Brass Buttons: Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel at 50

If there was ever a musician with a lousy sense of timing, it had to be country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons.

After bolting from one of his first bands before they released an album, he joined one of the ‘60’s most beloved American acts and again quit before his album with them came out. Along with one of its ex-members, he formed a new group but only did one album with them and got fired. When he finally went solo, he repeated this pattern, putting out one album and then died before the second one came out. Even there, he missed joining the vaunted 27 Club by only a few weeks. Yet despite all this mess, the drug-addled, rich boy denizen deserves his legendary status, which culminated in 1974’s Grievous Angel album, that came out a half century ago this month.

Parsons’ pre-musical background was a Southern gothic tale — born into a rich Georgia family with a dad who was a WWII hero, his parents dealt with alcoholism, depression and affairs, leaving them both dead before he turned 20. Gram found refuge in music, forming rock and folk groups that never took off before he enrolled at Harvard and latched onto country music. 

His musical trajectory took off after co-founding the International Submarine Band in ‘66. They cut an album but Parsons had a lucky run-in with bass Chris Hillman which eventually led to Parsons joining the Byrds. Parsons was done with his old band, only to be heard with them later in ‘68 with the Safe At Home album. Meanwhile, he helped to nudge the Byrds into country territory, leading to the now-classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, which mixed then-unreleased Dylan material with country, folk classics and a pair of Parsons originals. Though the album brimmed with warmth, gentleness and sublime sweetness, like the Submarine album, it bombed on the charts. And after only about six months in the band, Parsons quit, supposedly jarred by the prospect of South African shows, but by then, he had also stirred up a friendship with the Rolling Stones. 

Hillman also quit the Byrds not long after, reuniting with Parsons to form the Flying Burrito Brothers. Their 1969 debut Gilded Palace of Sin was arguably the most imaginative (and humorous) album Parsons ever put his name on, finding a great cohort and songwriting partner with Hillman and displaying a carefree spirit, along with featuring Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s startling fuzzbox steel guitar. But their startling debut didn’t sell and Parsons soon lost interest in the band, leading to dreary material for their second record and Parsons himself getting kicked out before 1970’s Burrito Deluxe came out. Its most notable track was “Wild Horses,” which the Stones gave to him before recording it themselves. 

AUDIO: The Flying Burrito Brothers “Wild Horses”

After latching onto the Stones, Parsons got tossed out of their circle during the Exile on Main St. sessions and took the wise route of finally going solo. 1973’s GP was a good course correction, sounding like a nice continuation of his Byrds work and like the Burritos brothers, included some heavy R&B leanings with help from Elvis’ incredible back-up band, including guitarist James Burton. 

Unlike the drug and drinking binges of his debut, the sessions of the follow-up (which would be Grievous Angel), during two weeks in the summer of ‘73, were relatively more low-key, again featuring Elvis’ sidemen and singer Emmylou Harris in a Hollywood Studio for a countrified rock album (or vice versa) that sounded like a Nashville creation. Like Burrito Deluxe, Parsons found himself dry for new tunes, leading him to dig through his old songbook for material (like the Stones did later with Tattoo You). Regardless, he never sounded so confident as here and even bragged to his friends that he had finally completed the record he always wanted- one which he would never live to see come out and also not released in the way that he had intended.

Even its first song has a tortured history. “Return of the Grievous Angel” came from a Beantown poet named Tom Brown who approached Parsons with the words and it definitely stuck with him, supposedly becoming one of the few things that Parsons rescued when his house went ablaze and which he would add the music to. Though not initially intended to be the title track, “Angel” is a great lead-off regardless, telling a prodigal son tale of a wanderer dramatically making it back: “20,000 roads I went down, down, down and they all led me back to you,” leading a trail through the prairie, ‘waves of grain,’ Cheyenne, Tennessee and the Devil on an epic journey to his loved one. And who is “the king [with] … an amphetamine crown”? Elvis, Gram himself? We might stop to wonder if we weren’t overwhelmed by the beautifully intertwined harmonies that Parsons and Harris craft, achieved live by singing into one single mike. Parsons yells out to Burton to “pick it for me” as Byron Berline’s fiddle and Al Perkins’ steel guitar carry the musical woe along.

“Hearts on Fire” seems like a great forlorn country tune but it also has a twisted history. Walter Egan wrote it as a cornpone parody but then Harris’ partner Tom Guidera made it a true tear-jerker. Led by a hushed vibraphone more than Burton or Perkins, Parsons/Harris milk the temperature-related imagery (“put out the flames and set this cold heart free”) for lovely melancholy with their voices flying high and free at the end, though later here, they’d embellish another cover that conveyed heartache in an even richer fashion. 

After all that misery, things pick up ironically with yet another great cover. Tom T. Hall was already known as a brilliant songwriter, having given the world “Harper Valley P.T.A.” His 1970 tune “I Can’t Dance” seemed like a novelty song but the sly twist here is that the singer had two left feet but he’s so in love that he’ll embarrass himself and try to hoof it just for his sweetie. Parsons picks up on this with a piano-heavy version courtesy of Glenn D. Hardin which calls to mind Ol’ Jerry Lee, especially in the intro. Harris is more subdued here, heard mostly on the chorus and the tune provides us a bit of awkward glee for the first half of the record, (and just be glad it’s not the Genesis tune of the same name from later). I can’t help but think though there’s another meaning deeper down in the tune, maybe with Parsons also obliquely admitting that he can’t make it on the charts, but he’ll try to engage his audience anyway. Think that’s B.S.? Wait until side two and see…

Meanwhile, “Brass Buttons,” which dates from Parsons’ mid-60’s pre-International Submarine Band days, might be one of the most affecting, haunting songs on the record, which is saying a lot. Though it’s another piano-led song, this one’s a sad ballad with a weepy steel guitar, staring out with Parsons alone, rummaging through his clothes and his voice almost drifting away, as if he’s lost in his reveries and maybe not coming back.

Though it started as a Burrito Brothers reject, “$1000 Wedding” triumphantly finishes off the first side here. It’s another mournful ballad with Harris coming in on the second chorus, adding weight to the story of a hearty binge leading up to a ceremony that’s anything but merry: “Supposed to be a funeral/it’s been a bad, bad day.” For the last verse, when Harris roars in again with Parsons, the words of the reverend are slowly, carefully rolled out, bringing up talk of demons at the end. Though it’s tempting to read too much into the song here and Parsons’ life, his own rocky marriage was in fact falling apart at the time, so make of that what you will.

Starting off side two is a big ol’ telling lie. “Medley Live From Northern Quebec” is none of those things- it’s not a medley or live or from Canada. It’s a studio concoction with Parsons and friends yelling and adding in sound effects. The first part is the Louvin Brothers’ moralist tale of a woeful shmoe, “Cash On The Barrelhead.” While the original had a lighthearted bluegrass feel, Parsons speeds it up with a chugging beat as the fiddle and steel battle it out for solos, while he does another call-out to Burton. Parsons makes the loser with bad luck (which was a part of him, even if he didn’t want to admit it) sound like a carefree drifter, even adding a yodel at the end. After thanking the ‘crowd,’ Parsons drolly tells the assembled, “here’s an old song from a long time back,” which gets met with cheers and broken bottles. Compared to his version of “Hickory Wind” with the Byrds (only five years ago), the sad, slow waltz sounds more dispirited and longing, talking of his old home, but even with Harris chiming in on the chorus, it’s also a little misbegotten here, with the hoots and hollers sounding out of place, not to mention too forced. Like “I Can’t Dance,” this seems like another painful way that he tried to deal with his lack of mainstream acceptance, needing to create this imaginary world where he and his songs were beloved. Compare this to another Byrds song with fake crowd cheers, “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” where his former bandmates cleverly took on the music industry’s manipulative machinery.

(In an interesting side note, a few months earlier than Angel, Parsons did a live radio broadcast, later released at Live 1973, where he bawled out an audience member for being too chatty and dedicated a mean song to him. Is the ‘medley’ here an ironic reaction to that or a change of heart?) 

Shifting from an artificial landscape where he relives the past, Parsons then strikes into an even deeper, more poignant vein of heartache than “Hearts on Fire.” Originally an album-only Everly Brothers track, “Love Hurts” was a beautiful, wrenching song that had the siblings sound like they were consoling each other. Here with Parsons and Harris, the song has a richer, more meaningful character to it as we could be listening to a couple who’s been fighting and now realizing that they’re stuck in a relationship despite all the ugliness. Months after Angel came out, Nazareth’s version would finally make a hit out of the song, but this is the version that will truly break your heart into pieces.

VIDEO: Nazareth “Love Hurts”

From there, Parsons takes us on a deceptive joy ride. “Ooh Las Vegas” was a hold-over from his first solo album, co-written with producer Ric Grech (Family, Blind Faith). The upbeat pace and mood almost hide the story of unease- a land of sin that’s “no place for a poor boy like me.” The fun is fleeting at best as he scores his dope and pays the price as heard in this witty, ingenious verse with mirror images of his good/bad times- “Well, I spend all night with the dealer/Tryin’ to get ahead/Spend all day at the Holiday Inn/Tryin’ to get out of bed.” In a bit of unintentional foreshadowing, weeks later, he’d be in the same situation but it was even more dire- he’d never get out of that bed at all.

Amazingly enough, “Vegas” isn’t even the eeriest piece of prognostication on the album. That honor goes to the next song and the closer, “In My Hour of Darkness,” bottoming out in a place that Ian Curtis would manifest a few years later. Originally written by Parsons about another former Byrd member, Clarence White, and other musical friends who had died recently, he generously gave Harris co-writing credit though she swears that she only helped to tweak the song. Paying tribute to his late friends, listeners instead thought that the ghostly prayer of a song was somehow autobiographical, as if Parsons was calling forth his own doom. I don’t buy it myself but the weight and doomy force of the song still make it at least somewhat plausible. Still, I think the singer was again the victim of crappy luck and timing.

To celebrate the record’s completion, before a planned tour, a little desert vacation at Joshua Tree National Park led to a drug cocktail that did Parsons in on September 9, 1973. Rather than ship the body back to the family, a buddy of his carried out Parsons’ ‘wishes,’ taking him out to the same desert area for a half-assed cremation. Parsons’ corpse still would make it back to his family to be buried and the insane incident would pile onto his legend. Since then, the park rangers there aren’t obliged to share the story though fans continually add their make-shift memorials which dutifully get discarded by the staff.

As for the album he left behind, it didn’t come out to be what he had intended. His wife Gretchen insisted that Harris’s name wouldn’t grace the cover and the would-be title track, “Sleepless Nights,” was yanked off the record. It’s another Everly Brothers song and it’s forlorn and adorable and while it doesn’t match “Love Hurts,” it would have been a keeper regardless. That, and two other outtakes, yet another Everlys song, “Brand New Heartache” and another Louvin Brothers song “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night” (nice but a little too country and homey) would eventually appear on an outtakes album in 1976, which finally made “Sleepless Nights” a title track.

AUDIO: Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris “Sleepless Nights”

In keeping with his cult tradition, Angel didn’t sell squat when it came out. But while it isn’t as historic or quite the music revolution that Sweetheart or Gilded Palace were, it’s a great album regardless of the fact that it’s made up of covers and leftover songs mostly, showing that Parsons could present a masterful group of songs regardless. It’s both hodgepodge and a culmination of his work. Part of his genius then was making it all sound prophetic and completely assured.

As for his legacy, Harris’ career took off not long after, with her becoming the country legend that Parsons never was during his lifetime. His whole concept of a country-rock mash-up (which Parsons dubbed ‘cosmic American music’) would find progeny who made it slicker and more profitable, including Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles- not coincidentally, she and Eagles’ co-founder (and Burritos member) Bernie Leadon provided back-up on Angel. That’s not even mentioning the ’80s country-punk movement in L.A. or the alt-country movement epitomized by No Depression, all of which are part of his legacy too. Then there was 1999’s tribute album Return of the Grievous Angel featuring The Pretenders, Steve Earle, Elvis Costello, Wilco, Sheryl Crow, Beck and Parsons’ old running buddies Hillman and Harris, which covered most of the original Angel album. Surely Gram would have loved it, but do you see what I meant about shitty timing?

Side note: Seek out Ben Fong-Torres’ Hickory Wind, a great Parsons bio that helped with the research here.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Jason Gross

Jason Gross is the editor/founder of Perfect Sound Forever, one of the first and longest-running online music magazines. He has written for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Time Out, AP, New York, MTV, Oxford American, Billboard, MOJO, The Wire, and Blurt. Reissues and collections that he's produced included Delta 5, Essential Logic, Kleenex/Liliput, DNA, Oh OK and OHM –The Early Gurus of Electronic Music. He lives in New York with his girlfriend and 30 plush cats.

Latest posts by Jason Gross (see all)

• The ‘Soul’ of Gregg Allman - June 17, 2026
• Haitian Divorce: Steely Dan’s ‘The Royal Scam’ at 50 - May 28, 2026
• Twinkle, Twinkle Uncle Floyd - January 29, 2026