------------------ [excerpt, Life, by Keith Richards] --------------- When I fell in with Gram Parsons in the summer of 1968, I struck a seam of music that I'm still developing, which widened the range of everything I was playing and writing....
Early that year he'd joined the Byrds...They'd just recorded their classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and it was Gram who had totally turned them around from a pop band into a country music band and expanded their whole being.
That record, which bemused everybody at the time, turned out to be the incubator of country rock -- a major influence. ...
...We played music without stopping. Sat around the piano or with guitars and just went through the country songbook. Plus some blues and a few ideas on top. Gram taught me country music -- how it worked, the difference between the Bakersfield style and the Nashville style. He played it all on piano -- Merle Haggard, "Sing Me Back Home," George Jones, Hank Williams.
I learned the piano from Gram and started writing songs on it.
...And Gram was a bold man. This guy never had a hit record. Some good sellers, but nothing to point to, yet his influence is stronger now than ever. Basically, you wouldn't have had Waylon Jennings, you wouldn't have had all of that outlaw movement without Gram Parsons. He showed them a new approach, that country music isn't just this narrow thing that appeals to rednecks. He did it single-handed.
He wasn't a crusader or anything like that. He loved country music, but he really didn't like the country music business and didn't think it should be angled just at Nashville. The music's bigger than that. It should touch everybody. ---------------------- [end excerpt]
{On Google, type in
"the flying burrito brothers six days"
and select from several options on You Tube}
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