Golden Gram

I know I'm getting older (as we all are, as we all know), but it still came as a bit of a jolt to realise that a few days ago it was the 50th anniversary of Gram Parsons's death – half a century! The death was a sordid affair, the result of a massive intake of morphine, barbiturates and alcohol, and what happened next was a sorry tale. A footnote in this book (now available on eBay!) tells the story succinctly: 

'3 A kind of farcical modern iteration of Shelley’s funeral took place in 1973 at Joshua Tree in the Californian desert, when two friends of the singer Gram Parsons attempted to cremate his body, which they had stolen from Los Angeles airport. Pouring five gallons of petrol into his open coffin and lighting it, they created an enormous fireball and fled, leaving Parsons’s charred remains behind. They believed they had been acting on his wishes.'

But what a talent, what a voice! I remember the shock of hearing of Gram's death, but I remember at least as vividly the electric impact of hearing this, the opening track of his posthumous Grievous Angel album, for the first time. All those years ago...