Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel

Among the most fascinating and ultimately saddest stories in American popular music is the brief life and odd afterlife of Gram Parsons, one-time Byrd, Burrito Brother, quasi-Rolling Stone and inventor of the "cosmic American music" that became alt-country or Americana after his death. Fallen Angel: Gram Parsons, a UK-Germany television production that screened as part of the Portland Reel Music festival, is a feature-length documentary that explores Parsons' life and musical legacy with a host of the musicians and family members who knew him best. Director Gandulf Hennig — a small and hyperactive German — hosted the screening in Portland, and was clearly blown away by an audience queue that extended around the block, forcing a sold-out showing and emergency late-night screening for the remaining audience.

What is clearest about the Parsons documentary is that everyone who knew him realized they were in the presence of genius - a completely self-destructive and obnoxious genius, but genius nonetheless. His most prominent musical partners, including Chris Hillman of the Byrds, Keith Richards of the Stones, and Emmylou Harris, testify so eloquently. But the same self-assured genius made Parsons almost completely unbearable as a musical, romantic, or family partner, and he tore down relationships that could have saved him and enriched music immeasurably, alienating himself from his most dedicated allies. It's also clear that in his abbreviated life, Parsons was able to play key roles in some of the most significant musical transformations of his era - taking the Byrds into proto-country, performing on the bill with the Stones at the disastrous concert at Altamont, bringing Emmylou Harris to national attention, and playing an active role in the rediscovery of American roots and country by the rock audiences of the time. Keef in particular expresses his remorse at playing with Parsons, recognizing his gifts and his talent, and not recognizing how Parsons' own habits and weaknesses were threatening his prospects to continue his musical growth (Mick Jagger, not interviewed here, is depicted as a far more competent professional who tried to encourage Parsons to take his career, health, and family life more seriously).

I was never a huge Parsons fan; my knowledge of his musical legacy comes from the performances by other musicians of his songs. But seeing the old concert footage - from sophisticated live sets to ramshackle house jams - makes it clear that he was a true one-of-a-kind, with a gorgeous voice and spectacular physical beauty, coupled with songwriterly gifts that were just beginning to grow - before alcohol and drugs caused caused his eventual decline and death at the age of only 26.

I'm much less interested in the morbid tale of Parson's afterlife - the theft of his corpse and his partial-cremation in the desert by a road manager. But as Peter Buck of R.E.M. says in the film, that sort of mystery explains a large part of his mystique.

My only complaint about the documentary, which is incredibly detailed, loving, and sympathetic to both Parsons' survivors and his musical colleagues, is that the director puts too much emphasis into talking-head commentary and fails to show any complete performances, or any live footage longer than a minute or so long. Additionally, there were either very few interviews ever recorded with Parsons or Hennig chose not to include them. As a result it's harder to get a sense of how Parsons himself spoke or expressed himself.

A very worthwhile documentary about musician Gram Parsons of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Originally filmed for British and German television, the movie is a very detailed portrait of Parsons' life, albeit at arm's length—there would appear to be very little footage of Gram available, most of it performance clips, many of amateurish home movie quality. I don't recall even one shot of Gram on screen talking, although his voice is heard in a few sound snippets from an audio interview of indeterminate origin. The movie instead relies on extensive usage of still photographs and, most impressively, interviews with just about anyone still alive who was involved in Parson's life, including bandmates Chris Hillman and Emmylou Harris, Keith Richards, the surviving members of Gram's family, blustery former road manager Phil Kaufman who stole Gram's body at LAX and drunkenly drove it out to the desert and burned it, and even the girlfriend who checked into room number 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn with Parsons and watched him die of an overdose. The dynamics of Parsons' dysfunctional family and the impact it had on him are well documented, perhaps maybe a little too well documented, but the recollections of the musicians who played with him provide the most illuminating commentary on the allure and difficulties of Parsons' self-destructive talent. Overall, I had two main criticisms. One, the filmmakers' melodramatic animation of cartoon flames that rise from the bottom of the screen as Kaufman describes striking a match and throwing it into Parsons' gasoline soaked coffin—not to mention the aerial shot of a bonfire burning in the desert, obviously supposed to emblematic of Gram's burning corpse—is especially cheesy, and really tacky. But my larger complaint is that despite the effluent praise of Parsons' talent, the film never establishes a broader historical context for his musical accomplishments that would allow the casual viewer to understand why he was so important, which was that he almost single-handedly invented the genre of country-rock. Pamela Des Barres alludes to it somewhat when she describes Gram playing records by Lefty Frizzell and Willie and Waylon for her, turning her on to a rich, vibrant side of country music that most rock music fans were unaware of at the time. But with the Byrd's Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and his injection of flashy Nudie suit glam rock star attitude into his fairly traditional but definitely non-Nashville brand of country songwriting, he broke through to the rock crowd with an updated take on country music that paved the way for the Eagles and every country-rock outfit that followed. You maybe wouldn't quite understand how revolutionary that was from this film—some obscure family friends could've been replaced by a perceptive rock critic or two—but all in all it's a really good documentary.

You should know I am biased in this comment. I know some of the people in this documentary. And I had Gram's piano in my house for ten years after he died.

I value what he found with Emmylou as charmed, unique and important. His music never touched me personally because it was so hopeless in intent while being so seductive and original in its phrasing. This is everything Sinatra was claimed to be. It was genuine; just the wrong food for health.

There are two stories here. One is the story of what actually made the music special — when it was. You won't get this from old musicians or girl friends. You have to get it from someone who is a storyteller of skill equal to the subject: subtle, light, subliminal and full of contradictions. Addiction before it manifests, while it is still an urge.

This documentary misses that, misses it completely. Some people say that he was influential and then point to what today is called country music. That's neither useful nor correct. You miss everything if you miss this.

There is another story, the "Tennessee Williams" family tragedy that proceeds three generations before and already two after him. Its vastly more complex than described here, cleaned for obvious reasons.

Some day, someone may find a way to tell this story in a way that is not merely voyeuristic, but in a way that matters, that is deep and that changes lives. Until then, simple people will just want the broad outlines, and some unusual drama. And they will be able to get that here.

The editing is fine. The archival footage is valuable. There are lots of good songs.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This film is a wealth of weird and sad detail narrated directly into the camera by Parsons' then (c. 2004) still-living relatives and cohorts, including Chris Hillman, Emmy Lou Harris, and Parson's siblings, managers, and, starring prominently *his academic advisor (a Baptist minister) from his single year at Harvard* ?!, etc.

Parsons was set to be the heir to a citrus plantation in Florida, and his family had tensions out of F. Scott Fitzgerald: a patrician, strong-but-doomed mother, and two fathers who were "merely" middle class and who fought to fit in to the mother's Florida oligarchy. Much of this story is handled in a way that is crushingly sad and strange but at times also funny and sweet, apparently like Parsons himself, especially onstage. But the movie itself is raw photographically and edited in a way that that makes Parsons' family history (his natural father died when he was 12; mom remarried; his mother died, the stepfather remarried; there are a half-sister and a cousin who complicate the narration) a bit more confusing than it needed to be. An interesting artifact, as its assembly seems like local news footage, intuitively assembled, thus raw; certain more elegant transitions, labeling and curating techniques for managing large casts of interviewees seem to have become standard documentary practice, even schooled, since this was made. Maybe any roughness, jumble, or loose ends in this are apt to the subject.

This is a slipshod documentary that is about as original and involving as an episode of VH1's Behind the Music. The production values are very poor, with much of the video footage shot erratically out the window of a moving car, and the editing is a clumsy, uninspired pastiche of quick pans and tilts across black and white still photos jarringly inter-cut with a relentless onslaught of meaningless talking heads (do we really need to hear from the girlfriend of Parson's manager or the best friend of Parson's dead stepfather?). We hear very little of Parson's music, most of which plays in the background under the interviews, and no one except Emmylou Harris manages to truly elucidate Parson's gifts as a singer and songwriter. Technically, the film is embarrassing, but it is even worse in its shameful final minutes, when it juxtaposes the bizarre circumstances of Parson's burial with the heartfelt grief of those who loved Parsons, and manipulates the audience into laughter when what we should be feeling is sadness. Fallen Angel is disrespectful of Gram Parsons' groundbreaking music, banal in its storytelling, and grotesquely insensitive to the people who knew and loved him.