Twenty Thousand Roads

Starred review from August 27, 2007
Gram Parsons is remembered as much for wearing sequined cowboy suits on stage and for being illegally cremated in the desert by one of his friends after dying of a drug overdose as he is for the half-dozen albums he played on in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the Byrds' classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo
. Meyer (A Girl and a Gun
) covers both aspects of the legend, but he gives particular attention to the way Parsons brought together elements of country and rock music to forge a new sound. After a leisurely telling of Parsons's “rich white trash” family drama in Florida and Georgia, including his father's suicide and the barely contained contempt of his mother's family, the biography plunges into his musical career, careening from one band to the next just as Parsons himself did. Meyer is appreciative but never adulatory of Parsons, who he believes threw his talent away; while citing the influence of the Flying Burrito Brothers' debut album, for example, he repeatedly mentions the band's “unbelievably sloppy” sound. This isn't the first biography of Parsons, but Meyer's semidetached stance as a critical fan makes it a valuable one, in the vein of Peter Guralnick or Greil Marcus.

October 15, 2007
Heir to a fortune, Gram Parsons didnt have to work too hard. Handsome, well-mannered, possessing a strong sense of entitlement, he could be incredibly charming. Coasting through school, he played in folk bands before being turned on to country at Harvard in 1965. He envisioned a Cosmic American Music combining country and R&B, and he introduced it to the hippie culture flourishing on the West Coast. That doesnt seem radical now, what with alt-country and Americana music, but in 1967, Meyer says, The combination of rocker exuberance, roadhouse scholarship, and Nashville session tradition generated a new form. Drawing on extensive interviews, Meyer traces Parsons through recording with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds (with whom he made the acclaimed Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and the Flying Burrito Brothers; befriending the Rolling Stones; and squandering his natural talents in a series of bad decisions. His drug abuse gave even Keith Richards pause, and his 1973 death via overdose was capped by a drunken ad hoc cremation. A fascinating biography of a great pop-music innovator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)