The Straight Dope

While watching a recent interview with Emmylou Harris, I was horrified when a member of the audience asked a rather personal question about Gram Parsons. ("Why did Gram Parsons kill himself at such a young age?") Ms. Harris handled the question gracefully and moved on to other, more pertinent topics (the sad state of commercial country music), but the question got me thinking. I've been a fan of Parsons' music but don't really know all that much about him as a person, other than he died young, and there was some controversy surrounding his death. Can you fill me in? -- Jamie D., East Lansing, MI

Gram Parsons has become something of a cult figure in the music business. He never hit it big, and few outside a small circle remember him now. But people who ought to know say he was one of the pioneers behind the country-rock phenomenon of the late Sixties and early Seventies. For a short time he was a member of the Byrds, and he was the creative force behind the band's 1968 country album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which many consider a classic. He went on to form the Flying Burrito Brothers and later invited then-unknown Emmylou Harris out to L.A. to sing on his solo album, GP (1973), helping to launch her career. He hung out with the Rolling Stones (his influence can be heard on several cuts from Exile on Main Street), and he had a big impact on Elvis Costello, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, and the Eagles. Remember New Riders of the Purple Sage and Pure Prairie League? They owed a lot to Parsons. He's received many post-humous honors and musical tributes; Emmylou Harris is working on a tribute album now, 24 years after his death. Best of all he was born Ingram Cecil Connor III (Parsons came from his stepfather), and you gotta love a guy with a name like that.


So far your typical live-fast-die-young story. Then it gets strange. Before his death Parsons had said that he wanted to be cremated at Joshua Tree and have his ashes spread over Cap Rock, a prominent natural feature there. But after his death his stepfather arranged to have the body shipped home for a private funeral, to which none of his lowlife music buddies was invited. Said buddies would have none of it. Fortified by beer and vodka, they decided to steal Parsons' body and conduct their own last rites.

Having ferreted out the shipping arrangements, Phil Kaufman (Parsons' road manager) and another man drove out to the airport in a borrowed hearse, fed the poor schmuck in charge of the body a load of baloney about a last-minute change of plans, signed the release "Jeremy Nobody," and made off with Parsons' remains. They bought five gallons of gas and drove 150 miles to Joshua Tree; by moonlight they dragged the coffin as close to Cap Rock as they could. Kaufman pried open the lid to reveal Parsons' naked cadaver, poured in the gas, and tossed in a match. A massive fireball erupted. The authorities gave chase but, as one account puts it, "were encumbered by sobriety," and the desperadoes escaped.

The men were tracked down a few days later, but there was no law against stealing a body, so they were charged with stealing the coffin, or as one cop put it, "Gram Theft Parsons." (Cops are such a riot.) Convicted, they were ordered to pay $750, the cost of the coffin. What was left of Parsons was buried in New Orleans.

So, youthful high jinks or breathless stupidity? All I know is, I'd want my friends to show a little more enterprise in keeping me alive than in torching my corpse.

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