Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons

Being a bit older than some, I can say that I have seen the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, and Gram Parsons/Emmylou harris. and best of all--Emmylou Harris with a variety of others--most recently; Mark Knopfler. I could care less about all the questionable history between GP & ELH. In reality they were awesome together. She remains the torch bearer of the original "Cosmic American Music" theme. She defines being pigeonholed into a specific type of genre. Just listen to all the music they have made, then come to understand "Cosmic American Music". The people they have played with boggles the mind. From Fred Neil, Neil Young, Steven Stills, Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, & so many more, it Grievous Angel : An Intimate Biography of Gram ParsonsHickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsonsreally does make you understand who they were and are. They are my musical heros.

Definitely worthwhile for any Gram Parsons, Flying Burrito Bros., ISB, Byrds, etcetra fan. A lot of info you already knew, but just from another or different perspective. What I really liked were the many different interviews with many of those who were influenced by Gram, such as Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Keith Richards and many more. The only negative; errors a good editor should've discovered. It's Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup not "Sweet Soul Music" Conley that wrote "That's All Right Mama". And it's Joan not John Baez. Or did I get the only copy with these typo's? Hopefully. Otherwise, still worth 5 stars in my opinion. A keeper!

I really enjoyed this book and found it the most user friendly of all the books written about country rock legend Gram Parsons. It presents him in a realistic light, warts and all. He was a remarkably talented young man who had it all. Unfotrunately the one thing he lacked was self-discipline and that ended up being the end of him. Nonetheless, the musical and social/personal journey he had in his short life make for great reading. I highly recommmend it. I found it fun to be playing some GP music softly in the background while I read it. This really made some cool ambience.

I loved this book, with its trippy, subjective syntax and its hard-edged look at Gram Parsons, one of the distinctive singer-songwriters of the postwar era. What a life he had, however short, and the music he made continues to inspire us and to make us a little weepy. Partly, as Hundley and Parsons show us, Gram always felt a little disconnected himself, for he was an orphan at age 18, and his best memories of his mother were always colored by her "Glass Menagerie" fondness for alcohol and lost dreams and Southern gentility, while the father was the same sort of dad Gram himself grew up to be--good in the short haul, but sort of impatient. It's sad about the drugs that seem to take over, but even before becoming a drug addict he's sort of a jerk, spoiled and self-indulgent in the way of the boy who's always had more money than anyone else in his class at school, so he could buy himself out of any scrapes his charm couldn't extricate himself from. The story of the Burrito Brothers' train ride throughout the continental USA, staying at the best hotels and wasting millions of dollars of the record company's money, is a real rock legend, but it isn't very pretty really when you look at the facts. You can get only so much mileage out of being a "trustafarian." Thiss book makes one wonder why there isn't a comprehensive biography of Brandon de Wilde (one of Gram's first friends in New York). Surely Brandon, one of the great child stars who grew up to be a young leading man, and who died of drugs early on, had an even more interesting life than Gram? The glimpses we see of him here, and his attempts to establish a foothold in the music business, are fascinating. Likewise I never knew that Gram helped Peter Fonda record a single--love to hear that one! Maybe I'm dense but I couldn't figure out if the dying, melancholy Gram, old before his time at 26, actually had an affair with Emmylou Harris or not. Is it perhaps still a huge secret 35 years later? The prose of GRIEVOUS ANGEL dances around the details of this "intimate friendship" but surely enough time has gone by, water under the bridge, for the truth to emerge. If not, just say so in one simple sentence, instead of vague romantic prose poems about the intimate bond the two of them shared. You'd think she was the widow from the way Jessica and Polly write about her.

Is there anything new that can be said about the life of Gram Parsons? Perhaps not, but his fascinating and tragic life still makes for interesting, if not compelling reading in the hands of talented writers. Jessica Hundley and Polly Parsons' "Grevious Angel" will not supplant Fong-Torres' "Hickory Wind" as the main reference source on his life. Their book is not based on the same extensive research as "Hickory Wind"; however, "Grevious Angel" does contain numerous text boxes of usually one to three page duration which contain testimonials about Parsons' influence or first-hand accounts of the man himself. While Hundley and Parsons do portray Parsons as a musical visionary, they do not understate, nor excuse, nor glorify his terrible substance abuse and reckless lifestyle, which resulted in his untimely demise. Overall, the book is likely to appeal to younger or recent fans of Gram Parsons, rather than the old timers, who probably know his life triumphs and tragedies in greater depth than the account presented here.