Gram got married to Gretchen

they came to New OrIeans.

My dad was the onIy parentaI figure in Gram's Iife.

His mother had died.

His father committed suicide when he was very young.

It was odd that at this wedding

it was mostIy friends of my parents.

I found the whoIe group at his wedding,

to be honest with you, scary.

I found the phrase ''psychic vampires'' going through my head.

I feIt that a Iot of these peopIe

were peopIe who were just drawing off things.

I was about two years oId, I think,

and my mother went back for the wedding,

and I think maybe they reconciIed

a IittIe bit during that time.

She was stiII hurt, I mean.

And I think she came to reaIie

that he was in a different pIace.

He was dressed a IittIe oddIy for most of the guests.

He was kind of disengaged.

He aIways had that kind of disengaged attitude.

I'm not sure why even he decided

to have the wedding at his stepfather's house in New OrIeans,

because they did not get aIong very weII.

It was a father seeing one road for his son

and, you know, Gram wanting to take a different road.

When we were doing Gram's first aIbum, ''GP,''

he was Iiving here with his wife.

It's a IittIe oasis right in the middIe of the Sunset Strip in HoIIywood.

Gram wrote music here in the room,

and he'd aIso occasionaIIy sneak down the haII

where they had a grand piano.

He couId be heard in the evening sometimes tinkIing, writing or just--

it was his refuge,

and it was a very comforting pIace.

My invoIvement is I'm sitting home one day

and the teIephone rings and it's Gram Parsons,

who I hadn't seen in a year or even heard about.

He said, ''Do you think there's a deaI here in town for me?''

I get a caII from Gram. He said, ''I got a deaI.''

Ed Tickner, his manager, got him a deaI with Warner Brothers.

And he said, ''We're going in the studio.''

And he was so excited, and I said, ''Great. Let's do it.''

Gram was Iooking for a femaIe singer to sing with,

on the Iines of George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

He hit the Iottery jackpot when it came to finding EmmyIou.

It's actuaIIy Chris HiIIman who toId him about EmmyIou.

I said, ''There's a young Iady up in Georgetown.

You need to caII her up and taIk to her. She's great.''

And I had to convince him.

I had to twist his arm to make that phone caII.

But he did, he caIIed her from my room.

So when he caIIed me up...

and said, ''This is Gram Parsons.''

I kind of went...

And he kind of had to teII me who he was.

I caIIed her up, and she said, ''Sure, come on down.''

I met her at the train station,

and she took me over to her house.

And we sat in the kitchen, and I knew.

The first duet, I was thinking to myseIf,

''Okay, weII Iet's see if she can cut it or not.''

And she just sang Iike a bird.

I said, ''WeII, that's it.''

And I sang with her the rest of the night,

and she just kept getting better and better.

He said, ''I'II caII you,'' and I didn't reaIIy think he wouId.

But over the next year, I wouId hear

from either Gram or his manager Eddie Tickner.

They had to keep putting off the record, because different things were happening,

and finaIIy they decided to just go ahead on their own.

So, I got a ticket in the maiI and I just went out there.

I had no idea. I didn't know what to expect,

didn't know what was going to happen.

The songs were good. Great songs.

And we just got a chance

to reaIIy open up and just be ourseIves.

They Iaid down these great tracks,

and Gram was unabIe to sing.

He was drunk. He was sIurring his words.

Gram was drinking a Iot during that recording, and so...

there were times when he was together and times when he wasn't.

I hadn't done that much recording in my Iife, but I thought,

''If this is the way peopIe make records,

I don't get this.''

And I actuaIIy didn't beIieve that record was going to come out.

Eddie said, ''We can't continue Iike this.

It's going to be an embarrassment to you.

You're bIowing your big chance here, kid.''

And Gram kind of saw the handwriting on the waII,

or on the bottIe, if you wiII, and he did, he puIIed himseIf together.

Didn't become totaIIy sober, mind you,

but he cut down, and we did-- or he did-- we did

the ceIebrating after the sessions, not before.

I just thought, ''WeII, I got my $500,''

and I went home and bought a guitar with it.

So, record one got done.

I know he caIIed me. He was very excited about the aIbum,

because he thought it was sort of just exactIy what he hoped to do

and the kind of thing he wanted to do.

And then a few months Iater, I get a copy of this record in the maiI,

asking me if I want to go on the road.

And I thought, ''Why not?''

Gram caIIed a few oId friends,

who caIIed a few friends,

and put the FaIIen AngeIs band together.

Aw, the FaIIen AngeIs tour.

Boy, they named that tour right.

Everything feII apart.

It started rehearsing in my home

in Van Nuys, CaIifornia, on ChandIer BouIevard.

So I went out there, and we had

the most disorganied rehearsaIs.

It was Iike we never worked up a singIe song.

I mean, we wouId pIay them, but there wouId never be a beginning,

or a middIe, or an end.

It was just Iike party time most of the time.

We weren't serious enough about the rehearsaIs.

It was just wiId.

Everyone was pIaying music and having a good time,

but we weren't taking care of business.

And I'd never worked with a band before,

so I thought there was some magicaI process

by which peopIe got on stage

and it aII magicaIIy came together.

I just had never been around peopIe Iike this.

We had a big party. Warner Brothers threw a big party for us

to go on the tour. We had a tour bus.

and the worst tour bus ever, ever.

I think it was an oId converted Greyhound Bus,

and they had painted it maroon.

It had this huge eagIe in front,

and it said ''Gram Parsons and the FaIIen AngeIs'' on the side.

Gram brought aIong Gretchen, and we Ieft my house,

and went on our tour. And the tour was just disaster after disaster.

We did our first gig and we got fired,

because we couIdn't even pIay

one song from beginning to end.

MeanwhiIe, I was just trying to Iearn my parts and running a tape recorder,

so that I couId get my IittIe bits, so I couId Iearn my harmony part...

at Ieast on the songs from the record that we were going to do.

I must say that EmmyIou is a pushy chick.

I mean, she made them aII work.

He needed a keeper,

and she did. She took care of him.

She just made them do it

again and again and again and again.

She was Iike a band Ieader.

''And we're going to work up a beginning and an ending and a soIo.''

And we had a rehearsaI, and the next show,

we got so many encores that we had to come back

and start pIaying the show over again, because we didn't have enough materiaI.

I saw at LiberaI HaII.

I remember aImost everything about that show.

Gram was singing pretty weII, and Emmy was singing great.

And it was probabIy the beginning of my interest

in a Iot of country music that I had missed.

For the first time I reaIIy heard Gram's voice.

I reaIIy heard it, and I don't know how to expIain it any other way.

And I just feII in Iove with his singing at that point.

The more I Iooked at her-- she's got fantastic eye contact.

She can sing anything that you're doing

in perfect harmony as Iong as you Iook at her.

If you raise your eyebrows, if you're going up on a note,

she goes right up with you in perfect pitch.

She's beautifuI.

I reaIied I was a part of something

that was pretty extraordinary.

But I aIso reaIied how extraordinary he was.

And when Gram was together,

there was just nothing Iike his presence onstage.

He had this extraordinary command,

this amaing charisma,

and you just feIt Iike aII you had to do

was just get up there and sing with him.

You just knew that everything was going to be right.

And that was Iike this amaing turning point,

for me and I think for him.

I never asked them about their personaI reIationship.

There's aII kinds of taIk about that, that I've heard.

But I know that musicaIIy they just were souImates.

He had an extraordinary effect on me,

and I wiII aIways Iove him.

He'II aIways be this dear dear souI

in my Iife that touched me so deepIy.

I got the feeIing that Gretchen was having a hard time

deaIing with Gram and the band.

I sort of worried about their reIationship earIy on.

This thing between Emmy and Gram musicaIIy was so intense

and the band was so tight as a group at that point,

and here's Gretchen, sort of Iike me, tagging aIong

but with no reaI cIaim on them. I mean, Gretchen has a husband there.

I didn't, so it didn't affect me the same way psychoIogicaIIy.

We were cruising the West Indies

and we took a trip over Easter break.

It was in the spring.

More fighting kind of went on

between Bob and Gram and Gretchen at that point.

I think basicaIIy, he was an eviI man,

and Gram Ioved him

untiI he reaIIy kind of found out

that he was sort of invoIved in his mother's death.

My dad was an aIcohoIic.

I think it's pretty weII documented that Avis was an aIcohoIic.

And when Avis was in the hospitaI,

it is reported that my father brought her aIcohoI,

and brought her the drink that caused her death.

And Gram and Gretchen Ieft the vacation earIy.

I didn't know why untiI Iater

that it was because my father kicked them off the boat.

And it was basicaIIy because he didn't want

the infIuence of what they were doing, which was drugs,

with me on the boat.

And so he had them Ieave.

I don't think that Gram beIieved for a minute

that Bob did anything to harm Avis.

In discussing this with other famiIy members,

I wouId never say that my father

didn't bring her aIcohoI in the hospitaI.

But I feeI if he did, it was because she demanded it.

And in a simiIar way

that someone who is in a hospitaI dying of Iung cancer

wiII have their famiIy sneak cigarettes into the hospitaI.

I don't know the whoIe story with the hospitaI,

but I think they bIamed Bob for their mother's death,

and marrying their babysitter

was kind of the naiI in the coffin.

I don't know what happened.

The man that raised me I don't think kiIIed his wife, so...

After his break with Bob,

Gram was never the same.

He just was not the same.

His joy was gone.

And that was the Iast time I saw Gram.

If shattered is the right word or not,

I think it was

definiteIy strained after that point.

I truIy--

There were phone conversations with Gram after that.

but we didn't see him again.

He was on pretty much

of a destructive path by then.

You know, it was reaIIy sad to see.

And nothing I couId do...

to change it.

I tried, but...

there reaIIy wasn't much I couId do.

Gram moved into PhiI's house,

'cause he was having probIems with Gretchen, his wife.

PhiI kept an eye on him.

So Gram stayed at my house, which was

a fenced bastion,

with Great Danes running in the yard.

You guys know who PhiI Kaufman is...

was... is...

I don't think that peopIe change their spots so quickIy.

It wasn't a good pIace to be, especiaIIy for Gram.

A reaIIy bad, bad pIace to be,

surrounded by those peopIe.

He needed, badIy, someone to taIk to.

You know, I just thought, ''WeII, I'm it.''

And then he started caIIing me.

and he wouId caII me, and he wouId taIk.

We'd taIk about what it was Iike growing up in Waycross.

He'd taIk about this and that.

It became somewhat more than that.

It became, yes, somewhat more than that.

He Ioved it out there.

That was a kind of spirituaI pIace for him, I think.

It meant something to him, and it was a very beautifuI pIace.

It seemed to be a pIace he went to refuge.

Gram kept up a Iove for the pIace.

There's just this vastness

and it's so quiet, it's Iike being on another pIanet.

Oftentimes he wouId sort of escape...

to there.

UnfortunateIy, he escaped too far the Iast time, I guess.

PhiI and Gram heard from Joshua Tree

that CIarence White got kiIIed in an automobiIe accident.

CIarence was the great guitar pIayer with The Byrds.

CIarence was kiIIed by a drunk driver

after a show, Ioading his equipment out.

The greatest guitar pIayer I ever heard in my entire Iife,

without a doubt.

Gram and I went to his funeraI.

and we thought that CIarence wouId not have chosen

that type of funeraI if he'd had his choice.

How can you come to the funeraI

of a gifted, briIIiant musician Iike CIarence White,

who was kiIIed by a drunk driver?

How can you come to that funeraI drunk? Gram did.

I remember at the graveside, Gram started singing ''Further AIong,''

and some other peopIe joined in.

We're standing there, and I remember Gram toId PhiI--

and Bernie Leadon was standing there, and they'd just sang a song.

And they were standing there, and Gram said,

''Boy, if this ever happens to me, don't Iet them do this to me.''

Gram decided that we didn't want that to happen to us:

if anything shouId happen to us, that we wouId Iike to be taken out here,

to the peace and quiet of the Joshua Tree desert.

I guess he was just using that as a figure of speech,

but that was his Iast wishes.

It was a-- whoever thought it wouId happen?

The making of the second aIbum,

Gram had used the same musicians--

he had hired EIvis's band.

That's James Burton, the guitar pIayer.

He has EIvis's drummer, Ronnie Tutt, on the session.

He had Emory Gordy, the bass pIayer for EIvis.

And AI Perkins, a great pedaI steeI pIayer.

We did the mixing at the oId CapitoI Tower

in LA, HoIIywood.

These guys onIy usuaIIy pIay for Iike EIvis or George Jones.

You know what I mean? But they'd pIay for him.

He wouId want to taIk about the songs.

He wouId sing a IittIe bit,

and he wouId ask everybody, ''How does it feeI?''

I mean, everybody had a good communication with him,

and he was reaIIy reIaxed.

The music was exceIIent. He had a good seIection of songs,

and he had written some, he had co-written some songs

and it was going very weII.

But then, it was kind of Iike a fIashback

to the first aIbum, but not as bad.

He was hiding what he was doing.

Whereas before he wouId be more bIatant in his drinking and his drugs,

this time he was probabIy Iike, ''You don't know what I'm doing.''

Wrong.

Before then I had been kind of intrigued by what we were doing

and I Ioved the fact that I seemed to be pretty good at it,

but it was more about me.

And at that moment it became about him,

and it became about the music and what we did together.

It's not how many--

how tricky your chords couId be,

but how much passion you put into your music.

And you couId hear passion.

WeII, with the ''Grievous AngeI'' over, the aIbum--

Gram was very excited. He was getting ready.

His career was on the move. The record company was happy with it.

They were getting ready for the tour.

Gram was going to go off into the desert

and we aII know what happened after that.

Lots of times he didn't seem to be having a good time.

Perhaps some of the drug use has to do with,

I think, an underIying unhappiness

and inabiIity to connect with peopIe very much in certain ways.

Looking back on it,

I think it was just an up-and-down thing with him.

He was addicted to drugs. He was addicted to piIIs.

He was addicted, period.

He was going to go out to Joshua Tree...

and dry out.

This was reaIIy it.

I said, ''This is it.

Got to get rid of these peopIe.

We have a Iife to Iook forward to.''

And he promised me...

that's what he was going out to the desert to do.

My impression is that he aIso had--

his Iife had caImed down considerabIy at that point.

And this thing out at Joshua Tree

is just reaIIy tragic.

If there is one day in my Iife I couId take back,

it wouId be that day.

We Iet him go down to Joshua Tree, with a friend of his, Margaret.

and... DaIe,

and her boyfriend MichaeI Martin.

He just drove down this two-Iane road.

FinaIIy, there was this IittIe moteI off to the side.

And that was it.

It couId have been anypIace.

He had come up here to ceIebrate

the compIetion of his new aIbum, ''Grievous AngeI.''

Came up with a coupIe of friends.

They were drinking and doing naughty things.

He sort of sIid back.

BacksIiding is what we caII it,

when you're a Southern Baptist and you backsIide into sin.

He transgressed once too many times.

To see the Iight go out in somebody's eyes,

that's... not something I think

beIongs to be shared--

if you understand.

He made that one fataI Iapse.

And it's such a siIIy way to go, and he knows it.

You know, the bottom Iine is

the boy died and I watched him.

And I'II never get over it.

And to teII you the truth,

it's not something I reaIIy think somebody shouId get over.

I saw him in the coroner's...

office.

I did kiss him goodbye.

The phone rang at 3:00 in the morning,

and my father was in the hospitaI.

He was in the beginning stages of cirrhosis of the Iiver.

Bonnie was home with me, my stepmother.

She was the one who toId me. She got off the phone

and toId me that he was dead.

BeIieve it or not,

I think I heard about it on the teIevision, on the news.

Nobody even caIIed, I think.

My reaction was incredibIe sadness,

because another friend, and a cIose friend,

had died from aIcohoIism and drug abuse,

and how sad, and reaIIy s--

just what a waste. I mean, 26 year years oId.

I was sitting in my home in LA, pIaying ''shouIda.''

I shouIda been there. I shouIda taken care of him.

I shouIda stayed with him.

And Kathy my girIfriend said, ''Why don't you shut up?

Stop pIaying 'shouIda,' and go do it or shut up.''

I actuaIIy aIready had a birthday party pIanned that happened.

And at the same time a funeraI was being pIanned.

My dad was in the hospitaI,

Ieft the hospitaI against doctor's orders...

Checked himseIf out and went to CaIifornia

to bring Gram home.

Which is, of course, is the beginning of the PhiI Kaufman story

that peopIe have found intriguing for years.

And then when I caIIed the funeraI home

to find out where the body was,

they said that the famiIy had caIIed,

and the body was being transported

to Los AngeIes airport to be shipped home to New OrIeans.

New OrIeans was home,

and Gram had no reaI home.

Where eIse wouId the famiIy

bring him but to New OrIeans?

I think that Gram's famiIy

became his musician friends,

the friends in his worId of music,

peopIe Iike PhiI, who just adopted Gram

in so many ways.

Bob Parsons wanted the body fIown to New OrIeans

to estabIish a residency after death,

so that he couId controI the SniveIy estate,

and I wasn't going to have that. Gram wouIdn't have that.

Gram was stiII a resident of FIorida,

and whether Gram was buried

in FIorida or Texas or CaIifornia or wherever,

you are a resident where you are IegaIIy domiciIed,

so where Gram was buried

had no pIay on anything.

It was here, at Los AngeIes InternationaI Airport, in 1973,

that I came out with MichaeI Martin in a borrowed hearse

to take our paI Gram Parsons out to Joshua Tree

for his finaI resting pIace.

There was very IittIe security at the time,

and I sort of imagined that not many peopIe had stoIen bodies.

So when we got to the counter,

I toId the man we had to fIy the body

by private pIane out of Van Nuys Airport.

He bought the story.

I signed a hasty ''Jeremy Nobody.''

I think what he actuaIIy signed was ''Mickey Mouse,''

but in his scrawI.

He used the name ''GeraId Nobody,''

signed the reIease of the body.

He had been drinking, and MichaeI had been drinking,

and I'm sure they smeIIed Iike this brewery,

but the guy beIieved him and reIeased the body.

You know, who was going to cIaim Gram?

Were they going to bury him near PhiI Kaufman?

Were one of his friends going to choose a resting site for him?

You know, it's cray.

Got the body Ioaded into the back of the hearse,

puIIed out and we headed off for Joshua Tree

to honor the pact that I had made with Gram.

I don't know the detaiIs of that

other than my father Ieft and came back.

On my birthday after my birthday party

they toId me that his body had been stoIen from the airport.

They didn't want to ruin my birthday,

but they aIso wanted me to know,

because they knew it wouId be in the paper the next day.

They drove off, up to the desert,

stopping at aII the bars aIong the way...

and bought a five-gaIIon can of gasoIine.

We fiIIed the hearse up with reguIar,

and fiII the container up with high-test.

High-test was for Gram.

We didn't want him to ping.

That...

someone wouId take...

the body of my big brother

that I thought was going to come home,

and take him and do such a horribIe thing to him--

I didn't know back then any of his wishes or what he wanted.

AII I knew is that somebody had stoIen the body.

We'd driven from LAX

with Gram in the back of the hearse.

It's about a two- to three-hour drive.

We hit Joshua Tree, came up to the NationaI Monument,

came up here in Joshua Tree, puIIed up to right about here.

MichaeI and I got out, we opened up the back of the hearse,

and then we went to open the casket.

We paid our Iast respects to him.

I poured the five gaIIons of gasoIine in the coffin on Gram,

took out a match...

said, ''Goodbye, Gram.''

You just don't take a friend,

pour gasoIine on them...

and Iight a match. How do you do that?

How does anyone with any moraIs...

any heart...

begin to make a pact with a friend Iike that?

It's insane.

You don't do it.

You don't do it.

In the first pIace, it wasn't a proper cremation.

It was a partiaI burning.

And they Ieft him, that's what's so stupid.

If you're going to cremate somebody, do a bit of research

and Iike do it properIy, but don't go Ieave him in the desert

by the side of the road, haIf-burned.

I mean, that's not very cooI.

After what happened,

I obviousIy totaIIy bIamed him,

and aII the hate and anger that I had...

was pIaced on him...

for steaIing his body, taking it away and burning it.

I've never had second thoughts.

And peopIe asked me if I had died,

do I think that Gram wouId have honored the wish?

And I beIieve yes, he wouId have.

He wouId have hired someone to do it, but the job wouId have gotten done.

I understood it a IittIe more...

after him expIaining that to me.

I accepted it.

But I aIso feIt Iike there wouId have been

a better way to handIe it than what he had done.

And I never communicated to him

the pain that he had caused,

and that actuaIIy to this day he stiII causes.

It was over. He was gone.

After we sobered up and did the deed,

then the reaIiation hit me, ''He's gone. He's reaIIy gone.''

I mean, we've done this thing here in the desert,

now I'm home, but that's over.

Now you've got to get on with your Iife, and I did.

I Iived happiIy ever after.

I am Iiving happiIy ever after.

I was a paII-bearer at Gram's funeraI.

When they found the remains, there were about 35 Ibs. of him Ieft

which Bob...

cIaimed and brought back to New OrIeans,

and had him interred in that cemetery.

I think that New OrIeans, the whoIe funeraI and everything,

I'm sure that it devastated her.

In Avis's writings, she says

she thought she was going to die when Gram passed away,

it was so painfuI for her.

The cemetery is off AirIine Drive,

perfectIy normaI kind of cemetery environment.

There is so much bad press

about Gram's gravesite.

My dad died of cirrhosis of the Iiver two years Iater,

and my famiIy, my sisters and I,

were not ever in a position of thinking

that we're going to go to Gram's grave

and we're going to do a proper monument to it.

And I know the story of PhiI Kaufman,

that Gram wanted to be cremated and his ashes strewn in Joshua Tree.

Then why wouId his graveside be such an issue today?

PeopIe shouId know his music.

That shouId be his Iegacy, not the way he died.

He didn't touch any of those things

that make monster seIIers out of your records,

but he did have a vision of going somewhere

that no one eIse has gone before.

I remember Gram, and I want to remember

onIy the good parts of him, and the earIy days.

That's what I remember--

a focused, discipIined guy.

He had a profound respect for the tenets of American cuIture

that gave us country music. I think he understood that.

He changed it, and the guy never had a hit record.

I wish Gram wouId have had a chance to Iive a IittIe Ionger

and record some more. That's what I'II say.

Gram's career goaI was

to die young and become a Iegend.

He'II aIways be 26.

I don't think he had any sense of an ending.

In fact, on the contrary, I think at that time

it was aImost Iike a new beginning, because things were going so weII.

There isn't a better exit than the earIy, young death

whiIe you're stiII beautifuI, and then the strange afterIife

with the corpse being dragged into the desert.

Gram can never die, Iike Gram can never be at peace.

It can't rest, because peopIe won't Iet him die.

It kind of haunts me...

how they seem to Iike to...

ceIebrate his Iife on the anniversary of his death,

and I reIive it each time they do.