Gram Parsons – Sacred Hearts And Fallen Angels: The Gram Parsons Anthology

Except for a brief period in the early ’80s, when I now believe I was trying so hard I put a clothespin over my crap detector, I never really “got” Gram Parsons as a country artist. And as a country-rock harbinger, he definitely institutionalized some of the worst attributes of bands that followed in his wake and were accused of betraying him with those very traits.

This two-CD package offers a good opportunity to reconsider those weaknesses as well as his strengths. What comes through constantly is that, while he often fronted outstanding bands, he was basically another self-absorbed folkie singer-songwriter of the early-’70s Los Angeles ilk. But he had the good idea to package that sensibility in a different form of music.

How else to explain an artsy, shadows-of-my-mind effort like the Byrds’ “Hickory Wind”, which nearly everyone I’ve asked claims as their favorite of his songs even though most couldn’t remember (or never knew) what it was about, or even hum its melody? What is it in Gram that such fans are responding to, if not one of those two things? His vocalizing, I guess, though I hear little beyond narcissism even there.

One man’s pathos, after all, is another man’s pathetic, as Gram proves time and again once he’s gone solo (on Return Of The Grievous Angel, to name one). His 1973 live reading of “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” goes completely overboard, with Parsons reveling in his own sadness while putting down somebody else (who, admittedly, asked for it) to the extent that the song ceases to be about that nemesis and becomes instead about Gram’s pain. His vocals actually strip the song of its meaning by emphasizing the pain rather than the mockery.

As a singer, he is very much still earnestly learning on the first half of this CD. He brays “Knee Deep In The Blues”, goes flat while trying so hard to ape a real country singer on “I Must Be Somebody Else You’ve Known”, and shows frequently bad timing, coming in too early on a steel player’s solo and the like.

On the second half, his voice is either too tattered or — the more intimate he tries to sound, the more he falls short — out of tune and rhythmically bereft. On “A Song For You”, he’s all these things at once, but throws in a lot of the right words and phrases, such as “Jesus,” “front door,” “ship” and “tomorrow,” for an early-’70s singer-songwriter. Often as not, it’s Emmylou Harris’ exquisite harmonies that make the later recordings.

His melodies could also be pretty generic and forgettable, with some songs (“Luxury Liner” with the International Submarine Band, “Older Guys” with the Flying Burrito Brothers) starting off like they’re rips from the Monkees, fer chrissakes.

For all that, I do appreciate his most straightforward country songs, such as “How Much I’ve Lied” and “In My Hour Of Darkness”. And I admire his taste in choosing mainstream country songs to introduce to his audience (“Miller’s Cave”, even “California Cottonfields”). There are nice touches throughout these five years’ worth of songs; those rhythmic little guitar fills highlight the Burritos’ take on “Dark End Of The Street”, while the harmonies do the same for “Do Right Woman”.

The grabber arrangement makes the Burritos’ “Wheels” one of the few Parsons efforts that serves both country and rock equally nobly. Roger McGuinn’s pop sensibility, which was probably stronger, at that point, than his folkie instincts, saves Gram’s work with the Byrds (though Parsons’ ballyhooed reading of “The Christian Life” is strictly sing-by-numbers compared to the taunting McGuinn version originally released).

Most of the time when I listen to Parsons, I feel like I’m hearing a privileged, artsy folkie who confuses his own James-Taylor-like misery with the hard working-class truths of country music. I’m as drawn to his tragic story as the next person. But I also think of, say, the deathbed recordings of Billie Holiday, which have a cult that claims that listening to her dying is more compelling than listening to her classic work. I disagree, and to apply the analogy further to Parsons, I think Holiday had something that put her last recordings in context. She had a track record of consistent, unsurpassed greatness preceding them.