Credit: Dangerous Minds / Reprise Records
The battle for the corpse of Gram Parsons in 1973
The passing of Gram Parsons in 1973 at the age of 26 was a shock to all in the musicworld, but a surprise to no one.
The architect of ‘cosmic American music’ had been on a downward spiral for years. His brush with fame in The Byrds introduced him to the dark side of rock stardom, which directly led to him developing a heroin addiction in 1970 that would dog him for the rest of his days. Parsons became erratic and unreliable, yet he was given chance after chance, both due to his effortlessly charming nature and the fact that the music he was creating was some of the best of the entire decade.
It’s a look into the specific kind of strange naivety the music industry had back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Within a few years, the music industry would clamp down on the likes of Parsons and fellow mercurially talented fuckup Townes Van Zandt. The kind of artists who were unreliable messes that made music the public didn’t care about, but a few important people saw genuine greatness in.
Parsons, in particular, could have been one of the biggest names in music had he got his act together, but try as he might, he just couldn’t.
Thus, while his passing made headlines in the music world, the vast majority of people, even within the industry, wouldn’t have been able to hum a tune he’d made solo or in The Flying Burrito Brothers, the band built to launch him into the mainstream. Those who could, however, worshipped the ground he walked on. I’m not even exaggerating that much, Parsons’ cult following sometimes came across like exactly that, a cult. Y’know what cultists do when their leader dies?
They get even weirder than normal.
A few months before the passing of Gram Parsons, he and his road manager, Phil Kaufman, went to the funeral of his ex-Byrds bandmate Clarence White. Kaufman maintains that Parsons got freaked out by the pomp and circumstance of the funeral, and later recounted to Classic Rock that the songwriter turned to him and said, “This is bullshit. If I die I want somebody to have a few beers, take me out to the desert and burn my body.” Kaufman said “All right, it’s a deal.”
Then came the fateful night of September 19th, 1973, when he overdosed on alcohol and morphine while on holiday in Joshua Tree, California. Despite the best efforts of his friends, including an ice cube suppository from his girlfriend Margaret Fisher, he passed away in a matter of hours. Despite supposedly confiding in Kaufman what his wishes were, Parsons’ stepfather, Robert Parsons, took over and began organising what happened next.
He began organising a more official funeral to be held in New Orleans, and stationed his step-son’s body in a California funeral home before chartering a plane from Los Angeles International Airport to deliver him a few days after his death. Kaufman and a few of Parsons’ inner circle couldn’t let that happen. So, after Gram Parsons was moved from the funeral home to a cargo terminal in LAX, hours before he was due to fly out, his friends talked their way past the cops while out of their minds on whiskey, loaded him up into a hearse that belonged to one of their girlfriends and made off with him.
Together, they drove two and a half hours back out to Joshua Tree. Once they’d reached the desert, they loaded him back out and took the lid off the coffin, poured five gallons of gasoline on his corpse and, after one last toast in his name, they lit the coffin. Meaning that Gram Parsons wasn’t so much cremated as he was exploded.
Fucking rad.
Kaufman and Michael Martin both somehow made it home despite nearly being arrested for driving while intoxicated. After a few days, though, the hearse they were driving was identified, leaving the scene where what remained of Gram Parsons’ body was found, leading to the arrest of both Martin and Kaufman. However, they got off on the most bizarre technicality possible, despite Robert Parsons presumably wanting them both strung up.
It turns out that in the letter of Californian law in 1973, a corpse had no financial value. Thus, Martin and Kaufman could only be actually charged with stealing the coffin in a court of law. For their troubles, they were given a fine of $300 each and were ordered to pay the restitution costs to the funeral home. The duo threw a wake for Parsons as a way of raising the money for the fines called the “Kaufman Koffin Kaper Koncert”.
This celebrated his life in a way that probably made the man himself much, much happier than his actual funeral, which went ahead in New Orleans with the charred remains of Parsons’ body.
No comments:
Post a Comment