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Love Hurts
In September 1973, needing to blow off steam after recording his second solo album, “Grievous Angel,” Parsons, his girlfriend and two others made a beeline for Joshua Tree. After day-drinking at a bar in town, Parsons and his party retired to the Joshua Tree Inn, a small, Spanish-style motel where he was a welcome regular and friend of the owners and staff.
“Donovan told us years later that all the musicians that would stay here when visiting Joshua Tree, they’d all hang out outside their rooms or by the pool and just play,” said Dee Dee Cornett, the inn’s current general manager.
In rock circles of the time, Parsons was almost as well known for his drug consumption as his music. He was notorious for cocaine binges that led to missed concerts and fractured relationships, Ben Fong-Torres writes in his biography of the musician, “Hickory Wind.” (Keith Richards even suggested he was going too hard.)
While partying with his friends that night at the motel, it’s believed that Parsons overdosed on a combination of alcohol and morphine. After he was briefly resuscitated, he was brought to his room — No. 8 — where his breathing would once again slow, then stop forever.

What entwines Parsons and Joshua Tree is not only his death there but also what followed. His estranged stepfather arranged for Parsons’ body to be flown to Louisiana for burial. But according to friend and tour manager Phil Kaufman, Parsons wanted to be laid to rest in Joshua Tree, and it was up to Kaufman to make good on his friend’s last request.
So in a bizarre scene that seems straight out of a movie — later emulated in the 2003 indie film “ Grand Theft Parsons” starring Johnny Knoxville, Michael Shannon and Christina Applegate — Kaufman and a friend borrowed a hearse, drove to LAX and convinced the airline staff that burial plans had changed and that they were there to take the body. From there, they drove to Cap Rock in Joshua Tree, where Kaufman doused the coffin with five gallons of high-test gasoline and lit a match.
“We drove into Joshua Tree and kept driving and driving until finally I said, ‘This is as far as I can go. We’re drunk. We’re going to have to get out of here,’” Kaufman wrote in his autobiography, “Road Mangler Deluxe. ” “Later on, people said Cap Rock was Gram’s favorite place and Gram wanted to be buried there. [We only stopped there because] we were too drunk to go any further and it was a large enough place that we could turn around and make our escape.”

A horrified maintenance crew found the still-smoldering body the next morning, only partially consumed by the flames. (Kaufman had seen a pair of headlights in the distance and, convinced it was the cops, lit out before the improvised cremation was finished.) Kaufman and accomplice Michael Martin were eventually arrested, but because there was no law at the time against stealing a corpse, they were convicted only of stealing the coffin and fined $300 each. (They also had to pay $708 for the destroyed casket.) Decades later, it remains one of the most bizarre stories in rock ’n’ roll history. (Parsons’ remains were eventually buried in Louisiana.)
The actual cremation spot isn’t publicized by the park, but it’s not difficult to find. According to Kaufman and several rangers, the body was cremated on a median bordering the Cap Rock parking lot. It makes sense, given how drunk Kaufman and Martin were that night; they probably couldn’t haul the heavy coffin to the backside of Cap Rock, where fans frequently erect those makeshift memorials.

~ Robert Annis New York Times

First Aid Kit - Emmylou - www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC57z-…

"In My Hour of Darkness" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzuSea…

THE TEMPTATION OF GRAM PARSONS
by Timothy Parrish

September 18, 1973
Joshua Tree National Park

On the desert floor two figures squared off. One was a singer, the other something else. Neither carried a gun though death was surely in the air along with the cooing of mourning doves. Near them a Joshua Tree leaned in as if to listen, but it could have been the wind. From the adjacent bluff a figure, God-like to the unknowing, seemed to loom above the battle. It is said he came as a painter, and the text sometimes refers to him as the Creator, though the scroll of the saints from which this account is being copied is corrupt in places. Whatever his true name, he has less to do with things than it seems, but his presence can hardly go unnoticed. He had not come to witness a great event but simply to enjoy the sunset. He preferred watching stars wheeling or dust vermiculating to the machinations of men and women. Lately, the air’s atoms danced in purple shadings new to his vision. He wished to copy them before they evolved into different hues once California falls into the sea. He brushed streaks of light into the gathering darkness and imagined the world’s end. If not this day, some other one. They were all the same to him, and he would never end. Below, the singer hummed hymns. He wore a rhinestone-studded jacket embossed with a shining cross. It glittered in the setting sun like a burning eye radiating outward from his head. The man’s spark had caught the painter’s attention, though the singer did not know the light he cast. The other one, more shadow than substance and shifty like a mirage, jumped about like Jack Flash to distract the singer. The birds’ singing carried to the bluff as did that of the man. The painter did not distinguish their sound from the blowing sand. All Creation to him was the same buzzing noise. Just then a rush of atoms whirled the desert sands about the two figures into two pillars funneling upward. These grains were dispersed into the blackening sky and seemed to light it with stars which may have been just the brushwork of the painter. The shadowy one flickered intensely like an emanation from a fire, or rather as a figure cast off from the sun, a dark eminence, be it said. He went through many shapes, female and male, animal and human, before settling again for the form of a man. He resembled Mick Jagger, the sort of optical illusion the desert is known for. The cross-laden one paid no attention, but sang of wild horses only he could see and listened for a voice only he could hear. Hers. The one who had called him here. He did not know her name or shape. Nonetheless a dream of her form had been stitched into his jacket, along with the hempen leaves he liked to smoke, and Nudie’s cross. Long ago, he had been tuned, he knew not how, to hear her singing from each atom in Creation. Everywhere a keening, in radios, refrigerators, and rocks on the shore. Crying and moaning as if praying for the lost, this voice seemed on the verge of dissolving the world. He had encountered her everywhere but believed he knew her best in this place. Once in a D. C. tavern he thought he had found her in the flesh. She had hair black like coal and was called Emmy Lou. Her voice had pulled him in from the streets he had been pounding. She sang to still the stars but her voice was not the one. Since it sounded as Kentucky whisky tastes, he kept her for his band. Singing “Love Hurts” their blended voices found such harmony he thought the heavens were opening to carry them from this world. For such moments, he sang. The singing should never stop. Lovely. Like a bird you sing. The singer did not answer. Between the two, he guessed he was the only one living, and life had taught him to let the dead bury the dead. He was here for her whose voice stirred in the wind but was not of the wind. Twenty thousand roads they had traveled together to reach this trail which brooked no turning away. Her sound would carry him away today. He was ready, so he kept singing. Softly. He had learned that the softer he sang, the louder she hummed. He felt her voice rising from the desert floor and into the throats of the gathering birds. The words they sang he could not make out, but he hummed them anyway and knew what they were after he had sung them. The shadow might have departed but jealousy held him fast. He had known her elsewhere. Even then she had not sung with him.
Sorry to interrupt. It’s just that I, uh, was wondering about your jacket. The singer was prepared to keep singing until kingdom come, but he understood he could not avoid this meeting. He stopped singing. Nudie made it for me. It fits my shoulders right. I would think it uncomfortable. All that sweat, you know. On stage I rather prefer a tank-top and knickers. The singer moved to remove his coat. Try it. I named it Sin City. It’s yours it if it fits you like it does me. The shadow jumped back. Not for me, thanks. Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of— I know who you are. You’re not the one I was expecting. From the Joshua Tree, the birds trilled. They almost seem to sing with you, the birds do. The singer shrugged. The shadow offered him various life possibilities, but the singer was distracted thinking of truck stops, billboards, and the amphetamines Elvis had put into his hand the time they met in Vegas. The King swallowed a dozen pills like they were the twelve apostles, saying Jesus refused the kingdoms of this world. Then Elvis gave the singer the rest of his stash and offered him the use of his personal band for his next album, though his girl singers he kept for himself. You’ll have to find your own chorus, Gram. And when you do, cleave unto your back-up singers. Just don’t fuck them. Respect them as you would Mother Mary since she too possessed the power to rock this world. To the King’s sermon the singer attended, though he preached with fucked out eyes. The shadow’s precise words have been lost or excised. An unknown commentator describes his words as mellifluous and deceitful. In answer, the singer sang the beloved chorus that begins she once lived here. This refrain was all that remained from his dream in which they had lived together in a place he did not know. She left before he could remember her leaving. At Monterey in ’68 he glimpsed her. He had come to hear Janis but recognized on stage the one from his dream. She sang Ball and Chain. A film (no longer extant) was made of her performance. When he came to witness it, though, he saw that the singer was indeed Janis whom the scroll calls a saint. Her life also has been lost. The text continues with the singer speaking. I read an old poem one time that we learned to sing from birds. You think that’s so? Ah, yes, the poet Lucretius. I knew him, you know. I just mention it because I’m always hearing I sing like a bird. Personally, I don’t hear it, but let’s say I do. What would that mean? Like, what is the bird’s song? Birds sing for other birds, right? And the songs they sing, have they been singing them the same way from time immortal or has their manner of singing changed from what it used to be? And if I do sing like them, does that mean my singing has been going on since forever and this dubious life of mine has been just a brief intense awakening to my song? The mourning doves cooed more intensely. Listen to them. You think that’s how they sounded two thousand years ago? Just two thousand? Why not the mesozoic era? After Adam, let’s say. Adam was a myth. Adam is a way of speaking. You’re evading the question. Many birds alive then are now extinct. Evolution has rung its changes on whatever song they can be said to sing. It is hard to say. I reckon it’s close enough. You know the Possum? Why, he never sings the same song twice even if the words are the same. But it’s still just one song because it’s always the Possum. We were speaking of birds. The Possum is a fellow named George but that’s not the point. It’s that when the birds are singing near me, and I catch their sound with my singing ears— Your singing ears? Whatever calls me to sing. An echo in my head of a perfect voice that’s not quite mine. Drugs have ruined your mind. Could be. The singer became all shook up. Man, it’s itchy wearing this coat. He picked a thorn from the Joshua Tree and scratched below the elbow. His skin bled. There were marks on his flesh like tracks from a needle. What’s wrong with you? Hard to say. Birds have been on my mind a lot lately. Ever since they started following me. Birds have their own paths to follow. They’ve been following me since Winston-Salem. It’s the weirdest thing. It started when the power went out during an outdoor night show. I tell you, it’s a strange feeling when the music stops. Sudden darkness and the guitar cold in your in hands. Eerie silence all about. I went from singing to hundreds to feeling all alone and borderline forsaken. It was ok though. I forgot about the crowd and listened to the birds. Above me they whooped and honked like a gathering Albert Ayler solo. Their song’s pitch kept varying and it seemed the cosmos was a radio being tuned for me alone to hear. Its signal was just getting clear—I was drifting off into it when I felt my shoulder being shaken by a roadie. He’d been at it awhile, I guess. He said I had fallen asleep on my feet. Then he pointed to the moon and declared it was shining so the cross on my jacket had lit the arena. I turned by back to the crowd to face the moon. But for the birds’ singing it felt like there wasn’t a breath in that place. Like we were all dead together. It came upon me to reach my hands into the heavens. It was hard to hold them above me, but the crowd’s stillness held them fast. Pinned them to the night sky for what seemed like hours. I had the crazy notion I was preparing to fly. If I kept my hands in the stars I’d be carried up by the birds’ singing and maybe everybody there would be carried along with me. Inspiration passes, though. It passes like gas, in fact. A fart blasted from the crowd with more crescendos than a Ronnie Tutt drum solo. My arms fell but the stars stayed put. Everybody laughed but me. Once again I felt truly alone and I thought of him who had truly worn the cross. It occurred to me he wasn’t permitted to drop his arms. He had to hold on. Him? The Magdalene’s man. The one fastened to the air with nails. Don’t tell me you don’t know him. That bastard fairly bled on me. You asked about the cross I wear. It was Nudie’s idea, honestly. He said it would be good advertising for his business. But that night I started to wonder if the cross didn’t have a life of its own. The shadow pursed his borrowed lips. The lights returned. Our guitars were buzzing like crazy, making feedback like Jimi makes. The crowd cheered and the band had started up again. They kept vamping, waiting for me hit my cue. I froze. I wished it was still dark and silent with my hands in the sky. I felt I had failed somehow and there was no point to singing—that I may as well die that night as go on. It was then I felt the birds near me. I heard their singing above the noise of my band. They didn’t care that I had dropped my arms. A feeling of peace took me over. I started up singing. The birds have been following me ever since. Maybe they followed him too. Maybe he heard them singing as he died and their singing helped him to go on. I recall no birds singing. Just his long pitiful groan. Oh man! Imagine that being bootlegged! It was tuneless, I assure you. The soldiers laughed as they took him down. They were amused he could not carry himself away. Sands swirl into the inky black sky and become constellations, galaxies. Above, the painter painted furiously. You can’t save yourself, you know. The shadow’s voice was almost kind. As for Nudie’s cross, it’s beneath you. Take it off. You are much better than that old cliché. Death can’t be altered by a myth. And the way you’re headed… to die alone in your motel room, it’s not right. Hank Williams at least merited a driver for his last ride. You’re as good as he is. If you don’t listen to me now, you’ll go off alone like Elvis who died straining at the stool. Shit shall mark your end. Your own friends will burn your flesh just to prove you can’t rise.
And these things came to pass but they were not the better part of his story.
You’re crazy. I’ll never match Hank and Elvis isn’t dead. I have a pass for his next Vegas run. You’re the one with a ridiculous get-up. You could have come as Keith. He always has good dope and he shares. I have no business to do with you. Meet your twin. I died in the womb, as Jesse did when he shared with Elvis their mother. I’ve returned to save you from yourself. We’re not kin. You live for death and I die for life. Metaphysical claptrap. You go everywhere licking up my wares like cocaine in a hooker’s crack. Nothing proves my existence like your miserable life. You’re a figment of someone else’s imagination. The singer spat and his spit passed through the shadow’s fat lips and stuck to the earth. You’re not even here. Yet you speak to me. I’m Southern. Mama raised me to be polite. Dear ole Mama. You’re not her spawn. I may not be Keith but I do have things to share. What is your fancy? Tell you what. Let’s sing together and after that we’ll see. “Mama Tried” ok with you? The real Mick would. You sing the first verse and I’ll come in on the chorus. The shadow hissed, albeit faintly. Ok, I’ll start. At the chorus the singer eased into “The Old Rugged Cross” as he had learned to do from the Hag. He stopped his song to laugh. Lucifer, it is said, could sing. You’re just a shadow without form. You can’t laugh at me. Who hid those pills in your pocket? Elvis or me? And that voice you keep hearing? How do you know she’s Sophia and not a trick I play with the wind? Who’s Sophia? As a sort of subterfuge, an old, well-tongued harp suddenly floated between them. The shadow grabbed it. Beatnik poetry night at The Palomino Club! The key please, Maestro. He blew into the harp and made a hideous screech never heard when Little Walter had used it. He coughed a little and then smiled. Her name was no longer between them. I don’t have any verses yet, but I can recite the chorus. You may invent your own tune. This night my blood, oh yeah, will hold more junk than it can carry. Ooo baby baby. My moldering body in the motel room shall tarry. Ooo baby baby. And then I’ll rot. The singer turned toward the painter who could have read the singer’s lips had he been paying attention. In my hour of darkness, in my time of need. It is written he did not hear the birds for a time and heard creation’s sound before the birds knew it. Do you like my song? Were you singing? I thought it was a desert song. A reverberating stillness, a silence blowing in with the north wind. It’s a hum drowning out the roaring engines, pounding jackhammers, ringing phones, the countless sounds of a world always under construction. Makes me recall my first guitar. A beautiful Martin. Its wood felt so good in my hands, I didn’t need to strum it. Just tapped each string lightly and listened for the trembling. Such a gorgeous hum, Jesus Lord! The shadow stooped a hair. The singer did not notice. She was my first girlfriend, but I put her down. I’m a bad boy. I own it. Had to go electric. Like Dylan. Got a Hummingbird with a nice Fender Showman amp and rocked the fuck out. I wailed but underneath this glorious noise I could heard her sighing. Couldn’t quit that Martin. Tuning her was such a joy. I cradled her and fingered her so lightly until she purred just so. I swear I could have tuned her if I was deaf. My fingers knew how tight to torque a string by the way it vibrated. The papers mention a fire recently consumed your guitars. Your Martin I suppose . . . Sad, isn’t it? How even sound may turn into ash. Oh, you can’t burn her away. The singer tapped his chest. A guitar in rest is like a heart between beats. Its sound is already there. My song begins just before I start singing and doesn’t end when I’ve left the stage. After the last encore, it lingers in the ether. Kind of like a ghost of itself dying in order to live or the birds’ song carrying over eons. Were you to fall dead right now, birds would eat you. You know, I’ve hardly ever seen a bird dead. Why is that? Dead birds should be falling upon my head at every hour but I’ve never seen but one. Creation devours them. And their song? The shadow produced some fine Columbian weed but the singer paid no attention. In this place, the text reports his famous “Sandbox Sermon.” My parents kept a sandbox where I often played. One day I was moving sand around, not doing much of anything, really, when a bird came unto my hand, I don’t know how. I remember brushing her feathers and singing songs I wanted her to hear. I did that for some time before her lifelessness startled me. Until that moment, I had not known death. I recoiled. My hand jerked and cast it behind me. To calm myself, I pictured her flying. She had once possessed that power. Where was it now? All of creation hurtled toward me as if collapsing into the void created by the bird’s death. Into this annihilated space I knew I was going too. A feverish chill came over me. My hands were tingling. A contagion I caught from the bird. Furiously, I wiped them against my clothes and also in the sand to inoculate myself from the bird’s contagion. It didn’t stop the sick feeling from moving up my arms, tickling my throat, and then resting on my lips. I felt myself slipping into darkness. I stumbled about and fell into sand soiled with my puke. When I awakened, her dead eyes were staring into mine. The bird had landed. It took a minute to realize I wasn’t dead too. I took up my toy shovel and scratched out a shallow grave in the sandbox. With the plastic blade, I pushed the bird into the hole and smoothed its surface over with my hands. I heard Mama calling me to dinner. She served me fried chicken. I ate, greedily, but the bird would not leave me be. Something in me said it was wrong to leave her alone in the sand with nothing for company but her death. I set out to retrieve the bird. It was the day’s last light—like it is now. I found the place where I had smoothed over the sand and began to dig. Nothing turned over but the sand. I worked until long after dark and my shovel broken. Then like a dog I commenced to paddling in the dirt with my hands. I touched every grain of sand but never found a feather. The clouds moved above me as they are moving above us now. I started crying. My tears fell on the sand like drops of rain. Now I am going to puke. Go ahead. I’d like to see you puke. The singer waited but the shadow made no move. I can guess your thoughts. You’re thinking, the bird was in the box. The darkness and the sand kept it hid. From dust to dust, so to speak, and maybe you’re right. I learned a different lesson. Death is a natural state that may be lost. You won’t believe me but in Winston-Salem that night I saw among the others my fallen bird lying. Of this I have no doubt. I prefer the parable of the mustard seed to your ridiculous story. My dear Skag Face, the blood to your brain is clogged. Mystic Moron! Junkie Fuckhead! Spontaneous Abortion! Can’t you see that you are addicted to this world?! You tie yourself off with it every night! I am offering you your very last chance to save yourself. You’re tempting me with health? Be my friend and your favorite obsessions will not kill you. You will have a string of hits longer than Elvis and the
Beatles combined. In this world, fame alone is what counts. It lasts longer than a Robert Johnson 78. You know RJ? If you do it’s because I met him at a crossroads like this and we struck a bargain. Seems to me he died pretty young. Do you not have ears to hear? You may still have a long life. Millions will adore you. Your fame will dwarf the Eagles. No one will remember them, a mercy, if I may say so. Kingdoms will dance and crawl at your feet. Eventually, you will be granted a perch from eternity, conveniently located in Cleveland, where you will shine as a star from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You’ll be bigger than the Clash! The Sex Pistols! Even Prince! Behind the shadow a giant screen descended from the sky and the singer saw this future like a movie playing. He felt for the pills in his pocket. He yawned. A Prince can’t outrank a King. Neither can I. Elvis’s band backed me on my new album. That’s sufficient eternity for me. I can arrange for you to sing at his funeral. The singer’s eyes bulged. I hate to think of Elvis dying before I do. I know which song I’d do, though. Please don’t sing it. I can wait until the funeral. You ever hear a song that’s hard to even play? “Cup of Loneliness” by the Possum is the one. I found it on my turntable one afternoon when I was looking for something else. Elvis, probably. Could’ve been Chuck or Jerry Lee. Maybe Little Richard. One of the prophets. In their company, time disappeared like it never was. The evanescence of this world became manifest. School, teachers, my parents, people at church, even my friends, phantoms all. Fuck them, fuck them to the max! To the max became my mantra. The platter is on the table, crank it up! Yet, the sad fact of life is that the record won’t always play. Time sneaks in beneath your door bringing bullshit obligations. Homework, chores, the bread of this life we’re told to earn. In the sanctuary of my room, the prophets promised resurrection that life denied. This record knew that. The Possum’s singing came into my room like a thief in the night and found me where I was.
At first, the singer seemed so far away, like a voice in the wilderness. I couldn’t hear the music through the pops, scratches, and hisses. Wherever it came from, that record had been played. Somebody before me likely had been crying over it. Tears will your scuff your vinyl, man. I found that out the hard way. Still, the record called to me. I turned the volume up full bore but couldn’t make out the words for the scuffs. To let the sound come into me, I fell to my knees and bent my head over the player. His voice kept getting louder and louder even though I wasn’t fiddling with the knobs. By the time I knew the words well enough to sing them, it didn’t matter. They revealed what I had always known. I had been born dead. I had no options but to sing my way through it or keep dying. That’s when I first dreamed of being on stage somewhere. This record was my master and I was its disciple. For weeks, I played just that record, hoping to catch the spirit. My voice—I barely had my feathers then—cracked trying to catch his tone. The grain of his voice! Thicker than the rings of a redwood tree! How was I ever going to match it? I still can’t, to tell you the truth. That critter was singing from the Tree of Life sitting on a limb I couldn’t reach. His voice was the sorry truth of this world. I could not overcome it. Feeling helpless, I resolved to increase the dose of my listening. If I couldn’t sing like George, I’d let his voice take me away. I gathered up my mother’s ludes and set the player so the record kept repeating. My homespun version of eternity. That’s when I noticed something peculiar. Each spin sounded different, like George was just rehearsing, still trying to get the hang of the song himself. The only consistent sound happened when the tonearm lifted to return the needle to the record’s groove. The surface noise stopped with the singing. A pleasing lull, a silence deeper than the ocean. Sleepy-time down south. I’m going down, down, down, a sweet surrender like drowning, when I become aware of a second voice. A singing between his singing. A vision rose up of a beautiful ship being built to carry a song to sing to. I realized I didn’t have to sing as good as George. Anybody could board that ship. When I awakened, the record player had shut off. I rose to start the record again but it was gone. Guess it had found somewhere else to play. The only voice singing in that room was mine. And I’ve been singing ever since, waiting for that ship to come and carry me away. My advice is not to hold your breath. Nor would I count on any ships sailing from the desert. You’re not hearing me. I’m talking about a place where the singing keeps going on. I might leave you for there now if I sang… I don’t know. . . “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night” and sang it just right. Can’t you understand that you’ll never leave this place? Now take my offer or miss Elvis’s funeral. The two faced each other, standing as gunfighters once stood. The singer turned aside and took the Joshua Tree in his arms to offer her a graceful dance. In the distance cities twinkled like stars. As the pair danced, thistles ripped more flesh from his hand. The edges of the world lit up like an ember bursting and then turned a bluish black that seemed to consume the shadow. The tree held on to the jacket and tore its pocket holding the morphine pills. He let go of his partner and caught the falling objects before they became lost in the sand. He put them in his body as he had seen the King do and tasted his own blood for the last time. The desert kicked up. Its grains stuck to his teeth and his tongue. Licking his mouth, he looked below and above and saw nothing, not even the stars. She had not shown her face and he was so thirsty. In his motel room a bottle of tequila beckoned. He bade farewell to the tree and made for where he had to go. The moon shone upon him like a spotlight. On the bluff, the painter stared at his blank canvas. He did not see the refulgent cross lighting the man’s path in the darkness or hear him humming with the birds that were singing the saint back home.

Description

Love Hurts
In September 1973, needing to blow off steam after recording his second solo album, “Grievous Angel,” Parsons, his girlfriend and two others made a beeline for Joshua Tree. After day-drinking at a bar in town, Parsons and his party retired to the Joshua Tree Inn, a small, Spanish-style motel where he was a welcome regular and friend of the owners and staff.
“Donovan told us years later that all the musicians that would stay here when visiting Joshua Tree, they’d all hang out outside their rooms or by the pool and just play,” said Dee Dee Cornett, the inn’s current general manager.
In rock circles of the time, Parsons was almost as well known for his drug consumption as his music. He was notorious for cocaine binges that led to missed concerts and fractured relationships, Ben Fong-Torres writes in his biography of the musician, “Hickory Wind.” (Keith Richards even suggested he was going too hard.)
While partying with his friends that night at the motel, it’s believed that Parsons overdosed on a combination of alcohol and morphine. After he was briefly resuscitated, he was brought to his room — No. 8 — where his breathing would once again slow, then stop forever.

What entwines Parsons and Joshua Tree is not only his death there but also what followed. His estranged stepfather arranged for Parsons’ body to be flown to Louisiana for burial. But according to friend and tour manager Phil Kaufman, Parsons wanted to be laid to rest in Joshua Tree, and it was up to Kaufman to make good on his friend’s last request.
So in a bizarre scene that seems straight out of a movie — later emulated in the 2003 indie film “ Grand Theft Parsons” starring Johnny Knoxville, Michael Shannon and Christina Applegate — Kaufman and a friend borrowed a hearse, drove to LAX and convinced the airline staff that burial plans had changed and that they were there to take the body. From there, they drove to Cap Rock in Joshua Tree, where Kaufman doused the coffin with five gallons of high-test gasoline and lit a match.
“We drove into Joshua Tree and kept driving and driving until finally I said, ‘This is as far as I can go. We’re drunk. We’re going to have to get out of here,’” Kaufman wrote in his autobiography, “Road Mangler Deluxe. ” “Later on, people said Cap Rock was Gram’s favorite place and Gram wanted to be buried there. [We only stopped there because] we were too drunk to go any further and it was a large enough place that we could turn around and make our escape.”

A horrified maintenance crew found the still-smoldering body the next morning, only partially consumed by the flames. (Kaufman had seen a pair of headlights in the distance and, convinced it was the cops, lit out before the improvised cremation was finished.) Kaufman and accomplice Michael Martin were eventually arrested, but because there was no law at the time against stealing a corpse, they were convicted only of stealing the coffin and fined $300 each. (They also had to pay $708 for the destroyed casket.) Decades later, it remains one of the most bizarre stories in rock ’n’ roll history. (Parsons’ remains were eventually buried in Louisiana.)
The actual cremation spot isn’t publicized by the park, but it’s not difficult to find. According to Kaufman and several rangers, the body was cremated on a median bordering the Cap Rock parking lot. It makes sense, given how drunk Kaufman and Martin were that night; they probably couldn’t haul the heavy coffin to the backside of Cap Rock, where fans frequently erect those makeshift memorials.

~ Robert Annis New York Times

First Aid Kit - Emmylou - www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC57z-…

"In My Hour of Darkness" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzuSea…

THE TEMPTATION OF GRAM PARSONS
by Timothy Parrish

September 18, 1973
Joshua Tree National Park

On the desert floor two figures squared off. One was a singer, the other something else. Neither carried a gun though death was surely in the air along with the cooing of mourning doves. Near them a Joshua Tree leaned in as if to listen, but it could have been the wind. From the adjacent bluff a figure, God-like to the unknowing, seemed to loom above the battle. It is said he came as a painter, and the text sometimes refers to him as the Creator, though the scroll of the saints from which this account is being copied is corrupt in places. Whatever his true name, he has less to do with things than it seems, but his presence can hardly go unnoticed. He had not come to witness a great event but simply to enjoy the sunset. He preferred watching stars wheeling or dust vermiculating to the machinations of men and women. Lately, the air’s atoms danced in purple shadings new to his vision. He wished to copy them before they evolved into different hues once California falls into the sea. He brushed streaks of light into the gathering darkness and imagined the world’s end. If not this day, some other one. They were all the same to him, and he would never end. Below, the singer hummed hymns. He wore a rhinestone-studded jacket embossed with a shining cross. It glittered in the setting sun like a burning eye radiating outward from his head. The man’s spark had caught the painter’s attention, though the singer did not know the light he cast. The other one, more shadow than substance and shifty like a mirage, jumped about like Jack Flash to distract the singer. The birds’ singing carried to the bluff as did that of the man. The painter did not distinguish their sound from the blowing sand. All Creation to him was the same buzzing noise. Just then a rush of atoms whirled the desert sands about the two figures into two pillars funneling upward. These grains were dispersed into the blackening sky and seemed to light it with stars which may have been just the brushwork of the painter. The shadowy one flickered intensely like an emanation from a fire, or rather as a figure cast off from the sun, a dark eminence, be it said. He went through many shapes, female and male, animal and human, before settling again for the form of a man. He resembled Mick Jagger, the sort of optical illusion the desert is known for. The cross-laden one paid no attention, but sang of wild horses only he could see and listened for a voice only he could hear. Hers. The one who had called him here. He did not know her name or shape. Nonetheless a dream of her form had been stitched into his jacket, along with the hempen leaves he liked to smoke, and Nudie’s cross. Long ago, he had been tuned, he knew not how, to hear her singing from each atom in Creation. Everywhere a keening, in radios, refrigerators, and rocks on the shore. Crying and moaning as if praying for the lost, this voice seemed on the verge of dissolving the world. He had encountered her everywhere but believed he knew her best in this place. Once in a D. C. tavern he thought he had found her in the flesh. She had hair black like coal and was called Emmy Lou. Her voice had pulled him in from the streets he had been pounding. She sang to still the stars but her voice was not the one. Since it sounded as Kentucky whisky tastes, he kept her for his band. Singing “Love Hurts” their blended voices found such harmony he thought the heavens were opening to carry them from this world. For such moments, he sang. The singing should never stop. Lovely. Like a bird you sing. The singer did not answer. Between the two, he guessed he was the only one living, and life had taught him to let the dead bury the dead. He was here for her whose voice stirred in the wind but was not of the wind. Twenty thousand roads they had traveled together to reach this trail which brooked no turning away. Her sound would carry him away today. He was ready, so he kept singing. Softly. He had learned that the softer he sang, the louder she hummed. He felt her voice rising from the desert floor and into the throats of the gathering birds. The words they sang he could not make out, but he hummed them anyway and knew what they were after he had sung them. The shadow might have departed but jealousy held him fast. He had known her elsewhere. Even then she had not sung with him.
Sorry to interrupt. It’s just that I, uh, was wondering about your jacket. The singer was prepared to keep singing until kingdom come, but he understood he could not avoid this meeting. He stopped singing. Nudie made it for me. It fits my shoulders right. I would think it uncomfortable. All that sweat, you know. On stage I rather prefer a tank-top and knickers. The singer moved to remove his coat. Try it. I named it Sin City. It’s yours it if it fits you like it does me. The shadow jumped back. Not for me, thanks. Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of— I know who you are. You’re not the one I was expecting. From the Joshua Tree, the birds trilled. They almost seem to sing with you, the birds do. The singer shrugged. The shadow offered him various life possibilities, but the singer was distracted thinking of truck stops, billboards, and the amphetamines Elvis had put into his hand the time they met in Vegas. The King swallowed a dozen pills like they were the twelve apostles, saying Jesus refused the kingdoms of this world. Then Elvis gave the singer the rest of his stash and offered him the use of his personal band for his next album, though his girl singers he kept for himself. You’ll have to find your own chorus, Gram. And when you do, cleave unto your back-up singers. Just don’t fuck them. Respect them as you would Mother Mary since she too possessed the power to rock this world. To the King’s sermon the singer attended, though he preached with fucked out eyes. The shadow’s precise words have been lost or excised. An unknown commentator describes his words as mellifluous and deceitful. In answer, the singer sang the beloved chorus that begins she once lived here. This refrain was all that remained from his dream in which they had lived together in a place he did not know. She left before he could remember her leaving. At Monterey in ’68 he glimpsed her. He had come to hear Janis but recognized on stage the one from his dream. She sang Ball and Chain. A film (no longer extant) was made of her performance. When he came to witness it, though, he saw that the singer was indeed Janis whom the scroll calls a saint. Her life also has been lost. The text continues with the singer speaking. I read an old poem one time that we learned to sing from birds. You think that’s so? Ah, yes, the poet Lucretius. I knew him, you know. I just mention it because I’m always hearing I sing like a bird. Personally, I don’t hear it, but let’s say I do. What would that mean? Like, what is the bird’s song? Birds sing for other birds, right? And the songs they sing, have they been singing them the same way from time immortal or has their manner of singing changed from what it used to be? And if I do sing like them, does that mean my singing has been going on since forever and this dubious life of mine has been just a brief intense awakening to my song? The mourning doves cooed more intensely. Listen to them. You think that’s how they sounded two thousand years ago? Just two thousand? Why not the mesozoic era? After Adam, let’s say. Adam was a myth. Adam is a way of speaking. You’re evading the question. Many birds alive then are now extinct. Evolution has rung its changes on whatever song they can be said to sing. It is hard to say. I reckon it’s close enough. You know the Possum? Why, he never sings the same song twice even if the words are the same. But it’s still just one song because it’s always the Possum. We were speaking of birds. The Possum is a fellow named George but that’s not the point. It’s that when the birds are singing near me, and I catch their sound with my singing ears— Your singing ears? Whatever calls me to sing. An echo in my head of a perfect voice that’s not quite mine. Drugs have ruined your mind. Could be. The singer became all shook up. Man, it’s itchy wearing this coat. He picked a thorn from the Joshua Tree and scratched below the elbow. His skin bled. There were marks on his flesh like tracks from a needle. What’s wrong with you? Hard to say. Birds have been on my mind a lot lately. Ever since they started following me. Birds have their own paths to follow. They’ve been following me since Winston-Salem. It’s the weirdest thing. It started when the power went out during an outdoor night show. I tell you, it’s a strange feeling when the music stops. Sudden darkness and the guitar cold in your in hands. Eerie silence all about. I went from singing to hundreds to feeling all alone and borderline forsaken. It was ok though. I forgot about the crowd and listened to the birds. Above me they whooped and honked like a gathering Albert Ayler solo. Their song’s pitch kept varying and it seemed the cosmos was a radio being tuned for me alone to hear. Its signal was just getting clear—I was drifting off into it when I felt my shoulder being shaken by a roadie. He’d been at it awhile, I guess. He said I had fallen asleep on my feet. Then he pointed to the moon and declared it was shining so the cross on my jacket had lit the arena. I turned by back to the crowd to face the moon. But for the birds’ singing it felt like there wasn’t a breath in that place. Like we were all dead together. It came upon me to reach my hands into the heavens. It was hard to hold them above me, but the crowd’s stillness held them fast. Pinned them to the night sky for what seemed like hours. I had the crazy notion I was preparing to fly. If I kept my hands in the stars I’d be carried up by the birds’ singing and maybe everybody there would be carried along with me. Inspiration passes, though. It passes like gas, in fact. A fart blasted from the crowd with more crescendos than a Ronnie Tutt drum solo. My arms fell but the stars stayed put. Everybody laughed but me. Once again I felt truly alone and I thought of him who had truly worn the cross. It occurred to me he wasn’t permitted to drop his arms. He had to hold on. Him? The Magdalene’s man. The one fastened to the air with nails. Don’t tell me you don’t know him. That bastard fairly bled on me. You asked about the cross I wear. It was Nudie’s idea, honestly. He said it would be good advertising for his business. But that night I started to wonder if the cross didn’t have a life of its own. The shadow pursed his borrowed lips. The lights returned. Our guitars were buzzing like crazy, making feedback like Jimi makes. The crowd cheered and the band had started up again. They kept vamping, waiting for me hit my cue. I froze. I wished it was still dark and silent with my hands in the sky. I felt I had failed somehow and there was no point to singing—that I may as well die that night as go on. It was then I felt the birds near me. I heard their singing above the noise of my band. They didn’t care that I had dropped my arms. A feeling of peace took me over. I started up singing. The birds have been following me ever since. Maybe they followed him too. Maybe he heard them singing as he died and their singing helped him to go on. I recall no birds singing. Just his long pitiful groan. Oh man! Imagine that being bootlegged! It was tuneless, I assure you. The soldiers laughed as they took him down. They were amused he could not carry himself away. Sands swirl into the inky black sky and become constellations, galaxies. Above, the painter painted furiously. You can’t save yourself, you know. The shadow’s voice was almost kind. As for Nudie’s cross, it’s beneath you. Take it off. You are much better than that old cliché. Death can’t be altered by a myth. And the way you’re headed… to die alone in your motel room, it’s not right. Hank Williams at least merited a driver for his last ride. You’re as good as he is. If you don’t listen to me now, you’ll go off alone like Elvis who died straining at the stool. Shit shall mark your end. Your own friends will burn your flesh just to prove you can’t rise.
And these things came to pass but they were not the better part of his story.
You’re crazy. I’ll never match Hank and Elvis isn’t dead. I have a pass for his next Vegas run. You’re the one with a ridiculous get-up. You could have come as Keith. He always has good dope and he shares. I have no business to do with you. Meet your twin. I died in the womb, as Jesse did when he shared with Elvis their mother. I’ve returned to save you from yourself. We’re not kin. You live for death and I die for life. Metaphysical claptrap. You go everywhere licking up my wares like cocaine in a hooker’s crack. Nothing proves my existence like your miserable life. You’re a figment of someone else’s imagination. The singer spat and his spit passed through the shadow’s fat lips and stuck to the earth. You’re not even here. Yet you speak to me. I’m Southern. Mama raised me to be polite. Dear ole Mama. You’re not her spawn. I may not be Keith but I do have things to share. What is your fancy? Tell you what. Let’s sing together and after that we’ll see. “Mama Tried” ok with you? The real Mick would. You sing the first verse and I’ll come in on the chorus. The shadow hissed, albeit faintly. Ok, I’ll start. At the chorus the singer eased into “The Old Rugged Cross” as he had learned to do from the Hag. He stopped his song to laugh. Lucifer, it is said, could sing. You’re just a shadow without form. You can’t laugh at me. Who hid those pills in your pocket? Elvis or me? And that voice you keep hearing? How do you know she’s Sophia and not a trick I play with the wind? Who’s Sophia? As a sort of subterfuge, an old, well-tongued harp suddenly floated between them. The shadow grabbed it. Beatnik poetry night at The Palomino Club! The key please, Maestro. He blew into the harp and made a hideous screech never heard when Little Walter had used it. He coughed a little and then smiled. Her name was no longer between them. I don’t have any verses yet, but I can recite the chorus. You may invent your own tune. This night my blood, oh yeah, will hold more junk than it can carry. Ooo baby baby. My moldering body in the motel room shall tarry. Ooo baby baby. And then I’ll rot. The singer turned toward the painter who could have read the singer’s lips had he been paying attention. In my hour of darkness, in my time of need. It is written he did not hear the birds for a time and heard creation’s sound before the birds knew it. Do you like my song? Were you singing? I thought it was a desert song. A reverberating stillness, a silence blowing in with the north wind. It’s a hum drowning out the roaring engines, pounding jackhammers, ringing phones, the countless sounds of a world always under construction. Makes me recall my first guitar. A beautiful Martin. Its wood felt so good in my hands, I didn’t need to strum it. Just tapped each string lightly and listened for the trembling. Such a gorgeous hum, Jesus Lord! The shadow stooped a hair. The singer did not notice. She was my first girlfriend, but I put her down. I’m a bad boy. I own it. Had to go electric. Like Dylan. Got a Hummingbird with a nice Fender Showman amp and rocked the fuck out. I wailed but underneath this glorious noise I could heard her sighing. Couldn’t quit that Martin. Tuning her was such a joy. I cradled her and fingered her so lightly until she purred just so. I swear I could have tuned her if I was deaf. My fingers knew how tight to torque a string by the way it vibrated. The papers mention a fire recently consumed your guitars. Your Martin I suppose . . . Sad, isn’t it? How even sound may turn into ash. Oh, you can’t burn her away. The singer tapped his chest. A guitar in rest is like a heart between beats. Its sound is already there. My song begins just before I start singing and doesn’t end when I’ve left the stage. After the last encore, it lingers in the ether. Kind of like a ghost of itself dying in order to live or the birds’ song carrying over eons. Were you to fall dead right now, birds would eat you. You know, I’ve hardly ever seen a bird dead. Why is that? Dead birds should be falling upon my head at every hour but I’ve never seen but one. Creation devours them. And their song? The shadow produced some fine Columbian weed but the singer paid no attention. In this place, the text reports his famous “Sandbox Sermon.” My parents kept a sandbox where I often played. One day I was moving sand around, not doing much of anything, really, when a bird came unto my hand, I don’t know how. I remember brushing her feathers and singing songs I wanted her to hear. I did that for some time before her lifelessness startled me. Until that moment, I had not known death. I recoiled. My hand jerked and cast it behind me. To calm myself, I pictured her flying. She had once possessed that power. Where was it now? All of creation hurtled toward me as if collapsing into the void created by the bird’s death. Into this annihilated space I knew I was going too. A feverish chill came over me. My hands were tingling. A contagion I caught from the bird. Furiously, I wiped them against my clothes and also in the sand to inoculate myself from the bird’s contagion. It didn’t stop the sick feeling from moving up my arms, tickling my throat, and then resting on my lips. I felt myself slipping into darkness. I stumbled about and fell into sand soiled with my puke. When I awakened, her dead eyes were staring into mine. The bird had landed. It took a minute to realize I wasn’t dead too. I took up my toy shovel and scratched out a shallow grave in the sandbox. With the plastic blade, I pushed the bird into the hole and smoothed its surface over with my hands. I heard Mama calling me to dinner. She served me fried chicken. I ate, greedily, but the bird would not leave me be. Something in me said it was wrong to leave her alone in the sand with nothing for company but her death. I set out to retrieve the bird. It was the day’s last light—like it is now. I found the place where I had smoothed over the sand and began to dig. Nothing turned over but the sand. I worked until long after dark and my shovel broken. Then like a dog I commenced to paddling in the dirt with my hands. I touched every grain of sand but never found a feather. The clouds moved above me as they are moving above us now. I started crying. My tears fell on the sand like drops of rain. Now I am going to puke. Go ahead. I’d like to see you puke. The singer waited but the shadow made no move. I can guess your thoughts. You’re thinking, the bird was in the box. The darkness and the sand kept it hid. From dust to dust, so to speak, and maybe you’re right. I learned a different lesson. Death is a natural state that may be lost. You won’t believe me but in Winston-Salem that night I saw among the others my fallen bird lying. Of this I have no doubt. I prefer the parable of the mustard seed to your ridiculous story. My dear Skag Face, the blood to your brain is clogged. Mystic Moron! Junkie Fuckhead! Spontaneous Abortion! Can’t you see that you are addicted to this world?! You tie yourself off with it every night! I am offering you your very last chance to save yourself. You’re tempting me with health? Be my friend and your favorite obsessions will not kill you. You will have a string of hits longer than Elvis and the
Beatles combined. In this world, fame alone is what counts. It lasts longer than a Robert Johnson 78. You know RJ? If you do it’s because I met him at a crossroads like this and we struck a bargain. Seems to me he died pretty young. Do you not have ears to hear? You may still have a long life. Millions will adore you. Your fame will dwarf the Eagles. No one will remember them, a mercy, if I may say so. Kingdoms will dance and crawl at your feet. Eventually, you will be granted a perch from eternity, conveniently located in Cleveland, where you will shine as a star from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You’ll be bigger than the Clash! The Sex Pistols! Even Prince! Behind the shadow a giant screen descended from the sky and the singer saw this future like a movie playing. He felt for the pills in his pocket. He yawned. A Prince can’t outrank a King. Neither can I. Elvis’s band backed me on my new album. That’s sufficient eternity for me. I can arrange for you to sing at his funeral. The singer’s eyes bulged. I hate to think of Elvis dying before I do. I know which song I’d do, though. Please don’t sing it. I can wait until the funeral. You ever hear a song that’s hard to even play? “Cup of Loneliness” by the Possum is the one. I found it on my turntable one afternoon when I was looking for something else. Elvis, probably. Could’ve been Chuck or Jerry Lee. Maybe Little Richard. One of the prophets. In their company, time disappeared like it never was. The evanescence of this world became manifest. School, teachers, my parents, people at church, even my friends, phantoms all. Fuck them, fuck them to the max! To the max became my mantra. The platter is on the table, crank it up! Yet, the sad fact of life is that the record won’t always play. Time sneaks in beneath your door bringing bullshit obligations. Homework, chores, the bread of this life we’re told to earn. In the sanctuary of my room, the prophets promised resurrection that life denied. This record knew that. The Possum’s singing came into my room like a thief in the night and found me where I was.
At first, the singer seemed so far away, like a voice in the wilderness. I couldn’t hear the music through the pops, scratches, and hisses. Wherever it came from, that record had been played. Somebody before me likely had been crying over it. Tears will your scuff your vinyl, man. I found that out the hard way. Still, the record called to me. I turned the volume up full bore but couldn’t make out the words for the scuffs. To let the sound come into me, I fell to my knees and bent my head over the player. His voice kept getting louder and louder even though I wasn’t fiddling with the knobs. By the time I knew the words well enough to sing them, it didn’t matter. They revealed what I had always known. I had been born dead. I had no options but to sing my way through it or keep dying. That’s when I first dreamed of being on stage somewhere. This record was my master and I was its disciple. For weeks, I played just that record, hoping to catch the spirit. My voice—I barely had my feathers then—cracked trying to catch his tone. The grain of his voice! Thicker than the rings of a redwood tree! How was I ever going to match it? I still can’t, to tell you the truth. That critter was singing from the Tree of Life sitting on a limb I couldn’t reach. His voice was the sorry truth of this world. I could not overcome it. Feeling helpless, I resolved to increase the dose of my listening. If I couldn’t sing like George, I’d let his voice take me away. I gathered up my mother’s ludes and set the player so the record kept repeating. My homespun version of eternity. That’s when I noticed something peculiar. Each spin sounded different, like George was just rehearsing, still trying to get the hang of the song himself. The only consistent sound happened when the tonearm lifted to return the needle to the record’s groove. The surface noise stopped with the singing. A pleasing lull, a silence deeper than the ocean. Sleepy-time down south. I’m going down, down, down, a sweet surrender like drowning, when I become aware of a second voice. A singing between his singing. A vision rose up of a beautiful ship being built to carry a song to sing to. I realized I didn’t have to sing as good as George. Anybody could board that ship. When I awakened, the record player had shut off. I rose to start the record again but it was gone. Guess it had found somewhere else to play. The only voice singing in that room was mine. And I’ve been singing ever since, waiting for that ship to come and carry me away. My advice is not to hold your breath. Nor would I count on any ships sailing from the desert. You’re not hearing me. I’m talking about a place where the singing keeps going on. I might leave you for there now if I sang… I don’t know. . . “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night” and sang it just right. Can’t you understand that you’ll never leave this place? Now take my offer or miss Elvis’s funeral. The two faced each other, standing as gunfighters once stood. The singer turned aside and took the Joshua Tree in his arms to offer her a graceful dance. In the distance cities twinkled like stars. As the pair danced, thistles ripped more flesh from his hand. The edges of the world lit up like an ember bursting and then turned a bluish black that seemed to consume the shadow. The tree held on to the jacket and tore its pocket holding the morphine pills. He let go of his partner and caught the falling objects before they became lost in the sand. He put them in his body as he had seen the King do and tasted his own blood for the last time. The desert kicked up. Its grains stuck to his teeth and his tongue. Licking his mouth, he looked below and above and saw nothing, not even the stars. She had not shown her face and he was so thirsty. In his motel room a bottle of tequila beckoned. He bade farewell to the tree and made for where he had to go. The moon shone upon him like a spotlight. On the bluff, the painter stared at his blank canvas. He did not see the refulgent cross lighting the man’s path in the darkness or hear him humming with the birds that were singing the saint back home.