A confession: I have totally fallen for this Gram Parsons mythology. Indoctrinated by years of biased textbooks, hippies' hyperbolic eulogies, and Entertainment Weekly features (a Johnny Knoxville/Christina Applegate biopic currently entitled Grand Theft Parsons is due next year), I have venerated Parsons to the point where, back in '91, my Parsons figurine necklace saved my life when I should have been shot in the neck. I know he was a narcissistic, condescending, uncontrollable malcontent, probably undeserving of most of my praise. I don't care. Every martyr has his cross. Jesus' was made of wood; Parsons' was made of morphine, booze, and Cosmic Morphoid Crazydust (or some such opiate).
A Harvard drop-out, Parsons met Byrds bassist Chris Hillman at an unromantic Hollywood bank, coerced him into joining the Crosby-less band in Nashville, and, amidst quiet feuding with Roger McGuinn, made what is deniably one of the Top 20 country records of all time. Today, no noteworthy reviewer is naïve enough to claim Sweetheart of the Rodeo was the first country-rock album. Instead they'll tell you it was Parsons' International Submarine Band's 1968 album Safe at Home, and maybe that they even have the receipts to prove it. But, while Parsons was more of a heroin addict than a pedagogue, if he's taught me anything, it's that there was no "first" country-rock record. Country has always rocked. When Hank Williams sang, "I'll never get out of this world alive," he paved the way for Sid Vicious. If anything, Sweetheart is vastly less rocking than Merle Haggard's late-60s albums-- Parsons was simply the first to disseminate the rock to North Hollywood and Keith Richards' mansion.
The actual album is a blindingly rusty gait through parched weariness and dusted reverie. It's not the natural sound of Death Valley or Utah, but rather, a false portrait by people who wished it was, which makes it even more melancholy and charismatic. Between the shuffling and galloping are the astonishingly doomed harmonies, McGuinn and Parson's hypnotic and enthusiastic vocals, and countless miles of Lloyd Green's pedal steel. The songs, mostly covers, are equally saturated in sincerity and dedication. McGuinn had originally conceived the album as a panorama of American genres from the turn of the century through the synthesizer era until Parsons and Hillman convinced him to focus solely on country. Still, the diversity is there: a plucking Woody Guthrie, a craggy, grisly Haggard, post-motorcycle Dylan, Stax/Volt genius William Bell. But The Byrds have so totally captured a particular sound that the transitions are seamless. The righteousness of "The Christian Life" is perfectly at home on an album with a song about murdering your wife.
The crucial aspects of this particular release, however, are the extras-- especially since an expanded edition already came out in 1997 highlighting some unreleased master tapes. This new double-disc version is about double the price, and somehow managed to miss a few tracks from the '97 version. It also claims everything's been remastered without sounding at all distinguishable from the last edition. To be fair, the second disc offers six International Submarine Band songs (three of which have never been available on CD), but even these are valuable mainly for historians and best heard in the context of the entire Safe at Home album. Suffice to say, it's an underdeveloped band that can occasionally stun you into submission (the steaming "Luxury Liner", or the waltzing tribute to monogamy and masculinity, "Strong Boy") and other times sound like a disorderly, if endearing, garage-rock band with way too much emphasis on tambourine.
Due to contractual obligations, Lee Hazlewood, founder of the LHI label, took all but three Parsons tracks off the original album-- although, by all accounts, he was the auteur of the entire recording. Parsons has come back here with a vengeance: For starters, 19 of the 28 supplementary tracks feature Parsons on lead vocal. Whether you think this package is worthwhile is entirely dependent on whether you think Parsons deserves this much credit. On the album itself, McGuinn's belabored, satirical vocal on "The Christian Life" is adequate, even beautiful, performed like a pop star who sings odes to woe while showering in hundred-dollar bills. Conversely, Parsons sounds like he's had a bloody nose for a week on the bonus track presented here, giving the song a more sincere read than McGuinn's obvious pisstake. He's also drunk and has the stuttered, cracking delivery of someone who was self-schooled in a sand dune (which is strange considering he was a spoilt egoist). Of course, this begs the question of who exactly needs four relatively-similar sounding versions of "The Christian Life" or "One Hundred Years from Now". Well, I do. I've been listening to those songs on repeat for years now. Finally, I can mix things up a bit.
While there are significant, if not epiphanic, variations in the second disc's working demos and rehearsals, the causal Parsons fan will certainly be satiated by the '97 single disc. If you're a Gram man, on the other hand, listening to the gradual development of the plaintiveness on "One Hundred Years from Now" or the original sluggishness on "Life in Prison" is equivalent to bowing at Parsons' altar. Only die-hards will find the second disc worthwhile. But then, everyone should be a die-hard.
