Cosmic Cowboy

I just finished "Twenty Thousand Roads," a new biography of fabled country-rock singer Gram Parsons by David N. Meyer. The author, while not making Parsons into a saint (he died of a drug overdose in 1973 at the age of 26), clearly feels it's his mission to set Parsons up as one of the most influential musicians of the rock era. I gotta say that based on the evidence of the book and his few extant recordings, he seems more like an interesting footnote, though he was undeniably an influence on the 70's country-rock and 90's alt-country movements. Parsons was a rich kid from a dysfunctional family living off a trust fund. He played in bands as a teenager, hooked up with The Byrds, hung out with The Rolling Stones, was the lead singer with The Flying Burrito Brothers (which included Byrd Chris Hillman and future Eagle Bernie Leadon), cut a couple of solo albums, and helped Emmylou Harris get her career going. He tried to bring "authentic" country music (an early idol was Buck Owens) together with rock, R&B, and gospel to create what he called "Cosmic American Music."

Meyer has done his research well and is honest about Parsons' prodigious drug and alcohol use; he makes it clear that Parsons was not the "tormented junkie" type, but someone who liked drugs and what they did to him. But I'm not convinced that Parsons had a strong enough work ethic or a coherent enough aesthetic to have done much more than he did before he died. The author is also very opinionated which at times is refreshing but also leads me to question the objectivity of his reportage. For example, he hates The Eagles for bastardizing Parsons' "cosmic" music into pop bubblegum, and every time the band is mentioned, it is with disdain and nasty adjectives. I'm not exactly an Eagles fan (though I do like their On the Border album a lot), but to be fair, the Eagles were after something different than Parsons was; it feels like Meyer is blaming the Eagles for Parsons' failure to stay alive and bring his amorphous musical vision to fruition. The author also tries to include all voices when there is a difference of opinion about some aspect of Parsons' life, but he also plays favorites without letting us know why.

Overall, I enjoyed the book--it's a fast read and contains just enough lurid gossip to keep the pruriently-inclined reader interested. It also sent me back to Parsons' music, which I'm sure would make Meyer happy. He states that Parsons' Burrito Brothers albums are among the worst-produced "influential" albums ever, but I don't know that a glossier, crystal-clear production would have suited Parsons. I just heard a few cuts off of a "new" Burrito album of a live concert from the Avalon Ballroom in 1969--the sound quality is pretty bad, and Parsons is not in strong voice (according to Meyer, most of the Burrito live shows were total drug-fueled messes), but there is a good version of "Hot Burrito #2" and a great studio demo of "Thousand Dollar Wedding." And I also revisited Emmylou Harris' Elite Hotel album; I think that her version of "Sin City" is a masterpiece of creepy, apocalyptic beauty.

Which reminds me: though Meyer does a decent job discussing the music, he never touches on any of Parsons' spiritual beliefs, which might have provided some more insight into a guy who wrote a lot of songs about sin and death.