Though he passed away aged just 26, Gram Parsons didn't mess around while he was here – a member of The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The International Submarine Band, he also found time to make two sublime solo albums and partly invent country-rock as we know it. Here, Uncut present 20 o...
19 WE’LL SWEEP OUT THE ASHES IN THE MORNING
GP, 1973
Written by Joyce Allsup, this 1969 almost-hit for Carl & Pearl Butler is faithfully revisited as a duet by Parsons and Emmylou Harris, her crystalline certainty anchoring his more wayward vocals. A song about battling the illicit thrill of “stolen love” and “wild desire”, it almost certainly carried personal resonance for the pair.
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20 SIN CITY
The Gilded Palace Of Sin, 1969
This superb Hillman-Parsons country-gospel ballad features Gram as Travis Bickle in a Nudie suit, toting a guitar rather than a gun and painting a ravaged portrait of a decaying LA. Though heavy with the old-time religious doomsaying of The Louvin Brothers, it also takes very modern sideswipes at consumerism and the record business. The man come to “clean up this town” is Bobby Kennedy, assassinated not long before.
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