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Gram Parsons

Gram Parsons

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Gram Parsons: Another Side of This Life (Sundazed)

Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2001

Unheard mid-’60s folk recordings taped in Florida by Gram’s pal Jim Carlton. ...

Going Up the Country: The Byrds and Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Retrospective by Bill Wasserzieher, ICE, August 2003

THOUGH OPINIONS differ on who recorded the first country-rock album, there is no question that the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo was the first one ...

Audio interviews

Phil Kaufman on Gram Parsons (2003)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 7 November 2003

From Mick'n'Keef to Emmylou; from Topanga Canyon to the Joshua Tree: Executive Nanny Phil Kaufman looks back on low lives and high times with Gram Parsons.

File format: mp3; file size: 51.9.mb, interview length: 54' 02" sound quality: ***

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The Byrds: Middle Earth, London

Live Review by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 18 May 1968

HIGH FLYING BYRDS TRIUMPH WITH A BRITISH AUDIENCE... ...

Gram Parsons, The Burrito Ego Man

Interview by Jacoba Atlas, Melody Maker, 25 July 1970

LOS ANGELES, Tuesday: Gram Parsons, founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers, was a Byrd, a southerner and a Harvard College Drop-out. With the formation of ...

Music Makers: Gram Parsons

Interview by Michael Oberman, Evening Star, The (Washington DC), 13 January 1973

WHEN GRAM Parsons formed the International Submarine Band (one of the first country-rock bands to surface in an era of rock and roll) in 1966, ...

Ex-Byrd Gram Parsons Solos: He's No Longer in a Hurry

Interview by Judith (Judy) Sims, Rolling Stone, 1 March 1973

LOS ANGELES — Back in 1969 Gram Parsons, rhythm guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist, and Chris Ethridge, bassist, decided to form a country rock band ...

Gram Parsons: GP

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 1 March 1973

GRAM PARSONS is an artist with a vision as unique and personal as those of Jagger-Richard, Ray Davies, or any of the other celebrated figures. ...

Gram Parsons: GP (Reprise)

Review by Charlie Gillett, New Musical Express, 31 March 1973

WELL NOW, there's country music, and there's country music. And this here's the second of the two. The first is what you would hear at ...

Gram Parsons: Parsons Knows...

Interview by Loraine Alterman, Melody Maker, 7 April 1973

Gram Parsons, former member of the Byrds and Burritos and now the proud owner of a solo album, talks to Loraine Alterman in New York ...

Parsons the Country Preacher

Interview by Roy Carr, New Musical Express, 12 May 1973

This is the man Presley's musicians turn to when they're sick of those Las Vegas riffs. ...

Gram Parsons: Take Your Partners and Away You Go (One Step back Two Steps Forward)

Essay by Phil Hardy, Let It Rock, July 1973

Rock, Country & Gram Parsons ...

Gram Parsons Dies in Desert

Report by Bill Wasserzieher, The Village Voice, 27 September 1973

PARK RANGERS found the half-charred body of country-rock musician Gram Parsons in a burned casket at Joshua Tree National Monument in California last Friday. ...

Gram Parsons: The Superstar Who Didn't Quite Make It

Obituary by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 6 October 1973

GRAM PARSONS somehow never quite got to be the nationally-touted superstar he deserved to be, which is possibly as much his own fault as anyone ...

Gram Parsons: Ashes In the Morning

Memoir by Eve Babitz, Rolling Stone, 25 October 1973

Eve Babitz is an artist and author of a column and an upcoming book entitled Eve's Hollywood. — Editor ...

Gram Parsons Death Mystery

Report by Jacoba Atlas, Circus, December 1973

Gram Parsons: His body disappeared and the story behind it is cloaked in a veil of mystery. Why was it stolen and why was it ...

Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel (Warner Bros. MS 2171, Import)

Review by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 16 February 1974

THEY SAY this isn't as good as GP and hopes have been expressed that Gram Parsons has left a legacy of more recorded material. Well ...

Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel (Reprise import)

Review by Chrissie Hynde, New Musical Express, 23 February 1974

WHEN YOU'RE sitting in a trailer at 2 a.m. somewhere out in 'Last Stopsville', and there's just you, one more hit of apple wine, the ...

Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris: Grievous Angel

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 28 March 1974

MICK JAGGER wrote 'Wild Horses' for and about the late Gram Parsons and its chorus describes the paradox that fueled Parsons’ life and vision. '...Wild ...

Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel

Review by Noe Gold, Crawdaddy!, April 1974

GRIEVOUS ANGEL is the final, triumphant chapter of an epitaph Gram Parsons must have begun writing years ago. No one could have done it better ...

Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel (Reprise MS 2171); Chip Taylor: Last Chance (Warner Bros, BS 2718)

Review by Phil Hardy, Let It Rock, May 1974

WITH THIS album, Gram Parsons ends what was probably one of rock's most uneven and exciting careers on a high note. Always a writer of ...

R.I.P. Giants – The Dead Certs

Overview by Ed Jones, Melody Maker, 25 January 1975

How dying can be a good career move. ...

Gram Parsons: GP (Reprise)*****

Review by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 1 May 1976

IF YOU woundered why, or where, Rick Grech gets off with performing Gram Parsons type country music, it stems from co-producing this bona fide classic. ...

Emmylou Harris: Return of the Electric Cowgirl

Interview by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 6 July 1980

SEVEN YEARS ago, the threads in Emmylou Harris' cowgirl suit were beginning to fray around the edges. ...

Gram Parsons: We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning

Retrospective by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 21 April 1985

"Death is a warm cloak. An old friend. I regard death as something that comes up on a roulette wheel every once in a while."Gram ...

Gram Parsons: Gram Cracker

Profile by Tim Riley, The Boston Phoenix, 25 May 1990

Parsons's Grievous Angel returns ...

Gram Parsons: The Father of Country Rock

Retrospective by Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, 1991

GRAM PARSONS wasn't exactly bursting with credentials when he came up for consideration as a member of the Byrds in the early spring of 1968. ...

Ben Fong-Torres: Hickory Wind – The Life and Times of Gram Parsons

Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock & Roll Disc, October 1991

"LIVE FAST, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse," the classic punk credo spoken by John Derek to Humphrey Bogart in Knock on Any Door ...

Ben Fong-Torres: Hickory Wind: The Life And Times Of Gram Parsons

Book Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1991

HE VIRTUALLY INVENTED country rock with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and was a major influence on the Stones of Sticky Fingers. He ...

How We Met: Emmylou Harris and Phil Kaufman

Interview by Lucy O'Brien, The Independent, 5 October 1996

THE SINGER Emmylou Harris, 47, was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She started her career singing with country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, then after his death ...

Gram Parsons: The Good Ol’ Boy

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1998

ON A WARM fall night in the tie-dyed rock’n’roll town of Woodstock, with the maple leaves turning to gold and purple on the mountains that ...

Gram Parsons: Another Country

Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 12 September 1998

Twenty-five years ago, Gram Parsons died in a remote desert motel, the victim of a prodigious appetite for drugs and alcohol that shocked even Keith ...

"Alternative country is what punks play when they grow up..."

Overview by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 16 October 1998

Tom Cox on the new bands that are making country music sexy ...

Country Rock

Book Excerpt by James Hunter, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1999

COUNTRY ROCK, the incorporation of musical elements and songwriting idioms from traditional country music into late 1960s and '70s rock, usually pursued in Los Angeles. ...

The Long Way Around: Gram Parsons

Retrospective and Interview by Holly George-Warren, No Depression, July 1999

I keep my love for variations, even tho I've some sort of "rep" for starting what (I think) has turned out t'be pretty much of ...

Gram Parsons, Track by Track

Sleeve notes by Bud Scoppa, Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels (Rhino), September 2000

The International Submarine Band: Safe at Home ...

Gram Parsons: Sacred Hearts And Fallen Angels (Rhino)

Review by John Morthland, No Depression, May 2001

EXCEPT FOR A brief period in the early '80s, when I now believe I was trying so hard I put a clothespin over my crap ...

Twangs can only get better

Overview by Tom Cox, The Observer, 21 October 2001

Country has gone way beyond Nashville, says Tom Cox. It's the new rebel music. ...

In His Hour Of Darkness: Gram Theft Auto and the Road Mangler Deluxe

Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 6 March 2004

IT IS THE midsummer of 1973. Two men stand together amidst a throng of mourners at the graveside of Clarence White, former Byrd and the ...

Parsons Lives in Film: Grand Theft opens in theaters tomorrow

Report and Interview by Jason Cohen, Rolling Stone, 17 June 2004

IT'S ONE OF rock & roll's great mythologies: the day Phil Kaufman stole Gram Parsons' body, keeping a promise to give his friend a fiery ...

Gram Parsons: Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels (Rhino)

Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, August 2004

WITH A BODY OF WORK scattered over a wide selection of labels, Parsons fans had until now been faced with a musical Easter egg hunt ...

The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Introduction

Book Excerpt by David Kamp, Broadway Books, February 2006

2021 AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written in 2005 and does not entirely hold up today. (But most of it does.) ...

Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons by Jessica Hundley with Polly Parsons (Thunder's Mouth Press)

Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Ugly Things, Summer 2006

LET'S TALK, BRIEFLY, about what constitutes a biography. From James Boswell writing in the late 1700s about Dr. Samuel Johnson to Hunter Davies in the ...

Emmylou Harris: Album By Album

Retrospective and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2007

FEW SINGERS are more universally revered than Emmylou Harris, whose glorious alto has serenaded us for the past 35 years. Her shimmering body of work ...

David N. Meyer: Twenty Thousand Roads – The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music

Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 14 December 2007

TO HIS CHAMPIONS, Gram Parsons was a cult-hero musical genius and the primary inventor of "country rock". But he was also a tragic figure who ...

Gene Clark remembered: "Genius and insanity hand in hand…"

Retrospective by Luke Torn, Uncut, May 2008

IT'S ANOTHER DAY in the busy life of one of the biggest bands in America. The Byrds have just recorded 'Eight Miles High', and are ...

The Ballad of Emmylou Harris

Retrospective and Interview by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 1 June 2008

At 61, Emmylou Harris is still the drop-dead-gorgeous queen of country rock. But behind closed doors the singer has sad secrets to reveal. ...

Gram Theft Parsons Revisited

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Classic Rock, March 2012

LATE IN THE evening of September 20, 1973, two drunk men clad in rhinestoned jackets and cowboy hats drove a hearse into Los Angeles Airport ...

Heartaches and Hangovers: Gram Parsons' GP

Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 2013

IT IS A FINE irony of her long career as the Queen of Country Rock that, on the night when Gram Parsons stopped by to ...

The Read: Mr Gram Parsons

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Mr. Porter, April 2015

Narcotics, Nudie Cohn suits, and the Rolling Stones – we pay homage to the fiercely talented founder of alternative country, whose untimely demise was as ...

How the Ghost of Gram Parsons haunts Alt-Country

Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, January 2018

GRAM PARSONS didn't care much for the term "country-rock". And he wasn't thrilled by some of the more candy-coated bands who were able to capitalize ...

The Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo at 50

Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, June 2018

MARKING THE 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Byrds co-founders Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman have been performing the album in its ...

Classic Rockers Firefall Drop First New Record in Two Decades

Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 30 November 2020

IT WAS, according to guitarist/singer Jock Bartley, not only one of the highlights of his musical career, but of his life. And it happened onstage ...

see also Flying Burrito Brothers

see also Emmylou Harris

see also International Submarine Band

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