Gram Parsons is perhaps the most influential rock star you’ve never heard of. Parsons has become something of a cult figure in the music business. He never hit it big, and few outside a small circle remember him now. Music critics say he was one of the pioneers behind the country-rock phenomenon of the late 60s and early 70s. His short stints with the International Submarine Band, The Byrds, and The Flying Burrito Brothers lasted barely a minute and his solo career didn’t make it much longer. He is remembered for what he called “Cosmic American Music,” a hybrid of country, rhythm and blues, soul, folk, and rock. Artists like The Doobie Brothers, Elvis Costello, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, and the Eagles found their sounds in the reverberation of Gram Parson’s legend. Among rock historians, his legacy is unquestioned. However it is Parsons’ death that has become much of what defines him.
He died 40 years ago on September 19, 1973 and that is just the beginning of the story. Blessed with charm and cash (his mother’s family had made a pile in the citrus business in Waycross, Georgia), Gram got into booze and drugs early. He loved hanging out at the Joshua Tree National Monument in Southern California. He went there regularly, with bandmates and close friends (like Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones) to get high, commune with the cactus, and watch the sky for UFOs. His chosen home during these visits was the nearby Joshua Tree Inn, a modest cinder-block motel whose owners had come to know Parsons over the years. Along with Parsons on this trip were his friend Michael Martin; Martin’s girlfriend Dale McElroy and an old high school friend named Margaret Fisher.
The foursome arrived on Monday, September 17, 1973. The group spent much of the day by the pool getting tanked. By evening Gram looked like hell and went to his room to sleep. That day they plowed thru their stash so fast that Martin returned to Los Angeles the next morning to score more marijuana. Parsons dragged the remaining women out to the airport for lunch, throughout which he drank Jack Daniels non-stop. Meanwhile, Parsons scored some heroin in town and then topped it off with morphine he acquired from a drug connection, who was staying at the Inn. Several hours later, Margaret Fisher showed up at McElroy’s door in a frantic state. Parsons had overdosed, she said. They grabbed some ice and went to Room 1, where he was passed out on the floor and turning blue. There Fisher revived him with an ice cube suppository — an old street remedy for overdoses. When McElroy left the two alone again, Graham was walking around the room, seemingly recovered.
After another hour or so, at about 10:00, Fisher returned to McElroy’s room and asked her to sit with the sleeping Parsons while she went out to get some dinner. McElroy grabbed a book and went to Parsons’s room. After a few minutes, she realized that his breathing had gone from normal to labored. McElroy had no experience with drug overdoses and no training in CPR. Mistakenly believing that there were no other people in the hotel, she never called out for help. Instead she tried to get him breathing again by pumping his back and his chest and giving him mouth-to-mouth.
After about a half hour of futile pumping and pushing, McElroy realized that Parsons was probably beyond help. At this point Margaret Fisher returned, then left to call an ambulance. The rescue crew arrived and quickly concluded that CPR would not be successful. They got Parsons to the nearby Hi-Desert Memorial Hospital in Yucca Valley by 12:15 a.m. The doctors could not find a pulse and, after trying unsuccessfully to restart his heart, declared him dead at 12:30 a.m., Wednesday, September 19, 1973.
The press was told that Parsons had died of natural causes, but after performing an autopsy, the coroner listed the cause of death as “drug toxicity, days, due to multiple drug use, weeks.” A blood test showed a blood alcohol level of 0.21% — high, but nowhere near fatal standing alone. No morphine showed in the blood test, though it did turn up in more than trace amounts in urine and liver tests. The urinalysis also revealed traces of cocaine and barbiturates. Since substances may accumulate in the body over a long time, it’s unclear from the urine and liver tests whether Parsons used morphine, cocaine or barbiturates that day.
When the news of his Gram’s death reached his stepfather Bob Parsons, he immediately realized that his own interests would be best served by having the body buried in Louisiana, where the senior Parsons lived. Parsons knew that under Louisiana’s Napoleonic code, in the absence of a will, his adopted son’s estate would pass in its entirety to the nearest living male, which just happened to be Bob Parsons himself. But the code only applied if it could be proven that Gram Parsons had been a resident of Louisiana. Burying the younger Parsons in New Orleans would bolster the tenuous arguments for Louisiana residency. Bob Parsons booked a flight to LA to claim the body. At stake was his stepson’s share of the dwindling but still substantial family fortune. His stepfather arranged to have the body shipped home for a private funeral, to which none of his “low-life” music buddies were invited.
When Phil Kaufman (Parsons’s road manager) learned of the plan to bury his friend in New Orleans, he became distraught. He knew that Parsons had no connection whatsoever to that city. He knew that Gram didn’t like his stepfather and would not have wanted any of his estate to pass to him. He knew that Gram would never want a long, depressing, religious service with family and friends. Most of all he knew he had made a pact with Parsons: whoever died first, “the survivor would take the other guy’s body out to Joshua Tree, have a few drinks and burn it.”
After a long day of drinking vodka and beer, Kaufman decided he had to honor his promise. Years later, Kaufman said, “This family was a Tennessee Williams novel: his mother dies, and the stepfather tries to take over the family fortune, and he had the daughter locked up, and he had power of attorney. And she got away; she was hiding out. He called me, and he had the FBI call me, and the police call me. I really got in his face about giving my phone number to policemen. We had quite a few heated conversations. Gram referred to him as the Alligator Shoe Pinkie Ring A-hole.”
What happened next was one of the strangest episodes in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. An episode that would make Gram Parsons a posthumous legend and offer lasting inspiration to every misguided, alcohol-fueled barstool jockey from coast-to-coast.
Next week: “The Strange Saga of Gram Parsons Part 2”
Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Indiana National Road” and “Haunted Irvington” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
