You’ll hear the phrase “game respects game” in the sports world. It generally means that someone with a lot of talent shows serious respect for others with similar skills. Well, that phrase holds true in the world of music as well.
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Nobody melded country and rock influences with quite as much commercial success as The Eagles managed to do. On their 1974 song “My Man”, they paid tribute to a guy who helped pave the way in that country-rock department.
Bernie and Gram
Don Henley and Glenn Frey ended up receiving the bulk of the attention among the Eagles. That transformation took place as the band grew in popularity throughout the 70s. In the beginning days of the band, however, Bernie Leadon possessed perhaps the most imposing musical pedigree.
Leadon had already been at the forefront of the fusion between country and rock with a pair of different bands in the 60s. He briefly played with Dillard & Clark. Following that, he joined The Flying Burrito Brothers, and he recorded a pair of albums with that highly influential outfit.
Gram Parsons joined Leadon in the latter group. The wildly talented and highly mercurial Parsons blazed the trail for this hybrid genre that really started to attract a great deal of attention at the start of the 70s. One of those bands that carried that banner was The Eagles. Leadon helped to steer their artistic direction at the outset of their time together.
A few albums into their career, however, the Eagles began to chart a more diverse course. Led by Henley and Frey, they dipped their toes into soft-rock balladry, R&B, and, most of all, harder-edged rock. Leadon found himself less involved on the creative side. He moved on from the band following their 1975 album One Of These Nights.
Before he made that jump, however, Leadon left perhaps his biggest impact on the group as a writer and singer with “My Man”. Although he initially started writing the track as a tribute to Duane Allman, the lament for a lost talent soon became focused on Parsons. He died at age 26 in 1973, a year before the song was released on On The Border.
Exploring the Lyrics of “My Man”
In the first verse, the narrator reaches out to a friend and tries to offer them advice on how to navigate the world’s sorrows. “Don’t feel too bad, you’re not all alone,” he explains. “We’re all trying to get along.”
Only in the second verse do we get any indication that the song is an homage to Parsons, the “talented guy” who would “sing for the people, and people would cry.”
When Leadon sings about Parsons as someone who would “touch your heart, then be gone,” it’s easy to imagine that’s how he personally viewed Gram. Leadon then makes reference to one of Parsons’ most famous songs (“Hickory Wind”), which he performed with The Byrds and solo: “Like a flower, he bloomed till that old hickory wind / Called him home.”
The chorus imagines a benevolent fate for Parsons. “My man’s got it made,” Leadon sings, supported by gorgeous harmonies from his bandmates. “He’s gone far beyond the pain.”
Meanwhile, those left behind have to make do with life’s slings and arrows: “And we who must remain / Go on living just the same.”
The final time through the chorus, Leadon changes “living” to “laughing” which suggests that mirth can still exist, even in the vacuum left behind by departed friends. Bernie Leadon paid the ultimate respect to Gram Parsons on “My Man” while also teaching some valuable life lessons along the way.
Photo by RB/Redferns
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