Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel
Featured Album
In Rolling Stone's 1973 obituary for the star-crossed Gram Parsons, they parlay the man as "the fucked-up young lord of zig-zagging…from purity to debauchery…[they] light their candles at both ends and sweep out the ashes in the morning." Like all great artists, their genius lies in somehow marrying the furthest extremes of their personas, even as such a merger ultimately destroys them. For the man born Ingram Cecil Connor III, the melding of his rich-boy upbringing with his down-and-out songwriting made for strange bedfellows, much as his reveling in sinful excesses and the stringent church-bound notions of redemption clashed within him. What incandescent sparks, though!
While his debut solo album, GP, had its sessions bogged down by drug abuse, Grievous Angel found Gram cleaned up and focused on putting down his tracks as quickly as possible. Wrapped quickly, Parsons never lived to see its release. Posthumously put onto the market, Grievous Angel faltered on the charts, peaking meekly at 195. By comparison, the death of soft rock crooner Jim Croce, whose plane crashed two days after Parsons OD'd in Joshua Tree, sent his product straight to number one.
While GP contains an even keel of classic songs, Grievous Angel hits bittersweet highs that hint at what might have been had he pulled up on the reins a bit. From the honky-tonking self-deprecation of "I Can't Dance" to the shimmering "Hearts on Fire," the heartbreaking twang of "Brass Buttons" to a reading of "Love Hurts" that plumb erases earlier versions recorded by the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, Grievous Angel is a fitting finale to the zig-zagging life of Parsons.
The secret weapon of the album lies in the twining vocals of Parsons and a Washington DC folksinger named Emmylou Harris, a sublime coupling that instantly sent the duo up to the highest echelons of harmonizing. Think Louvin Brothers, Everly Brothers, George Jones and Tammy Wynette — it is here that Parsons and Harris keep their company. Even after her singing partner's death, it's a role Harris has fulfilled for innumerable others in the decades that followed, from Willie Nelson to ex-Byrd Gene Clark, from Dolly Parton to Connor Oberst. None can match this pairing though, a match made in both heaven and hell, and sweeping out the ashes in the morning.
