Imagine recording just an absolute masterpiece.
Right. But, like, now imagine the lead artist
has to be literally, physically carried into
the recording studio. Oh, man. Right. And he's
completely incapable of writing a full album
of new music, and then, tragically, he dies before
the record is even released. Yeah, it's a heavy
story. It really is. So, welcome to today's Deep
Dive. We are looking at the beautiful, kind of
chaotic miracle that is Graham Parsons' album,
Grievous Angel. a really legendary piece of work.
Exactly. And our mission today is pretty straightforward.
We're pulling entirely from a really fascinating
Wikipedia article that details this 1974 studio
album, which basically surges Parson's final
testament. Final musical statement, yeah. Yeah.
And for you listening, I want to set the stakes
right up front because this isn't, you know,
your standard dry album review. Not at all. We're
going to explore how a commercial flopper record
that was actually manipulated by a jealous widow,
somehow became the foundational text of what's
called cosmic American music. Which is here.
Right. And it ultimately secured a spot on Rolling
Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all
time. I mean, this is the ultimate story of illusion
versus reality, right? Completely. It's a tragic
genius basically racing against his own demons
to leave one final mark on the world. Yeah, and
to truly understand the gravity of that mark,
we have to look at the incredibly dark context
that surrounds it. Because it gets really dark.
It does. We're essentially analyzing a snapshot
of an artist who is standing at the absolute
edge. I mean, Graham Parsons died of a morphine
and alcohol overdose at just 26 years old. Just
26. In Joshua Tree. Exactly. Out in Joshua Tree,
California. And what makes Grievous Angels so
profound is that the bulk of it was recorded
in the summer of 1973, which was just... weeks
before that tragedy happened. Oh, so it was right
at the end? Right at the very end. He was basically
living on borrowed time, and the music really
reflects that profound urgency. Okay, let's unpack
this. Because to understand the album's brilliance,
we first have to look at the incredibly contradictory
atmosphere in the recording studio itself. The
studio sessions are legendary. Right. So we're
in Wally Hyder Studio 4 in Hollywood. It's the
summer of 73. If you read the accounts from the
people actually in that room, it sounds like
they were attending two completely different
recording sessions. Yeah, the stories do not
line up at all. They really don't. Yeah. You
have acoustic guitarist Herb Peterson, and he
recalls that when Carson showed up, he was just
a total mess. Yeah, Peterson did not hold back.
No, he didn't. According to him Parsons was you
know coming in late battling some very serious
heroin addiction and alcoholism and Peterson
said he essentially had to be physically brought
in and quote -unquote Minded by his singing partner
Emma Lou Harris basically babysat Yeah, exactly
Peterson flat -out said Parsons wasn't in any
shape to record and was generally just out of
it for the most part But then the paradox there
is striking because you flip the coin and you
have bassist Emory Gordy Jr. providing this entirely
different narrative. Right, which is so weird
to me. It is. Gordy explicitly calls them great
happy sessions. Great and happy from a guy who
has to be carried in. I know, right? But Gordy
recalls that Parsons really rallied. He says
he was bouncing all over the studio, showing
everyone the songs and kind of directing these
really loose, spontaneous arrangements. That
is such a contrast. He really is. And then you
have his manager Phil Kaufman, who sort of splits
the difference between those two extremes. What
did the manager say? Kaufman claimed Parsons
wasn't necessarily sober, but he was just much
better at hiding his drinking and drug use than
he had been during his previous solo album, the
one called GP. Wait, I, um, I have to push back
on this a little bit. Because I really hate this
romanticized myth of the quote unquote tortured
genius holding court. Sure. I mean, If Parsons
is actively disintegrating, showing up late and
needing Emmylou Harris to literally babysit him,
why did the band just walk out? That's a very
fair question. Right. Because we aren't talking
about a bunch of amateur garage rock kids who
are just happy to be there. No, these were top
tier guys. Exactly. We are talking about members
of Elvis Presley's Taking Care of Business band.
Yeah. You've got legendary guitarist James Burton
and piano player Glenn D. Harden. I mean, these
are consummate discipline professionals who literally
play for the king of rock and roll. They don't
have time to waste. They don't. So was this studio
dynamic essentially a musical weekend at Bernie's?
Oh, wow. Weekend at Bernie's? Well, yeah. Are
they just, like, propping up a severely impaired
guy to get the tracks down and collect a paycheck?
Well, what's fascinating here is that the tension
you are describing is the method. What do you
mean? The paradox wasn't a flaw in the recording
process. It was actually the engine that drove
the album. Burton, Hardin, and the rest of the
band stayed, because when Parsons actually stepped
up to the microphone, the soul and the delivery
were just undeniable. The talent was still there.
It was. And because the formal arrangements were
left so incredibly loose, it allowed this hyper
-professional band to step up and build a really
sturdy, reliable framework around him. Ah, I
see. So they were basically functioning as, like,
Musical shock absorbers. Precisely. Musical shock
absorber is a great way to put it. They took
all the erratic, unpredictable bumps of his addiction,
so the chassis of the song stayed completely
smooth. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. They
created a safe container for his chaos. Parsons
provided the raw, fraying nerve at the center,
and the band provided the polished steel holding
it all together. Wow. It's honestly a master
class in accommodating a fracturing frontman
without letting the song itself break. You know,
it makes you think about the workplace dynamics
we all deal with. Oh, for sure. Like, for you
listening, have you ever had to carry a brilliant
but completely chaotic colleague over the finish
line on a massive project? Everyone's had one
of those. Right. where you're doing all the heavy
structural lifting, managing the schedule, fixing
all the typos, just so their one flash of genius
can shine through at the big presentation. Yeah.
That is exactly what this backing band, and especially
Emmylou Harris, did for Graham Parsons. And that
dynamic, that kind of pulling things together
at the last minute, it wasn't just happening
with the band's physical performance in the studio.
No. No, it fundamentally shaped the track list
itself. Because of Parson's deteriorating physical
and mental condition, he simply lacked the focus
required to sit down and write a full album's
worth of new material. Oh, of course. You can't
write if you're out of it. Right. The illusion
is that this was a brand new record, but the
reality was much more desperate. Here's where
it gets really interesting, because you look
at the track list, and it is a total patchwork
quilt of his entire life. Yeah, completely stitched
together. Out of the whole album, only two new
songs were quickly written during these sessions.
Just two. Just two. You have the title track,
Return of the Grievous Angel, which, get this,
Parsons didn't even write the lyrics for. Wow.
Yeah, the words were actually penned by a Boston
-based poet and fan named Tom Brown. That's crazy.
And then you have In My Hour of Darkness, which
Emmylou Harris had to arrange. And that is the
entirety. of the brand new material. Exactly.
To get this album done, Parsons was forced to
basically become an archivist of his own past.
He had to dig through his own history. Yeah,
he had to scavenge his previous eras just to
fill the runtime. So you have a track like Brass
Buttons, a song that dates all the way back to
the mid -1960s when he was just a folk singer
at Harvard. All the way back to Harvard. Yeah.
Then you have A Thousand Dollar Wedding, which
was actually recorded with his former band, the
Flying Burrito Brothers, around 1970. The backstory
on The Thousand Dollar Wedding is wild, too.
It is. I mean, he's digging through the crates
of his unreleased life to pull out this highly
narrative, almost theatrical song about his own
aborted plan to wed the mother of his daughter.
Right, in this incredibly ostentatious style.
Exactly. It's dense and brooding. And then he
pulls, ooh, Las Vegas, which was a rejected track
from his first solo album. Just pulling scraps.
Yeah. He even pulls Hickory Wind, which is a
song he had already famously recorded and released
with The Birds years prior. Yeah, he's just gathering
whatever he can find. So my question to you is,
is Grievous Angel really an album, or is it more
like a college student writing a brilliant senior
thesis by frantically cobbling together a bunch
of old essays the night before the deadline?
Well, the panic and the frantic assembly certainly
mirror your college student analogy. Right. But
we have to evaluate the final thesis he submitted.
because even though it was scavenged from disparate
parts of his life, it operated as the ultimate
manifesto of his entire musical philosophy. It
really expanded what he called Cosmic American
Music. We hear that term thrown around so much
in music history, but what does Cosmic American
Music actually mean mechanically on this specific
record? Mechanically, it's the seamless integration
of country music soul and storytelling with the
rhythm and attitude of rock and roll. So blending
the two worlds. Yeah. It means taking a weeping
pedal steel guitar or maybe a traditional country
fiddle and pairing it with a heavy driving rock
rhythm section. Oh, that makes sense. And it's
playing country music not as a novelty or a parody,
which some rockers did. Right. They kind of made
fun of it. Exactly. But Parsons played it with
absolute earnestness while injecting it with
a countercultural rock and roll swagger. A really
unique blend. Definitely. And Tom Russell, writing
in the magazine Helix, made a massive comparison
regarding the synthesis. He argued that Parsons'
influence in bringing country music to rock and
roll is as culturally important as Bob Dylan
combining folk lyrics with rock instruments.
Whoa. Comparing him to Dylan going electric.
Yeah. That is not small praise for a record pieced
together from scraps. It's monumental praise.
I mean, Dylan synthesized folk and rock, showing
that acoustic storytelling could have this electric
energy. Right. Well, Parson synthesized country
and rock, showing that traditional rural music
could have a countercultural edge. I love that.
So even he was submitting old essays, the final
document changed the academic field forever.
Man, and if that track list was a Frankenstein's
monster of old and new material, the stitch holding
all those eras together was undeniably Emmylou
Harris. Without a doubt. Which makes the drama
that happened after the recording sessions, like
the illusion of Graham as a solitary solo artist,
incredibly jarring. Yeah, Emmylou Harris's contribution
to this album honestly cannot be overstated.
She was vital. She really was. The musical connection
between her and Parsons is the emotional core
of the record. You hear it most clearly on their
duet of Love Hurts, which is a song originally
written by Bode Low Bryant. Oh, I know that song.
Yeah. And biographer David Myers points out their
perfect emotional restraint on this track. He
highlights what he calls their lovely high wine
and describes their performance as a keening
reach for the suffering. A keening reach for
the suffering. That is a very poetic description.
But how does that translate vocal? because traditional
country duets usually have a very specific polished
structure, right? They do. Traditional country
duets often feature the male lead with the female
voice neatly tucked underneath, or vice versa.
Right, in very predictable, safe harmonic intervals.
Exactly. But Parsons and Harris didn't do that.
Their phrasing was looser, sort of wrapping around
each other. Okay. The lovely high wine. comes
from them pushing into the upper registers of
their voices, where the sound starts to thin
out and feel fragile. Oh, it's like it's going
to break. Exactly like it's going to break. But
they hold back. They feel the pain. They show
the vulnerability to the listener. But they never
cross the line into melodrama. Oh, wow. The sustain
they achieve on the final words, love hurts.
It just demonstrates a profound technical and
emotional synchronization. It's haunting. It
sounds like an absolute master class in harmony
and restraint. It really is. But then, the tragedy
strikes. September 1973, Parsons overdoses in
Joshua Tree. Yeah. The album is mixed, the master
tapes are done. But it hasn't been released yet.
It wouldn't come out until January 1974. Right,
a few months later. And in that four -month gap
between his death and the release, his widow,
Gretchen Parsons, steps in. And this is where
it gets messy. So messy. She initiates some breathtakingly
petty historical revisionism. Yeah, the sources
are clear that Gretchen had never cared for Emily
Harris's relationship with her husband. She was
jealous. Right. And now with Graham gone, she
had legal control over the estate. And she essentially
tries to erase... Emelu Harris from history.
She really did. Like originally the album was
going to be credited to Graham Parsons with Emelu
Harris and the front cover was an actual photograph
of the two of them together. A beautiful picture
too. Yeah. But Gretchen rips Emelu off the front
cover completely. She relegates her to a simple
credit on the back. Just unbelievable. And it
gets worse. She physically removes the original
title track, a song called Sleepless Nights.
which completely alters the length and pacing
of the record. She literally changed the music.
She did. And then she replaces the cover art
with an image of Graham floating alone in this
quote -unquote sea of blue. Trying to make him
look like a lone wolf. Exactly. It's the equivalent
of a museum curator walking up to a masterpiece,
pulling out a paintbrush, and literally painting
over a co -artist's face just because of a personal
grudge. It's wild to think about. How does personal
jealousy... successfully alter musical history
like that. Well if we connect this to the bigger
picture... It happens more often than we'd like
to admit. Really? Yeah. Estates often have immense
legal leverage over unreleased material. And
record labels, you know, wanting to get the product
to market and make money, they will often concede
to demands. That is so frustrating. It is. But
what's crucial here is that while the packaging
was manipulated to create this illusion of a
solitary genius, the truth of the art remained
untouchable. The music spoke for itself. Exactly.
The critics at the time saw right through the
drama. Alan Jones, writing for Melody Maker,
reviewed the album and basically said it defies
standard critique. What did he say? He wrote
that the works need no analysis. There are no
words to describe the sense of desperation and
the haunting quality of these last works. They
just need to be listened to. Wow. You know, it
really makes you rethink the art you consume.
Definitely. For you listening right now. Consider
how much of the music, the literature, or the
films you love has been filtered or edited or
manipulated by the messy personal lives and estates
of the creators long after they are gone. It's
a sobering thought. It is. We buy the record
or read the book, assuming we are getting the
artist's pure unfiltered vision. But sometimes
we're just getting a curated vendetta. That's
a vital point. Despite all that manipulation,
the quality of the scavenge tracks really survived
the editing process. Oh, absolutely. Years later,
when the magazine Uncut compiled Parsons' 20
Greatest Tracks, the top three on their entire
list, which were Hickory Wind, Brass Buttons,
and $1 ,000 Wedding, were all pulled directly
from this exact album. That's incredible. Yeah.
The songs he had to dig out of his own past literally
became his ultimate legacy. So what does this
all mean? Let's look at the incredible journey
we've just been on. It's been a ride. We started
in a drug -addled recording studio in Hollywood
with a legendary backing band acting as shock
absorbers for a fading addict. Right. We watched
him scavenge a track list from his Harvard folk
days all the way to his Burrito Brothers era,
completely held aloft by the revolutionary vocal
mechanics of his partnership with Emmylou Harris.
A true patchwork. And then we watch that final
testament survive a jealous posthumous edit by
his widow. Yeah. You know, the ultimate irony
of all of this. What's that? When Grievous Angel
was finally released in January 1974, it peaked
at a completely disappointing number 195 on the
Billboard 200 charts. Number 195. Ouch. Yeah.
A massive commercial failure that quietly went
on to define an entire genre. It is a profound
testament to the fact that long -term cultural
impact rarely aligns with immediate commercial
success. Oh, sure. But before we finish, there's
one final bizarre detail from the source material
regarding this theme of illusion versus reality
that we actually haven't discussed yet. Oh, I'm
intrigued. So track one on side two of the album
is titled Medley Live from Northern Quebec. OK,
a live track. Well, it combines the Leuven brothers
classic Cash on the Barrelhead with his own song
Hickory Wind. It is not a live recording at all.
Wait, really? Not at all. It is entirely fake.
You're kidding? Nope. They took a studio recording
and heavily layered it with canned applause and
an ersatz completely artificial concert ambiance.
No way. Yeah. The album credits even list his
manager Phil Kaufman, producer Kim Fowley, and
others as providing quote, background blah blah
to simulate a bustling crowd. Background blah
blah. That's actually in the credits. Literally
credited as background blah. That is hilarious.
But why? Well, that's the question to leave you
with. Why would an artist who was so deeply obsessed
with the raw, authentic soul of country music
intentionally engineer a completely fake live
track for what would become his final testament?
Was he perhaps trying to simulate the adoring
sold out audience he never quite achieved in
life? Oh man, that is a haunting thought to end
on. A fake audience for a very real genius. Well,
thank you all for joining us on this Deep Dive.
I highly encourage you to go listen to Grievous
Angels with all these messy, beautiful contradictions
in mind. We'll catch you next time