by Jake Brennan
Gram’s heavy, soft-spoken, understated singing voice stank of heroin. He sang loose and slack-jawed, but his admiration for Conway Twitty lent a measure of directness to the vocals, and the mix of those ingredients manifested an emotional harpoon of vulnerability that cut straight through to the hearts of listeners.
GP is a staggering work of artistry, and the boys in Elvis’s band couldn’t help but wonder what a record might sound like if their other front man, the one with the sideburns and ever-expanding waistline, was given the artistic freedom to make the records he wanted to make. But they knew that would never happen. The Colonel had too many Vegas seats to fill and too many early bird specials to shill.
When the record was completed, Gram was emotionally spent. So he headed out to Joshua Tree to chase UFOs again.
But there would be little rest for Gram Parsons and his damaged soul in 1973. Grief would soon roar back into his life. On July 15, 1973, Gram’s friend and frequent musical collaborator, the great guitarist and onetime Byrd Clarence White, was struck by a drunk driver while loading gear into his car after a gig. He died instantly. When Gram heard the news, he was besieged by grief.
Though overpopulated by long-haired musicians, the funeral for White was a staid, Catholic affair. The opposite of what Gram thought his friend would have wanted. During the graveside portion of the service, Gram took it upon himself to pay an honest tribute to White. Unprompted by any family member of White’s or by any funeral or church official of any capacity, Gram launched into song at his friend’s grave and in front of scores of grieving musicians. The gesture brought some level of catharsis to those in attendance, more than anything the priest had said, anyway. Gram understood grief. Grief was hardwired to his soul. The beast in Gram knew well and good when to rouse itself, and this was one occasion where its presence was welcomed.
But after the funeral, Gram drowned the beast in alcohol at a local bar filled with friends. Among them was his now-ubiquitous sidekick, Phil Kaufman. It was there that Gram and Phil made a pact to one another, that no matter who kicked first, the other would make sure that under no circumstance would the dearly departed among them be sent off in the soulless fashion foisted upon their soulful friend, Clarence White. “Fuck that straight-laced funeral jive,” Gram said. “Take me out to the desert in Joshua Tree, burn my body up, and set my soul free.” A handshake and two shots of well tequila with cold Schlitz chasers sealed it.
Gram Parsons: Cosmic American poet, Keith Richards’s pilot fish, and chaser of UFOs.
Gene Hackman was pissed. Learning your lines was hard enough. Getting into character emotionally was another thing entirely. The fucking distractions on a movie set were monumental to begin with but now, with cops busting up his scene to arrest the biker who owned the house they’d arranged to shoot this scene in, the entire day would be shot to shit. Gene would never be able to get back into character now.
Hackman and director Arthur Penn watched with a mix of incredulity and annoyance as the owner of the house, Phil Kaufman, was led out under the lowering boom and through the film crew in handcuffs. The whispers started immediately:
“Kaufman burned the body.”
“The one the newspapers had been talking about for the past couple days.”
“The body in the desert. That junkie country singer…”
The newspapers had it right. Kaufman did burn the body and he didn’t care who knew about it and he’d do it again if he had to to make sure that his friend, Gram Parsons, was honored in death that way that he had pledged to do for him in life.
After Clarence White’s funeral, Gram Parsons was focused. When GP failed to set the world on fire, Gram was disappointed but undeterred. He was hell-bent on making another great record.
But first Gram needed some rest. He headed back to Joshua Tree for some R&R. He was happy. He had a strong feeling that when this new, yet-to-be-written album was released, the results would be different. The world would finally get hip to Gram Parsons and his Cosmic American Music. Hell, at least the local bar out at Joshua Tree had one of his songs on the jukebox. He made it a point to hang out as much as possible at his new local and to hit the stage whenever the mood struck him. One night, while sitting in with a local band and working their way through Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” Gram took note of how the pedal steel player couldn’t keep up with the rest. When they finished the set, Gram found out why. The steel player’s arms were loaded with track marks from shooting junk and were so badly bruised he could barely move them, never mind play steel.
The sight of the track marks wet Gram’s whistle. He’d been drinking most of the day and night and taking pills, but now he had heroin on his brain. That familiar junkie jones kicked in. Subconsciously he knew that no amount of booze, pills, or promise of the future would stave off the pain for too long. Heroin, though? Heroin took it all away.
So Gram and a couple friends he was traveling with split. They knew they could fix back at the hotel. Back at the Joshua Tree Inn a local heroin dealer was arranged for Gram. When the dealer arrived, she had her two-year-old with her. Gram didn’t mind. But he did mind that the dealer didn’t come as advertised. She didn’t actually have any heroin. Instead, she had vials of stolen government-grade morphine sulfate. At this point, Gram didn’t care. He could feel the saliva dripping down the inner walls of his cheeks. He could feel the giddy pitter-patter of his heart picking up speed in anticipation of getting high. He needed to feel the rush of opiates blast up his veins and wipe away the coming hurt. Morphine was close enough and it would have to do. Gram would just take twice as much.
So he did.
And immediately things went south. Gram’s overdose came quick. His breathing slowed. Then it grew rasped. His two friends managed to get him up and into the tub with his clothes off. They jammed ice cubes into his asshole, a home remedy almost as old as ice itself, which shocked his system and revived him. Gram was mumbling and semiconscious, but within no time the morphine once again took control of his faculties. No frozen enemas would be able to help him this time. And then, Gram felt next to nothing. Just warm bliss. His body went slack. His mind went black. No pain.
Gram Parsons overdosed and died in room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn on September 19, 1973.
When Phil Kaufman heard the news, he was back in LA and he was pissed. Pissed that Gram had been so careless. Pissed that Gram’s traveling friends hadn’t known how to keep him alive, and pissed that he wasn’t there to take care of his friend himself.
He wouldn’t let that happen again.
The friend in Joshua Tree who’d called Kaufman to give him the news mentioned that authorities were taking his body away. So he moved fast. He made it to the Joshua Tree Inn from LA in three hours. Kaufman immediately cleaned out Gram’s room, wiping away any trace of an illicit drug party. He then rounded up Gram’s two friends and got them out of Joshua Tree and back to LA where they would be beyond the reach of the local police and therefore unable to be questioned. Kaufman knew how to clean up a rock ’n’ roll mess.
But the job wasn’t done.
Once back in LA, Kaufman called the Joshua Tree morgue to inquire about his friend’s body. Gram’s family, upon hearing of his death in the press, had made arrangements for it to be flown back home to New Orleans. The body was chilling in an airport hangar at LAX, waiting to be retrieved by Gram’s stepfather for what would no doubt be a stale, religious, conservative Southern funeral service. In other words, the exact opposite of what Gram would want.
Kaufman, ever the fixer, had a friend who owned a hearse. He borrowed it, grabbed some other friends—a motley crew of leather-clad, greasy-haired rock ’n’ roll biker types who Kaufman knew could serve as impromptu illicit pallbearers—and then headed out to LAX. On the way they pounded bottles of Mickey’s wide-mouth grenades and shared pints of Beam, Cuervo, and Jack.
Kaufman wheeled the hearse to the off-ramp toward LAX and straight toward the shipping hangar. He and his band of rock
’n’ roll pallbearers bounded out of the car and headed into the office area. The square behind the desk was either scared, stupid, or both, because he bought the long line of crap Kaufman fed him: They were off-duty funeral home workers there to move the body by private plane.
Unbelievably, Kaufman was given clearance to grab the coffin. So he did. And he and his cohorts began wheeling it out of the hangar to their waiting hearse. Just then a cop in a black-and-white on patrol pulled up to see what in the hell was going on with what must have looked to him like a drunken gang of biker body snatchers.
Kaufman was quick with the bullshit.
“Officer! You’re just in time. We’re a man short and not sure how we’re going to get the coffin into the back of our hearse. Can you give us a hand?”
Remarkably and without question, the officer did just that.
Gram Parsons’s body was snatched.
Next stop? Joshua Tree.
But first they needed gas. So, once out of LA and well on their way to the desert, they stopped off at a gas station and filled five gallons. Kaufman and his men drank the entire ride out. They were wasted by the time they made it out to Joshua Tree National Park. The area of the desert that Gram loved so much. The part of the world that allowed him to run free of his pain, to chase UFOs and to leave all the grief behind.
At around 1:00 a.m., the hearse made it out to the part of the desert known as Cap Rock and stopped. The stars were electric. It was a beautiful night. Kaufman unfolded his drunken, greasy-jean-clad legs to the desert floor and walked around back. With his crew, he pulled Gram’s wooden casket from the back of the hearse and dropped it unceremoniously onto the desert floor. Kaufman popped open the lid. There was Gram. Naked, dead, and bloated. Surgical tape covering the autopsy wounds.
Kaufman wasted no time. He grabbed the gallons of gasoline and poured it all over Gram’s body. He lit a match. Dropped it and BOOM! Gram’s body ignited into a fireball. His soul exploded into eternity in an overstated blast. It was so unlike him. Gram Parsons was subtle. He was marked by deep emotional pain and engaged in a quiet but constant race to outrun his grief. Regardless of the manner in which Gram Parsons’s body left this world, there was no mistaking it—he was now free.
Phil’s friend Gram was liberated. His other friend, Charlie Manson, was behind bars. His former bosses, the Rolling Stones, had established themselves as the “world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band” and Phil Kaufman was sitting in his car, now an old man, a mangled shell of himself from back in those hazy days of lawless rock ’n’ roll. Gram was on his mind lately because Gram was on the minds of lots of people lately. Gram Parsons and the myth that Kaufman helped create was going through a resurgence of popularity among a new generation of snap-buttoned, pony-tailed, country rock ’n’ rollers. Sure, they added the prefix alt to country, but still, if it walks like an Eagle and sings like an Eagle it’s probably a second-rate version of an Eagle, and that means it’s a third-rate version of Gram Parsons.
Chapter 5
Axl Rose
Axl Rose felt at home on St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan’s East Village. He could feel the inspiration that drove his heroes, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, to create some of the most intense music he’d ever heard. Music that to this day—February 2, 1988—still spoke to the angry young man in him. Squalor, crime, and grime. Punk rockers, skinheads, and hippies hanging on for dear life. Homeless people, drag queens, junkies, and tourists. St. Mark’s was a low-key bohemian bazaar of countercultures clashing up against one another in the form of hard-to-find books, harder-to-find records, and imported porn. Studded belts, Dr. Martens boots, leather for days, and other edgy, irreverent fashion items unavailable to the rest of America like that CHARLIE DON’T SURF T-shirt hanging in the window of Trash and Vaudeville. The one with Manson’s 1969 mugshot—big and intense—emblazoned across the front. Axl thought it was killer, so he popped into the store and had the dude with the peroxide hair and Iggy Pop tattoo behind the counter grab it for him. Axl wouldn’t wear it onstage that night, though. No, he had his Thin Lizzy shirt teed up for that.
The show, later that evening at the Ritz, a couple blocks north of St. Mark’s, was being broadcast live on MTV, and Axl’s band, Guns N’ Roses was wired tight for maximum rock ’n’ roll. America took notice. When it aired, the show was watched by a relatively small audience of American teenagers, up way past their bedtimes. But the show was recorded on dusty VHS tapes and passed around high school corridors repeatedly over the coming months until the ferocity of Guns N’ Roses was recognized and salivated over en masse by high school kids everywhere.
Axl Rose came to life onscreen as a real-life version of The Breakfast Club’s Johnny Bender. He was the high school burnout who we all knew growing up. The one who doubled down on shop electives and wore ripped jeans out of necessity, not out of a sense of fashion. The guy who sported self-imposed cigarette burns on his muscular forearms and was rumored to have a Bud Man tattoo on his ass. This was the same dude who sat in the back of the classroom and simultaneously frightened and attracted the cheerleaders. Those same cheerleaders who wouldn’t give you the time of day. You saw this dude standing alone—quiet—at the edge of the keg party up off the train tracks. You left him alone because you heard the story about the time he busted the bottle of Michelob across the jock with the big mouth’s face, but inside you burned to know more about him. What made him tick? What made him so pissed? What made him so fucking cool?
Just like that kid, Axl was filled with contempt and untapped confidence. Onstage at the Ritz, you could feel his anger. It was something that had been building up inside since birth. It was coming out one way or another. Likely through violent rage or petty crime or both. But rock ’n’ roll saves. Otherwise Axl Rose would likely have been in jail on that night instead of blowing the minds of all in attendance as well as everyone watching at home on television and later on Memorex.
Onstage, Axl looked a little older than the millions of high school burnouts who would soon come to worship him and his band. He was essentially the same angry young man he was growing up back in Lafayette, Indiana, but at the Ritz, it was clear that his time had come. And he’d arrived with a murderer’s row of bandmates: Slash, the bronzed Mad Hatter Adonis; Izzy Stradlin with his “Ronnie Wood via Johnny Thunders” cool; Duff McKagan, eleven feet tall and oozing punk rock sex and excitement; and last, the wide-eyed ball of heavy metal puppy dog charisma, Steven Adler. A band that you could immediately tell never had a fuck to give. And their live show was flawless—even with the flaws, it was flawless. Songs like the Diddley-esque “Mr. Brownstone,” the jet-fueled “Nightrain,” and the showstopper “Rocket Queen” veer from brilliant to trainwreck and back again in the time it takes to suck a Marlboro red from first flame down to toxic filter.
GNR was from the street and for the street. Their lyrics represented a band living a hand-to-mouth life of rock ’n’ roll debauchery and all too willing to let themselves die in the pursuit of it. You couldn’t tell if they were creatively brave—risking it all in the service of making totally authentic rock ’n’ roll—or if they were just too stupid to know any better. Through it all, the band was impossibly cool. Every shot. Every pose. Every note (even the out-of-tune ones from Slash), every vocal (even the ones from Axl that run out of breath), all combined to somehow make them seem even cooler. If you tried, you couldn’t have created a more representative version of a rock ’n’ roll band than the one Axl Rose took to the Ritz stage on February 2, 1988. You wouldn’t know it from watching them, but that band, and the fuck-all attitude that propelled it, and more specifically its singer, had been a long time in the making.
Young Axl Rose, juvenile delinquent.
The crack from the back of the hand to his mouth came quick. It was unexpected. And it stung like a motherfucker. Young Axl could taste his blood bubbling up from his lip. The damage could have been worse, but luckily Axl’s dad didn’t wear rings. Jewelry was too ostentatious for a
Pentecostal. So was Barry Manilow and his No. 1 hit, “Mandy,” which was what put Axl on the receiving end of another blow to the grill. Axl made the mistake of absentmindedly singing along to the song’s chorus with its lyrics that his dad somehow considered sexually suggestive. Axl seriously did not understand how he was related to this dude, his old man, this abusive, religious nutbag. But that was because Axl wasn’t actually related to him. He just didn’t know it yet. Then again, young Axl Rose didn’t know much beyond Led Zeppelin riffs, Elton John melodies, and pent-up rage for the man he thought was his father.
Soon, young Axl would learn that his father was really his stepfather and that his real father was never to be brought up. It was a discovery that did little to endear Axl to his stepdad, and thus the violence continued. It wasn’t reserved for just Axl, either. His stepdad threw his fists around to keep Axl’s mom in line as well. Axl saw it all as a little boy and a teenager: the beatings and the mental anguish.
By the time he was sixteen, rock ’n’ roll was his only salvation. That and his new friend Izzy. They vibed on the Stones, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and the new onslaught of British punk bands invading America: the Sex Pistols, Generation X, and the Clash.
They also bonded over beer, grass, and pills. And of course, the two of them, especially Axl, took every opportunity possible to fuck with the local authorities. Axl had a real hatred for the small-town, conservative, square-jawed local cops. To him, they were just an extension of the repression and bullshit rules imposed by his stepdad, except out on the street he could talk back and let loose the inner rage he carried. An arrest for disturbing the peace was worth it. He could never let loose on his stepdad like he could on the cops. Plus, the cops would have to catch him first. So Axl mouthed off to Lafayette’s Finest every chance he got, and the cops, in turn, found a special kind of satisfaction whenever they could bust his ass and throw him in jail. The result was a long string of juvenile arrests for petty crimes, public drunkenness, loitering, etc.