Hickory Wind

Fülszöveg

H e lived hard, died young and never had a hit record. But eighteen years after his death, the music and style of Gram Parsons echoes through the charts, in the songs of Emmylou Harris, his protege and singing partner; the Rolling Stones; the Eagles; Tom Petty; Elvis Costello; Dwight Yoakum; and the Grateful Dead, among others. Who was Gram Parsons? The answers-and the helter-skelter life-are here, in this first major biography of the poor little rich kid who started a revolution in country-rock fusion and burned out in the southern California desert at the age of twentysix, his body filled with drugs and alcohol and torched by friends in Joshua Tree Monument. An artist whose musical legacy has been compared to everyone from Lennon-McCartney to Hank Williams, Gram Parsons' life reads more like Tennessee Williams: a saga steeped in southern money, mental illness and rampant alcoholism. Rebelling against his tragic family background, he seized freedom with a vengeance and rode it into... Tovább

Fülszöveg

H e lived hard, died young and never had a hit record. But eighteen years after his death, the music and style of Gram Parsons echoes through the charts, in the songs of Emmylou Harris, his protege and singing partner; the Rolling Stones; the Eagles; Tom Petty; Elvis Costello; Dwight Yoakum; and the Grateful Dead, among others. Who was Gram Parsons? The answers-and the helter-skelter life-are here, in this first major biography of the poor little rich kid who started a revolution in country-rock fusion and burned out in the southern California desert at the age of twentysix, his body filled with drugs and alcohol and torched by friends in Joshua Tree Monument. An artist whose musical legacy has been compared to everyone from Lennon-McCartney to Hank Williams, Gram Parsons' life reads more like Tennessee Williams: a saga steeped in southern money, mental illness and rampant alcoholism. Rebelling against his tragic family background, he seized freedom with a vengeance and rode it into the ground. After a brief enrollment at Harvard, Gram wound up mixing acid, rock 'n' roll, and country in his own International Submarine Band. In 1968, Parsons joined the Byrds and made "Sweetheart of the Rodeo/' officially the first country-rock album ever recorded; he also met and befriended the Rolling Stones. Within a year, Parsons had formed the Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman, been fired by his own band, and set out on a long, hot summer of drugs and musical collaboration that climaxed in a rendezvous in the south of France with Keith Richards. His (Continued on back flap)
(Continued írom front flap) remarkable albums with Emmylou Harris followed, but just as Parsons' career was taking off, his life came to an abrupt end with a lethal drug-and-alcohol cocktail in a cinder-block motel in southern California. The bizarre aftermath became a part of the Gram Parsons legend: acting upon what they claimed was his stated wish, friends stole his casket en route to New Orleans and took it to Joshua Tree Monument, where they torched it in the desert sands. It was a sad end to an incredible career, but Parsons' music and influence live on. Ben Fong-Torres has written a powerful, evocative biography of the man whose music transformed rock 'n' roll. Drawing on interviews with friends, family, and such musicians as Keith Richards, Roger McGuinn, and John and Michelle Phillips, Fong-Torres has re-created a microcosm of the '60s rock world and the neverending party that did end-too fast, and too soon. Vissza