|
June 19, 2006
Rock music was still new in the late '60s and early '70s, and for a lot of kids back then, it was a rebellion against everything that had come before it. Nowadays we think nothing of blending rock with other styles of music. Bands like the Golden Arm Trio slip back and forth between classical and punk, and some of our younger opera singers cultivate rock star personas, trashing hotel rooms and running from hordes of teenage fans. It wasn't always like that.
Gram Parsons is one of those musicians I always meant to give a listen to, but only in the past year or two have I paid him much attention. Parsons borrowed from country and western to make a whole new form of music. There was no name for the songs he wrote, so he invented one: "cosmic American music." By acknowledging the traditions of the past, he broke rock music way open and exposed it to the future. He owed as great a debt to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard as to he did to the Rolling Stones.
The 2004 film Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, by producer/director Gandulf Hennig, will be of interest to those already familiar with Gram Parsons' solo material or his work with the Flying Burrito Brothers. The film comes out on DVD June 20. Gram Parsons is a tough subject, and Hennig struggles to balance Parsons' musical legacy, his troubled relationships, and the bizarre story of his post-mortem adventures (including the abduction and incineration of his remains by his road manager, Phil Kaufman).
Gram Parsons
|
Fallen Angel works best when it explores Parsons' effect on the world around him. Hennig tells the story through interviews and the scarce live footage he was able to find. Parsons was a muse, a lover, an influential musician, a big brother, and the punchline to a self-aggrandizing drinking story. The musicians who worked with him alternately eulogize Gram's genius and describe their extreme frustration in working with an irresponsible trust-fund kid who regularly blew off practice to hang out with the Rolling Stones, just because he could.
Parsons' slow swandive is grimly fascinating to watch, but Hennig spends too much time on interviews that add nothing to the story. For example, he lets Parsons' stepsister air thirty-year-old grievances about the rumors surrounding Parsons' mother's death and whether or not Parson's grave marker is big enough. And the dramatic reenactment of Phil Kaufman's corpse thievery is positively corny, better suited to a Court TV crime story reenactment than a theatrical release.
The film doesn't really address just how huge an influence Gram Parsons had on subsequent American music. It would have been much more interesting to hear current alt-country musicians discuss the influences they've drawn from Parsons' work. I saw Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel in the theater and enjoyed it. I would have appreciated the film much more if I'd been able to fast-forward through the dull bits, but despite its imperfections, it's worth renting.
Posted June 2006
Send to del.icio.us |
|
hotchicken commented, on July 8, 2006 at 8:35 p.m.:
Thanks, I'm Netflixing this movie. I first heard of Gram Parsons through the Cowboy Junkies, who covered a song and performed another with him on Black Eyed Man in 1992.