4 Songs That Show How Gram Parsons Became a North Star for Many Rock Legends

Each time I hear the Grateful Dead’s folk hymn, “Ripple”, I think of Gram Parsons. “Let there be songs to fill the air,” sings Jerry Garcia on the band’s American Beauty classic. Written by Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, it’s not about Parsons, but musically (and perhaps pensively), it’s a direct link between the Dead’s 1970 reinvention and a genre Parsons envisioned as “cosmic American music.”

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It’s one of countless ways that Parsons helped shape country rock, or what many today file under Americana. And without his influence, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Wilco, Evan Dando, Lucinda Williams, and many others would sound very different. So here are four songs that show how Parsons became a North Star for many rock legends.

“Hickory Wind” by The Byrds

On Parsons’ only album with The Byrds, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, he penned two tracks, “Hickory Wind” and “One Hundred Years From Now”. The first recalls the safety of childhood while also grappling with, as he sings, “What else can life bring?” In a “faraway city,” he feels a little less lonely thinking of the familiar smells of the tall pines, the oak, and the blowing winds taking him back home.

“Sin City” by The Flying Burrito Brothers

On the front cover of The Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut album, the band is photographed wearing Nudie suits. That gaudy garb, according to Wilco’s Pat Sansone, “has a currency in pop culture and rock and roll culture because of that Burrito Brothers album cover. It’s such an iconic image.” Parsons co-wrote “Sin City” with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman, and together, the duo wearily harmonize a cautionary tale about the music industry in Los Angeles.

“Wild Horses” by The Flying Burrito Brothers

Parsons famously hung out with The Rolling Stones in the late 60s and early 70s. He befriended Keith Richards and likely helped guide the Stones’ turn toward country rock. While Parsons’s time with the hard-partying band didn’t help his own struggles with addiction, The Flying Burrito Brothers released a version of “Wild Horses” before the Stones. It arrived on Burrito Deluxe, one year before the release of Sticky Fingers. In Parsons’s voice, we get to hear a glimpse of what it might have been like sharing country tunes with Richards.

“Return Of The Grievous Angel” by Gram Parsons

While touring in Boston, a poet named Tom Brown gave Parsons a set of lyrics he’d written for the singer. From Brown’s drifter tale, Parsons formed his defining song, “Return Of The Grievous Angel”. Together with Emmylou Harris, Parsons sings about a bohemian existence on the road, with devils and deep blue seas alike. The wandering tune also features this “cosmic” and eternal verse:

Out with the truckers
And the kickers and the cowboy angels,
And a good saloon in every single town.

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