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

A voice called me down this road—a voice compelling enough that it needed no books or explanations, but so intriguing I wanted them anyway.I first heard Gram Parsons’ voice on the G.P./Grievous Angel double album, singing aching duets with Emmylou Harris on “Love Hurts” and “We’ll Sweep out the Ashes in the Morning.” (Possibly the best song ever written about adultery.) It eventually led me to Gilded Palace of Sin, and one of my favorite songs of all time, “Hot Burrito #1.” And yet, as St. Augustine says, the beauty of created things can never entirely satisfy us, so I was still restless; the voice itself was not enough. I’d been wandering around on Wikipedia, but still wanting to know more. So my path finally took me to this excellent book by David Meyer.Meyer, too, understands the irresistible lure of the voice; he describes it as “the most moving white voice I know,” and says it’s one of those “American voices that transcend any rational discussion and, really, anything rational at all.” That voice led Meyer down his own roads, tracing the route of the rowdy troubadour, trying to reconstruct Parsons’ tragic journey by talking to those who traveled alongside him, and travelling to the place where Parsons’ few remaining family members laid him to rest at the end of his too-short life. The tombstone that marked the end of the earthly journey for this young man—too young, it seems, to have borne such great emotion—pays tribute to the voice, and the man behind it, with the simple epitaph: God’s Own Singer.The singer’s own journey began under strange and unforgettably unique circumstances: born to high-class alcoholic parents, a mother (Avis Snively) who was an heiress in a Central Florida citrus dynasty, a father (Coon Dog Connor) who flew fighters in World War II. Granted a no-work job in Waycross, Georgia by his rich in-laws, Connor settled in to a life of lazy alcoholism, working a few hours each day, then spending the rest hunting and working on cars. A loving father and Boy Scout leader, he bought Gram a reel-to-reel tape recorder—a rare and expensive item in the late 1950s, one that would come in handy for a budding musician. And then right before Christmas of 1958, he used it to record a last I-love-you to his son, and then shot himself.Rather than becoming the shy introvert one might have expected after such a tragedy, Gram grew up well-dressed, confident, and smart. An Elvis-loving teenager, he had money to buy guitars, and time to learn songs and play gigs. His mother remarried, and he ended up with a supportive stepfather. And his mother gave him space to do all of these things—but also drank herself to death, right around the time of his high school graduation.The well-off sometimes understand things the poor cannot. And one thing in particular: financial security is no substitute for emotional security. For people who came up with nothing, it’s possible to think happiness is simply a matter of getting something: enough wealth to pay the bills, put food on the table, buy a nice car and a big house, throw parties, woo women; enough to wander down life’s many roads at leisure, and never check your bank balance. Parsons’ story suggests that’s not the case. Throughout the remainder of his life—already two-thirds over when he started his musical career in earnest (after an abortive stint at Harvard), he was taken care of, a trust-fund kid who never had to worry about succeeding for the sake of financial security. It allowed him to explore his art for its own sake—not because he needed commercial success to survive, but because he enjoyed performing—and it afforded him the opportunity to get off the beaten path and explore avenues others might have overlooked. (When country music was unhip, on the other side of the Vietnam culture war from the folkies and hippies who were Parsons’ natural flock, Parsons was bravely bridging the gap, drawing inspiration from its stars, playing in its juke joints. And it wasn’t an easy gap to bridge, nor a safe one—“longhairs” visiting a clean-cut country establishment were sometimes subjected to harassment, ridicule, and even physical violence. Still, while many of his contemporaries were following the folkie crowd to San Francisco with flowers in their hair, smoking pot and strumming peaceful music in Golden Gate Park, Parsons was more likely to be onstage in a Los Angeles honky-tonk, trolling meth-agitated rednecks by wearing a custom-made Nudie suit adorned with a provocative set of embroidered images: marijuana leaves, pills, flames, naked women—and the cross.)Yet wealth also allowed Parsons to explore lazily, to wander down other paths as often as he wanted to, to lose himself in women and whiskey and heroin, using them in possibly the same way that he used performing, as a cheap substitute for the love and attention and emotional stability he lacked growing up. Describing one career hiatus for Gram—the death-through-inattention of the International Submarine Band—Meyer says: “The problem wasn’t that Gram lived separately from the band or that he was in love. He also lived in a different economic reality.” Though the Snively citrus empire—once representing 20% of the industry in Central Florida—was starting to lose ground, “Gram most likely received around thirty to forty thousand dollars, two times a year—a fortune in 1967. Gram never had to earn. If he wanted to let music slip to focus on love or spiritualism, he would eat no worse. That was not true for the rest of the band.”Another biographer might have turned judgmental in the face of such callousness. And yet, as Meyer says, “everyone drawn into Gram’s orbit ends up seduced.” Even with—and perhaps because of—all his flaws, Parsons was a charming and memorable person. And he continued to live an intriguing life—palling around with the Rolling Stones during the infamous druggy sessions in the south of France that led to “Exile on Main Street,” returning to the United States and taming his addictions long enough to record G.P. and Grievous Angel.Still, Meyer isn’t too seduced to look honestly at the sadness and heartache and dysfunction of Parsons’ final years. Using the druggy pointillism of his sources’ spotty memories, Meyer paints an intriguing picture of the last months of the journey—of Parsons and his wife accidentally burning down their house, of Parsons and Emmylou Harris going on tour and singing beautiful love duets together while Parsons’ wife seethed offstage, of Parsons hooking up with an old high school classmate and getting away from crazy L.A. with a trip to the California desert. (And still, of course, Gram Parsons could never go far enough down the road to escape himself; one scene from that trip shows Parsons and his companions dropping into a desert bar, where Gram drunkenly discovered one of his own songs on the jukebox, and started playing it over and over and over.)And then: the end. A sad overdose in a desert motel at the ripe young age of twenty-six.Meyer honorably chronicles this heartbreaking death (and its bizarre coda) without mythologizing it; one sees it as it truly must have been for those who knew and loved Gram, as an unimaginable catastrophe, as one of those events that simply overwhelms—a tragedy bequeathed by a sad soul whose life had been shaped by heartaches of his own. Though the roads have been obscured by the haze of drugs and the fog of memory, one gets the sense Meyer has explored every avenue, and arrived at as much of the truth as one can find. (I did catch a couple minor factual errors related to peripheral matters; Meyer’s background information on Coon Dog Connor’s military career got something wrong that was probably only noticeable to an aviation geek like myself—and there was another error in the info on Gram’s stepfather, Bob Parsons.)Gram Parsons left behind a considerable legacy—a mingling of music that can be heard in every act that brings together country and rock, from Garth Brooks to Bright Eyes. But a legacy is still no substitute for a living, breathing human being. Was that the only ending possible for someone as sad as Gram Parsons? I’d like to think not. But it’s the ending we’re stuck with. “I tell my friends I’m happy but they read me like a book,” Parsons once sang; at the end of this book, you’ll be grateful you read it—but sad, as well, that it ended as early as it did.

This book is extremely well written, and comes across as being ostensibly well researched. And yet one of the main perspectives of the book seems to be how screwed up on drugs Gram Parsons was through much of his professional music career. There are certainly many eye witness accounts to support this, and after all he died of a combination of alcohol and drug toxicity. But here's where the writer's bias prevails. If the writer is to be believed, Gram was barely creatively and performance functional from around 1969 on. The book describes of Gram being so intoxicated at times that he was playing gibberish on his guitar, and that it was a common occurrence for the sound crew to unplug him. Also its stated that he was out of touch or had no rapport with the audiences when he performed. While I don't doubt that this may have periodically occurred, I don't believe that this was the norm for Gram Parsons performances with the Burritos or the Fallen Angels. There are plenty of recorded live Gram Parson performances with both bands available on Youtube and elsewhere that would support the opposite view. These live performances depict Gram where he's on top of his game, not slurring his words but singing and performing very well. Another bone that I have to pick, is how bad the writer implies that the FBB "Burrito Deluxe" album is, due once more to Gram's constant drug use and his unwillingness to work . Again while I don't doubt that excessive drug use did occur during the making of the album, but the recorded result speaks for itself. It is a great album, as no doubt thousands of FBB fans agree. The band's new original songs with the addition of Bernie Leadon's creative input and guitar playing are simply great. The cover songs from other artists are also very good; especially the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" which is outstanding and in my opinion surpasses the Stones Version in feeling. Leadon's guitar playing seems to make the band sound more tight as well. While this album isn't as good as the first FBB album "Gilded Palace of Sin," it certainly has its moments. And it could've been even better had Chris Hillman not prevented the classic Parson's song "$1000 Wedding" being recorded by the the band. He thought it was just a dirge. But I digress.The writer includes a glossary of People and Rock Groups at the end of the book. This is very helpful if you forget who somebody was, or you wanted to know more about them. But there is another Glaring Bias evident in the description of some of the bands mentioned in the book. For example for The Doors he describes them as " Sixties LA band exploring Thanatos and Eros via a big beat and second-rate poetry. Renowned for a***h*** lead singer." And he describes The Eagles as "The worst iconic band in American rock. In fact much worse than that." These descriptions are totally unjustified and are very offensive to the many Doors or Eagles fans who may read this book, especially because the writer never states anything in the book to support these views. While it's true the Eagles took Gram's idea of audience accessible "Country Rock" and ran with it while never giving credit to Gram where credit is due. The Doors split the bill with the Flying Burrito Brothers on several live performances in LA, it might've been more insightful the get any of the surviving Doors views on what Gram Parsons was like at these performances. This also goes for a whole host of people like Peter Fonda, Linda Ronstadt (who sang on Parsons solo work), Neil Young, or Jackson Brown, who were contemporaries of Gram on the emerging music scene. Maybe the writer tried and failed to contact these people? Who's to say?As other reviewers have stated, the writer goes deep into Gram Parson's family history before really getting into the part of Gram's life that most readers wish to know about. I don’t know that it’s necessary to learn about Grams Grandparents or to take a deep dive on the Snively family business. You have to read nearly 30 percent of the book before getting to Gram and the International Submarine Band.I enjoyed this book, and as I previously said; its very well written. But it could've been way better if the writer would've toned down the Bias and left out much of the Connor/Snively/Parson's family history. The best Biographies try to present the facts without any bias what-so-ever, and leave it to the reader decide. While I believe for most of this book the facts are presented accurately, its because of bias that I mentioned above that I dropped one star giving this book 4 stars instead of 5.

Big section at the beginning about his family life, which is very interesting. Still reading it, but I am truly enjoying his story.

Great Item at a great price and quick delivery!

The numbers of sources, human and not, used by the author in this biography lends to the sense of a true, intimate, and well-researched work. The writing style is humanistic, engaging, and entertaining to a degree that kept me from wanting to put the book down. All in all, a great read about a very influential and pioneering country rocker, with a wonderful peek inside the real world of "sex, drugs, & rock n roll"!

Jason Walker, author of God's Own Singer, described David N. Meyer's book as the definitive Gram Parsons bio. And while I liked GOS a whole lot, I have to say he's right - in terms of detail and analysis of sources, Meyer knocks it out of the park. Not only that but for a book so thick - we're talking around 500 pages, give or take, long for a music bio - it's incredibly readable.Walker and Meyer also agree that while Gram produced some absolutely standout material throughout his short and troubled life, he also wasted a lot of it with a needle in his arm or a bottle in his hand. Poor Gram may have wanted to be Keith Richards, but he sure as hell didn't have the Stone's constitution. Not realising this is what ultimately killed him and, oddly, resurrected him after death as the icon he so wanted to be in life. Again, Neyer's version of the comedy of errors that was Gram's cremation was somewhat more credible than perhaps the heavily dramatized version of events that Walker, with a lot of help from some dubious sources, cooked up. But a little less fun, in fairness.For Gram fans, I'd recommend both books. For sheer fanboy passion, Walker's is hard to beat. But if you're looking for the actual truth of the matter, a keen eye for separating truth from legend, Meyer probably has the edge.

Very well written and researched book

GOOD BOOK BUT A WASTED LIFE.