Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music

This book has all the elements of a well written biography--it's incredibly comprehensive in Grams' details from birth to death and the aftermath, it's easy to read and follows smoothly, it doesn't judge and presents many contemporaries' and close friends' points of view, and it provides a lot of data for proposing that Gram was one of the main and most dedicated creators of the blending of country, soul and rock music in the mid-sixties--Which were at great odds with each other culturally at that point in time. For folks like me who lived through the era it reveals how a lot of the connections I saw occurring in music--why the Rolling Stones went roots-country-blues on Exile on Main Street (after sucking at psychedelia), where Poco, Manassas, Pure Prairie League and especially Emmylou Harris suddenly sprung from in the early '70's etc., etc A great read of a sad, short but fruitful life--and an encyclopedic rendering of the beginnings of alt-country, outlaw country music...

I consumed David M. Meyer's fantastic biography of the enigmatic, deeply destructive and hugely gifted Gram Parsons within weeks of having also read Jim Walsh's likewise excellent oral history of The Replacements "All Over But The Shouting". Quite the double bill- there is much that overlaps in the two stories- enough to cause one to really ponder the relationship between challenging art, marginal personalities, and the contrary and self defeating nature of so many artists in different mediums who have exhibited a very particular sort of attraction/revulsion towards a wide, mainstream acceptance in the market place. In a strange, if entirely appropriate coincidence, Keith Richards occurs as a kind of chimerical figure in both books. Keith bonds with Gram, appreciates his extraordinary talent, and shares his penchant for excess. Only too haltingly does he assist Gram in getting his music heard- a long held promise to produce a Gram solo record goes mournfully unfulfilled- eventually Gram succumbs to the high wire lifestyle that both men are driven to but only Keith survives. A decade and a half later, he's a Replacements fan and has them open for the X-Pensive Winos at Madison Square Garden. But immediately it becomes clear that the stage is too big for the Mats and they too wilt in Richards Shadow. All of this occurs to me as a single illustrative instance of what is so peculiar about the dichotomy between the relatively few great artists seemingly programed to survive and even thrive in the hothouse of public notoriety and the larger number who seem unable to weather it's various excesses and deprivations over the long term. In addition to it's being impeccably researched and delightfully rendered in the knowing but never condescending argot of a passionate music fan, there is a special excellence in Meyer's unsentimental contemplation of Parsons grim fate. For all of the posthumous mythologizing and tireless legend making that has gone on during the three and a half decades since his death, it remains true that even in the asinine context of early exits in rock music, there was something uniquely senseless, avoidable and frustrating about Gram's demise at the age of 26. Meyer's work is an essential history in many respects, but perhaps most importantly because it correctly challenges us to esteem Parson's great music, while impugning the notion of his "romantic fate". Finally and for the perhaps the first time we have here the true, slighlty pathetic story of Gram Parsons: a massive talent, feckless and heedless, whose greatest work no doubt laid ahead of him.

This is a wonderfully crafted biography with a broader scope than the already-compelling life of Gram Parsons. David Meyer has captured Parson's time, place and musical era in beautiful, evocative prose. You have to make yourself slow down enough to savor the fine writing even as you are swept up by the saga.

This is a wonderful book. It is passionate, obsessive, brilliant, sometimes very moving, often screamingly funny, an amazing portrait of a talented but wounded young man and of a time when everything changed. The biographical detail has the richness of a good novel, backed by a wealth of insight into the broader musical and cultural context that Parsons shaped and was shaped by. I am totally biased, of course, but I think "Twenty Thousand Roads" is a marvel.

This is a passionate, well-researched rock bio of Gram Parsons. It's an easy read, wonderful for those who love the music, great for those who are learning it. An amazing saga. Meyer's other books contain some of the funniest, incisive criticism of film; as he turns his attention to the fabled rocker, few old myths are left standing, but Parsons emerges as a human figure who we now know as never before.