Fiddle & Guitar

(photo of the Gram Parsons room at the Joshua Tree Inn Bed & Breakfast)

Gram (born Cecil Ingram Connor III <3) came from a very affluent & fairly dysfunctional Florida & Georgia citrus family.  He lost both parents at a young age: his father suffered severe mood swings while he lived & committed suicide when Gram was 12; his mother remarried, but died not long after from cirrhosis of the liver brought on by alcoholism.

Gram turned to music, & by his early teens had begun performing & touring.  His family connections meant he always had plenty of cash & by all accounts he had the kind of charm that gets you invited to parties.  He developed a sizable drug & alcohol habit that stayed with him until he died at age 26.

Gram also had a longstanding infatuation with Joshua Tree National Monument.  He visited often, sometimes alone & occasionally with friends (including Keith Richards!), to hang out, get fucked up, and look for UFOs.  I’m not being sarcastic, either- they really were looking for UFOs.

The last trip was in September of 1973, just after finishing recording his final album, Grievous Angel.  Gram reportedly headed to Joshua Tree with friends on Monday, September 17, 1973 to celebrate & was declared dead from drug toxicity (alcohol & morphine are the most likely candidates, according to this account, although cocaine and barbituates were also found in his system) on Wednesday, September 19.

Accounts of his death vary pretty widely, due to the states of the witnesses and the fact that they were all trying to avoid being arrested.  It seems pretty safe to assume that he overestimated his tolerance and OD’d, a notion also supported by the most believable of the stories.  Regardless, it was after his death that things took a turn for the odd.

Bob Parsons, Gram’s stepfather, made arrangments for burial in Louisiana.  Under Louisiana law, the estate would pass to the closest living male, regardless of what was in the will.  Since Gram was neither born in nor lived in Louisiana (They called him “Georgia Peach” for a reason, y’all.), it’s speculated that Parsons wanted to strengthen a shaky claim to residency.  At any rate, he arranged for a private ceremony that none of Gram’s industry friends were invited to & flew to L.A. to pick up the body.

He wasn’t expecting Phil Kaufman, though!  Kaufman was Gram’s road manager, and the two had reportedly made an agreement: whichever of them died first would cremate the other & spread his remains at Cap Rock, in Joshua Tree.  Kaufman also believed that Gram had no attachment to Louisiana and wanted little to do with his stepfather.  So he & another friend of Gram’s, Michael Martin, got drunk and decided to steal the body.  You know, as you do.

The two men drove to the airport in a borrowed hearse, where they convinced the guy in charge of the body to release it to them.  They signed the release forms (As “Jeremy Nobody,” apparently.  Seriously, body attendant guy?) and took off with their friend’s corpse.  According to Kaufman, they even convinced a police officer (who somehow couldn’t tell they were both drunk as rats, even after Kaufman drove the hearse into the hangar wall trying to get out) to help them get the body into the hearse!

They took the body back to Joshua tree, stopping on the way to buy five gallons of gasoline.  They chose a site close to Cap Rock, poured all five gallons into the open coffin, and tossed a match in after.  As one might imagine, the result was less a sucessful cremation and more a giant fireball.

Said fireball attracted the authorities, who were no doubt already looking for the pair.  However, according to one oft-quoted account, Kaufman & Martin “were unencumbered by sobriety” & managed to get away.  The L.A.P.D. must have taken their witty pills that day, as it was also one of them that dubbed the affair “Grand Theft Parsons,” which became the title of the 2003 movie on the subject.

The two men were arrested several days later.  Kaufman claims they turned themselves in on November 5, Gram’s birthday.  Since corpse theft isn’t technically illegal (A corpse has no intrinsic value!), they were fined about $700 for the theft of the coffin.  Kaufman raised the money with a benefit show he called Kaufman’s Koffin Kaper Koncert, which doubled as Gram’s wake.  He was helped out by Dr. Demento, Boris Picket, and The Crypt Keepers (of “Monster Mash” fame).  Beer was served in bottles sporting a likeness of Gram and the label “Gram Pilsner: A stiff drink for what ales you”.

Bob Parsons retrieved what was left of Gram’s charred corpse and went ahead with his plans.  Gram is buried in The Garden of Memories, an undistinguished cemetary near the New Orleans airport, with a plaque reading “God’s Own Singer.”  Parsons’ claim on the estate was thwarted by a Florida court, and Parsons himself died a year later from alcohol-related illness.  The money went to Gram’s estranged wife Gretchen and his daughter Polly, as well as his two sisters.

Fans paid for a concrete memorial slab at the site of the botched cremation, near a large rock flake now known as “the Gram Parsons memorial hand traverse” to climbers.  The slab has since been moved to the Joshua Tree Inn, which has also turned room 8 (the room he was registered at the time of his death) into its “Gram Parsons room,” with a guestbook fans can sign to mark their pilgrimages.

(photo via www.joshuatreeinn.com)