Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. Each book is a work of real love--nylon Passionate, obsessive, and smart--Nylon. For those who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you'd do well to check out the series.
Исходное описание:
Оригинальное название
flying burrito brother's the gilded palace of sin (33â…“ series).pdf
Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. Each book is a work of real love--nylon Passionate, obsessive, and smart--Nylon. For those who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you'd do well to check out the series.
Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. Each book is a work of real love--nylon Passionate, obsessive, and smart--Nylon. For those who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you'd do well to check out the series.
It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch. The series is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice A brilliant serieseach one a work of real loveNME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype 2 [A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK) We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com 3 Also available in this series: 1. Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes 2. Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans 3. Harvest by Sam Inglis 4. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller 5. Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice 6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh 7. Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli 8. Electric Ladyland by John Perry 9. Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott 10. Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos 11. The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard 12. Let It Be by Steve Matteo 13. Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk 14. Aqualung by Allan Moore 15. OK Computer by Dai Griffiths 4 16. Let It Be by Colin Meloy 17. Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis 18. Exile on Main St. by Bill Janovitz 19. Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli 20. Ramones by Nicholas Rombes 21. Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno 22. Murmur by J. Niimi 23. Grace by Daphne Brooks 24. Endtroducing by Eliot Wilder 25. Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese 26. Low by Hugo Wilcken 27. Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes 28. Music from Big Pink by John Niven 29. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper 30. Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy 31. Doolittle by Ben Sisario 32. Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis 5 33. The Stone Roses by Alex Green 34. In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar 35. Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti 36. Loveless by Mike McGonigal 37. The Who Sell Out by John Dougan 38. Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth 39. Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns 40. Court and Spark by Sean Nelson 41. Use Your Illusion Vols 1 and 2 by Eric Weisbard 42. Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy 43. The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck 44. Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier 45. Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier 46. Aja by Don Breithaupt 47. Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor 48. Rid of Me by Kate Schatz 49. Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite 6 50. If Youre Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef 51. Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich 52. Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson 53. Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 54. 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel 55. Horses by Philip Shaw 56. Master of Reolity by John Damielle 57. Reign in Blood by D.X. Ferris 58. Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs 59. Gentlemen by Bob Gendron 60. Rum, Sodomy & the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen 61. The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl 62. Pink Flag by Wilson Neate 63. Radio City by Bruce Eaton 69. 69 Love Songs by L.D. Beghtol 7 The Gilded Palace of Sin One sin very naturally leans on another. Thomas Wilson Bob Proehl 8 9 2008 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com 33third.blogspot.com Copyright 2008 by Bob Proehl All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents. Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer waste recycled paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Proehl, Bob. The Gilded Palace of Sin / Bob Proehl. p. cm. -- (33 1/3) Includes bibliographical references. eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-4349-5 1. Flying Burrito Bros. Gilded Palace of Sin. 2. Flying Burrito Bros. I. Title. II. Series. 10 ML421.F63P76 2008 782.420922--dc22 2008045099 11 12 13 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Envy: Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1. Vanity: Cosmic American Music 2. Sloth: Burrito Manor Fathers 3. Vanity: Nudies Rodeo Tailors 4. Sloth: Hot Burrito 5. Lust: Christines Tune 6. Avarice: Sin City 7. Lust: Dark End of the Street 8. Wrath: My Uncle Sons 9. Gluttony: The Train Song 10. Envy: Let It Bleed 11. Avarice: Burrito Deluxe Holy Ghosts 12. Wrath: Under My Thumb Epilogue Gluttony: Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome? 14 Bibliography 15 16 Acknowledgments With thanks to Casey, Gregg, Khaled, Luke, Melanie, and Shaianne for reading it, Steve for alleviating some of my guitar-related ignorance, Eryn for listening to me blather on about it, and Sarah for being awake three hours later than anyone on the East Coast. The next one will be for my mom, but this one is for my dad. 17 18 Prologue Envy: Sweetheart of the Rodeo Roger McGuinn had gotten his band back. It was McGuinn whod started the Byrds off, after all. Gene Clark was between jobs and between sounds when he stumbled upon McGuinn playing Beatles covers at the Troubador in LA, a bold move in a club devoted to folk. And David Crosby was essentially a Hollywood brat and petty criminal when he joined the duo singing in a stairwell at the Troub months later. The trio had mild success doing folk songs as the Jet Set, but McGuinn had given the band its name and, between his spiraling Rickenbacker 12-string and his lilting tenor rising out of the harmonies to take the lead on Mr. Tambourine Man, its signature sound. Bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke were brought on almost as hired help, turning the folk trio into a real band. But as the Byrds expanded the folk rock sound theyd topped the charts with in 1965, McGuinn found himself shouldered out of the spotlight by Gene Clark, a naturally stronger songwriter and singer, and David Crosby, a dynamic personality with a penchant for bullying. 1 Clarks departure for personal reasons left McGuinn and Crosby to grapple for control of the band until midway through the 1967 sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers, when McGuinn and Chris Hillman drove up to Laurel Canyon and informed David Crosby he was out of the band. Crosbys firing and the resignation of drummer Michael Clarke left McGuinn and the shy, soft-spoken Hillman as the only 19 members of the original quintet. McGuinn entered 1968 at the helm of one of the biggest bands in America, with a critical darling of a record ready to be released and a sweeping vision of the Byrds next step. My original idea for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, McGuinn would later explain, was to do a double album, a chronological album, starting with old-timey musicnot bluegrass, but pre-bluegrass, dulcimers and nasal Appalachian stuff. Then get into the advanced 1930s version of it, and move it up to modern country, the forties and fifties, with steel guitar and pedal steel guitardo the evolution of that kind of music. Then cut it there and bring it up into electronic music and a kind of space music, and going into futuristic music. To bring this vision to life, McGuinn planned to employ a small army of session players. Different Byrds for different eras, revolving around the two remaining members, McGuinn and Hillman. The pair began scouring the California scene for players, picking up Hillmans cousin Kevin Kelley on drums. McGuinn, head still full of the experimental jazz sounds that informed Eight Miles High, wanted a pianist who could cover jazz and blues material. The Byrds ended up with Gram Parsons. I think it was back in late 1967 when I first met him, said Hillman. Id heard about this new kid in town who was writing and singing country songs, but I hadnt paid much attention until somebody explained the International Submarine Band to me. Parsons International Submarine Band had just recorded their first album, Safe at Home, for Lee Hazlewoods new label. Young, hip guys playing 20 country music, Hillman described the album. I liked it. Actually, it was an old idea of mine. And to think some young upstart had beaten me to the punch. He brought the 21-year-old Parsons into a Byrds rehearsal. Parsons faked his way through a handful of blues tunes and an unwitting McGuinn hired him on the spot. We hired a piano player and he turned out to be Parsons, a monster in sheeps clothing, McGuinn lamented later. And he exploded out of his sheeps clothing. God! Its George Jones! In a sequined suit! 2 The Byrds new hire turned out to be an outspoken ally for the generally quiet and unassuming Chris Hillman. A vet of the California bluegrass scene, Hillman had been trying to tug the Byrds into country since the beginning, meeting with resistance from McGuinn and Crosby. But the combined influence of Parsons and Hillman was enough to move the band in a country direction, musically and physically. The band spent February rehearsing Louvin Brothers tunes alongside Dylan numbers. McGuinn had chosen two songs from Dylans bootlegged Basement Tapes to book-end the album, and they filled in the middle with songs by Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers and Woody Guthrie. Parsons wrote two songs for the album, the forward-looking One Hundred Years from Now and the backward-looking Hickory Wind, and brought in a song by Stax artist William Bell, You Dont Miss Your Water that had been recorded by Bell and Otis Redding. Parsons and Hillman worked it over into a country tune with Parsons on lead vocals. In fact, Parsons was taking lead vocals on half the albums tracks, 21 and McGuinn hadnt contributed a single original song. In March they packed up for a weeks worth of recording sessions in Nashville, including an appearance at the Grand Ole Opry. 3 Even with fresh haircuts and muted versions of their usual hippie attire, the Byrds were clearly not welcome at the staunchly traditional Opry. The crowd welcomed them with taunts of tweet tweet and Cut your hair! but warmed a little after a rendition of Merle Haggards Sing Me Back Home. By the time host Tompall Glaser announced theyd be following it with Life in Prison, another Haggard classic, the Opry audience was ready to give these freaks a chance. Amid the applause, Gram Parsons seized the mic. Were not going to do that tonight, he informed the audience. Were going to do a song for my grandmother who used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry with me when I was little. Its a song I wrote called Hickory Wind. Powerless to stop this unauthorized change of programming, Tompall Glaser stormed off the stage. In the wings, country legend Roy Acuff fumed. Fuzzy from the joint the Byrds had shared backstage, McGuinn hit the opening chords and looked on at irrefutable evidence: Gram Parsons had hijacked his band. After returning to LA to finish recording Sweetheart, the Byrds traveled to London for a handful of shows. Parsons wanted to take the entire Nashville session band along, including the bulky pedal steel, but McGuinn and Hillman 22 balked at the cost. After one of the shows at Middle Eartha hazy psychedelic club in a Covent Garden basement that played host to bands like Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, and the Pretty ThingsMcGuinns friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards led the Byrds on a trek to Stonehenge, accompanied by a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. As the bottle went around, McGuinn explained that on the advice of South African singer, Miriam Makeba, 4 theyd decided to tour South Africa to witness apartheid for themselves. McGuinn had been assured theyd be playing for integrated audiences. Equal parts awed by the Stones and nervous about the racial politics of playing in South Africa, Gram Parsons approached Keith Richards with his doubts about the upcoming tour. We wouldnt go, Richards flatly replied. Whether it was a heartfelt belief, a growing fear of flying, a schoolboy crush on the Stones, or pure petulance that certain of his demands regarding the tour had not been met, Parsons never showed up at the airport. McGuinn fired him on the spot and Hillman, who thought hed found an ally in the young upstart, was livid. The Byrds announced they were looking for a new guitarist and, leaving Parsons with the Stones, departed from Heathrow for Johannesburg as a three piece. The tour was disastrous. The band arrived to learn they were playing to segregated audiences, an entirely black audience one night, an entirely white audience the next, and returned to Europe to find themselves vilified in the European press, attacked as racists and hypocrites. Honestly hurt by the accusations, McGuinn nearly suffered a nervous breakdown; 23 the band sustained serious financial losses of a questionable nature, attributable to their new business manager, Larry Spector, who had recently been given access to the bands accounts. They returned to LA physically drained, emotionally damaged, and mentally exhausted. Columbia Records released Sweetheart of the Rodeo in August 1968 to poor commercial and critical response. Having already attempted to put the album on country stations 5 and unable to get the album played on rock radio stations, Columbia ran a series of radio spots featuring song clips from the record. Over the brief clips, a couple argued whether or not this was, in fact, the Byrds. For their latest Columbia album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, assured the announcer at the ads conclusion, the Byrds take eleven trips to the country. Why not fly with them? With virtually no radio presence, the albums sales languished and were made even worse by the reaction within the rock community, who called them out not on the choice of material, but on the execution. The Byrds do not sound like Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, wrote a Rolling Stone reviewer. Theyre not that good. In fact, they were very good, approaching country music with skill and a certain 5 An early attempt had gone horribly, with noted country DJ Ralph Emery flat-out refusing to play the bands music during an in-studio appearance by the Byrds. Parsons and McGuinn ridiculed Emery in the song Drug Store Truck Driving Man, which essentially labeled Emery an ignorant, racist hick. level of critical distance. But it was a cold precision, producing an album that sounded like clinical country. Their 24 studied approach resulted in a kind of sterility that bordered on satire. But then, according to Gram Parsons, the album Columbia put out hadnt been the album hed worked on. He erased them and did the vocals himself and fucked them up, he complained when he heard the finished product. Parsons lead vocals had been all but eliminated, with only Hickory Wind remaining. Theres a story behind ita couple, actually. When the International Submarine Band sank, it left a collection of legal troubles in its wake, including a contract giving Lee Hazlewood Industries the rights to Parsons vocals. According to the official story from McGuinn and Columbia, LHI threatened to sue Columbia if they used the vocal tracks, forcing McGuinn to overdub The Christian Life, Life in Prison, One Hundred Years from Now, and Youre Still on My Mind with an awkward imitation of Parsons southern drawl. Roger is definitely putting on an affected southern accent on that album, commented Hillman. I think he approached it like an acting job, although not a good acting job. Its funny, its silly. At the last moment, a studio rep from Columbia rushed into the studio, waving a settlement in the air and saving Hickory Wind from oblivion, preserving at least a bit of Parsons presence on the album. Sweetheart producer Gary Usher told it differently. Those legal problems were resolved once we were in Nashville, he revealed in a 1981 interview. Whoever sang the leads on Sweetheart of the Rodeo did so because thats how we wanted to slice the album up. McGuinn was edgy because Parsons 25 was getting a little bit too much out of this whole thing. You dont just take a hit group and interject a new singer for no reason. The album had just the exact amount of Gram Parsons that McGuinn, Hillman and I wanted. The studio tapes that surfaced on Columbias Byrds box set some 20.years later, which feature clear takes of Parsons vocals on all the overdubbed songs, back up Ushers version of events. Lee Hazlewood wasnt enough of a heavyweight 6 to intimidate Columbia Records into substantially altering an album by one of their flagship bands. More likely, McGuinn saw an opportunity to grab the wheel and he took it, ensuring the Byrds wouldnt become the backing band for a usurping George Jones in a sequined suit. In the end, the Byrds lowest selling album to date bore few traces of Gram Parsons six-month tenure with the band. Two months later, burned out from the South Africa debacle and furious at manager Larry Spectors handling of the bands finances, Chris Hillman quit the Byrds, the last of the original quintet to leave. And Roger McGuinn had gotten his band back. 26 27 1 Vanity: Cosmic American Music You should dream more.reality in our century is not something to be faced. Graham Greene Its 1956 in Waycross, Georgia, and a young boy is playing Elvis on his front stoop. Hes been practicing the moves since he saw Presley earlier that year, the sneering lip and jittering legs. Despite ears like open doors on a Cadillac, the boys Buddha-like cheeks and slicked-back hair make for a passable approximation of the Sun Records star. With the familys brand new hi-fi cranking out the latest Elvis 45s and the neighborhood kids gathered around, the boy is the star of the show. Its 1973 in Joshua Tree Park, California, and he is not breathing. What was once baby fat has returned as the unhealthy bloat of a longtime drinker. His female companion, experienced in dealing with junkies, shoves ice cubes up his ass to revive him. He springs back to life, grinning weakly and asking the woman what she plans to do with him now that shes got his pants off. Its 1958 in Winter Haven, Florida, and the boy is spending Christmas at his grandparents estate. His mothers family is one of the richest citrus producers in Florida, and it has always been clear to the boy that he can have whatever he 28 wants. Back home in Waycross, his father, exiled to one of the family businesss satellite operations and left alone on Christmas Eve, shoots himself in the head. He leaves no note and the death is ruled accidental. Its 1971 in the south of France, and the young man has brought his new wife to honeymoon at Keith Richards estate at Nellcote. In the basement of a sprawling villa, the Rolling Stones are laying down recordings that will become Exile on Main Street. The summer is a haze of drugs, humidity, and personal entanglements. He spends hours at the piano with Richards, banging out songs by Buck Owens, George Jones, and Hank Williams. The two look like boys at summer camp, both young and healthy-looking. Maybe he floats into the basement in the middle of the night while the tapes are rolling, lending his voice to one of the raucous singalongs that punctuate the album. Maybe he is buried deep in the mix of Sweet Virginia. He roams the house, high on other peoples drugs, nodding out in odd places. Mick Jagger, who can barely get studio time out of Keith, is giving the young man dirty looks. Anita Pallenberg, Keiths girlfriend and undisputed lady of the manor, makes a call to friends in Ireland, singer Donovan and his wife. Could you please take Gram? Hes out of his head and needs to be with somebody. Its 1964 in Winter Haven, Florida, and a new nightclub has opened up in town. Located in an old warehouse and done up with a medieval theme, the Derry Down is owned and operated by Bob Parsons, the boys new stepfather, a blatant attempt to buy the boys love using his own mothers money. The boy knows this but chooses not to care. His band, the Shilos have just come back from a stay in the folk Mecca 29 of Greenwich Village and are confident they can be the next Kingston Trio. They are sharply dressed, four likely lads. Its 1973 in Los Angeles, and the young man is standing on the outer edge of a funeral. They are burying Clarence White, a former member of the Byrds who was hit by a car unloading gear at a gig just days before. The young man and his friend Phil Kaufman have shown up drunk, and as the preacher talks, the young man says to his friend, Man, if I go first, dont let them put me in the ground like that. Take my body out to the desert and burn it. Kaufman agrees, takes another swig out of a concealed bottle. As the service ends, the young man begins singing, softly at first, then rising, joined by the other mourners, an old country spiritual called Farther Along. Its 1965 in Jacksonville, Florida, and the young man is graduating from high school. Before the commencement ceremony, someone approaches him with news. The young mans mother has died of alcohol poisoning in a hospital bed, miles away. Given the choice, he opts to go on with the ceremony, telling no one, not even his younger sister, what has happened. By the end of the summer, hell be a Harvard man. Its 1973 in Joshua Tree Park, California, and two campers have reported a large log burning on a rock in the park. The rangers investigate. Its not a log, but a smoldering coffin, stolen from the airport the day before, with a green Western Airlines body bag lying beside it. In the coffin is the body of an overdose victim, dead at 26, only three weeks after finishing his second solo album. The albums cover image and title are changed to a soft-focus close up of the young 30 mans face on a field of blue. In the upper-right corner in small white text: Grievous Angel. Its 1968 in Los Angeles, and a young man is playing Elvis in roughneck honkytonks. Bedroom eyes and cowboy swagger, decked out in a fire engine red Nudie suit spotted with sequined yellow submarines, he frequents the open showcases, his appearance just begging for a confrontation with the regulars. The first couple of times I nearly got killed, Gram Parsons told it later. There I was in my satin bellbottoms and the people couldnt believe it. I got up on stage and sang and when I got off, a guy said to me, I want you to meet my five brothers. We were going to kick your ass, but you can sing real good, so well buy you a drink instead. Keith Richards has similar memories of watching Gram on the LA country circuit. I remember being in the Palomino club in LA and, yknow, hardened old peroxide waitresses whod been there for yonks, tears streaming down their eyes while theyre listening to Gram play. 7 Gram Parsons was 21 and imagined he was about to change the world. Dropping out of Harvard after only a year, hed formed the International Submarine Band with some friends in Boston. Taking their name from an acid-fueled discussion of a Little Rascals episode, the bands shows included elements of country, soul, and R&B. Striking out in Boston, the band relocated to a house in the Bronx, paid for by money from Parsons considerable trust fund, his share of his 31 grandfathers $28 million citrus empire. Parsons had taken a little time away to check out Los Angeles and fell in love, first and foremost, with a blonde, 8 but also with LA as a city and a scene. New York was hardly a hot bed of music in 1967, and within a couple days in LA, Parsons had met musicians, movie stars, and a cross section of the California social set. 9 He called up his band mates and told them California was where they needed to be, so the band shipped themselves out West. The International Submarine Band struggled to find gigs, eventually landing a recording contract with Lee Hazlewood by promising more of a pure country sound, 10 rather than the country/R&B hybrid theyd been playing. The decision to excise R&B from the repertoire split the band, leading to the departure of bassist and co-founder Ian Dunlop. Meanwhile, Parsons was schlepping from one showcase to another, losing out to wheelchair-bound Johnny Cash impersonators and yodeling grandmas, risking his neck for the approval of truckers and waitresses. The offer to join the Byrds came along immediately after the Sub Band had finished cutting their first album, Safe at Home, and Parsons was quick to grab the next rung up on the ladder. He was determined to show the hippie kids that country music was vital, and show country audiences that a California longhair could play it just as well as anyone. By 1968, hed blown through two bands trying to bring country music to the masses. Close listening to Safe at Home and Sweetheart of the Rodeo show them not as the country rock innovations theyve been labeled in retrospect, but as earnest, straightforward country albums, loyal and reverential to the tradition that spawned them. The only innovation was the 32 people playing on them, and ultimately, that was why the albums failed. The Byrds almost hostile reception at the Grand Ole Opry and the Byrds ridicule at the hands of country DJ Ralph Emery proved that the country audience was not ready to open the door for a scenester like Parsons. And the abysmal sales of Sweetheart within the rock audience proved that the LA scene was not ready to embrace a style of music whose most popular practitioners held the hippie movement in obvious contempt. Safe at Home and Sweetheart of the Rodeo made for opening arguments, but Parsons had yet to make his case. While hanging with Keith Richards in England after leaving the Byrds, Parsons was starting to get other ideas, leaning away from pure country towards something else. I always had this dream about doing stuff in England, Parsons told an interviewer, starting a country band in England, cause England is so unjaded that way, theyre so open minded about it, really. Theyre so open minded theyre ignorant. They dont know. Maybe its just a dream but it seems like the perfect place to start a country music scene. Only the musicians cant support it. Unfortunately. So you had to take over American musicians and it costs a whole lot of bread. He started to believe that he could pioneer a form of music that was insurgent and new, which demonstrates part of the problem with Gram right off: pioneer isnt really a title you get to give yourself, and it wasnt till long after he was gone that anyone credited Gram Parsons as one of the pioneers of country rock. He hated the term country rock, by the way, referring to the genre in 1973 as a plastic dry fuck. 33 11 Parsons tried a list of names to describe this new genremountain gospel; white soulbut the one that seemed to get the most press was the most overstated. Gram Parsons was going to invent a Cosmic American Music. It was more than hippies playing Merle Haggard at the Opry, although that was part of it. It was more than the inescapable bathos of George Jones, gussied up in a rhinestone suit at the Whisky-a-Go-Go. It grew from the lessons of Ray Charless landmark efforts, Modem Sounds in Country and Western and Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues, 12 two albums that demonstrated the artists ability to take the best parts of country music, its raw emotional content, the elegance and simplicity of songwriting, and personalize them through translation to a foreign medium and aesthetic. Charles dove into his native Southern music as if there were never racial boundaries between country and soul, layering Hank Williams and Patsy Cline with lush strings, backing choirs, and his own soulful vocals. Cosmic American Music would embrace Southern music by black and white performers and drag it into the multicolored lights of the California psychedelic scene. It would be Buck Owens singing Aretha Franklin songs, on acid and plugged in, barreling forward on a Tennessee two-beat and sprawling out in fuzzbox and wah-wah. During Parsons sabbatical in England, everything was happening in California. The slow dissolution of the Byrds and the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, bands with too many front-men for their own good, had left LA teeming with available talent. Lineups formed, dissolved, and reformed as musicians caromed off one another. Assessments of the homefront from 34 former International Submarine Band bassist Chris Ethridge convinced Parsons that LA was the only place to be. Arriving in August 1968 just as Sweetheart was hitting record stores, Parsons talked extensively with Richie Furay from Buffalo Springfield about starting up a band, but after failing to agree on a lineup, the two decided to strike out separately. 13 While Parsons and Ethridge were trying to put a new band together, Chris Hillman was recovering from a season in hell with the Byrds in South Africa. McGuinn and I in hindsight were fools to do that tour, Hillman said, but we were professional. Both of us were probably the two most professional out of the original five guys. We felt, Well, we have a contractwed better go. And we were assured, Oh, youll play for black and white audiences, which was not true. And we shouldnt have gone. Adding to the stress of the South Africa experience and the vitriolic backlash against the Byrds in the European press, mysterious expenses incurred by the band under the questionable management of Larry Spector depleted the bands accounts to almost nothing. Finally fed up, Hillman quit the Byrds not long after they returned to the States. It didnt take Parsons long to track down his former bandmate. Bearing marijuana and a bass player, Parsons went to visit Hillman at his home just outside LA. Hillman was still justifiably angry over the way Parsons had left the Byrds in the lurch, but the inclusion of Chris Ethridge on bass would 35 allow Hillman to step forward on guitar for the first time since hed left the Hillmen to join the Byrds in 1965. The opportunity was too much to pass up. I had been talking with Chris Ethridge about starting a group, a stoned Parsons said in a 1971 radio interview. And finally Chris Hillman came around and said, Look, Im sorry, I didnt want to go to South Africa either. It was the wrong thing to do. I think Ill quit the Byrds and join you guys. I said, Fine. Two guys named Chris in the band. Why not? In truth, it was Parsons and not Hillman who did the apologizing, and Hillman gave a different, more accurate version of the pairs reconciliation. I forgave him, and we started anew. I was so stifled, I felt asleepI needed stimulation. Gram kind of came to me, hat in hand, and said, Im sorry that I did that. We made up, and we embarked on a brand new journey. With Hillman on board, the new band was coalescing quickly, which was good, because Parsons had been telling Melody Maker about the band since the moment hed gotten back to LA. 14 The groups already formed, although I cant say too much about it, Parsons told the magazine. Its basically a southern soul group playing country and gospel-oriented music with a steel guitar. All they needed was the steel player Parsons had promised. And, of course, a name. After striking out with a couple 36 Nashville pedal steel players Parsons had been interested in, they settled on their third choice, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, an animator on the Gumby television show. 15 Older than Parsons, Hillman, and Ethridge by a good eight years, Kleinow was a fixture on the LA country scene and had played with the Byrds during some of the post-Sweetheart shows in California. After being approached by Hillman and Parsons at the Palomino, Kleinow agreed to join the fledgling band. Already equipped with three Byrds or pseudo-Byrds, they tried to recruit two more. Clarence White and Gene Parsons (no relation) had been signed on to the Byrds fulltime after the South African tour as a guitarist and drummer, respectively, but both opted not to join the group of McGuinns castoffs. Even with no official drummer, the boys decided the lineup was complete. Finding a name proved to be even easier. Founding International Submarine Band member Ian Dunlop, whod help come up with the bands original name and had followed Parsons out to LA, left the Submarine Band before the Safe at Home sessions and formed a loose collective of musicians playing soul music along with country. Determined to actively avoid commercial success, Dunlop chose a ridiculous and unmarketable name: the Flying Burrito Brothers. The line-up included guitarist Barry Tashian and sax player Bobby Keyes, who would go on to record with the Rolling Stones. Parsons had actually opened for the band at their debut gig. Once it was apparent that Safe at Home was the Sub Bands swan song, Chris Ethridge, whod replaced Dunlop as the Sub Bands bassist for the recordings, joined up with the original Burritos. But the band had no interest in being popular, shunning LAs music industry and refusing to sign to a label. After being recognized by a fan on the streets of LA, Dunlop 37 decided the band was getting too big and moved back to New York City, leaving Ethridge without a band and the Flying Burrito Brothers moniker vacant. 16 I stole it from him, Parsons practically giggled later. Without pausing to contact Dunlop, Parsons, Hillman, and their new band picked up the name and ran with it. 38 39 2 Sloth: Burrito Manor Lazier than a toad, Ive gotten by without lifting a finger: Ive lived everywhere. Arthur Rimbaud Not everyone gets his musical career subsidized by a trust fund. Chris Hillman had been in love with music since he first picked up an instrument. But unlike Gram Parsons, he also depended on it to pay the rent. Born and raised in San Diego, Hillman started working on the LA country scene as a teenager, joining the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers in the early sixties and taking a job as the mandolin player for the Golden State Boys soon after. The San Francisco scene had a strong base in country and blue-grass, 17 but LAs music scene was dominated by folk. Outside a couple clubs like the Palamino and the Ace of Hearts out in Industry, it was tough to get work as a country band. The Golden State Boys would often play under different names to get multiple bookings at the same venue, eventually settling on the Hillmen. [The Golden State Boys] were my window on authenticity, said Hillman. They came right out of the South. I was a middle-class white kid from Southern California, a surfer, and Id never been around people from the South before. We would play all these weird clubs in California that were really 40 there for all the transplanted Southerners, who really would have been more at home in Alabama. In an effort to break into more popular and lucrative folk-oriented venues like the Troubador, the Hillmen started including renditions of early Bob Dylan songs like When the Ship Comes in and Farewell in their repertoire. This may seem commonplace today, because Dylans songs have been translated into every genre from reggae to death metal, but in 1964 Dylans material only made the rounds on the folk circuit. The Dylan covers came at the suggestion of Hillmans friend, Jim Dickson, who was managing a folk trio called the Jet Set. While the Hillmen were trying to break into LAs folk scene, the Jet Set was ready to break out of it. In 1965, Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark burst out of a screening of A Hard Days Night changed men. They wanted to turn their backs on the sounds of the Kingston Trio and expand their folk sound into Beatleseque pop. It was Dickson who brought them the tools to do it. The first was a demo of Mr. Tambourine Man. The second was Chris Hillman. Chris was playing mandolin at the time with a group called the Greengrass Group, I think, remembered Roger McGuinn. It was a horrible, watered-down, Disneyland kind of version of bluegrass. Chris was just in it for a steady $100 a week and all the beer you could drink at the club or whatever. So that was it. With the addition of Michael Clarke on drums and a new name from McGuinn, the Byrds were formed and Hillman left 41 country music and the Golden State Boys behind to stand quietly in the background of one of the most commercially successful American bands of the sixties. He may not have been on board aesthetically, but Hillman knew a solid meal ticket when he saw one. I was always trying to get the band to play country songs, Hillman insisted, but David Crosby always objected. Wed be driving in the car and hed go on and on about the sitarhow it was unique, the way it used sliding scales, and had no frets. Id say, Listen to this, and hit the radio dial until I found a Nashville station and a steel guitar. And Crosby would shout, I hate that, I hate that corny shit. Outside of a Porter Wagoner song recorded for an early Byrds album, the hints of a country influence on Younger than Yesterday and production work on a couple tracks by former Hillmen the Gosdin Brothers, Hillman managed to ignore the country itch for three years, until Gram Parsons dropped a Buck Owens tune into his audition for the Byrds. I suppose I convinced the Byrds that they should be doing country music instead of trying to write their own Bob Dylan material, claimed Parsons. I guess Chris had been trying to say something like that all along but wasnt sure that it wouldnt wreck his whole life, that hed be out of money and the Byrds would be out of a job. After a while he saw that you could make bread at country music and the Byrds came to be more of a millstone around his neck than anything else. Burrito Manor, a structure with a name as overblown as the Gilded Palace of Sin, was a bachelor pad up on Desoto Ave. in Reseda, California. Near enough to the beach for surfing, 42 near enough to downtown LA for hitting the clubs, the Manor served as the shared residence of the reunited Hillman and Parsons through the end of 1968. Since Parsons was already renting out an apartment for his estranged girlfriend Nancy Ross and their daughter, Polly, it was Hillmans name on the lease, but both men called it home. In addition to the split with the Byrds, Hillman was in the process of getting divorced and Parsons had recently split with his girlfriend. Burrito Manor was a bachelor pad in every sense. Hillman talked of the two men taking solace in each others friendship during the months at Burrito Manor, but also referred to the pairs lifestyle as the physical abuse program. Booze, drugs, and all-night poker games were par for the course and the Manor played host to a bevy of women, many of whom showed up as characters, performers, or both on Gilded Palace of Sin. Self-proclaimed Number One Burrito fans Miss Mercy and Miss Pamela, supergroupies of the LA scene, were frequent visitors. Off we went to the outskirts of town into the San Fernando Valley, Miss Mercy recalled of their first trip to Burrito Manor. We drove up to a modern cowboy ranch with wagon wheels paving the driveway. We entered the house and shy Chris Hillman and the cat in the Nudie suit greeted us with a grocery bag full of grass. Between the women, the drugs, and the nights out performing and carousing, its a wonder they got anything done. In fact, Parsons would spend most of his short life in situations much like this, sharing houses with talented musicians like Keith Richards, Rick Gretch of Blind Faith, and Ian 43 Dunlop, doing little but getting high, getting laid, and occasionally fucking around on piano or guitar to no particular end. But while Hillman and Parsons were free to raise hell by night, Hillman kept them on a strict regimen during the day. Sometimes Parsons would wander downstairs late in the morning to find Hillman already up and working on a song. Snapping out of his hangover daze, Parsons would quickly join in. A song written in the morning meant the afternoon was free for surfing, smoking pot, or just lazing around. Within weeks, the pair had written the better part of the album. Songs sprung out of everything around them: a girl Chris had met at the Troubador; a notice from the draft board; former managers and former groupies; a Village Voice piece; or Parsons ostentatious new Harley. They played off each other brilliantly, practically finishing one anothers thoughts. By the time a song was finished, they could remember whod brought the original idea to the table, but beyond that it was nearly impossible to discern whod contributed which snippet of melody or lyrics. With the songs more or less written, Parsons and Hillman began to work out the close harmonies that would become one of the albums sonic trademarks, delivered in the simple but precise style of the Everly Brothers rather than the more traditional and more vocally acrobatic shaped-note harmonies of the Louvin Brothers and the Carter Family. Chris Ethridge and Sneaky Pete began to flesh out the skeletal arrangements with bass and pedal steel. While the songs were taking shape, Parsons was already sniffing around LA for a record deal. Columbia Records wanted nothing to do with the duo thatd effectively destroyed the Byrds as a commercial entity, but Reprise, a 44 division of Warner Brothers Records, took interest when they heard Keith Richards was all set to produce the album. The rumor came, of course, from Parsons. I think thats what Gram wanted, short of being asked to join the Stones, said Hillman, But I cant remember any promise from Keith, or even any discussion with him. Nevertheless, Parsons was spreading the rumor about Richards around town. Joan Baez had scored a successful single with Parsons Hickory Wind and, as Chris Ethridge pointed out, We had more Byrds than the Byrds did. Reprise, whose stable of artists included bands like Captain Beefheart and Jethro Tull, would have been a perfect fit for a somewhat out-there band like the Flying Burrito Brothers, but the boys ended up signing to A&M Records, a largely adult contemporary label, wooed by the promise of a bunch of new equipment. They showed us some toys or something, Parsons would contemptuously say later. But A&M wanted the Flying Burrito Brothers in the studio right away, and Parsons and Hillman were sitting on a stack of freshly written songs, some of the best either of them would ever write. Just weeks after shacking up together at Burrito Manor and only months after a falling out that should have ended their friendship, Hillman and Parsons had a record deal, complete with an advance, new gear, and studio time. The Flying Burrito Brothers were almost set to go into the studio; the band had just one more stop to make, at a little shop on Lankershim Boulevard. 45 Fathers They couldnt have been more different. One had everything hed even think to want handed to him, every desire fulfilled almost before he could think it. When hed decided he might want to try music, a music room appeared in the house in Winter Haven, materialized out of his familys money and equipped with any instrument he might need. When he started a folk band, an all-ages nightclub appeared downtown for him and his band to headline at. He attended Harvard on middling grades, paid for a NYC flophouse out of his trust fund, and moved to California with the tab already paid on a lifetime of musical freedom. The other took his first job at 15. Granted, it was a teenagers dream job: a working musician. He diligently parlayed it into a career. At the age of 20, he sold out the bluegrass hed been playing all his life and joined the Byrds, not because he preferred it, but because it paid the bills. Music was his life, but it was also his job, and pushing the envelope was fine as long as the checks kept coming in. The music brought them together, of course. Both men shared a deep, abiding love for the country music theyd been raised on. While other folks in LAs hippie scene viewed country as quaint and hokey, they felt it pulsing in their brains, heating in their blood. Both Hillman and Parsons lost their fathers at a young age, both had the course of their lives violently altered by that loss. From that point on, the dominating male voices in both their lives would come from their radios and record players: the stoic baritone of Johnny Cash for moral guidance, 46 the playful tenor of Buck Owens for recreation, the trembling high lonesome sound of George Jones for emotional comfort. For that brief moment, those few months in a house in Reseda, two fatherless boys, adopted sons of country music, made brothers of each other. 47 48 3 Vanity: Nudies Rodeo Tailors The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. -William Blake Born into a middle-class Jewish family in the highly anti-Semitic Russia of 1902, little Nutya Kotlyrenko was shipped off to America at the age of eleven, as soon as the familys finances allowed. At Ellis Island, he took the Americanized surname his brother and cousins had already adopted, Cohn, and unable to write or spell his first name, he left Ellis Island with a botched version of it: Nudie. I guess that man never knew what a favor he did by giving me that name, Nudie wrote later in his life, but its been my trademark for years. People are always impressed by an unusual name, and Nudie has suited me just fine. Nudie Cohn grew up poor in New York Citys garment district, apprenticing under tailors and dressmakers while dreaming of a career in music or the movies. After years of traveling the United States working odd jobs, he wound up back in New York City making g-strings and burlesque costumes for the strippers in Times Square at a shop called Nudies for the Ladies. After a number of business ventures and financial hardships, the Russian immigrant who dreamed of being a singin cowboy moved out to the San Fernando Valley along with his 49 wife, Bobbie, operating a small, tailoring business out of their garage. Unable to afford a decent sewing machine or fabric to work on his own designs, Nudie decided in 1947 that country vocalist Tex Williams would be his springboard into the burgeoning field of cowboy costuming. The venture got off to a rough start. Tex Williams could hardly afford to deck his eight-piece Western Caravan out in new custom-made suits. But after a long talk, the charismatic Nudie convinced Williams to sell his horse and saddle to front money for the suits. Armed with a new sewing machine and a supply of fabric bought on credit, Nudie made plans to get the nine musicians together for a measuring. When we all got together though, we got to drinking, Nudie told it later. I had a friend with me to help take the measurements, but he was half drunk and so was I. Between us, we made one whole drunk, and boy was he a drunk! The band was pretty juiced too and nobody would stand still properly for the measurements. It was a mess, but we sure had a great time. I got home and started cutting out the suits. The results were disastrously ill-fitting and with only days before Tex and his Western Caravan were scheduled to appear at the Riverside Rancho, Nudie and Bobbie worked non-stop to turn another batch of credit-bought cloth into nine perfect-fitting white western suits, hand stitched with prominently displayed Ws on the yokes. The show at the Rancho was a remarkable success and the band made enough to pay Nudie the full $850 for the set of suits. Although it would remain a garage operation for the next three years, Nudies Rodeo Tailors was officially born. 50 The cowboy look hadnt always been in with the country set. Most early country performers hailed from the Southeast and didnt have much trade in cattle herding. Plain plaid shirt and overalls for the boys and simple calico dresses for the girls were standard fare at the Grand Ole Opry and likeminded country stages from Chicago to Shreveport, while the dapper cowboy duds of dudes like silent film icon Tom Mix were largely limited to the West Coast. It wasnt until two Eastern European immigrants, Nathan Turk operating in California and Bernard Rodeo Ben Lichtenstein in Philadelphia, began adorning Western wear with elaborate embroidery inspired by the traditional costumes of Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary that Western clothing became haute couture throughout the country music community. The craze was led largely by singin cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but soon a sharp tailored western suit was a sign of status on any country stage and rodeo wear was big business. When Nudie Cohn opened up shop in 1947, he was unarguably small time. Turk and Rodeo Ben were running large operations, employing dozens, and beginning to experiment with manufacturing. 18 With the vocal support of his first customer, Tex Williams, Nudies operation grew by underselling and out-charming the competition. A hand-tailored Turk shirt would run a performer nearly $60, while Nudie would do one up for you for $19. He was a constant presence at country shows and honkytonks, and the Cohns garage became a stopping point and meeting place for cowboy personalities from Pee Wee King to John Wayne. By 1950, Nudie had moved into his first California storefront and managed to rope two of the biggest singing cowboys in the business, Roy Rogers and 51 Gene Autry, away from Turk and Rodeo Ben, making them rhinestone-studded Nudie customers for life. Nudie took to heart the drug dealers credo: Give them the first taste for free and keep them coming back. Scores of country musicians remember Nudie helping them out at low points in their careers. Starting out on small Southern stages in the early forties, Alabama-born Hank Williams was one of the few Southern country artists who adopted the Western style, although he could only afford beat up Stetson hats and ill-fitting second-hand shirts. In 1948, when Nudie met Hank at the Louisiana Hayride, a country radio show out of Shreveport, he was immediately impressed with the young musician. I knew he wanted one of my suits real bad, Nudie said of Hank, but he was too proud to ask me to make him a deal. I liked that. So I decided that I would make him a real special suit and send it to him as a gift and thats just what I did. Hank was thrilled to pieces when he received that suit in the mail. Of course, once Hank hit the big time he wouldnt wear anything but Nudie suits. Williams even wore his most famous Nudie, a white drape-style suit with music notes embroidered in black on the lapels, back and sleeves, to his very last gig: the King of Country Music was buried in it at the age of 29. 19 Nudies style was completely over the top. Turk and Rodeo Ben were primarily concerned with overall design, centering on contrasting piping and nuanced embroideries of westernthemed 52 images (horses, pistols, and saddles along with the Eastern European derived use of decorative floral patterns), employing showier elements like rhinestone and fringe only sparingly. In contrast, Nudies compositions were almost hallucinogenic. With imagery personalized to the performer 20 and rhinestones encrusting the embroidery and often extending onto the fringe that trimmed sleeves, yokes, and bibs, the suits were amazing show pieces, performances unto themselves. 21 Although not all that Western in style, Nudies most famous creation remains the Liberace-inspired 14-karat gold lam pseudotuxedo he made for Elvis in 1957. The suit, which graces the cover of 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Cant Be Wrong 22 made its debut at a show in Chicago and featured almost 10,000 rhinestones, all set by hand. According to Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick, What stood out most for the Colonel [Elviss manager, Tom Parker] was the first time Elvis fell to his knees and left fifty dollars worth of gold spangles on the floor. He went up to Elvis after the show and asked him not to do it again. The suit made a few more appearances, but, Guralnick said, after a while he came to be embarrassed by it. 23 By the mid-sixties, Nudies business was in decline. Country singers, anxious to distance themselves from their singin cowboy predecessors, dropped rhinestone couture like a hot rock, opting instead for the dapper, understated attire of George Jones and Buck Owens, or the dirty denims of outlaws like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. At the same time, the rockers who were starting to dabble in country were looking even further back for fashion tips. Dylans 53 amicable hobo get-up on the cover of Nashville Skyline and the gentleman gambler togs sported by the post-Hillman era Byrds, the Charlatans, and the Band drew from turn-of-the-century ideas of authentic cowboys, before Tom Mix and the movies, and certainly predating the gaudy excess of Autry and Rogers, Nudie and Turk. Of course, gaudy excess was just what Gram Parsons was in the market for. The idea of authenticity hangs like a ghostword in the wings of almost any genre of music, from Norwegian black metal to West Coast hiphop, and country music is no exception. When Dylan decided to go country, he not only adopted the authentic clothes of a poor white southerner, he also morphed his already put-on Arkie accent into the high nasal whine of real country singers like the Louvin Brothers. The Charlatans, led by Dan Hicks, actually opened up a saloon in a frontier nowhere town in Nevada to garner themselves some country cred. In rejecting the excess of the Nudie suit in favor of what they viewed as more legitimate country clothing, country musicians like the Highwaymen and proto-country rockers like the Byrds or Dylan were shunning the inauthentic and untenable creature that country music had become. But authenticity is a notoriously tricky thing, and the truth of the matter is, Willie Nelson never robbed a stagecoach, Dan Hicks never roped a steer, and Bob Dylan, 40 some years of impeccable Woody Guthrie impersonation aside, was born and raised in Minnesota. 24 The very notion of trying to be authentic unravels itself. Gram Parsons had no aspirations of dressing like a real cowboy because he had no intention of being a real cowboy. Gram Parsons wanted to be a country star, and country stars wore Nudie suits with all the trimming. 54 When Parsons made his first trip to Nudies Rodeo Tailors, it was something of a pilgrimage. Nudie suits had, after all, defined the visual aesthetic of country music throughout Parsons childhood. A custom-made Nudie suit was no cheap thing, but with his trust-fund backing, money was no obstacle for Parsons. Within a couple months of his arrival in LA, Parsons was the proud owner of a fire engine red Nudie decked with yellow submarines 25. He even sprung for suits for the rest of the International Submarine Band, although, tellingly, the band chose approximations of Civil War era costumes for their album cover attire; quiet, understated and traditional. Gram and Nudie hit it off right way. Both men were gifted raconteurs and shameless self-promoters. I took a kind of special liking to [Gram], Nudie said. Not only was he one hell of a good songwriter and musician, he was also real smart and a nice boy too. He was a real downhome kind of guy, he liked to hang around my store and pick the guitar. When A&M cut the Burrito Brothers their first advance check for Gilded Palace, Parsons gleefully dragged the band to the shop at 5015 Lankershim Blvd for fittings. Not all of the members were as enthusiastic. Sneaky Pete in particular was skeptical as Manuel Cuevas, Nudies son-in-law who shouldered most of the design work by the end of the sixties, showed him designs for a black jumpsuit bearing a huge golden pterodactyl. But after years on the bluegrass scene, Hillman was excited at the prospect of his own Nudie suit. Ive always wanted to wear one of those suits, Hillman said. And, yknow, you cant do that in bluegrass. Cant do that. But you can wear em in country music. If you plug in, 55 you can wear a Nudie suit. With Manuels help, Hillman put together a suit of bright blue velvet with peacocks whose feathers extended onto the sleeves and a starburst of pure sequins on the back. Ethridges outfit was the most traditional: a long-cut five button white suit coat decorated with roses that pointed simultaneously to Ethridges Southern roots and the traditional peasant costumes that inspired some of the earliest Western designs. Literally and figuratively, Parsons suit outshone them all. The white coat, cut high to show off a handtooled leather belt, had large multicolored pills along the sleeves: white-crossed amphetamines, red barbiturates, and green and blue capsules to symbolize some combination of the two. Kelly green cannabis leaves snaked up the front, and bright pink poppies stood out at each shoulder. The lapels bore carefully embroidered naked women, the cartoonish renderings recalling the cover girl from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, stripped bare. The pants flared out at the bottom with bright red inserts, and flames rose up from the flares, licking at the poppies that sat at the point of each low-cut hip. But the centerpiece was the jackets back, emblazoned with a red cross, rays of light streaming out of it like a massive prison tattoo, a cholo cross. In a tradition dating back to the beginnings of rodeo tailoring when bands would title their matching outfits, the suit was given a name: the Sin City. We spent many hours together, designer Manuel recounted later. There was a lot of brotherhood going on in that outfitone of those things that happens once in a lifetime. But it wasnt until ten, fifteen years after making that outfit 56 that I discovered it was actually a map for him to follow to his death. The first destination for the suits was the California desert, just a few miles from the Joshua Tree Park bungalow where Parsons would fatally overdose less than four years later. We decided to take them out to the desert and do something kind of surreal with the Nudie suits, said A&Ms art director Tom Wilkes. He took the Burritos out to Joshua Tree with a crew that included photographer Barry Feinstein, a label rep and two attractive girls for the album cover shoot. Everybody was loaded, said Feinstein. The original plan to structure the photos around the strange foliage evolved as the spangled, drugged out band cavorted across the alien landscape with the girls, finally stumbling upon a ramshackle shed in the middle of the desert surrounded by detritus: broken crates and palettes, assorted underbrush. With the girls propped alluringly in the sheds doorway, the scene hardly needed labeling. In the middle of the desert, the Flying Burrito Brothers had found the Gilded Palace of Sin. Everybody knew we were in the right place, said Wilkes. The photo finally chosen was one of the bands least favorites. Parsons insisted there had been better shots, shots that made more use of the bizarre looking Joshua trees, a type of yucca plant found almost exclusively in the California desert. But the effect is striking. With the white of Parsons and Ethridges suits bleeding into the featureless sky above them and the absence of any expression on their faces, the boys look lost and stranded just outside the Gilded Palace 57 with no choice but to enter. Above and tucked just behind its shingled roof hangs the bands name, scrawled across the sky in huge circus font, letters bright pink to match Parsons poppies, trailing the cobalt blue of Hillmans suit. The Burrito Brothers helped spark a renaissance for Nudies shop. Through the Burritos, Nudie said, I got to be kind of well known to the rock and roll people, and I really appreciate what they did for me along those lines. By the end of 1970, Nudie had made the cover of Rolling Stone twice and his clientele included Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, 26 Roger McGuinn, Mick Jagger, and Sly Stone. In 1975, on the way to a benefit for Ruben Hurricane Carter, Bob Dylan and the entire Rolling Thunder Revue waltzed into my store and cleaned out my racks, Nudie recounted. They bought almost every special suit I had made up. They couldnt wait for custom orders because they were playing a concert in Houston the next day and had decided on the spur of the moment that a show in Texas just wouldnt be right without Nudies. Luckily, they were able to find a suit for everyone in the band and walked out satisfied, leaving me $15,000 richer. Throughout the seventies, the Western look dominated the mass culture in various iterations: the country pimp look of Nudie customer Bootsy Collins, the Liberace-via-Lankershim Boulevard attire of Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John, the blue jeans and bandanas of new cowboy film stars Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, and finally the urban cowboy chic of disco icon John Travolta. 27 The visual aesthetic of country, reinjected into the rock scene by the Burritos in 1969, had spread like a virus, and 58 ideas of manufactured authenticity fell by the wayside. One can imagine Gram Parsons off somewhere, smiling and tipping a star-spangled Stetson. 59 60 4 Sloth: Hot Burrito So there we are, fast, theres the dogma. And its excuse, its usableness, in practice. Which gets us, it ought to get us, inside the machinery. Charles Olson Chris Ethridge was the once and future Burrito. After the dissolution of the International Submarine Band, Ethridge joined up with Ian Dunlop, who hed replaced as bassist in the Sub Band, sax player Bobby Keyes, who would later record with the Rolling Stones on Exile on Main Street, and a ragtag bunch of Californians in the original Flying Burrito Brothers, a jam session assemblage of players fooling around with the basic components of country and soul music. When Dunlop gave up on LA for Boston, an abandoned Chris Ethridge lured former bandmate Gram Parsons back from England to pick up the Flying Burrito Brothers name. Less than a year later, Chris Ethridge was the first to leave the Burrito Brothers, disappointed with their lack of commercial success and bored with their lack of direction after Gilded Palace of Sin. In 1974, a greatest hits compilation from A&M sparked a renewed interest in the defunct Flying Burrito Brothers. Informed that there were bookings available for a band with that name, Chris Ethridge joined up with Sneaky Pete to once 61 again resurrect the Flying Burrito Brothers. Without Parsons or Hillman, the band was, at best, a bit of a joke and Ethridge left after the first album. They took the Flying Burrito Brothers name when they should have let it rest, said Chris Hillman. Ethridge told me he left because he couldnt stand it. Still, Chris Ethridge holds the dubious distinction of being a member of all three incarnations of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Poised to go into the studio, the Burrito Brothers were still two songs short of an album, and the deep and immediate well Hillman and Parsons had been drawing from was dried up. There were a couple contenders, but nothing seemed to click. The Burritos rehearsed the songs they had, hoping something else would come along. It came in the form of a musical childhood tantrum, a crafty bit of piano pouting. When Chris Ethridge was a young boy in Mississippi, he lived in a small house with his parents, his brothers and sisters, and a piano in the living room. When his parents forbade him from going out to play with friends, Chris would plop down at the piano and bang out a repetitive melody line until they relented. Ethridge referred to them as his go songs, designed specifically to convince his parents to let him out, shouting Go on, get! Ethridge had remembered the melody lines ever since, and one evening after rehearsal, he plunked them out on the piano for Parsons. Willing to grab at anything by that point, Parsons swallowed some uppers, fed some to Ethridge and the two sat at the piano late into the 62 night, spinning the little lines into songs. The result was one of those inexplicable moments of brilliance that can only happen with the sword hanging overhead. By the time they were done, they were too exhausted to even name the songs and hastily labeled them Hot Burrito #1 and Hot Burrito #2. Listened to together, they feel like chapters in Raymond Queneaus Exercices de Style, an identical subject rendered twice in vastly different tones. Both songs are lovers pleas, cries from the very brink of a relationships end, and thinly veiled messages from Gram to Nancy to attempt reconciliation even as Parsons was tomcatting the LA club scene. Hot Burrito #1 presented its case as aching country-soul: James Carr meets George Jones. Parsons came on with a sort of sad sweetness, assuring his lover: Im your toy, Im your old boy 28 But I dont want no one but you to love me. No, I wouldnt lie. You know Im not that kind of guy. Sitting with Ethridge at the piano, Ethridge taking the low parts and Parsons the high, Parsons delivered one of the most soulful vocal performances of his career; deep and sincere, but still delicate, without weighty and overwrought pathos. 63 His best song probably he ever wrote was Hot Burrito #1, said Chris Hillman confidently. And his best recording on record was Hot Burrito #1. The companion piece, Hot Burrito #2 presents the same case, up-tempo and shot through with ambivalence and frustration. The songs narrative seems to pick up where #1 left off, taking the lovers feelings as givens. With the fullest instrumentation of any song on Gilded Palace and high harmonies drawn more from the Marvellettes than the Everly Brothers, Parsons proclaims, Youd better love me. Jesus Christ! Ecstatic, pleading, and frustrated all at once, he hits the Jesus Christ just as the band pauses for a beat, cracking the song open for a second to let Ethridges gospel-inspired piano and Sneaky Petes distorted pedal steel flood in. With the last two originals written, the band added two soul covers and a Parsons composition from Safe at Home, the straight-ahead George Jones homage Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome? and headed into A&Ms studios for a whirlwind bunch of recording sessions. Produced largely by the Burritos themselves and featuring four different drummers, a cracked chorale of LA hippies credited as The Hot Burrito Chorus, and an uncredited high harmony part by David Crosby, who just happened to be around the A&M studio at the time, the album was laid down in just a few weeks. We cut the album without any rehearsals, claimed Sneaky Pete. The album has a loose feel and raw energy lacking from more rehearsed albums like Sweetheart of the Rodeo or the 64 tight session playing of Nashville Skyline, but it hardly seems unrehearsed. It wasnt quite live in the studio, Chris Hillman said, but it was done in the minimum of takes. The album was finished in December, and A&M set up to rush release the album in February 1969. Unhappy with the session drummers theyd used on the album, 29 the Flying Burrito Brothers auditioned and quickly hired former Byrds drummer Michael Clarke, 30 who never quite got around to learning the songs. The promotions department took a tongue-in-cheek approach to marketing the band, setting up a hootenanny-style barn dance at the A&M soundstage for January. They sent out invites to folks all over LA, containing packages of hay for that special country feel, hoping the media would take notice. But the first people to take notice were the folks at the U.S. Postal Service, who suspected the hay of being extra special and confiscated the invites to test the packages for drugs. The tests were negative, but the media buzz the seizure created was better than anything the A&M marketing department could have dreamed up. Before anyone had heard a note of the album, the Burrito Brothers had the exact image A&M wanted: psychedelic cow-punks, drug-addled and rhinestone-spangled. They were all set in the style department, but going into their first set of live performances, substance was still an open question. Bernie Leadon, whod played with Hillman in the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers and would later join the Flying Burrito Brothers, saw the band in the first months of 1969, before The Gilded Palace of Sin was released. 65 Yeah, they got the look, Leadon said. Yeah, they got the attitude, they got the record deal, they got everything. But they forgot something fundamental here: they just cant play or sing. Early performances may have been shaky, but when the album came out in February, it was clear that The Gilded Palace of Sin was an entirely new thing, delivering on the promises of Safe at Home and Sweetheart of the Rodeo. A rock album dressed up like a country effort. A country album that didnt behave like one. A political album without the protest songs. A California album that sounded like Muscle Shoals. You could call it country rock if you wanted, but for better or worse, Gilded Palace of Sin was Cosmic American music. 66 67 5 Lust: Christines Tune You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song? W.B. Yeats Miss Christine is the girl climbing out of the crypt. Frizzlefried hair bursting autonomous from every which way, mascara laid on a quarter-inch thick, she looks every bit the hippie zombie on the cover of Frank Zappas 1970 album Hot Rats, the photo washed over in sickly pinks. Christine Frka, rail-thin body bent leftward by scoliosis and culminating in an explosion of kinky brown hair framing a frantic smile, moony beautiful eyes, and ghoulish makeup, was a crossbreed of hippie and protogoth girl. Born in San Pedro to Yugoslav parents, she spent her late teens on the LA strip, rising to become part of a small sect, a new gender role within rock: the supergroupie. Along with four other girls from the Strip, Miss Pamela, Miss Mercy, Miss Sandra and Miss Cyndarella, Miss Christine 31 was part of the GTOs or Girls Together Outrageously, 32 a girl group that bore little resemblance to Phil Spectors Ronettes or Barry Gordys Supremes. Organized and mentored by Frank Zappa, the GTOs were equal parts rock group and performance art ensemble. They released one album, Permanent Damage, on Zappas Bizarre Records 68 33 and made guest appearances on the musical efforts of other bands. Most notably for our purposes, they were the backing choir on Gilded Palaces closing number, Hippie Boy. They performed along with Zappa and the Mothers of Invention under overblown names like the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company or simply showed up in their junkshop harlequin clothes at every show, party, or happening worth being at. The GTOs embodied everything it meant to be a supergroupie; they created the idea and lived it out. In the liner notes to Permanent Damage, the members outlined what being a GTO meant to them. The GTOs are a menace to American maidenhood, they stated. Watch out that your teenage daughters dont get their hands on any of the GTOs literature promoting gayety, kinkyness and flamboyancy. The GTOs are out to corrupt your children. Watch out! There may be one lurking in your neighborhood! They were sexually active and sexually ambiguous, with constant playful hinting of lesbianism within the group. But a couple of things set Miss Christine apart from the rest of the GTOs. Describing herself in a Rolling Stone interview as the cold, cruel one in the group, she was barely sexually active, especially compared to her bandmates. 34 Unlike the rest of the band, Miss Christine was dead before her 23 rd birthday. And unlike the rest of the band, who were only featured as the backing on Gilded Palaces closing number, Miss Christine was the subject of the albums opening salvo: a vitriolic duet by Parsons and Hillman called Christines Tune. 69 The idea of groupie as a positive gender and cultural role model seems a sketchy case to make, largely due to the current perception of groupies as sexually available, interchangeable and disposable women, an image that rose up even within a few years of the GTOs heyday. As early as 1972, Robert Plant was lamenting the evolution of the groupie role in rock. Its a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a flurry, he told Rolling Stone, to rush to compete with what was in the good old days, the good-time relationships we had with the GTOs. When it came to looning they could give us as much of a looning as we could give them. The handful of women who, sometimes grudgingly, bore the title of groupie in the mid to late sixties were more than simply notches on rock stars bedposts. They were active participants in the scene. We talk about groups a lot, Miss Christine told Rolling Stone. Thats because its glamorous and because were very young. If you have a fave rave in a band, its like having a soldier in the war; you write him letters and you worry about him. Carrying on long-term relationships of varying natures with various rockstars, both visiting and indigenous to LA, they often found themselves in the role of psychiatrist, but just as often found themselves playing the part of music critic. Parsons and Hillman had known several of the GTOs since their pre-Burrito days, and the girls were frequent guests at Burrito Manor. Miss Pamela and Miss Mercy were often marks for Parsons evangelism on the subject of country music, listening to stacks of 45s by Buck Owens, Porter Wagoner, and George Jones. Miss Mercy and Miss Pamela 70 were sometimes the only attendees at Burrito Brothers shows and were often the first outside of the Burritos to hear demos of soon-to-be songs. In a California music scene dominated at least as much by style and substance, the fashionistas of the GTOs pushed themselves and the men they were involved with further and further out onto the cutting edge. They crafted their own weird getups, hybrids of hippie and ren fair chic, out of thrift-store finds and old curtains. When she wasnt frequenting Burrito Brothers shows or the beds of various rockers, Miss Pamela was designing and tailoring Western shirts as gifts for other rockers, which helped popularize the look the Burritos were sporting. 35 Miss Christine transferred her heavy eye makeup and enhanced pallor to sometime boyfriend and fellow Zappa protg Alice Cooper, creating the look that defined Coopers image for decades 36 and deeply affected the content of his songwriting. In addition to their stylistic influence on the LA scene, several of the GTOs were active in the various experimental film projects that sprung up on the interface between LAs rock star and movie star sets, 37 several of which, like 1971s 200 Motels, starring Miss Pamela, Ringo Starr as a dwarf, and Keith Moon as a nun, spewed forth from the always-active imagination of Frank Zappa. But the groupie role was utterly inseparable from sex. Sex was the mode of access to the scene and, for the GTOs, central to their songwriting. Most of the songs on Permanent Damage, all written collectively by the GTOs, were concerned primarily with sex and seduction, albeit handled 71 playfully and delivered in the style of a demented childrens choir. Not to say that everyone in Los Angeles thought of girls like the GTOs in sexual terms; Frank Zappa took a particularly fatherly role with regards to the girls, housing them when they hit hard times, lightly frowning upon sexual entanglements between them and the Mothers, and hiring Miss Christine as the nanny for his daughter, Moon Unit. But within the rock culture at large, sexual availability was a primary aspect of being a groupie. Nowhere is the confluence of sex and art in groupie culture more explicit than in the case of Cynthia Plaster Caster. Based mostly in Chicago rather than LA, but a friend to the GTOs, Miss Plaster Casters long term art project involved arousing the interest of touring rockers, then shoving their erect members into a substance called alginate, commonly used in creating dental molds. Once the alginate had molded to the shape of the cock in question, Miss Plaster Caster would remove the member, fill the newly formed mold with plaster and have sex with the participating rocker until the cast hardened, or until the rocker softened. Miss Plaster Casters project continues today, now expanded to include casts of famous breasts, and her pieces have been shown in galleries all over the world. Miss Christine had been involved with the Byrds going back before the release of the Notorious Byrd Brothers and contributed to the already difficult personal dynamics within the band. But of all the women they were involved with during the writing of The Gilded Palace of Sin, it was Miss Christine that Parsons and Hillman singled out for ridicule on the albums opener, a bouncy duet with Hillmans voice isolated in the left channel and Parsons in the right, intertwining harmonies on the choruses and taking turns at the 72 verses. Now a woman like that, all she does is hate you/She doesnt know what makes a man a man, Hillman explains in the first verse, and in a sense it was true: unlike most of the girls surrounding the Byrds at their peak, Miss Christine, although ever-present, was sexually unavailable. Its all right to call her, but Ill bet you, warns Parsons, the moon is full and youre just wastin time After all, why go through the trouble of talking to Miss Christine, with her curly-haired head full of ideas and body under perpetual lockdown, when you were inundated with dozens of ready, willing, and able girls? At the same time, why go through the trouble of writing and performing a duet literally demonizing a 19-year-old girl for the utterly forgivable sin of not putting out? The answer lies somewhere within the emerging gender role of the groupie. While the girls of the GTOs were certainly involved with cultural production, part of their entrance into the rock sphere was dependent on their sexuality. 38 Miss Christine found herself trapped between the cultural and sexual aspects of the groupie role; excelling in the former, she was vilified for not living up to the duties associated with the latter. This move seems particularly questionable coming from the Burrito Brothers, who were themselves operating in a peculiar interspace between culturally dictated gender roles. Masculinity within traditional country music is complex and intensely structured. Roughneck outlaws like Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard were permitted, through weepy ballads and sappy odes like You Put Me on a Natural High and Theres a Tear in My Beer, to step out of their tough guy personas and emote in a way that would traditionally be 73 seen as highly feminized, provided of course that they retained the costume of masculinity: the crew cut, the sharp shave, the pressed shirt. 39 Visible signals of masculinity allowed safe access to more feminine spheres of emotional content while leaving the artists masculinity unblemished. The problem encountered by the Burritos, not to mention the Sweetheart-eta incarnation of the Byrds, in trying to find a country audience was that they carried none of the visual signifiers that would brand them as masculine and balance out the emotional content of their material. Their long hair and overall demeanor clearly branded them as fags, as the Byrds had learned at the Opry a year earlier. Even if their sets had consisted of the most gristled and butch country covers, the Burrito Brothers would never be mistaken for real men by a country audience. At the same time, by choosing to dive into the country tradition, they aligned themselves with not just the perceived hokeyness of country, but with all the misogynist aspects of the country tradition, every murder ballad 40 and trampin song, opening themselves up to criticism from any sensible feminist in the hippie community. The weepers that Parsons favored throughout his career, the songs his voice seemed built to sing, stood out like a sequined suit next to the aggressive masculinity of performers like Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Plant. Attempting to construct a form of masculinity out of the bricolage of two musical cultures, the Burritos were in a double-bind. The country audiences who would understand heart-on-sleeve balladry as masculine could only see the bands visual aesthetic as feminine, while rock audiences who could accept the masculinity of long hair had trouble understanding the raw emotive quality of the ballads. 74 When he sang about the agonies of love, his heart breaking, Miss Pamela said of Gram, tears rolled down his cheeks without his knowledge. The Whiskey-a-Go-Go was unfamiliar with sobbing men in Nudie suits. On stage, this made for a tenuous form of masculinity, but in their personal lives, the Burritos still felt the pull of traditional ideas of domesticity, coupled with the often more insistent tug of LAs throbbing groupie culture. Parsons and Hillmans demands on their long-term domestic partners were fairly traditional, and their expectations of groupies were no less traditional, even if those traditions were still nascent. Women like the GTOs were supposed to be emotionally and sexually supportive, a creative and libidinous Ladies Auxiliary to the almost exclusively male rock scene. By presenting herself with the outer trappings of a groupie, the wild clothes and makeup, the constant presence at shows and parties, only to reveal herself to be sexually unavailable, self-possessed and with no need for a man in her life, Miss Christine constituted a threat to the delicate new structure the boys were assembling for themselves: a devil in disguise. Miss Christine apparently took the whole thing with good humor. The song didnt keep her from joining the Burritos and the GTOs in the studio to put the finishing touches on Hippie Boy. If you listen closely, you can almost imagine its Miss Christines soprano warble riding out the other voices in the choir, becoming the last voice you hear exiting The Gilded Palace. Within three years, it ceased to matter to Miss Christine. In 1972, after spending a month in a body cast to straighten the crook in her spine, Christine Frka overdosed on a mixture of painkillers. Subsequent performances and recordings of Christines Tune went under the more 75 obvious title, Devil in Disguise and the Flying Burrito Brothers became largely silent on the songs origins and the curly-headed supergroupie who opted to keep her mind open and her legs firmly shut. 76 77 6 Avarice: Sin City Satan owns the fallen world. Don DeLillo How do you make your pedal steel sound like the Lords burning rain? It wont be easy. The instrument is going to resist you at every step. In its natural guts, it wants to sound like a prairie wind: It longs to be cold and slick and cutting, the pure sonic embodiment of what Gram Parsons called the high lonesome. Introduced into country music in the thirties, the attraction of the pedal steel is its unmistakable glissando, its ability to not just slide between notes like a standard lap steel or dobro but actually bend notes. Unlike other lap instruments, the pedal steel allows a talented player to adjust the tuning while sustaining a note, mournfully touching the infinitesimal spaces in between a natural and a flat. The pedal steel desperately wants to sound desolate and to make it sound vengeful, youll have to learn the instrument and then intensively unlearn it, returning from a place of smooth precision to a place of brutal primitivism: harsh jumps, slamming the slide abruptly back onto the unsuspecting strings. Failing that, or, better yet, in addition, get yourself a fuzzbox. A late-sixties guitar innovation developed originally for Jimmy Page, the fuzzbox is designed to make anything run 78 through it sound relatively awful. The inspiration for the fuzzbox was the guitar sound on early Kinks albums, 41 which Dave Davies produced by taking a razorblade to the speaker cone of his guitar amp. The fuzzbox reproduced this effect by amping and clipping the input signal, effectively turning a smooth sine wave input into an oscillating square-wave output, sending a signal to the amp that already sounded burned out. Garage rock bands like the Troggs and the Sonics used the sound for lo-fi legitimacy. Psychedelic bands like the Pretty Things and early Pink Floyd used it to produce the tearing sound of psychic damage. Jimi Hendrix used it for whatever the hell he wanted, which is a major perk of being Jimi Hendrix. Sneaky Pete Kleinow used it to complement a pedal steel technique that was already a perversion of the instruments normal use, producing the very sound that other players practiced to avoid. Once labeled the Jimi Hendrix of the pedal steel, Sneaky Pete could make a lonesome wind sound like a screeching fleet of bomber planes or a host of avenging angels, and no one but Sneaky Pete could have used the pedal steel to rain a distorted country apocalypse down on late-sixties Los Angeles like napalm onto a North Vietnam forest. The City of Los Angeles started as a mission. Specifically, the Mission San Gabriel Archangel in the San Gabriel Valley. From there, the city sprawled with evangelical zeal, converting the desert into Hollywood, into the Sunset Strip. The Whisky-a-Go-Go, the Troubador, and the Palamino sprung up like sectarian churches: worship rock here, kneel to folk here, praise country here. Through most of the sixties, Los Angeles was the Mecca of American rock music, home to 79 indigenous groups like the Byrds, Love, and the Doors, along with a host of pilgrims like Georgian Gram Parsons and Canadian Neil Young, whod joined the thing in process, whod come to be a part of something larger than themselves. The Gilded Palace of Sins second track, Sin City started at a particular point in Los Angeles: the garish front door of Larry Spectors 31 st floor condo. Spector was a thief, it was as simple as that, Chris Hillman told the LA Times almost 40 years later. Hillmans resentment towards the man who had mismanaged or embezzled the Byrds out of the bulk of their finances quickly spread out from Spector and from there infected and tainted all of the city around him. From Burrito Manors safe perch on the citys outskirts in Reseda, Hillman and Parsons imagined an Old Testament-style judgment visited upon the City of Angels, starting at Larry Spectors apartment and blanketing the entire city. 42 Sin City features the most explicit use of religious imagery on Gilded Palace, but religious themes pervade the album in oddly twisted forms. The album starts off by invoking a devil in disguise, 43 but unlike the subject of Presleys songa hellcat dressed up as an angelthe disguise here is sex and the devil is chastity. Draped in the patchwork clothes of a groupie, Miss Christine turns out to be a nun. The album presents itself as the Gilded Palace of Sin, but when sin enters the picture, its flipped with virtue like a vision from William Blake: sin as the disguise, the gilding; virtue as the devil concealed, the clatterboard shed with the gold flaking away. From this opening, Gilded Palace of Sin spreads across forty minutes searching for some sort of spiritual guidance, some 80 moral compass. In Juanita, written for a girl Hillman met at the Troubador, the singer is lost and abandoned in a dirty old room, in a haze of alcohol and pills, when an angel appeared in the guise of a teenage hippie girl. The song takes on the form of a prayer to the Virgin Mary for direction with the choruss repetition of O Mama, Sweet Mama, wont you tell me what to say? On the next track, Wheels, Hillman and Parsons craft a quasi-religious ode to their motorcycles. The plea for direction in Juanita becomes a plea for deliverance, even including the gospel music trope of getting higher and higher every day and replacing a direct line of communication to God with telephones to say what we cant say. The song also contains one of the albums most interesting recording errors. Going into the first chorus, Hillmans vocals in the left channel hit the high harmonies right alongside Parsons on the confident Were not afraid to ride, punctuated by Sneaky Petes replication of a Harley engines roar. But on the more somber next line, Hillman repeats the first line, while Parsons sings, Were not afraid to die. 44 In fact, it wasnt long before his wheels nearly took Parsons away. On a ride through the canyons with John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas during the sessions for the Flying Burrito Brothers second album, Parsons lost control of his oversized Harley and nearly died. When Phillips found him by the side of the road, bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears, a dazed Parsons, believing he was already dead, looked up at Phillips and muttered, John, take me for a long white ride. Bastardized gospel forms were the perfect fit for a band whose style was a combination of two genres that were the willful orphans of spiritual music. Country music traced much 81 of its heritage back to the Appalachian gospel of the Carter Family and the Louvin Brothers, and many country acts owed their harmony structures to variants of the five-part shaped-note singing popular in Appalachian churches. And of course, soul music has always been closely tied to the gospel tradition, particularly the Southern soul that the Burrito Brothers were so enamored with. The history of soul music is peppered with stories of singers rising to the top of the gospel charts only to turn their backs on the limited market of religious music for the wider commercial success offered by secular markets. In both genres, performers often translated melodies and lyrics that were written for gospel into commercial hits. Many of Sam Cookes early hits, including You Were Made For Me, featured melody lines that were variations on The Hem of His Garment, a song Cooke had written during his time with the Soul Stirrers. 45 Johnny Cashs first successful audition for Sun Records included hasty rewrites of gospel songs hed already pitched unsuccessfully to Sam Phillips and wouldnt get to record until later in his career. Burritos tracks like Juanita and Wheels cribbed the form but changed the content for motivations almost opposite those of Cooke and Cash: commercial viability and spiritual veracity aside, it was the form of those early country and soul songs that was dear to the Burrito Brothers. Leaving the good Lord out of it, the song structures were tried and true, objects of veneration in their own rights. The eerie prescience of Wheels and the searching desperation of Juanita were nothing compared to the apocalyptic vision of Sin City, which fused religious imagery with country gospel form. Hillman called the song a cautionary tale for people like Gene Clark from the Byrds, 82 who came here from Kansas with all that talent and all bright-eyed and talented and idealistic, and the whole thing just swallowed him up. Following a very traditional pedal steel intro, the opening lines, definitely attributable to Hillman, seem to call up his three-year stint with the Byrds. This whole towns filled with sin, Itll swallow you in If youve got some money to burn. Take it home, drive away, Youve got three years to pay, But Satan is waiting his turn. Hillman had been lured away from country and into the heart of LAs rock scene by the trappings of money and fame, but three years of pop stardom had come due in the loss of his wife and most of his money. Hillmans personal apocalypse was only a part of a larger end of the world. LA had been the undisputed center of Americas rock scene in the sixties, competing only with London as the most important city in the world for pop and rock music. But as the decade closed out, San Francisco was clearly in the ascendant. The implosion of some of LAs pioneering bands through 1967 and 68 had littered the scene with too many musicians, signing too many contracts, needing too many managers, until the industry part of LAs music industry dominated the actual music. Haunting the very edges of the industry was its very own dark angel in the form of Charles Manson, a failed musician 46 whose hippie-like Family stalked LA glitterati and music honchos from the shadows. At the same time, the feel-good politics underlying much of LAs music were cracking and 83 crumbling under the pressures of history, the continuing horrors of the decades end. The darkened visions of the Doors and Loves Forever Changes presented the flipside of psychedelia, but if sunshine and good times were tough to market by the end of the sixties, sonic bad trips were not faring much better. This seismic shift was swallowing the LA music scene even as it thrust the apolitical acid rock of San Francisco towards larger audiences and higher market shares. The slow-drawled vision of LAs end times in Sin City came complete with a savior, albeit a failed one. A friend came around, Tried to clean up this town. His ideas made some people mad. But he trusted his crowd, So he spoke right out loud. And they lost the best friend theyd had. Out of context, the reference is vague, but at the end of 1968, the friend was obviously Bobby Kennedy, the youthful second coming, the impossible smile that extended from Brookline, Massachusetts, to LA County; the Christlike righteousness that made bulldog-faced Nixon 47 wilt and shrivel. The Gilded Palace of Sin was written on the eve of the 1968 presidential election and released in the first days of the Nixon administration, after a shot to the head in the kitchen of LAs Ambassador Hotel on the night of the California primary had effectively robbed the youth of America of the best friend theyd had. 84 Like Wise Bloods Hazel Motes, the Flying Burrito Brothers were crafting the Gilded Palace of Sin into a Church without Christ: all the trappings of the gospel music that had inspired country and soul artists across the south for decades, without the grounding of an underlying belief structure. If there were any salvation, it would have to come from inside the music, because it surely wasnt coming from anywhere else. In spite of its rather bleak spiritual outlook, the album closes with a moment of peace and unity, a snippet of stolen melody from a classic spiritual delivered in discordant beauty. At the end of Hippie Boy, the memory of a youth trampled in the events of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago just months before stands in for divine intervention, bringing hippies, cowpokes, and straights together if only for a moment and letting the Burritos and their friends assure the listener that there would be peace in the valley, even if it came only after the entire LA scene had been laid to rubble and waste. 85 86 7 Lust: Dark End of the Street I was hurting. I was hurting too. I could feel the rain hurting, but it wasnt really me. I was there in sight and soul and everything, but my body wasnt there. My body was at home. I cant forget it. James Carr Its safe to say the session was not going well. It was late 1969 and it was a dark year for southern soul music. Atlantic Records was searching for a successor to Otis Redding, dead just three days after recording Dock of the Bay at the age of 27. They had their eyes on Goldwax recording artist James Carr. In 1963, Carr left the Memphis Gospel circuit 48 and signed with Clinton Claunchs nascent Goldwax label, scoring his first hit in 1966 with Youve Got My Mind Messed Up. 49 Carrs first two records on Goldwax produced a string of minor hits, including a rendition of Dark End of the Street, one of the quintessential soul performances of all time. If the music industry were a pure meritocracy, the single would have sold millions; with only Goldwaxs limited resources behind it, the track made a poor showing on the R&B charts. Carrs studio output over the next two years was limited. He suffered from bouts of alcoholism and severe depression, sometimes disappearing for months at a time only to wind up 87 on a friends doorstep in the dead of night, drunk and jacketless in the snow. In the studio, he would often lose his concentration, needing lyrics read aloud to him or requiring guiding vocals laid down by songwriter Dan Penn. With no other commercially successful artists in its stable and offers to buy out Carrs contract, Goldwax head Clinton Claunch was hoping to seize this one last moment, to establish James Carr as the next Otis Redding and save Goldwax from financial ruin. Clinging to this hope, Claunch booked time for Carr at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, 50 home of the Swampers, one of the greatest groups of session players in the history of Southern music. We had four good songs lined up, including To Love Somebody recounted Claunch of the Muscle Shoals session. And thats the only damn song we got on the session. He just sat up there and looked. Man, I wanted to take a bottle and knock him off that stool. Time was going, we got all them high-priced musicians, and we finally got that one song. I dont see how he ended up singing as good as he did, but man, he sang the whole thing through, didnt have to overdub or nothing. And we didnt get anything else, didnt get nothing. What they got was one track that twisted a sugary-sweet BeeGees tune into a tormented ballad of unrequited love. The Brothers Gibb had no idea what it was like to love someone the way James Carr did, and the Swampers flesh the song out with a bone-simple drum track and a rising structure that, by the songs end, can barely support the desperation of Carrs voice. The fade out seems necessary; the listener has a feeling like backing away from someone not right in the head and 88 about to lose control of a rant. It was one of the last recordings Carr would ever make. Shortly after signing to Atlantic, Carr had a complete breakdown and disappeared for over 20 years. 51 In California, Gram Parsons, a longtime devotee of Southern souls mystery man, snatched up the 45 as soon as he saw it. It joined the stack of Porter Wagoner, Merle Haggard, and George Jones. Always one to make cover songs his own, Parsons had altered the phrasing of a dozen vocalists to wrench their songs away from them, but on the Burrito Brothers cover of To Love Somebody, recorded after the Burrito Deluxe sessions, Parsons had Michael Clarke replicate the click-pop rhythm track of the Swampers. Parsons laid the song out in the exact phrasing of James Carr, trying his best to imitate to the Mystery Man of Southern Soul, a voice hed first pined for and grappled with on Gilded Palace of Sin. There wasnt exactly a map for how a rock band should go country by 1969, but there were a few general guidelines. The first was, you had to go. In one way or another, early efforts to country up required a divorce from the California scene. The Byrds made the pilgrimage to Nashville for Sweetheart and Dylan did the same on Nashville Skyline, whose title imagines Nashville as a city constantly seen from the outside, never actually entered. The International Submarine Band, new to California and shackled with a tight budget, deflected their inability to record in Nashville and highlighted the traditionalism of their aesthetic by calling their album Safe at Home. The joke was 89 obvious only to the band themselves: Geographically, the Sub Band was as far from home as they could get, but they had tucked themselves away in a homey little corner of music that other rock bands felt no impulse to intrude on. Beyond a physical pilgrimage, fledgling country rock musicians showed an awareness of country as a somehow separate space. Struggling in an ultimately failed attempt to cross over to a country audience, the Byrds self-consciously coded their failure into Sweetheart, opening and closing the album with tales of thwarted travel: Dylans You Aint Goin Nowhere and Nothing Was Delivered. 52 Neil Young seemed to grapple with clashes of genres and spaces; the downhome country title track rasped up against ragged guitar epics on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, an attempt to escape from the day to day runnin around of the rock scene, while Harvest strained to encompass the spatial conflict between the back-to-the-land cheer of Are You Ready for the Country? and the South totalized as the specter of its own racial history on tracks like Alabama and Southern Man. In a musical landscape where clear borders existed between country and rock, transgressing and crossing those borders necessitated a relocation, or at least lyrical reference to going, to leaving for a sort of idyllic, unspoiled space located permanently elsewhere. This unspoiled space of removal and retreat was inevitably white. As the antiwar and activist movements of the sixties developed side by side with and often slightly behind the civil rights movement, a lot of liberal white kids were beginning to wake up to the racial situation in America. For white rock musicians, this dawning racial awareness brought a sobering realization with it: Rock and roll was a stolen medium. 90 Comforting myths of Elvis sharing the stage with Chuck Berry and Little Richard as the originators of the genre were shattered and the truth behind them was much more disturbing. The pioneering and revolutionary ideas of rock and roll had originated in the black community and had been stolen, copied, repackaged, and sold to a white audience by white musicians before its real pioneers could see much money from it. To take ones place in the rock tradition, then, was to drink from a poisoned well, to participate in an ongoing project of cultural appropriation and racial looting. Not to argue that bands or performers abandoned rock in favor of country solely in order to alleviate white guilt; many of the early readopters of country were musicians already versed in genre-hopping for whom country offered a new sonic palate for experimentation. But beyond aesthetic possibilities, country offered up a musical landscape unscarred by the strip mining of black culture and at the same time non-exclusionary, encompassing the efforts of performers like Solomon Burke, James Carr, and Ray Charles along with those of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Going up the country was obviously not going to right centuries of racial injustice and politically represented more of a retreat, dodging the question, than any kind of protest. But country, conceptualized as a space and often conflated with Nashville as both a geographical city and a sort of prelapsarian dream of a city presented an Edenic vision, a skyline in the distance where Elvis had never stolen a single riff or hip swivel. Contrary to this tradition, The Gilded Palace is an insistently Californian album, from the cover with its high chaparral scenery and handmade Hollywood suits, to the lyrical content. 91 While other bands pined for the green, green grass of home, the Burritos were marking time in the urban decay of Sin City. The pigtailed cowgirl of Sweetheart of the Rodeo had been replaced by the threatening ultramodern groupie girls of the Strip and prairies rezoned into the ethical morass of the LA music scene. The album belonged more at the Whisky than the Opry, and when its shrieking chorale of hipsters screeched that Therell be peace in the valley, its clear that they were singing more about the San Fernando than the Shenandoah. Hillman and Parsons had tried to take the Byrds to the country, but nothing was delivered. This time, the pair werent goin nowhere: The country would just have to come to California. In addition to turning their backs on the standard nod to Nashville, the Burrito Brothers opted to pass on the usual deep bow to the country canon. The Byrds had peppered Sweetheart with Merle Haggard and Louvin Brothers songs to offset their Dylan covers. The Bands debut featured a reading of Long Black Veil, and Neil Young dropped his rendition of the Roy Acuff standard Oh Lonesome Me into the very center of After the Gold Rush. Not to be outdone, Bob Dylan dueted with Johnny Cash on Girl From the North Country to open Nashville Skyline, warping his voice into a high Appalachian nasal whine to offset Cashs grounding baritone. Most viewers of The Johnny Cash Show might have heard of Bob Dylan before he appeared on the program in 1969, but few would have followed his music. They needed Cash to tell them this kid was all right. Failing an invite from Johnny Cash or the Opry, covers were a way to gain access and to get the country audience on the bands side, because, as Gram Parsons had told Roger McGuinn, once they dig you, they never let you go. A crossover onto the country 92 charts could assure a bands financial success, but equally important to bands plowing a country field, getting in with a country audience meant you were legit. If you could convince an Opry audience you were the real deal, you effectively were the real deal. Any band could toss a mandolin or pedal steel player into a touring line up and wow the kids at the Fillmore, but if you could nail a Roy Acuff song and work it into a set that at once acknowledged the canon and added to it, 53 you might be able to dodge accusations of dilettantism and dabbling. You might be authentic country. Collectively, the Burrito Brothers knew as many or more country songs than their California rock contemporaries. Hillman had been playing country and bluegrass since he was fifteen and Sneaky Pete had been sitting in with LA country bands almost as long. A voracious record purchaser, Parsons would occasionally leave a party, hop on his Harley, and ride home to grab a stack of 45s by George Jones, Porter Wagoner, and Webb Pierce just to demonstrate the relevance and power of country music. The Burritos live sets often included more country covers than originals. Burrito Deluxe, the follow-up to Gilded Palace, would include country gospel standards like Farther Along and Down in the Churchyard. 54 But when they were ready to step into the studio to record Gilded Palace, it wasnt Nashville they looked to for covers; it was Muscle Shoals. A small town two hours south of Memphis, practically unreachable by highway or plane, Muscle Shoals, Alabama billed itself as the Hit Recording Capital of the Worldnot an idle claim. The pride of Muscle Shoals was the studio band billed alternately as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and 93 the Swampers. Theyd backed Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin, along with dozens of others. When Paul Simon heard their recording of Ill Take You There with the Staple Singers, he immediately made the pilgrimage to Muscle Shoals to record with them. Entering Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Simon was convinced he was being introduced to the studios office staff and meekly asked if he could please meet the band. His confusion was understandable; listening to their recordings, thered be no way to guess that all the members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section were white. You know the Jimmy Cliff song The Harder They Come? Thats the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section backing him up, and on Sitting Here in Limbo too. They played with James Brown on Its Too Funky in Here and Clarence Carter on Slip Away. Like the Funk Brothers in Berry Gordys Motown Studios and Booker T. & the MGs at Stax, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section went largely unheralded as they turned out some of the greatest tracks ever recorded. It was our goal not to sound like ourselves, said Swampers bassist David Hood, but to sound like the band of the artist we were working with. Like nearby Memphis, the studios at Muscle Shoals produced flawless country tracks sometimes on the same day they laid down deep Southern soul, often using the same backing band. And in the late sixties, the Muscle Shoals musicians, like Booker T & the MGs and the Funk Brothers, tended to be mixed race. If California rock represented music founded on an act of theft and Nashville country an unimpugned white sound, the soul sounds of Muscle Shoals formed a third space: black artists recording for a largely but not exclusively 94 black audience, hiring and working cooperatively with talented white performers to achieve their sound. For Parsons and his dream of an all-encompassing Cosmic American Music, a sonic rising of the South, the appeal of Muscle Shoals was obvious and immediate. Country, after all, was just one of the genres a southern boy would have been exposed to growing up. On the airwaves in Waycross, delta blues would sit just a careful twist of the dial away from the Louisiana Hayride. In their choice of Muscle Shoals tracks, the Burrito Brothers evidenced an almost uncanny understanding of the problems confronting an easily racially integrated music. The first selection was Do Right Woman written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman and recorded by Aretha Franklin. Performed by Franklin, the songs message is clear: to reap the benefits of domesticity, a man must be loyal, respectful, attentive, and sexually adequate. Not exactly a radical feminist agenda, but well within Franklins overall project of advancing and asserting basic rights of a woman in a committed relationship. With Parsons taking over the lead vocal, a straightforward reading becomes impossible. It would be downright bizarre to read the song as a plea for other men to improve their sexual performance, and given the tendency of Grams girlfriends to dote on and mother him, it seems equally implausible hes speaking to a lover when he threatens to leave if taken for granted. In any attempt to read the song as a sexual parable, the relative positioning of the speaker and object drift, shift, and spiral into incomprehensibility. 95 But if the song falls apart under straight sexual or romantic readings, it opens up under another. Parsons as the speaker remains the aspiring Do Right Man, but the Do Right Woman is not so much a romantic partner as she is Aretha Franklin, or at least the music Franklin represents. The opening line frames not the conditional it does in Franklins rendering (If you Take me to heart, then Ill always love you), but a plea and its accompaniment (Please Take me to heart, but either way, Ill always love you). The second line, posed by Franklin as a kind of threat, is a matter of pure acceptance from Parsons, happy to tag along whether hes taken for granted or not. The performance and fidelity of the Do Right Man is not sexual but musical and offered up to the Do Right Woman not as a duty but as a form of tribute. In either reading, the crux of the song comes in the bridge: They say that its a. mans world, but you cant prove that by me. When Aretha delivers the line, its an affirmation of everything shes put forth so far: 55 Aretha might cook the meals and clean the shirts, but theres no question whos in charge around here. But when Parsons sings it, the line changes dramatically, calling into question Parsons racial and gender privilege. The world he wants access to is barred by both his gender and his race and the me expands outwards from Parsons as the speaker to include the song as a whole: a failure of the idea that a white male has access to all cultural objects. The Burrito Brothers can cover an Aretha Franklin song, but they can never make it their own, a feat they arguably could have accomplished with any country standard. The track ends up sounding heartfelt but misguided, accepting its own defeat. 96 The Aretha Franklin cover is followed by a cover of James Carrs Dark End of the Street, written by Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, the high point of Carrs brief and erratic career. The lyrics are the stuff of country music: Carr makes a plaintive apology to his mistress, lamenting the secretive nature of their relationship. In the hands of a lesser vocalist, the song could come across as an insincere attempt to placate an illicit lover by a man whos more than happy to have his cake and eat it too. But Carrs stark sincerity is at once overwhelming and perplexing. How could the bonds of any marriage keep the singer and his lover indefinitely in the shadows? The situation has no hope of resolution, no endpoint but to be caught out, and the singer leaves no doubt of his feelings for the object of his affection. But marriage is only assumed, never explicitly mentioned in the song, and the they in Carrs panicked cry, Theyre gonna find us is never clearly explained as jealous spouses. On closer inspection, this reading of the song begins to fall apart. The cheating narrative is insufficient and this isnt a country song at all. Dark End of the Street is not a cheating song, but a miscegenation narrative: the black singers lover is white. James Carrs hiding the shadows is fully justified, because being caught with his lover would be absolutely life threatening, and the situation truly has no possible resolution. Parsons had delivered his share of cheating songs, and it would be easy to expect Dark End of the Street to translate into a simple song of infidelity in his hands. But in the Burrito Brothers rendition, the song twists almost to the point of breaking and comes out a miscegenation narrative of a different kind. Similar to the change in Do Right Woman, the songs focus shifts from the romantic to the musical and 97 the illicit liaison is not with a lover but with Carr and that Muscle Shoals sound, the deep soulful complement to the high lonesome. It takes on the feel of secretive late-night listening to black music on strained and static-streaked radio stations, of stolen trips to backwater juke joints and downtown jazz clubs. But just like Dylans Nashville Skyline and Youngs Alabama, 56 the Burritos Dark End of the Street creates a space that is explicitly racialized. Its this space, the song suggests, to which white musicians must go in order to commune with black music. Instead of the blatant acts of appropriation and outright theft that marked the beginning of the rock and roll era, the Burritos map out an act of love and devotion, submitting to the draw of a powerful strain of music while understanding that the music is not simply theirs for the taking. Meeting black music on its own turf and terms, they approach with the trepidation and excitement of an illicit lover. Within this shift, two beautiful and hopeful slippages occur. Theyre gonna find us, a line thats desperate to the point of frantic in Carrs reading becomes a hope for discovery in the Burritos reading; not just discovery of the Burritos particular project of musical inclusion, but discovery of a different approach to black music altogether, a road suggested by the mixed-race bands in the studios at Motown, Stax, and Muscle Shoals. The songs repeated outgoing cry of You and me delivered as a call and response, backed by Hillmans guitar and a high looping line on Sneaky Petes pedal steel, becomes an almost sing-song invitation, urging the audience to join the band in a space full of prohibition and potential, at the dark end of the street. 98 99 8 Wrath: My Uncle See the evasions so many don, To flee the guilt of time Delmore Schwartz There are so many issues one can take with the Eagles, but heres one germane to the current discussion: In June 1972, the band released their debut album, cleverly titled Eagles, featuring the singles Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feeling, both of which would become signature songs for the band. 57 What else was going on in the world while the Eagles were runnin down the road, tryin to loosen their loads? Nixons plans for Vietnamization of the war were moving slowly, with U.S. soldiers still pouring into the country by the thousands, and early indications were that the transfer of hostilities to the South Vietnamese military would be ultimately unsuccessful. As his plans abroad failed, Nixons plans at home flourished: He was creeping towards reelection by the second largest margin ever in a presidential election, thanks in part to a little hotel break-in that went down the same month the Eagles debuted and hindered little by the leak of the incriminating Pentagon Papers the year previous. Despite this, the Eagles found themselves possessed by a peaceful, easy feeling that they knew wouldnt let them down. 100 Take it easy, they urged listeners; dont let the sounds of your own wheels make you crazy. As easy (not to mention fun!) as it might be to vilify the Eagles for their blissful ignorance of world events, by 1972 the marriage of rock and politics had all but ended. While R&B and funk music were becoming ever more radicalized, rock music had largely left politics behind in favor of the personal confessional styles of singer songwriters like James Taylor and Cat Stevens, the bombastic arena rock and Tolkein dabbling of Led Zeppelin or the Lovecraft-infused prog of Black Sabbath. Left coast country rockers were just as happy to leave politics out of things, and the Eagles were no exception. But in truth, politics had been left out of country rock since its inception. I dont like the I aint marchin anymore attitude, Gram Parsons told a reporter in 1970, distancing himself from the political activism common among rock musicians on the West Coast. But when a draft notice showed up at Burrito Manor at the end of 1968, the Flying Burrito Brothers fell into step with the sentiments of the anti-war movement. Rock music of the sixties tended towards vocal leftist politics and saw itself as aligned with the student antiwar movements. Rock music and the counterculture it represented and produced were almost inherently political and of the moment, so much so that a simple concert could be seen as a major victory in the war against oppression, a step towards getting us out of Vietnam. Dressing like a hippie was a political statement, Haight-Ashbury was party headquarters for a political movement based not around whom you voted for, 101 but what you wore, what you ingested, and whom you slept with. Within the hippie movement, the personal, the cultural, and the musical were political. Country music also evidence a fair share of politics. Johnny Cash sat near the top of 1968s country charts with his Live at San Quentin album, a bold espousal of Cashs stance on prisoners rights. In front of a sold-out audience at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1969, Cash commented on his trips to perform for the troops overseas. Asked if these trips made him a hawk, Cash said, No, that dont make me a hawk. No. No, that dont make me a hawk. If you watch the helicopters bring in the wounded boys, then you go into the wards and sing for em and try to do your best to cheer them up so that they can get back home, it might make you a dove with claws. But Cashs politics were exceptional for a country musician. For the most part, the country establishment was waving the flag and marching in step, with the country airwaves full of hymns to Americas strength alongside 58 love songs and weepers. 59 While leftists like Abbie Hoffman draped themselves in the American flag to claim dissent as patriotic, country musicians wanted it made clear that they were what America really looked like. Merle Haggard nearly swept 1969s Country Music Awards with his dismissive rebuttal of the hippie movements claim to a legitimate and politically important role in American society, Okie from Muskogee: We dont smoke marijuana in Muskogee; We dont take our trips on LSD 102 We dont burn our draft cards down on Main Street; We like livin right, and bein free. 60 But while country and rock both wore their often-opposing politics on their sleeves, their hybrid offspring seemed entirely uninterested in politics. Dylans Nashville Skyline followed the class-conscious folk of John Wesley Harding with vapid, down-home, feel-good antics. Oh me oh my/Love that country pie! proclaimed Dylan, grinning like a huckster and sounding like a soft premonition of Johnny Rottens snarling exit line, Ever get the feeling youve been cheated? 61 Throughout his early career, some-time country rocker Neil Young left the politics out of his twangy efforts, saving his messages for plugged-in rock songs like Ohio and Southern Man. Sweetheart of the Rodeo espoused politics that might have been appropriate to the Populist era but bore little relevance to the times in which the album was released. In fact, part of the appeal of country music to rock musicians seemed to be an escape from current politics, a way to make music without the war hanging overhead. Early and proto-country rock bands used dated musical themes of an indeterminate bygone era, substituting cowboys and outlaws for hippies and soldiers. This included a change of wardrobe for bands like the Charlatans, the post-Hillman/Parsons Byrds, the Band, and the Dead. But the wardrobe changes were purposefully non-specific, evidenced most clearly in the anachronism-packed sepia cover photo of Crosby Stills Nash & Youngs Dj Vu. The picture featured the band members decked out in attire from various historical eras, including everything from a Union Army uniform to a Buffalo Bill-style Wild West getup, even as the album title suggested a sort of vague remembrance of the past. It was this 103 kind of aesthetic atemporality that allowed the Band to get away with a song like The Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down in 1970: If the Band gave any hint they were aware it was 1970, writing a sentimental barn-burner about the fall of the Confederacy in an era of newly-minted civil rights would be unforgivable. But the Band presented themselves as not just outside of the political scene, as they had by retreating to the bucolic Big Pink in upstate New York to record their first record, but outside of time entirely, smeared broadly across a blurry pastiche of Americas past. 62 None of the Burritos were what youd call overtly political. The Vietnam War and national politics were just things on the news, less pressing than the everyday concerns of music, drugs, and women. Parsons was even less concerned than the rest: Hed managed to finagle himself a 4-F deferment, medically unfit for service. But then, as My Uncle describes, a letter came from the draft board. The army wasnt convinced of Parsons 4-F status; they wanted proof. Included with the letter was a questionnaire and a request to come on down and get checked out by a real live army doctor. It wasnt a draft card, but it might as well be. Sonically, the Burrito Brothers might be living in the past, but the war came to Burrito Manor in 1968. On My Uncle, Chris Hillman puts down the guitar and returns to the instrument that launched his career, the mandolin. Hillmans precise strumming and Sneaky Petes jaunting pedal steel line stand in for the drum track on a song that comes closer to bluegrass than anything on Gilded Palace, or Sweetheart, for that matter. In a snaptight vocal harmony, Parsons and Hillman inform the listener of the 104 situation and the song jumps immediately from the letter to the solution without a moments thought; theres not even a full measure between the chorus and verse. Theyre headed for the nearest foreign border before the questionnaire is even filled out. Not content to just suggest draft-dodging, the song raises the question of what the boys owe Uncle Sam, a little twist of JFKs Ask not what your country can do for you into Ask what your country has done for you. The Burrito Brothers quickly assess their debt to their nation and find it amounts to something less than everything. Even as they romp through music that owes a deep debt to America, they aver that the American government is clearly not worth dying for. The albums closing track, Hippie Boy attempts to send up the country tradition of preacher songs. 63 Over a languid organ solo, Chris Hillman narrates a tale within a tale. A straight (Hillmans speaker) walks for a piece with a hippie carrying a box, who in turn narrates a story of a young hippie killed in the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968. The so-called riots in Chicago were actually more of a police action, a beatdown instigated by the Gestapo tactics of Mayor Daleys police force right in front of the delegates hotels. The incidents were widely reported, but the Village Voice singled out one victim in an article that was picked up by the national press and may have served as the direct inspiration for the song. At the southwest entrance to the Hilton, a skinny, longhaired kid of about seventeen skidded down on the sidewalk, and four overweight cops leaped on him, chopping strokes on his head. His hair flew from the force of the blows. A dozen 105 small rivulets of blood began to cascade down the kids temple and onto the sidewalk. He was not crying or screaming, but crawling in a stupor towards the gutter. When he saw a photographer take a picture, he made a V sign with his fingers. This image of violence resonated with bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers. Los Angeles and San Francisco were enclaves of a sort, but the threat of random violence perpetrated solely based on length of hair or style of dress was ever-present, 64 especially in the types of bars and clubs the Burritos were regularly playing. Still, the Burritos were careful to enclose their politics in both the satire of a form and within a framing narrative: The speaker isnt Hillman 65 and hes recounting only the description of the incident at the DNC from a teller whose sources are unclear. He might have been there, but, like Hillman and Parsons, he might just have read it in the Village Voice. The framing narrative ultimately breaks down after the central narratives subject, the hippie boy of the title, dies. As we come out of the narrative, the voices of the straight and the hippie hes been talking with become indistinguishable, fuse, and multiply into the albums cacophonous closing chorus: The hippie victim in Chicago becomes the hippie storyteller becomes the straight becomes Hillman becomes a rising off-key chorus of GTOs and Burritos bringing the album to its telos, a hymn sung for and along with the victims of police violence in Chicago. Beyond making a political statement, there were valid aesthetic reasons for including contemporary issues in a 106 country album. For one, it was more true to the tradition. Much like folk, country music was historically concerned with specific events of the moment. So-called classic country songs like the Carter Familys No Depression or the Louvin Brothers Atomic Power directly addressed the immediate political context of their composition. Treating the songs as timeless was, in some ways, a betrayal of what the songs were all about. Responding to the country tradition with nothing but empty reiterations of generalized sentiments added nothing to the canon; it allowed country to become a museum piece, studied, venerated, and occasionally repackaged for public consumption. The Burritos wanted country music that breathed and bled, that was relevant and vital. To create it, they injected the country of the past with everything at hand, anything they could find that mattered to them. They stuffed it full of club girls and pot and dead Kennedys and soul and hippies and riots and rhinestones, crossing their fingers and hoping it would pop, dazzling audiences as sure as Operation: Rolling Thunders bombing of North Vietnam or the sunburst on the back of Chris Hillmans Nudie suit. Sons The first Nudie suit I ever saw was worn by Pete Buck on the Monster Tour in 1995. Id gotten into R.E.M. the same time as the rest of the non-tuned-in world with Out of Time, a weird amalgam of lush strings, bubblegum pop, and country rock. As the rest of my friends drifted into the teenage rebellion of grunge music or the male posturing of classic rock, I pined away with the high lonesome sound of the pedal 107 steel on Country Feedback, thinking it was like nothing Id ever heard. Of course, I was sixteen and not that bright. By the early nineties, lots of young bands were getting in touch with their inner twang. As it had been in the late sixties, country music was nowhere you wanted to be if you were a cool kid, and the prevailing legacy of country-rock consisted of adult contemporary dreck like the Eagles 66 or the questionable politics of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their Southern Rock confederates. Even the Man in Black was at a career ebb, about to crest again with his remarkable American albums. But some more savvy listeners had begun to look past the mainstreams version of country history and unearth commercial failures like The Gilded Palace of Sin. College radio staples like Uncle Tupelo and Dinosaur Jr. drank deep from the well, finding inspiration in the source material of the Flying Burrito Brothers: country stalwarts like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and George Jones, and in the Burrito Brothers spirit of experimentation. Just as the Burritos had cross-pollinated country and soul, Uncle Tupelo fused a country aesthetic, complete with pedal steel, onto the hook-laden pop-punk of the Replacements, while Dinosaur Jr. morphed the sound into their own brand of ear-bleeding country, a combination of Burritos twang and Sonic Youths apocalyptic noise. R.E.M. dabbled in country-rock on Out of Time and dove in fully on Automatic for the People. Beck pushed the genre through a synth, breaking country into shattered bits of samples and reconfiguring it as dance music; Whiskeytown fronted the fiddle and alternated rasping punk vocals with nasal twang; aging Brit art-punkers, the Mekons, whod once planted their 108 tongues firmly in their cheeks and blurted out Never Been in a Riot, matured into an accomplished group of country musicians, helping to found Bloodshot Records in Chicago, a label thats been a home to insurgent country 67 since its inception. To form a list is inevitably to exclude, but you can add in the Nashville stops on Elvis Costellos constant world tour of music genres, the historical revisionism of Gillian Welch, the amphetamine cowpunk of the Old 97s, the cinematic gothic archness of Knife in the Water and the Pinetop Seven, the exploding/imploding dynamics of Palace, the dust-dragged beauty of the Cowboy Junkies, the rodeo circus suicide music of Johnny Dowd, the musical history lessons of the Drive-By Truckers, and the country-soul noir of Neko Case to the stable of artists who can trace a direct lineage back to The Gilded Palace of Sin. Just off the top of my headnot bad for an album that topped out at #164 on the Billboard and has never been certified gold. 109 110 9 Gluttony: The Train Song White freight liner, wont you steal away my mind? -Townes van Zandt You dont trust him; it would be unwise to trust him. He is a bear of a man but his high nasal voice wheedles out of him and he looks like he may be planning to extract your wallet. Theres something off about his personality and its the difference between a person who is charming and a person who tells you they are charming. He is happy to grant interviews, assuming the interviewer is willing to pay. Philip Kaufman was a self-labeled road mangler. He enjoyed this little pun, he enjoyed all of his jokes more than anyone else in the room and the jokes lost none of their humor through repetition. Kaufman has also described himself as an executive nanny, but procurer comes closer to the mark. Kaufman had none of the qualities that might make one famous and he knew it. He settled for being close to fame, buzzing off a contact high. His connections in the entertainment industry, never as extensive as he made them out to be, came almost entirely from his ability to procure drugs. He was fearless and mercenary: while half of Californias glittering set was terrified of becoming the next Sharon Tate, Kaufman, whod served time with Charles Manson at Californias Terminal Island Prison, was blithely selling bootlegged copies of LIE, the demo tape Manson had 111 given him, the one Kaufman had promised Charlie would find its way into the right hands. A few months after his release from prison in the summer of 68, Kaufman found himself in the employ of the Rolling Stones, who were in LA to mix Beggars Banquet. Parsons, having recently returned to LA from his stay with Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg in Sussex and working on assembling the band that would become the Burritos, met Kaufman through the Stones near the end of the summer. The two shared a penchant for drinking and self-aggrandizement and became fast friends. So when the Burritos prepared to embark on their first tour, a cross-country train trip in February 1969, Gram Parsons asked Phil Kaufman to be the bands road manager. Kaufman wasnt exactly sure what services the Burritos expected, but he guessed hed be able to figure it out. Even today, theres a lingering romance about Amtraks Super Chief, which makes the run from Los Angeles to Chicago. It winds its way through the barren, alien parts of America, the quasi-lunar landscapes of Arizona and New Mexico that John Ford chose for backdrops, etching them permanently into the visual iconography of the American West. The Super Chief cuts across Gary Cooper and John Wayne, passes through The Searchers and High Noon. For a band like the Flying Burrito Brothers, already at play in a field of American cultural icons, the Super Chief was just another bit of mythmaking, a piece in a patchwork of images and ideas. Its nice to think that, anyway. 112 The truth is, the Flying Burrito Brothers didnt want to leave the ground. Specifically, Gram Parsons couldnt get on an airplane unless he was doped up to his eyeballs. 68 Even though the train was significantly more expensive, the suits were picking up the bill, so the entire Burritos entourage loaded on to the Super Chief bound for Chicago, all of it on A&Ms tab. Along with the band, its two regular managers and Philip Kaufman, that entourage included Michael Vosse, an assistant to the Vice-President of A&M Records, the labels resident hippie. If Kaufman was in charge of procuring the drugs, Vosse, equipped with the company charge card, was responsible for procuring everything else. He might have been sent along as a chaperone, but Vosse was a willing participant in the bands activities, which began the night before the Super Chief left Los Angeles. Gram was practically shoving up peoples noses last night, Miss Pamela wrote of the send-off party in her diary. Big globs of it. Ah, the famous train tour, drawled Chris Ethridge. That was something else. That was a hell of a trip, I tell you what. With an ample supply of drugs stowed away and the Nudie suits cleaned and pressed, the train and Michael Vosses camera started rolling. Inspired by the jittery handheld camerawork and DIY aesthetic of DA Pennebackers documentaries as much as the more innocent and scripted hijinks of A Hard Days Night, the Burritos decided to document their cross-country journey. 69 113 It was like a Fellini move, remembers Chris Hillman. It was like a cowboy Fellini movie travelogue. The band, fueled by mescaline, coke, and various other implements of chemical alteration, 70 mugged for the camera like a tripped-out analog of the Fab Four, hanging out the backs of train cars, bleating garbled versions of Buck Owens songs, and generally terrifying the straights. By lunchtime on the first day, the band had been identified as disrupters of the peace. Some guy in the dining car, recalled Vosse, to this day I think hes a brilliant tactician, came up to all of us and said I know you gentlemen are in show business and you dont want to be bothered by people who want your autographs. Ive got a private dining room for you. The footage shows the truth of the matter: Not a single passenger on Amtraks Super Chief knew who the Flying Burrito Brothers were. Safely sequestered from their adoring fans, the Burritos settled into their posh dining car and got to the real business of the tour: poker. 71 According to Michael Clarke, the band spent as much time playing poker as they did playing music, with Parsons generally winning by virtue of being able to afford to bet indiscriminatelytough to read a player who can bet $500 on a pair and not give it a second thought. By the time they disembarked from the Super Chief for the first show in Chicago, the lack of practice was apparent. Ragged from the drugs and virtually unrehearsed, with a drummer who had yet to learn the songs, the bands live shows skirted the edge of disastrous, salvaged only by Hillmans professionalism and Parsons occasionalif 114 ultimately unreliablebrilliance. Crowds responded coolly, and some of the band members were quick to lay the blame on the audience. Sneaky Pete asserted that the band was supposed to sound ramshackle; they were cowpunks, rebels. Parsons insisted audiences and critics, both country and rock, just didnt get it. Hillman was embarrassed to be part of the whole mess. If you do a bad show, he said, and youve got a rhine-stone suit on, boy, getting off the stage is tough. Yknow, youre shining likemmm hmm. Not good. Although the band hardly rehearsed, Parsons and Hillman did manage to squeeze a little songwriting in among the drug-hazed days of high-stakes poker in high-class hotel rooms. Semi-inspired by the trip out, the pair penned The Train Song, a mid-paced boogie number extolling the near-spiritual virtues of train travel. It was a horrible song, Hillman said of it later, and I wrote half of it! But audiences seemed to like it well enough and Parsons was so excited about the new song, he cajoled Michael Vosse into calling A&M to have them stop all promotions on Gilded Palace of Sin in order to throw the remaining promotional budget behind this new single, which the band would cut as soon as they returned to LA. Sales were moving slowly, but the album had been critically praised, including a glowing review in Rolling Stone and an endorsement from Bob Dylan. Knowing that stopping promotions at this stage would leave the half-finished tour dead in the water, A&M refused Parsons request. 72 115 Along with fleecing his bandmates at the poker table, it became increasingly clear that Parsons was using this tour to establish himself as the undisputed frontman of the Burritos. More and more, Parsons talked about Ethridge, Kleinow, and Clarke as if they were hired help, openly discussing how ill-suited they were for his band. In a 1972 interview looking back on his experience with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons ran down the laundry list of complaints that had already started to surface on the first tour. I sort of feel that all along the Burritos had a drummer problem, you see, he explained. God knows I love old Michael Clarke like a brother. But hes not a country drummer. Parsons chuckled to himself. I hope you erase everything I said about Michael. Remarking on a recording of one of the early shows at the Palomino hed recently heard, Parsons said, I couldnt believe the way Chris Ethridge sounded. I had never realized that he wasnt a country bass player. And it should have been obvious to me cause hes such a great studio musician. But hes not a country bass player. What we needed was someone who could play a country shuffle, but it wasnt happening. Discussing Sneaky Pete in the same interview, Parsons admitted, There were times during the first album when I wanted to quit cause I couldnt understand this guy doing eight steel overdubs over himself. Sneaky (I feel like Im repeating myself) wasnt the right steel player for the group. Chris [Hillman] sort of has two opinions about this. In a way he digs Sneaky more than I do. I just settled for anybody whod play slide guitar with pedals on it. 116 Parsons was distancing himself from the band, but at the same time, he was making an effort to eclipse Chris Hillman. In interviews, Parsons would claim sole credit for songs the two had co-written and in performance, Hillman was being slowly relegated to the position hed held in the Byrds: the quiet guy in the back. The Burritos frequent employment of tight, Everly Brothers-style harmonies required Hillman and Parsons to stay close and focused on each other at shows. Unlike the vaulting harmonies of David Crosby, this style is more responsive, like dancing without a clear lead, and its nearly impossible to do well without eye contact, watching your partners face for clues as to where hes taking his harmony next. But footage of a lip-synched studio performance for a Philadelphia public access station during the train tour gives a better sense of how Parsons saw the band. While all of the Burritos were sporting their Nudie suits, only Parsons seemed to realize his potential as a living mirror-ball. Hillman gamely takes the first lead vocal on Christines Tune, forcing a smile but looking stiff and earnest as can be, while Parsons prances kinetically behind him, his suit throwing sparks at the camera, and when the two are harmonizing, Parsons treats his songwriting partner like a prop, leaning in to sing in his ear, subtly upstaging him. On the second number, Hot Burrito #1, the band is barely visible as the camera holds Parsons face in a tight close up, his eyebrows arching evocatively, selling every word to the camera and literally eclipsing the rest of the band. After all, the songwriting was over, the hard work was done. This was show business, and Gram Parsons had been preparing for this since those days on his front stoop. 117 After the television appearance and several shows in Philadelphia opening for Three Dog Night, the Burritos found themselves at the Boston Tea Party, booked for four nights of the most ontologically confusing bill imaginable: the Flying Burrito Brothers playing before the Byrds and after the Flying Burrito Brothers. Now based in Boston, Ian Dunlops Flying Burrito Brothers East was still something of a pickup band, the kind of loose collective hed favored since his post-International Submarine Band days in LA. Dunlop didnt feel inclined to argue over the rights to the name 73 and the West Coast contingent wasnt about to bring it up. Even stranger than the meeting of two incarnations of the Flying Burrito Brothers was the confrontation between the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers, who now contained more Byrds than the Byrds, 74 McGuinn had given up his epic original idea for the album that became Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and the electronic experiments that were supposed to follow the Byrds country excursion never materialized. Abandoned by Hillman and Parsons in a California dream of Nashville, McGuinn had gone native, and the Byrds had adopted a predominantly country repertoire and the pastiche of outlaw garb favored by the Band and the Dead. As always, the Byrds remained grounded in McGuinns pristine pop sensibilities and their country efforts sounded too clean, lacking the technical complexity of accomplished blue-grass and the barnstorming spontaneity of the best Burrito Brothers efforts. On the last of four nights, the two bands played together, with Parsons fronting the Byrds on Hickory Wind and You 118 Dont Miss Your Water. The crowd, most of them there to see the Byrds anyway, responded much more positively to Parsons with the Byrds than they had to the Burritos, and everyoneparticularly Parsonstook notice. For his part, Hillman couldnt help but notice how much more interested Parsons seemed in playing with the Byrds than in playing with his own band. 75 The tour ended in New York and the band, strung out from weeks of rough living and disappointed at the reception theyd received, were at each others throats. Whatever nerves remained in their tattered systems were frayed and irritated. Emotionally and physically wrecked, they put themselves in the tender care of Phil Kaufman, whod spent the last few weeks aiding and abetting their diets of self-abuse. The train tour ended, I think it was pretty much a train wreck, Phil Kauffman quipped. I think we flew home, because I remember Gram and Michael Clarke and Chris Ethridge, I got em on the plane and I had to order three wheelchairs in LA when we landed for the boys who were airsick. Airheadd be more like it. Delivered with his wheezing laugh. The Burritos returned to the safe environs of LA and the comfortable, if not always lucrative, LA club circuit, but more bad news piled up. Tired of playing to cold audiences and half-empty rooms, Chris Ethridge quit the band. The Burritos learned that by opting for the train tour, theyd passed on a little festival in upstate New York in the nowhere town of Woodstock. The biggest gathering of hippies the world would ever see and theyd missed it. But the worst news came in the 119 form of the bill on Michael Vosses company card. The Burrito Brothers now owed A&M Records somewhere in the range of $80,000 plus the recording costs for Gilded Palace of Sin and The Train Song, neither of which had made any progress on the charts. 120 121 10 Envy: Let It Bleed The crow looks rusty as he rises up. Bright is the malice in his eye One joins him there for company. But at a distance, in another tree. -Wallace Stevens Frankly, the Rolling Stones scare the fuck out of me. First off, theres no way they should still be alive. As a band, for one thing. None of the bands of that era still exist in any recognizable form. And dont even say the Who. Even more impressive, theyre all still alive! Do you realize that as of 2007, no one has ever died while he was a Rolling Stone? Its like the sweet black angel that swept through the field of sixties musical luminaries ensuring no major band escaped into the 1980s unscathed, simply passed over the Stones. If it had happened to the Beatles, people would say the hand of God was on them. But one doubts God would want anything to do with the Stones. You know when the jokes about Keith Richards being a corpse stop being funny? When you realize hell be dancing at your funeral. And your kids funerals. If their continued existence is off-putting, their music is downright terrifying. Find a song conceptually similar and listen to it up against the Stones. Here, Ill give you a start: 122 listen to the Stones cover of Lennon and McCartneys I Wanna Be Your Man. The Beatles are singing to no one but themselves, 76 engaged in the harmonic interplay of their own voices. The Stones are singing to your girlfriend 77while youre in the room. Ever wonder why Gimme Shelter is in half the films Martin Scorcese ever made? Listen to Gimme Shelter right after the Lovin Spoonfuls Summer in the City. The Spoonful paint a snarling picture of the way summer heat skirts the edge of violence, only to offer the cooling respite of the bounce pop chorus: just tap your feet, itll be all right. Gimme Shelter assures listeners that, foot-tapping aside, everything will not be all right: it starts with the match struck and burns away from there. Shelters just a shout away, shouts Mick over and over, even as the song fades out and leaves the listener feeling brutally exposed. At least from 1968 to 1972, they were the most important rock band in America. Actually, thats not quite right. They were the most important American Rock Band. Their early efforts might have had the Mr. Fish paisley tint of Swinging London blues dabbling, but from Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main Street, there was no band more American than the Rolling Stones. The final frightening thing to deal with about the Stones is their wake. Maybe you cant die while youre a Rolling Stone, but being around the Rolling Stones can seriously fuck you up. When the Stones came back to LA in 1969 to record Let It Bleed, they had just buried their former lead guitarist, Brian Jones, who had lived only one month after getting 123 kicked out of the band. The coroners report concluded Death by Misadventure, and that more or less hit it on the head. If the Beatles were encouraging fans to roll up for a Magical Mystery Tour, the Stones were offering only Misadventure, with all the consequences that might entail. Gram Parsons first misadventure with the Rolling Stones had cost him a job, but gained him a friend for life. I said, theres a good one, remembered Richards. I just got you out of the band. You were a member of the Byrds yesterday, today you aint got a gig! He chuckled at this in the strange husky laugh of his. And its that chuckle that says it all. Richards is talking about costing his friend a dream job, and his only response is to chuckle as if to say, Yep, kid, thats what happens. With his new wings already clipped, Parsons was warmly welcomed into the home of Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg in Sussex. Its difficult to think of Keith Richards as anything but the relic he is now, propped in a chair like a taxidermists triumph, perpetual cigarette dangling from skeletal fingers, but in 1968, he was a skinny, vibrant kid of twenty-four. He was living hard but he was only starting to live hard: The heroin habit that would dog Richards for most of his life was only a hobby and the daunting cocktail of substances that would pass through his legendary liver 78 were still held at a recreational level. Coming off a string of best-selling records whose creative direction had been largely dictated by Brian Jones, Richards was looking for ways to make his presence more strongly felt within the Stones and pick up the 124 slack left by the drug-addled Jones. He and Parsons clicked immediately. Grams one of those guys, Richards said, you meet with him and you say, bam, Ive known you forever. And you can only find out more about each other. But it was kind of like that immediately between him and me. In pictures from the months in Sussex, they look like two kids at summer camp, goofy and wild eyed, grinning from ear to ear. and when Richards talks about Parsons, its with a faraway sweetness reserved for friends of ones early childhood who are preserved by their early departure from ones life. Mick Jagger didnt take to Parsons as easily, and was occasionally brusque to him, but he couldnt help but respect Parsons musical knowledge, and if the two were never friends, they were at least briefly partners in an overall musical project. The first meeting of the three in 1968 opened up a new musical playing field for the Stones in a period of flux. Jagger and Richards knew a thing or two about country, but didnt have the deep and passionate knowledge of Parsons. Most importantly, Parsons introduced them to the Bakersfield sound, a plugged-in variant of country music popularized by Bakersfield, California-based artists like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens as an alternative to the polished orchestrated music coming out of Nashville at the time and nicknamed Bakersfield shitkick. Parsons also introduced Richards to Nashville tuning, an open tuning in which the C, D and E strings are tuned a full octave higher, creating a ringing double tone similar to a 12-string. Richards, 125 who had been playing weaving double guitar lines with Jones before the latter grew bored with guitar, was instantly enamored of the tone, and it would show up in his acoustic playing over the next four albums, 79 including Beggars Banquet, which marked the beginning of the withdrawal of Brian Jones from the band leading up to his eventual ouster. Keith Richards credits Parsons and his injection of country music into the bands repertoire with helping to spark the renaissance of the Rolling Stones. But Roger McGuinn, discussing the Parsons-Stones connection in 1976, put it differently. They pulled him over and started romancing him, McGuinn told an interviewer, and they ripped him off for all he knew. Parsons surely never saw it that way; he adored the Stones, particularly Richards. Throughout his career, he spoke excitedly about the album he and Richards were going to record together, as soon as Keith found the time. And it wasnt a case of Richards stringing Parsons along. Being a Rolling Stone was awfully time-consuming, and, as Richards said, I always figured, oh, hes about the same, hes a little younger than me, hell be around for ages. We can do loads of stuff. I mean, we werent even really just getting going. When the Stones hit LA in fall of 1969, shacking up at the home of Stephen Stills to finish recording Let It Bleed, Parsons became an immediate fixture, both at the house and in the studio. For their part, the Stones frequented Burrito Brothers shows, trekking to out-of-the-way clubs like the Palamino and the Golden Bear to lend the boys a little 126 secondhand credibility. The Stones had known Hillman since his early days with the Byrds, and although theyd never been good friends, they shared a mutual respect of talented working musicians. But the Stones were an established band, finding their feet again after the death of Brian Jones, while the Burritos were a new band, threatening to implode after just one album, and Hillman couldnt help but be frustrated by the amount of time Parsons was spending with the Stones and not the Burritos. People have speculated as to whether or not Gram Parsons wanted to be a Rolling Stone, but come on, who wouldnt want to be a Rolling Stone? Who would opt to stay with their struggling, deeply in-debt band rather than join the most successful band in the world? And more than any other band, even the Flying Burrito Brothers themselves, the Rolling Stones were realizing Parsons dream of a Cosmic American Music: Beggars Banquet came on as an explosive experiment with elements of country, but over the next three albums, culminating with Exile on Main Street, the Stones were producing a polyglot of country, soul, R&B, and rock, juxtaposing pedal steel and twang with rich soul vocals and blistering guitars. Of course, Gram Parsons wanted to be in the Rolling Stones. But there was no room in the Rolling Stones for Parsons. That didnt stop him from overselling his connection to the band. In addition to the constant talk of a collaboration with Keith Richards, Parsons and his fans have at various times claimed that he wrote Honky Tonk Women, 80 that he arranged or performed on Country Tonk, the front-porch hootenanny version that appears on Let It Bleed, 81 and that he contributed vocals on Exile, 127 82 Parsons also claimed he was the inspiration for Wild Horses, 83 later backing off to claim the Stones had written the song for him to record. In truth, Richards had sent him the demo of Wild Horses so he could pass it along for Sneaky Pete to record a pedal steel track. Parsons latched onto the song and asked Richards for permission to record it for Burrito Deluxe, an album which was stalled out due in no small part to Parsons overall disinterest. Richards agreed and although Hillman wasnt overly fond of the song, they were short on material and a new Jagger/Richards composition would sell records, assuming Burrito Deluxe ever got completed. Parsons time with the Stones was affecting more than just his already shaky work ethic: It was altering his stage presence and fashion sense. In a video for Older Guys, a series of shots of the band goofing around on the California coast, popping in and out of the cabin of a yacht, structurally similar to a video Parsons and Hillman had done with the Byrds for Hey Mr. Spaceman, the boy whod once been ecstatic just to sit on a bench, grinning and harmonizing, was now prancing and strutting, trailing pink scarves and wagging a finger at the camera, even delivering a Jagger-esque pout as he sang, Its so coastal living by the ocean. The scarves were just part of it. Painted nails, all that effeminate shit, recounted one of the Burritos roadies. Hed come into the Palomino when it was a real truck-driver place in these faggy outfits and the other guys would say We cant go on stage with this fucker. The drift towards 128 androgyny was shared by most of the Stones entourage. Stones biographer Stanley Booth said, We all got faggier by the day. The wonder is that by the end of the tour we werent all wearing dresses. We all had to brush our hair out of our eyes every eight seconds. You never saw a more limp-wristed bunch of sissies. But Booth was stressing a positive aspect of the band. The Stones toying with ideas and imagery of femininity and homosexuality was a reinforcement of their own masculinity. Besides, the Burritos had been parading into roughneck bars in rhinestones suits since the outset. If Parsons wanted to push that envelope a little further, the rest of the band was willing to let it slide. What didnt fly was his failure to show up at a recording session at A&Ms studios in Hollywood. After a couple phone calls, Hillman found him in a location he might have guessed. I tracked him down to a Stones session, recounts Hillman. Busting into the Stones studio, Hillman immediately apologized for interrupting and spotted Parsons sitting in the corner of the studio, watching the Stones. Mick Jagger, the other professional in this business, comes over to him, says Gram, you have a responsibility Chris is here. Go with Chris. Were working. Like a petulant child, Parsons got up and left the studio with Hillman. 129 130 11 Avarice: Burrito Deluxe Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are. Steve Albini Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass made the kind of album covers hipsters frame and hang ironically on their wallsa woman caked in whipped cream wearing a little tiara and set against a kelly green background; an unbearably slick-looking gentleman done up in a matador-gaucho pastiche posed on a flimsy hacienda set; gaudy seriffed lettering; amazing kitsch objects. The music is significantly less amazinga step above the Ray Coniff singers, but essentially elevator music. Not too surprising then, that when Alpert paired up with businessman Jerry Moss to start A&M Records in 1962, their stable of artists didnt exactly set the world on fireSergio Mendes & Brazil 66; Fairport Convention; Burt Bacharach. But the target market for music has always been the young folks, and the kids just werent buying Sergio Mendes albums. By 1968, A&M had some success with folk acts like Joan Baez and We Five, but wanted to tap deeper into the youth market. A&M was ready to rock. 131 The Flying Burrito Brothers were their first real foray into the rock scene and it seemed like a sure thing. The band contained two former members of the Byrds, 84 Joan Baez had scored a minor hit covering Parsons Hickory Wind, plus theyd work for next to nothing. The cash advance for Gilded Palace of Sin amounted to approximately $1500 for each band member, and all A&M had to put up additionally were recording, promotional, and touring costs. Of course, after working with modest artists like Mendes, Baez, and Bacharach, A&M could never have anticipated the Dionysian excesses of Parsons and the Burritos, both in the studio and on tour. In addition to the $80,000 the band had spent on the train tour, A&M had shelled out another $50,000 on recording and promotion for the bands first album and subsequent single and had seen practically no return on investment. They werent pulling the plug just yet; A&M had always said the Burritos were a second album band and they were willing to spend money to ensure the second album was a success. But playtime was definitely over, and it was time for the Burritos to start making money. With the departure of Chris Ethridge, the Burritos should have been shopping for a bass player, but instead hired lead guitarist Bernie Leadon, veteran of country acts like the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers with Chris Hillman, and Dillard & Clark with former Byrd Gene Clark. Leadon was a stronger lead than Hillman, who agreed to switch back to bass, an instrument hed more or less abandoned since his time in the background of the Byrds. 132 A&M also hired producer Jim Dickson, who had known Hillman since his bluegrass days and had been with the Byrds when they were still a folk trio. He had introduced them to Chris Hillman and introduced them to the songs of Bob Dylan, starting with Mr. Tambourine Man. Throughout his time with the band, Dickson had encouraged the Byrds to cover Dylan, believing their sound to be uniquely suited to his material. Dicksons job was simple: Craft the Flying Burrito Brothers into a commercially viable entity and churn out an album that would sell. Regardless of how Hillman felt about moving back over to bass, it was nice to have another professional on the team. Leadon shared Hillmans hard-nosed work ethic and discipline. His playing was solid, his songwriting was competent, firmly grounded in traditional country and bluegrass, and his patience with Gram Parsons flamboyant antics was low. Parsons and Hillman had written no new songs since The Train Song so the rehearsal sessions for Burrito Deluxe began with castoffs from The Gilded Palace of Sin. When those werent enough, the Burritos unearthed a Parsons tune that had been cut from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Lazy Day, which seemed to sum up everyones sentiments regarding the second album. Its a lazy day. Im bored with nothing else to do. Its a lazy day. Ive got something that I wanna try with you. 133 With the inclusion, at Jim Dicksons insistence, of the older Dylan number If Youve Gotta Go, the early tracklist for the sessions seemed like a collection of songs Hillman and Parsons had already attempted with no luck. In fact, with Hillman on bass, Dickson at the boards and the switch from two-part, Everly Brothers inspired harmonies to a three-part harmony including Leadon, 85 the Flying Burrito Brothers were looking suspiciously like a poor mans version of the Byrds. Filling up the extra spots on the tracklist was a major point of contention. Parsons felt that, like Gilded Palace, the second album had to include R&B numbers to get across what the band was all about. He suggested tracks like Larry Williamss Boney Maronie and James Carrs To Love Somebody. Leadon, who was not at all an R&B guitarist, argued that the band should make a more earnest attempt to woo country audiences by dropping in more traditional country and spiritual material. The deciding vote fell to Hillman, and it wasnt a tough call to make. Parsons was looking for ways to make an artistic statement, an appeal to an R&B audience who wanted even less to do with the Burritos than rock and country audiences already did. Advocating a more artistically safe route, Leadons approach sounded more like a marketing plan than a musical manifesto. Hillmans band was deep in debt to their label, and thered be no trust fund to bail him out. He sided with Leadon and the Burritos jettisoned R&B from their repertoire. It was a good day in the studio when everyone showed up. A&M had moved the sessions out to Hollywood, believing that LA provided too many distractions, which it did. But the move just made those distractions more appealing for a group 134 who would already rather not brave the traffic to Hollywood just to see who else had made roll call that day. Leadon and Hillman were there all the time, as was Michael Clarke, whod finally been hired as the full-time drummer after the train tour, but Parsons attendance was sporadic and his condition unpredictable when he did show up. I cant even claim to have really even participated, Parsons said later. I did what was asked of me and thats about it. Its a pretty lousy thing to have to admit. I waited to see if the album was gonna be a freak hit and then split. Other than Wild Horses, he showed no interest in the material, and his vocals were tepid and limp. Sneaky Pete was perhaps the only member whod gotten more work as a result of the first album and would often prefer to work a paying gig than suffer through another fruitless session with the Burritos, a band for whom he was mostly hired help anyway. The result reflected the bands utter lack of enthusiasm and inspiration. The playing was competent. Even Michael Clarke, dismissed as a poor drummer since his time with the Byrds, had developed into an adequate one. Jim Dickson took what the band gave him and polished it, giving it a smooth, post-production sheen, but in doing so did further damage to an already-flawed album. The final cut lacked any of the honky-tonk grit the Burritos could manifest in their better moments 86 and flattened out the band until all elements were precisely equal in the mix: nowhere does Sneaky Petes pedal steel commandeer a song like an air invasion, Nowhere does Parsons vocal rise out of the mired harmonies to grab the 135 audiences interest. Everything sits firmly in the middle of the mix, non-offensive, never challenging. In short, Burrito Deluxe fit in perfectly with the rest of the albums put out by A&M Records. Holy Ghosts Its easier to valorize a young dead man than a live old one. This may be universally true, but its certainly true for rock musicians: a reputation is better served by a short, strong career than an extended, varied one. To add to the problem, few musicians are able to transcend their initial moment of cultural relevance: the sixties were rough on the stars of the fifties, the seventies were trying for the stars of the sixties, and the eighties were outright brutal to everyone left around. We neednt list examples on this, but lets dojust for kicks. First and ever foremost are the surviving Beatles. Sure, we all wish John Lennon had gotten a chance to appear on the Simpsons, but few of us wanted to see him as a six-inch tall train conductor on a childrens program, or spouting jingoist pro-American lyrics on a Super Bowl halftime show. The handful of albums recorded by Jimi Hendrix remain vital, while Eric Claptons best work strains under the weight of two decades of dismissible pop and sentimentalist tripe. Nick Drake and Elliott Smith have earned permanent seats in the coffeehouse of miserablist culture as much through their talent as by being brief, brilliant gems of sadness, and Kurt Cobain remains untarnished by the alternarock monster he inadvertently created and abandoned. 87 136 Its an unfortunate truth, but dead rock stars are inevitably the ones who are canonized and airbrushed onto t-shirts. Its the way of the world. So it is with Gram and Chris. Together they produced an album that would become the blueprint for a musical movement, that bent genres and opened doors into other things that rock and country could be. Its an album musicians like Uncle Tupelo, R.E.M., Gillian Welch, and Beck discovered and returned to, taking it as a cue not to repeat, but to reinvent; to approach music with the same sense of wonder and reverence paired with experimentation and play that pervades The Gilded Palace of Sin. As much as any effort by Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards, The Gilded Palace of Sin is a collaboration, two individuals at the peak of their abilities, coming together to form something larger than either. The Gilded Palace of Sin is an album by Hillman and Parsons. But it never plays that way. Gram Parsons has become the patron saint of alt-country, while a significant number of the genres younger proponents wouldnt recognize Chris Hillmans name. Leaving the scene at the age of twenty-six, Parsons cemented his place in history and preserved his image as the child prodigy, the golden boy with the shining cross. He didnt have to stick around while the Eagles turned the musical style hed helped advance into a plastic dry fuck, didnt have to spend the seventies bouncing around the ruins of the California scene in collapse, brushing against other lost musicians hoping for a spark that never came. He could exist forever as potential energy. 137 But in none of Parsons most brilliant moments was he alone. Not one. Hillman is as much a part of Parsons early work as Parsons himself, just as EmmyLou Harris was an equal partner in his later efforts. Since his death, the two have kept Parsons memory alive in their own ways: Harris with an almost starry-eyed reverence, Hillman with the cool objectivity we reserve for only our closest friends. If Hillman seems a little bitter discussing Parsons, its understandable: Much of his career has been spent working in a genre thats become the Church of Gram Parsons, an edifice he and his friend had built together in the low desert of the late sixties. 138 139 12 Wrath: Under My Thumb See the Rolling Stones and die. -Stanley Booth He enters the frame from the upper left corner, licking his lips anxiously, sporting a suit of violent green. Someone leans over to inform you, Thats him, thats Meredith Hunter and for the next ten minutes, as Mick in a motley red and black shirt trailing scarlet scarves from his arms urges everyone to be cool, get it together, the crowd in front of the stage at Altamont Speedway is no longer a simple muddle of hippies and Angels: It becomes a dark space, waiting for the unnatural brightness of the green suit to violate it again. Your eye is searching for Meredith Hunter, to catch the last few moments of his life on screen. 88 The band lopes its way through Under My Thumb, 89 trying to ease the crowd back from something awful. Denim-clad arms crossed, Sonny Barger, the head of the San Francisco branch of the Angels, is giving Mick a look that could be desire or disgust. Its impossible to tell if he wants to fuck Mick or fight him. Mick is pleading, Its all right, I pray its all right and at the foot of the stage, the kids are shaking their heads at him, in sympathy or disagreement. Suddenly, he leaps back into the frame from the left, arms flailing. The Angels have created a space at the front of the 140 stage and Meredith Hunter jumps into it, only to be dragged down and out of the frame, stabbed repeatedly in the back and the side of the head. An 18-year-old Berkeley student, he is dead before the helicopter can get him to the hospital. The fact of it is, California deserved Woodstock more than New York did. A quick rundown of the Woodstock line-up reveals almost entirely West Coast imports without an indigenous New York band among them. By the end of the sixties, New York Citys rock scene was under the sway of Warhol and the Factory, the cool-to-the-point-of-icy aesthetic of the Velvet Underground. Yasgurs farm in upstate New York simply never earned the right to host the signature event of late sixties musical culture; San Francisco had put in the work, only to be passed over. The West Coast was entitled to a Woodstock-level event and the Rolling Stones were set to provide. Not to argue that it was a selfless move. The Stones had botched the free concerts original site in Golden Gate Park by announcing themselves as the concerts special guests in order to drum up press for both the show and the forthcoming Let It Bleed. Once the city of San Francisco knew the Stones were playing, they nixed Golden Gate Park due to the traffic and policing problems the show would create, forcing the move to the Sears Point Raceway. Additionally, the Stones had already sold the movie rights for a sizable sum, and financial disputes over distribution led to the breakdown of the Sears Point site, necessitating the last minute move to the Altamont Speedway two days before the show. But there is a sweet and generous navet that comes through in Micks plans for the concert, as explained to radio reporters in the week leading up to Altamont. 141 Its creating a sort of microcosmic society which sets an example for the rest of America, he told them. The concerts like the proscenium of a theater, its like an excuse for everyone to get together and, like, talk to each other and sleep with each other and ball each other and get very stoned and just have a nice night out and a good day. Its not just getting up there and seeing, sort of, the Grateful Airplane, yknow. The Rolling Dead. Its important also to remember the amount of time compression were talking about, the short span between Woodstock and Altamont, a distance of less than four months. In Rolling Stone, Hunter Thompson described this period in typical gonzo-prophetic prose as possessed with that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil We had all the momentum, we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. Four months after Woodstock, it could only feel natural that the momentum was continuing, even building, and that Altamont would be another Woodstock: an incarnation of everything the California scene was about. From the crest of the wave, there was no way to tell that everything had tipped, gotten just ahead of itself, and was crashing into the first year of the seventies. Even hiring the Hells Angels as a security force was not as monumentally idiotic as it seems. The Angels had provided security for a number of Grateful Dead shows without incident, and the Stones had used the British wing of the Angels for security at their recent Hyde Park show, 90 which had been as big as the projected Altamont turnout. The Angels also shared a kind of outsider status with the hippie movement, although the politics of the two groups 142 showed little to no overlap. And there were good reasons for not using the police: It wasnt just that there would be drugs, 91 there had to be drugs. Drugs were a crucial part of the equation. The Stones needed a security force with an open mind regarding conspicuous consumption of substances, they needed it on the cheap, 92 theyd had positive experiences with the less-bellicose British version of the Angels, and the Dead, who knew the San Francisco scene as well as anyone, had given the Angels their blessing. That naivet again: Nothing bad could happen. We were winning. But the Rolling Stones were the wrong band to replicate Woodstock. The Stones had a darkness to them thats otherly, that was utterly outside the Woodstock scene. Even their experiments in acid-fueled hippie-dippery resulted in Their Satanic Majesties Request, 93. Janis and Jimi had a bit of that darkness in them, but in Joplin and Hendrix, it showed itself as an abandonment of self in favor of excess as art, a sort of ecstatic self-destruction. The Stones themselves were indestructible; it was everyone else that was wrecked in their wake. Inevitable, well-meant, and doomed from the start, the planned free concert barreled through myriad obstacles to its final destination at the Altamont Speedway, 40 miles north of San Francisco, on December 6, 1969. At least 200,000 kids were expected, the largest West Coast concert audience since the Monterey Pop Festival two years earlier. And Parsons wanted to be part of it. The Burritos were nowhere near the caliber of the rest of the bill numberwise. Santana was coming off a career-making 143 performance at Woodstock, and their debut album was climbing the charts. The Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane had just recorded and were about to release two albums 94 that would each in its own way map and define a solid and crystalline moment of a scene that was already disintegrating. Crosby Stills Nash and Young were nothing short of a supergroup, built out of Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, and the Hollies. The Burritos could barely draw a crowd at the Palomino, and the uninspired Burrito Deluxe was dying on the charts. Even Parsons friendship with Richards was not enough to convince the rest of the Stones to hire the band on as an opener. Only after Parsons agreed to pay the Burritos travel expenses out of pocket was the band tacked onto the bill. So on the morning of December 6, the Flying Burrito Brothers trucked up from San Francisco to Altamont, stuck in traffic with 400,000 Rolling Stones fans. The day got off to a bad start. Sneaky Pete got into a minor car accident on the drive up and the band arrived in poor spirits. The Speedway was already full of kids, many of whom had filtered in the night before and camped out, ingesting alcohol, speed, hallucinogens, and anything else on hand 95 to ready themselves for the show. The boys milled about, spending a fair amount of time in the smoky trailer of the Rolling Stones. By the time the Burritos took the stage, Altamont had already been blessed with the first of the days four births, 96 and the Angels had taken up their posts at the end of the low-set stage, sporting pool cues weighted with lead at the butt end, skinny implements less imposing but no less effective than a cavemans club. A handful of audience 144 members caught the business end of a pool cue during the Burritos set, but overall, the band seemed to have a calming effect on the crowd. Gram up there and I mean, hes a very gentle guy, Keith Richards remembered. Very soothing effect on people. And he knew it, yknow? But I think, I mean, that probably saved at least some other peoples, and some other heads gettin broken. For a little while, yknow Gram could do that. He had a very commanding presence. Hillman agreed. I must say, the Burrito Brothers did calm the crowd down. In the movie [Gimme Shelter], you can see that. But I found it the most disturbing thing in the world. Even with a strong performance and a positive reception, there was something in the air at Altamont that set Chris Hillmans teeth on edge. He wasnt the only one to pick up on it; the Dead were informed upon arrival that the Angels had turned violent and immediately loaded back into the helicopter and left. 97 Hillman had enough concert experience to know something wasnt right. I had played Monterey with The Byrds. That was the best pop festival ever, over Woodstock, The Isle Of Wight, any of them. And Altamont was the exact opposite. It was a dark day. The Hells Angels were like uncaged barbarians, attacking anything that walked. God knows what theyd ingested, but they were just frightening. I went to get onstage with my bass, and I was stopped by two Hells Angels. It was like dealing with two sociopaths. I had to talk to them like they were children: Im going to play now, I have a show to 145 do, Im playing the bass, this is it what Im holding, I have to go on the stage now. It was the monk at the monastery dealing with the Norsemen. Once wed finished playing, I left immediately. Immediately. Hillman and Kleinow cut out and were back in San Francisco by nightfall. Naturally, Parsons wanted to hang out and see the Stones play; it had been months since the whole band had played out together on the West Coast. Leadon and Clarke, whod both missed out on Woodstock, wandered through the crowd after the Burritos set, not really in with the Stones entourage. Things went bad quickly. During the Jefferson Airplanes set, Airplane singer Marty Balin leapt off the stage to stop the Angels from beating on an audience member and received a punch in the face for his efforts. When Paul Kantner took the mic to inform the audience his bandmate had been abused, one of the Angels stepped up to Balins mic and clearly explicated the Angels policy for the day. Youre talking to me, now Im going to talk to you. Youre talking to my people. Now let me tell you whats happening. You. Whats happening. You know whats happening? Were partying, like you. The event was massive, covering miles of ground and some concertgoers remembered Altamont as an overall positive experience, only learning of the violence through news reports later. But as the daylight waned and a pause stretched out between the end of Crosby Stills Nash and Youngs set and the beginning of the headlining act, violence, particularly around the foot of the stage, escalated. 146 When the sun had gone down and the Stones were ready to take the stage, 98 the three remaining Burrito Brothers had found spots in the wings to view the show. Parsons stood apart from his bandmates with a comforting arm around Michelle Phillips, former member of the Mamas and the Papas, 99 who had gulped down a couple swallows of liquid LSD from what she thought was a cup of apple juice. By the time the Stones hit stride with their third song, Sympathy for the Devil the crowd was in a frenzy and at the foot of the stage, audience members warily backed away from Angels, who were now beating people without provocation. Mick Jagger was visibly shaken and tried to stop the band, but Keith Richards, blithely caught up in his performance, continued ripping through to the songs finish. People, come on, Jagger urged after the first couple songs. I mean, whos fighting and what for? Why are we fighting? We dont want to fight. Every other scene has been coolAll I can ask you, San Francisco, is like, the whole thing, this could be the most beautiful evening weve had for this winter and weve really, dont lets fuck it up. I cant do any more than to ask you, to just beg you to keep it together. Despite Jaggers pleas, his insistence that everyone sit down, it was too late. Everything had gone to hell. The darkness that seethed through the Rolling Stones had spilled over like a bucket poured into a cup. Somewhere in the middle of a loping, midpaced version of Under My Thumb, Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by Angel Alan Passaro. 100 Hunter was airlifted out of the show, but died en route to the hospital. No one told the Stones, but something came over them. After the restrained rendition of Under My Thumb 147 their performance became blistering, apocalyptic as they destroyed songs like Brown Sugar and Street Fightin Man. As frenzy ripped through the crowd, the Stones were in total control of themselves and their craft, even if theyd lost control of everything else. Nine songs into the set, a crisis point was reached; the stage at Altamont was no longer safe. The band was shuffled off the stage and towards a waiting helicopter. Parsons shepherded Michelle Phillips along with the rest of the entourage, while Leadon and Clarke, sensing that the only way to stay safe was to remain as close to the Rolling Stones as possible, followed as near to Parsons as they could get. Not close enough. Parsons, Phillips, and Stones biographer Stanley Boothe crammed into the copter and the door shut behind them, in the faces of Leadon and Clarke. As the helicopter left like the last airlift out of Saigon, half the Burrito Brothers were stranded on the ground, watching their lead singer being flown to safety. When it was over, said Bernie Leadon, we werent invited. So Gram, yknow, just gets in the rush with all the followers and the road crew and they just rush him off to the helicopter. And Michael and I were just [shrugs] Typical. Lets fend for ourselves. Miss Pamela, who left Altamont along with Miss Mercy not long after the Burrito Brothers set and a confrontation with the Angels, met up with Parsons and the Stones hours later, safe and away at the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco. Keith Richards plucked absently at his guitar. Mick Jagger paced the floor, remarking that this is it, this is the end of the Rolling Stones. They had to end the band. I didnt want it to 148 be like this, he said, not in the voice of the worlds biggest rock star, but of a kid whose actions have spiraled out of control. In the corner, his arm still wrapped around Michelle Phillips who could only watch, paralyzed, with pupils still wide as dinner plates, Gram Parsons was asleep, the events of a day that ended an era already sloughed off his shoulders. 149 150 Epilogue Gluttony: Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome? A working mother, struggling to make ends meet, she was singing at low-paying gigs, earning five, maybe ten bucks a night at clubs around DC. A former beauty queen, she specialized in folk songs, Joni Mitchell covers, but occasionally shed dip into old country tunes. She was indulging herself that night at Clydes, a singles bar in the District, singing Kitty Wells It Wasnt God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels to a small crowd that included a couple of kids who were calling themselves Flying Burrito Brothers. That fall in 1971, the Burritos were what country aficionados referred to as a large band, which means exactly what you think it means. The band was still headed up by Chris Hillman, but the rest of the original band had left. Two of the newer members caught the womans act and brought Chris Hillman to see her the next night. Hillman was suitably impressed and tried to figure out what to do with the young woman. He contemplated producing an album with her or even taking her on as the first Flying Burrito Sister, but in truth, Hillman was just about done with the Burrito Brothers, having just been offered a job with Stephen Stills new band, Manassas. While thinking it over, Hillman ran into his old friend, just returned from a tour with the Rolling Stones. The thin, bright, and beautiful boy had grown thick, his face doughy and 151 unhealthy. Although a long sabbatical at the bucolic Sussex farm of former International Submarine Band bassist Ian Dunlop had helped him kick the heroin habit hed been indulging in during his time with the Rolling Stones at Keith Richards Nellcote villa during the Exile on Main Street sessions, the wear on him was visible. He was this caricature, because his pants and shirts wouldnt button, Hillman said. Here was this very cuddly young kid, very thin, nice brown eyes, this good-looking kid who turned into this monster three years later, this overweight, loud, stupid person. Although Parsons and Hillman hadnt spoken in months, Hillman seemed to intuitively know that Parsons simply wasnt capable of making music on his own. For a handful of months in Reseda in 1969, the men had been like brothers: The talent, craftsmanship, and discipline of Chris Hillman had been kindling for Gram Parsons spark, but that fire had gone out for good at the end of June a year before. Seeing his former friend ready to work but lacking direction, Chris Hillman handed Gram over to the woman who would tend to the sputtering flame of his talent until it finally extinguished itself on September 18, 1973. Youve got to go to Washington and meet this chick, Hillman told Parsons in a Baltimore hotel room. Shes perfect for you. When Parsons hemmed and hawed, Hillman picked up the phone, dialed it, and handed it to Gram. At the other end of the line was EmmyLou Harris. 152 By the beginning of 1970, the end of the Flying Burrito Brothers had been scripted, but it took another six months to play out. Altamont had shaken the entire West Coast music scene and although the first few albums of the new decade, including American Beauty and Volunteers, still seemed baked in the optimistic California sun of the 1960s, the plaintive, post-coital moment of 1970 found its apotheosis in Neil Youngs After the Gold Rush, an attempt to fuse the sweet harmonies of CSNY with the ragged glory of Crazy Horse, released just weeks before the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Tending towards a certain hazy sweetness and an ambivalence about moving forward, the album is loaded with images of grandeur in decline, castles burning, all in a dream. California rock, with its hippie aesthetics and outspoken politics, was withering on the vine. While A&M prepared to release Burrito Deluxe, which hit the middle of the charts with a dull thud in April 1970 and started sliding downward, the label pushed the band back into the studio to record a third album that would be rushed out in the fall and deliver on the promise of Gilded Palace. The sessions took place in the Sound Factory in Hollywood and the songs were mostly country classicsClose Up the Honky Tonks, Green, Green Grass of Home, Sing Me Back Home, and Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down. Parsons still wanted to include more elements of R&B and rock, recording Honky Tonk Women and James Carrs To Love Somebody with the band loping half-heartedly behind him. With the exception of the latter, carried by one of Parsons stronger vocal performances, the tracks sounded limp and lifeless, the band loose and sloppy but without the energy theyd 153 displayed on Gilded Palace. Even on the selections he brought to the table, Parsons vocals showed none of the depth they had on the Burritos previous soul efforts. The Burrito Deluxe sessions had already scraped the bottom of the barrel for Hillman-Parsons originals, and the pair had written no new songs for the rushed recording sessions, which were put on hold to allow the band to go back out on tour. In his heart, Parsons had already left the Burritos by the time they left California in May 1970. Musically, the band was drifting further and further from his grand vision, sliding back into nostalgic lukewarm country, and the latest recordings of R&B tracks sitting next to country tracks rather than an integration of the two proved it. Parsons had once again started spreading rumors of a solo record, or a record with Keith Richards, or a solo record produced by Keith Richards. As with any story Gram told about himself, the details were fluid. He had both eyes on the exit, but no intention of being up front about it with his bandmates. I didnt know quite how to say it to Chris Hillman and not get into a fistfight, Parsons said later, so I tried to stick it out and make it work. He didnt try very hard. By this point, Parsons was using a lot of downers and when the band had to fly to a gig, his fear of flying would cause him to ingest enough Tuinal to completely incapacitate him. Roadies would have to push him through the airport in a wheelchair, decked out in a Nudie suit. Another cause of stress within the band was financial, or more specifically, the financial disparity between Parsons and the rest of the band. The band and most people associated with them knew that Parsons was well off, but with the band 154 struggling, Parsons began flaunting his wealth. While the rest of the band arrived at gigs in a cramped van and helped the roadies unload gear, Parsons would regularly show up late, making his ostentatious entrance in a limousine. 101 A mess of alcohol and pills, Parsons performances were increasingly erratic, without the occasional moments of brilliance that had redeemed his efforts on previous tours. His stage persona had devolved into a lounge lizard impersonation of Mick Jagger. At the same time, the rest of the band had built themselves into a professional unit. Lacking the raw and ramshackle energy of the original Burrito lineup, they could play the material and play it well. Unfortunately for the rest of the band, their lead singer was a train wreck. He wanted it all, but he didnt work at it, Hillman explained. And thats what I finally realized. He didnt put his time in. Discipline was not a word in his vocabulary. Things finally came to a breaking point at the end of June, and while it was Hillman who took action, Gram had given him little choice. Gram shows up right two minutes before our show time, not in good shape, Hillman recounted of the Burritos last show. Drunk. Stoned. And we start the first song, which was a fast shuffle. Gram comes in and starts singing a ballad! It was like the Keystone cops crashing into the wall. We had toOh my god, hes doing a ballad! Stop! and Mike keeps the time going on the cymbal, we slow waaaay down. Heres Gram, hes like, slow motion. 155 Backstage after the first set, a fuming Hillman put his fist through the body of Grams acoustic guitar, stunning Parsons even more than the rest of the band, whod seen this confrontation coming for a long time. Whatd you do that for, Chris? Parsons asked, playing the wide-eyed innocent. Hillman glared at his partner and informed Parsons he was out of the band. You cant fire me, insisted Parsons, Im Gram. No, stated Hillman, youre fired. Goodbye. Dropping his guitar, Gram Parsons left the show and the band played the second half of the set without him. It was and wasnt the end of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Hillman kept the band going for several years in various permutations, even briefly picking up former Byrd Gene Clark for a few 1970 recordings. In 1971, disappointed with the bands dwindling commercial prospects, Hillman left to join Stephen Stills Manassas. The band briefly continued with various lineups after Hillman, but by 1973, the Flying Burrito Brothers were through. Bernie Leadon, who had been instrumental in keeping the band moving after the initial push of Gilded Palace, would go on to become one of the founding members of the Eagles. We all make mistakes. After years of session playing, Sneaky Pete tried to resurrect the name in 1975 following the release of a greatest hits collection, even roping in Chris Ethridge for the endeavor. The attempt failed in every conceivable way, and the new Burrito Brothers dissolved after less than a year. 156 Chris Hillman spent the following decade working solo and with various survivors of the California scene, including Richie Furay and Roger McGuinn, eventually forming the successful Desert Rose Band with Herb Pederson in 1985. He has since returned to the mandolin and continues to tour with Pedersen as an acoustic duo, playing Byrds and Burritos songs along with bluegrass and country standards. In late September 1973, the body of Gram Parsons, dead at 26 from a drug overdose in Joshua Tree Park, was stolen from the Los Angeles airport by the Burritos former road manager, Phil Kaufman. In a borrowed hearse, Kaufman took the body back out to the Joshua Tree Desert, a mile from where Parsons had died and within 20 miles of the chaparral scenery of Gilded Palaces cover photo and burned the body in accordance with Parsons wishes and in defiance of Parsons stepfather, who pressed charges against Kaufman. 102 The next month, Kaufman staged a wake in his backyard to raise legal fees for his defense, selling commemorative t-shirts and bottles of Gram Pilsner beer. Miss Pamela still has one that she uses as a candleholder. He decorated the backyard with cardboard tombstones. Novelty act Boris Pickett and the Crypt Kickers performed, along with a scrawny college boy from Boston named Jonathan Richman and his band, the Modern Lovers, who would soon produce one of the seminal protopunk recordings of the seventies. The same night on the other side of town, a group of Grams friends, gathered to play music and listen to the recordings of the album that would be titled Grievous Angel, which had been completed only days before Parsons death. It was a 157 quiet gathering, a counterpoint and balance to the hokey glitz of Kaufmans carnivalesque funeral event. Ignoring the trappings of celebrity and show business, it was about the music that theyd shared. One can only guess which of his funeral services Gram Parsons would have attended. 158 159 Bibliography Books Booth, Stanley. The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. New York: Vintage Books, 1985. Cabrall, Mary Lynn. Nudie the Rodeo Tailor. New York: Gibbs Smith, 2004. Des Barres, Pamela. Im With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2005. Doggett, Peter. Are You Ready for the Country: Elvis Dylan, Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock. New York: Penguin, 2000. Einarson, John. Desperados: The Roots of Country Music. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001. Fong-Torres, Ben. Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1991. George-Warren, Holly and Michelle Freedman. How the West Was Worn. New York: Harry Abrams, 2001. Greenfield, Robert. Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. Cambridge: DeCapo, 2006. Guralnick, Peter. Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006. 160 Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. New York: Diane Publishing, 2000. Guralnick, Peter. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dance of Freedom. New York: HarperPerennial, 1986. Janovitz, Bill. Exile on Main St. New York: Continuum Press, 2005. Lott, Eric. Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Mailer, Norman. Miami and the Siege of Chicago. New York, Signet, 1968. Menck, Ric. Notorious Byrd Brothers. New York: Continuum, 2007. Ricks, Christopher. Dylans Visions of Sin. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House, 1971. Films Fallen Angel (Gandalf Hennig, 2004) Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charolotte Zwerin, 1970) 161 Albums Presley, Elvis, 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Cant Be Wrong, 1959. The Louvin Brothers, Satan is Real, 1960. Charles, Ray, Modern Sounds in Country and Western, 1962. Charles, Ray, Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues, 1963. Carr, James, Youve Got My Mind Messed Up, 1966. Love, Da Capo, 1966. The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, 1967. The Byrds, Notorious Byrd Brothers, 1967. Dylan, Bob, John Wesley Harding, 1967 Dylan, Bob and the Band, The Basement Tapes, 1967. Franklin, Aretha, I Never Loved a Man the Way That I Love You, 1967. Love, Forever Changes, 1967. The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, 1967. The Velvet Underground, Velvet Underground and Nico, 1967. The Band, Music from Big Pink, 1968. 162 The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 1968. Cash, Johnny, At Folsom Prison, 1968. Dylan, Bob, Nashville Skyline, 1968. The International Submarine Band, Safe at Home, 1968. The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet, 1968. The Beach Boys, 20/20, 1969. Cash, Johnny, At San Quentin, 1969. The Charlatans, The Charlatans, 1969. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gilded Palace of Sin, 1969. The GTOs, Permanent Damage, 1969. Haggard, Merle, Okie From Muskogee, 1969. The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, 1969. Young, Neil, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, 1969. Zappa, Frank, Hot Rats, 1969. Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath, 1970. Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Dj vu, 1970. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Burrito Deluxe, 1970. 163 The Grateful Dead, American Beauty, 1970. Hazlewood, Lee, Cowboy in Sweden, 1970. Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers, 1970. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin III, 1970. Stevens, Cat, Tea for the Tillerman, 1970. Taylor, James, Sweet Baby James, 1970. Young, Neil, After the Gold Rush, 1970. The Band, Cahoots, 1971. The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street, 1971. The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers, 1971. Parsons, Gram, GP, 1972. Young, Neil, Harvest, 1972. Parsons, Gram, Greivous Angel, 1973. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Sleepless Nights, 1976. The Eagles, Eagles, 1972. Uncle Tupelo, No Depression, 1990. REM, Out of Time, 1991. 164 REM, Automatic for the People, 1992. Uncle Tupelo, March 16-19, 1992, 1992. Cash, Johnny, American Recordings I-V, 1994-2005. Dinosaur Jr., Without a Sound, 1994. Steams, Jennie, Angel With a Broken Wing, 1998. Welch, Gillian, Hell Among the Yearlings, 1998. The Carter Family, Wildwood Flower, 2000. Welch, Gillian, Time (the Revelator), 2001. Parsons, Gram, Big Mouth Blues: A Conversation with Gram Parsons, 2002. Nelson, Willie, Cray. The Demo Sessions, 2003. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2007. 165 1 One of Crosbys more famous stunts was criticizing Gene Clarks rhythm guitar playing until Clark agreed to give Crosby his brand new red hollow body guitar and switch to tambourine in the early days of the Byrds, mostly because Crosby felt self-conscious on stage without an instrument. 166 2 Actually, it would be months before the sequined suits came into it. 167 3 Lets not picture McGuinn screaming in the passenger seat as Parsons and Hillman steered the band off the road and into the brush, laughing maniacally. McGuinn was, and remains, a consummate student of music and embraced the bands new direction. He took to listening exclusively to country music and even bought himself a Cadillac, unhip wheels by California standards, but a clear sign of success in country circles. But the show at the Opry made it clear who was in the drivers seat. 168 4 Born in Johannesburg, Makebas records were banned in South Africa after she testified before the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid. Not long after the period described here, Makeba married Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, a decision that cost her her U.S. record deals. 169 5 An early attempt had gone horribly, with noted country DJ Ralph Emery flat-out refusing to play the bands music during an in-studio appearance by the Byrds. Parsons and McGuinn ridiculed Emery in the song Drug Store Truck Driving Man, which essentially labeled Emery an ignorant, racist hick. 170 6 His discovery of Nancy Sinatras vocal talents and the secret genius of his Cowboy in Sweden album notwithstanding. 171 7 A caveat: many of the Keith Richards quotes in this book have been transcribed by the author and should be taken only as approximations of the sounds Keith Richards produced. I repeat, this is not necessarily English as you know it. 172 8 She happened to be the fiance of David Crosby, but that didnt hold things up much. Crosby was out of town, so Parsons drove right up to his house, knocked on the door, and when Nancy Ross answered, he informed her, Ive been looking for you for a long time. And Im taking you with me. And that was pretty much it. 9 Most importantly, Peter Fonda, a movie star who dreamed of being a musician. Fonda recorded one of Parsons songs and landed the International Submarine Band an appearance in Roger Cormans film, The Trip although the bands music was overdubbed by another band after Corman decided they were not psychedelic enough. 10 Also by allowing Hazlewoods girlfriend to produce their album. 173 11 A perfect description of the genres commercial standard bearers in 1973, the Eagles: synthetic, unsatisfying, impersonal, and only almost there. 12 Released in 1962 and 63 respectively, they were both favorites on the turntable at the flophouse the original International Submarine Band had occupied in New York. 174 13 Furay went on to form Pogo, which changed its name to Poco after a lawsuit from Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly. Abandoning Poco as a commercial failure years later, Furay formed the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with Chris Hillman and Linda Ronstadt-collaborator J.D. Souther. 175 14 This was common practice for Gram, who announced to the press collaborations that never quite took shape, such as those with Keith Richards, Rich Gretch, solo albums on the Rolling Stones label and other dream projects. 176 15 Kleinow also wrote and performed the shows theme song. His work outside of music includes production work on The Empire Strikes Back, Army of Darkness, and an Emmy for The Winds of War. 177 16 A firm believer in the band as a collective, Dunlop would continue to play music as the Flying Burrito Brothers East even after Parsons and Hillman appropriated the name. 178 17 The Godfather of the San Francisco scene, Jerry Garcia, dreamed of joining up with Bill Monroes band and formed a number of bluegrass outfits before moving into the more improvisational jug band music that eventually developed into the Grateful Dead. 179 18 Neither designer was ever content with the quality resulting from manufacturing, leaving the mass production of Western clothing to ranchwear outfitters like H Bar C and Rockmount. 180 19 Years later, Hank Williams, Jr. commissioned a reproduction of his fathers burial suit, which he sported when posing such timeless musical questions as Are You Ready for Some Football? One can only wonder what a rhinestone suit sounds like when its wearer is spinning in his grave. 181 20 Wagon wheels for Porter Wagoner, a sullen cowboy behind bars and spider webs for In the Jailhouse Now singer Webb Pierce, just as examples. 21 According to Nudie, In all my years designing, I have only refused to make one suit. A fellow came up into my shop one day and asked me to embroider some pornography on an outfit. The fellow in question was Keith Richards, who had requested a suit featuring embroidered penises. 22 In the attic space of Clevelands Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a 2000 exhibit on Elvis featured a massive screenprint of this cover, with a dozen iterations of Elvis in the gold suit, each one at least twelve feet tall. Filled with a Kantian terror at the sheer size of both Elvis and his fanbase upon viewing this, I returned home and meekly submitted to liking Elviss music. Twelve-foot-tall Elvises cant be wrong. 182 23 Contrary to popular belief, Nudie had nothing to do with designing Elviss Vegas-era jumpsuits, which are far more embarrassing. 183 24 A curious afterthought to the issue of authenticity and period-dress involves two mid-sixties pop bands: Paul Revere and the Raiders and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, the former decked out in Revolutionary War uniforms and the latter in Civil War uniforms. While, like the current indie rock band Clinic and unlike, say, GWAR, their outfits had nothing whatsoever to do with the content of their songs, the absurdity of their costumes relegated them to the status of novelty act. Could the Band, for instance, expect to be taken more seriously in their four-in-one ties than Paul Revere and the Raiders in their tri-corner hats? 25 A reference not to the Beatles album and film, but to Parsons short-lived band. 184 26 Manuel was central in designing much of the Deads early iconography, including the cover of their album, American Beauty. 185 27 Actually, the outfits in Urban Cowboy were fairly authentic: Costumers took extra care in choosing jeans that would withstand the heavy friction of regular mechanical bull rides. 186 28 Refusing to call him her old man, Old Boy was Nancys pet name for Gram. 187 29 Of the four drummers, former International Submarine Band drummer Jon Corneal did the most work on the album, laying down five tracks, but according to Hillman, Corneal and fellow Georgian Parsons never much got along. 30 Not so much hired as picked up. Clarke recalled the band driving by him on the street a day or two after an admittedly shaky audition. Parsons stuck his head out the window and yelled, Hey drummer, lets have some fun, and Clarke was effectively hired. 188 31 The Miss appellations had been bestowed upon the girls by ukulele-playing falsetto Tiny Tim, LAs own high-pitched answer to Oscar Wilde. 32 The name could also stand for Girls Together Only, Girls Together Occasionally, or Girls Together Often, depending on who you asked and when. 33 The album includes contributions from Zappa and the Mothers, along with Jeff Beck, Ry Cooder, and Rod Stewart. 189 34 The storied sexual conquests of Miss Pamela, for instance, are chronicled in Pamela des Barress autobiography, Im With The Band and included Chris Hillman, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Noel Redding, and a dude named Nick St. Nicholas, who was apparently in Steppenwolf. 190 35 Miss Pamela eventually took a short-lived position at Nudies Rodeo Tailors, although she was dismissed due in part to Bobbie Cohns concern that Nudie was becoming a bit too affectionate towards the young girl. 36 Christines enthusiasm for the look of tear-streaked mascara shows up in the songs assertion that It gets her off to see a person crying, as she had essentially rendered her boyfriend into a perpetual state of sobbing. 191 37 Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson in particular had close ties to the California music scene around this time, resulting in, among other things, the Nicholson-penned Head, a bizarre piece of psychedelia starring the Monkees. 192 38 Then, as now, women were criminally underrepresented in rock music, particularly women unattached to a male musician. Acts like the Mamas and the Papas or Sonny and Cher, in which the women were safely paired off, were more the norm, with Janis Joplin and Grace Slick as notable exceptions. 193 39 For a very strange intersection and explosion of any ideas on gender, emotion and appearance in country music, check out mid-fifties photos of Willie Nelson. Before becoming a recording artist himself, during the period he was penning songs like Crazy and some of the most brutal two-minute weepers ever written, young Willie looks almost exactly like present day androgynous country star k.d. lang. 194 40 The past few years have seen women in country music grappling with this part of the tradition, subverting and reversing gender roles in ultra-violent murder ballads, sometimes by taking the voice of the usually silent victims (Jennie Stearns Knoxville Girl), by assuming the narrative role of the killer in traditional murder ballads (Neko Case and Laura Cantrells renditions of Poor Ellen Smith) or by writing new narratives in which the oppressors get their comeuppance (Gillian Welchs Caleb Meyer, the Dixie Chicks Goodbye Earl). 195 41 You Really Got Me is the first instance of this technique, but many of the Kinks early hits utilize the same sound. 196 42 Los Angeles, more than New York, has long been a literary target for Biblical disasters. Perhaps because New York already seemed post-Apocalyptic, or perhaps because LA is, by its nature, more of a spectacle of a city, LA-based authors like Philip K. Dick and Steve Erickson seemed particularly inclined to visit the Wrath of God onto their hometown. 43 The song is also the most direct homage Parsons ever paid to his primary musical idol, Elvis Presley. 197 44 They both settle on Were not afraid to die on the second chorus. 198 45 In fact, it was one of the last songs he wrote for the group; Cooke had already been working on secular songs when he showed up for a Soul Stirrers session without any new material. Cooke picked up a Bible, opened to a page in the New Testament and composed the song on the spot, directly from Matthew 9:20-22. 199 46 Although not entirely unsuccessful. In 1968, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys picked up a couple female hitchhikers outside of LA and within days found his place overrun by Family members, including Manson himself. The meeting led to the Beach Boys recording Mansons song Cease to Exist for their 20/20 album, renaming it Never Learn Not to Love. 200 47 Could he even be a product of California? Surely Bobby Kennedy, tan and healthy, not Richard Nixon, sallow and hollow, was Californias true native son. 201 48 The rumor that he had once been a member of the Soul Stirrers, the same group that launched Sam Cooke, was fabricated, probably by Carrs own manager. 202 49 A surprising number of Carrs songs express love or its lack as a form of mental illness. 50 The towns name is a willful misspelling of Mussel Shallows, referring to the mollusk-encrusted sandbars (shallows or shoals) in the Tennessee River that effectively cut the town off from riverboat traffic. Assuming it was Mussel Shoals cost me hours of Google-related frustration. 203 51 Carr resurfaced in a mental institution in the early nineties and Claunch made efforts to put together a comeback that were again stymied by Carrs mental illness. 204 52 The album is literally boxed in by McGuinns devotion to Dylan, although the Basement Tapes from which the songs were drawn marked a major retreat for Dylan into the oddities of American music history. 205 53 Kind of the Tradition and the Individual Talent approach to country music. 54 Largely at the insistence of new Burrito Bernie Leadon and over the protests of Gram Parsons. 206 55 As well as a slap back at James Browns earlier musical assertion that this is a mans world. 207 56 Theres no room for Muscle Shoals in Neil Youngs horrific vision of the South, a reduction Lynyrd Skynyrd rightfully calls him out on. 208 57 In one of my favorite album reviews ever, the Village Voices Robert Christgau wrote that the Eagles were the tightest and most accomplished rock band to emerge since Neil Youngs Crazy Horse. They are the culmination of the vaguely country-oriented mainstream of American rock. Another thing that interests me is that I hate them. Listening to the Eagles has left me feeling alienated from things I used to love. 209 58 And sometimes conflated with. Glenn Campbells 1969 hit True Grit, for instance, is God Bless the USA dressed up as Girl, Youll Be a Woman Soon. 210 59 This situation should sound fairly familiar to anyone who paid attention to the state of country music following the World Trade Center attacks. Willie Nelson scored his first hit in years with the militaristic Beer for My Horses and Toby Keiths warning to terrorists that Well put a boot up your ass, its the American way soared to the top of country playlists across the United States. 60 Haggard later claimed the song was meant to be satirical, although he never got around to saying who was being satirized. 61 The Sex Pistols were the first punk band to abandon punk; Dylan may have been the first sixties musician to altogether abandon the sixties. 211 62 If this situation sounds familiar, it might be because of the recent revival of old-timey music, which has based itself in similar aesthetic decisions regarding a vagueness of historical placement. Old-timey music often resorts to songs that were intensely political in their original context to give the impression of leftist politics for NPR listeners, without all that pesky contemporary political content. Keep on the sunny side, new-grassers! 212 63 Many of which, like Buck Owens Cigarettes and Whiskey or Hank Williams Luke the Preacher, were already satirical. 213 64 Remember the ending of Easy Rider? That movie has insured I get a haircut every time I plan on going south of the Mason-Dixon. 214 65 Although its possible to imagine the speaker as Hillman and his hippie interlocutor as Parsons. 215 66 Who made the lamentable decision to reunite in 1994, despite previous promises they would never play together again. 216 67 Yet another attempt at labeling the genre. Alt-country was in the lead for a while and No Depression has also been tossed around as a contender following the title of Uncle Tupelos debut album and the launch of a magazine under that title, but it seems that Americana might be the current winner in the race to name a diverse subset of music. 217 68 Anxiety over flying had also prompted Gene Clarks departure from the Byrds a few years earlier. Leaving for a tour, Clark became so agitated he had to get off the plane, even though Crosby and McGuinn made it clear that doing so would cost him his spot in the band. 218 69 Standard Gram Parsons thinking: act big to get big. If it was good enough for Dylan and the Beatles, it might be good enough for the Flying Burrito Brothers. 70 Chris Ethridge remembers Parsons pushing something he described as cough syrup that could boy-howdy lay you out. 71 Weird parallel to A Hard Days Night: Pestered by their fans, the Beatles are forced to ride in a freight car, playing cards and performing I Shouldve Known Better to no one in particular. 219 72 The track was eventually recorded with the help of Johnny Guitar Watson and copious amounts of marijuana and made a poor showing on the singles charts. By the time Burrito Deluxe was recorded, Hillman was so disenchanted with The Train Song that it was left off the album entirely. 220 73 Or to suggest perhaps the Parsons/Hillman crew designate themselves the Flying Burrito Brothers West during their stay on Dunlops turf? 74 Ethridge was the only Burrito whod never been a Byrd, while McGuinn and Clarence White were the only two Byrds whod been Byrds before the restructuring that followed Hillmans departure. Or to put it another way, the Burritos had two of the original five Byrds, while the current Byrds only had one original Byrd. See how it gets a little skull-clutching? To make things slightly worse, Gilded Palace of Sin also featured the work of two of the original Byrds, even though Michael Clarke doesnt play on the album. David Crosby happened to be in the studio and laid down an uncredited vocal harmony on Dark End of the Street, probably just a6 a little fuck off to Roger McGuinn. Oh, and Gene Clark would later join up with the Burritos for a handful of recordings after Parsons departure, meaning that four out of five original Byrds were, at one time or another, Flying Burrito Brothers. 221 75 This wasnt an entirely new experience for Chris Hillman. At the Monterey Pop Festival less than two years earlier, Hillman and the rest of the Byrds had watched David Crosby make a guest appearance with Buffalo Springfield, whose members included Stephen Stills and Neil Young. Crosbys inspired performance highlighted his recently lackluster work with the Byrds and the incident helped to precipitate Crosbys break with the band. 222 76 Everything about the Beatles is about the Beatles; they are a signifier that signifies itself. 77 Or possibly your mom. 223 78 The same one since the beginning, I should add, unlike a certain David Crosby I could mention. 224 79 A clear example of the tone were talking about can be heard in the opening chords of Street Fighting Man, by the way. 225 80 Patently untrue, since there are demos to prove the song was written on tour in Brazil. 81 Unlikely, but possible, although he might have helped guide the arrangement and definitely suggested Byron Berline for the fiddle part. 82 Entirely possible, since no one at the Nellcote recording sessions was straight enough to keep track of who was in the dank basement studio at any given time. 226 83 While the inspiration for the song remains disputed, it certainly wasnt Parsons. Keith Richards claims the song was about being forced to leave Anita Pallenberg and their son Marlon to go out on tour. Mick Jagger claims the chorus came from the first words Marianne Faithful said to him after she woke from an attempted overdose. 227 84 Apparently no one at A&M knew or cared that Parsons and Hillman had been responsible for the worst-selling album of the Byrds career. 228 85 Which, without the deft and unexpected harmonies of David Crosby, sounded bland and conventional. 229 86 Thirty years later, Hillman got a chance to do justice to the albums strongest Hillman/Parsons composition, High Fashion Queen. Teamed up with Steve Earle for a Gram Parsons tribute album, Hillman made the track loose and rollicking, a barroom punch upeverything Burrito Deluxe wasnt. 230 87 Not Courtney Love, I mean grunge music. 231 88 There seems to be little else to Meredith Hunter other than his life on screen. The press ran no details at all on Hunter after the incident; not so much as a quote from his mother, if he had a mother, and he was buried in an unmarked grave. 232 89 Not Sympathy for the Devil, as Rolling Stone, the paper of record, reported after the fact. This urban legend kept Sympathy off Stones setlists through most of the seventies. 233 90 Held only two days after the death of former guitarist and Stones founder Brian Jones. 91 One concertgoer made reference to goblets of LSDgoblets. 92 The Angels were reputedly hired for $500 dollars and beer, although Sonny Barger would later claim theyd never been hired at all. 93 An attempt to out-Sgt. Pepper the Beatles, featuring the closing track, 200 Light Years from Home, which is exponentially more isolating than A Day in the Life. 234 94 American Beauty and the tragically overlooked Volunteers, respectively 235 95 Seriously, goblets of LSD. 96 A number which exactly balanced the days four deaths. In addition to Meredith Hunter, two people were killed in a car accident and one drowned in a drainage ditch. 236 97 Meaning that, timewise, it should have been the Dead on stage at the point Meredith Hunter was stabbed. In some parallel universe, Saint Stephen is playing when Angel Alan Passaro puts the knife in once, again, again. 237 98 Mick Jagger was accused of stalling the bands performance for better light for the film. In fact, Bill Wyman didnt arrive at Altamont until sundown, struggling with the traffic from San Francisco. 99 Michelle was the ex-wife of Parsons motorcycle riding buddy John Phillips and had been briefly kicked out of the band for dating founding member of the Byrds, Gene Clark. 238 100 At least it was Passaro who was convicted of the crime. Sonny Barger has claimed Hunter actually shot one of the Angels, who was spirited away because he was a wanted felon, but no evidence for this exists. 239 101 The Burritos had once mocked this same vehicle in song with their rendition of Hank Williams Long Black Limousine, a parable on the dangers of wealth and fame that was a staple of the Burrito Brothers live sets. 240 102 Unable to charge Kaufman with stealing the body under California law, Parsons stepfather had to charge him with stealing the coffin. 241