CHAPTER NINE
DEVIL IN DISGUISE
I had heard a little about Gram Parsons and his International Submarine Band, the name of which was inspired by a fictional group in a Little Rascals film. The word was that Gram was a good singer-songwriter who also played keyboard and guitar. He was signed to Lee Hazelwood Industries but was represented by Byrds manager Larry Spector, so we knew some of the same people. By chance, I happened to bump into Gram in a bank in Beverly Hills one day in early 1968, and we struck up a conversation. I hadn’t heard his music at the time but was aware that his band was exploring a country sound. Gram was an extremely charming and personable guy. With our shared love of country influences, it was easy to connect with him, and we hit it off right away.
During my conversation with Gram he told me his group had recently broken up, and he was looking for something new to get involved with. There was a Byrds rehearsal scheduled for that night, so I invited him to come play with us. We’d recently hired my cousin Kevin Kelly, a drummer who had been in a LA group with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder called The Rising Sons, to replace Michael Clarke. Given that we’d had success weaving some jazz elements into our sound with songs like “Eight Miles High,” Roger and I had already discussed adding a keyboardist to the lineup as we rebuilt the band. I told Gram we were looking for another player—possibly a keyboard player—and he said he’d love to come down and give it a shot.
I’m pretty sure Gram was already familiar with our material. When he showed up that night, he sounded good. He knew his way around our songs and he could sing, too. Keyboard player? Not really, but he more than made up for it with some songs he had written and brought in to play for us. Plus, he could play decent rhythm guitar, which gave us some flexibility. Roger and I both liked him and thought he would be a good addition to the band. Neither Gram nor Kevin ever became official members of the group, but we hired them both to round out our lineup and start preparing for some upcoming shows as a revised quartet.
In the meantime, Roger and I began planning our sixth record. The original idea was to create a double album that traced the evolution of twentieth-century music starting with acoustic, country, and folk material on the first disc and morphing into electronic space music on the second disc. Gram was a factor in focusing on the country material, but it wasn’t a stretch for us. We had all come out of folk music and, of course, I’d started out in bluegrass with the Squirrel Barkers and The Golden State Boys. We’d already recorded “Satisfied Mind” and Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susannah.” Plus, we’d recently used Clarence White and Red Rhodes, bringing country elements into our rock sessions. The Byrds was an eclectic group from the beginning, but country was certainly the part of our DNA that Gram wanted to champion, and his songs lent themselves to those arrangements.
We decided that recording in Nashville was the perfect way to kickstart our new project and, fortunately, Columbia Records had a great studio there that we were able to use. Stories have been told that we had to cut our hair short before heading to Music City USA, but nothing could be further from the truth. McGuinn and I both had short hair on the Notorious Byrd Brothers album cover with Michael and the horse. Such strange stores were always nipping at our heels.
We had a fabulous time recording in Nashville and got to work with some great musicians there: John Hartford on banjo and fiddle, Roy Husky on string bass, and Lloyd Green on pedal steel guitar. Songs like “I Am a Pilgrim,” “Pretty Polly,” and “Pretty Boy Floyd” gave us a chance to get back to square one—our love of traditional folk and bluegrass roots. And playing mandolin again was a welcome addition. We cut Gram’s original “Hickory Wind,” as well as two now-classic Dylan songs, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “Nothing Was Delivered.” Bob wrote both songs while he was recuperating from a serious motorcycle accident. The demos fell into our hands somewhat like “Mr. Tambourine Man” had a few years before, and we knew they were just right for The Byrds. Lloyd Green’s steel work on both tracks added something extra special.
It was fun being in Nashville around the music I had grown up with and loved so much, but I’m not sure if they quite knew what to make of The Byrds. After we finished recording one night, Roger and Gram went to visit influential country DJ Ralph Emery at his radio station in hopes of having him play an acetate of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” for his listeners. The recording was only a few days old. I didn’t go with them that night, but I heard all about how Ralph treated them on the air. When he finally did give in and play the song, he was dismissive. Our take on country music probably still had a bit too much rock influence for strict country fans of the era. I don’t know if maybe Ralph and some of the other folks in Nashville thought we were making fun of their music, but nothing could have been further from the truth. We had nothing but reverence for it and were absolutely sincere in our efforts.
Columbia Records secured us a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry’s radio show, broadcast live on WSM from Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium. We were to be guests on the Tompall and the Glaser Brothers portion of the show for what would be The Byrds’ debut in front of a live country audience—and probably the debut of any rock band ever on the Opry stage. This was only a couple of days after the cool reception Roger and Gram received on Ralph Emery’s show, so we were a little nervous about how we’d go over with the crowd. We were scheduled to perform “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” which was slated to become the next single, and then close our short set with “Sing Me Back Home,” which was Merle Haggard’s big hit at the time and something the Opry knew would be appreciated by the audience.
In those days you were discouraged from playing a full drum set on the Opry, so Kevin just played a snare drum with brushes. I played my electric bass, while both Roger and Gram played acoustic guitars. We were so honored to have Lloyd Green join us to play pedal steel. When we were introduced, there were a few laughs and some scattered “boos” in the audience. A few people were calling out “tweet, tweet” in response to our name. Nevertheless, we started the Dylan song. They might not have been enthusiastic, but they were polite enough. Tompall then got on the mic and said “That was fantastic, fellas. Now, I believe you boys are going to sing Merle Haggard’s brand-new hit song ‘Sing Me Back Home’ for us?” Roger and I were shocked when Gram stepped up to the mic and said, “No, we’re going to sing ‘Hickory Wind’ for my grandmother who’s listening tonight.” Roger and I exchanged glances but followed Gram into the unplanned performance.
Our rendition of “Hickory Wind” sounded good, but that wasn’t the point. After the broadcast, Tompall was screaming mad for having been put in that awkward position. Most of the Opry cast members weren’t too happy with us, either. Nobody said much to us backstage as we gathered up our belongings for a hasty exit. We were packing up the car when Opry star (and the ex-Mrs. Ralph Emery) Skeeter Davis came out the back door, “Hey, you Byrds,” she called. “You sounded fantastic. Everyone here? I love ’em, but they just don’t get it. I’m really sorry about how you were treated. Please don’t worry about that. You sounded great.” Skeeter Davis was our only friend that night.
Many years later I ran into Skeeter again in Nashville when I was back at the Opry with The Desert Rose Band. We started talking about that Opry performance from so many years prior, and I thanked her for her kindness. “Oh, that was so horrible that night for you guys,” she told me. “I am so sorry for how that all happened.” She was surprised when I told her I actually thought Gram was pretty rude. We were in someone else’s house, and we had agreed to the Opry’s song requests. Then Gram just hijacked it. What he thought was so hip and cool was actually insulting to the Opry folks. We should have stuck with the plan. Looking back, I now view that night as a missed warning. Gram was bright, extremely funny, ambitious, and very talented. But he was also unpredictable. I should have known that night what I was in for, working with an impulsive guy like Parsons. It would take me a while to learn that lesson.
Back
in Los Angeles, we continued recording sessions for the new album, with JayDee Maness on steel guitar and Earl P. Ball on piano to record the country covers “Life in Prison” and “You’re Still On My Mind.” We were soon joined by my old friend Clarence White, who played on the Louvin Brothers song “The Christian Life” and on “Blue Canadian Rockies,” an old tune I remembered from watching Gene Autry sing it in the movie of the same name.
In the spring of 1968 we were booked on a European tour and decided to take Douglas Dillard with us to play electric banjo. If anybody could play an electric banjo, it was Douglas, a phenomenal musician and a very close friend. His group The Dillards—which also featured his brother Rodney, Mitch Jayne, and Dean Webb—changed the face of bluegrass with their fine stage act and their appearances as the fictional Darling family on The Andy Griffith Show. In fact, it was seeing his name on the back of a Dillards album several years earlier that first led me and The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers to Jim Dickson; so, my history with Doug was significant. His group had even toured with The Byrds in 1966 when they decided to go electric, which proved to be a short-lived experiment. It was during that tour, when we had a few days off, that I went with Doug and Rodney to visit their home in Salem, Missouri. I stayed with their family and had a great time shooting pistols that Rodney and I had recently bought over the counter, and double dating with Doug and two local Salem ladies. I was looking forward to having my old friend join us once again. He fit right in musically and played off of Roger’s twelve-string, giving our sound a unique blend.
The tour was built around a rock festival to be held in Rome, The First International Pop Festival, which had the blessing of Mick Jagger and a member of the British Parliament named Lord Harlech. It was a complete bust. Nobody wanted to buy tickets to the six-day event. It was originally to be held at the Palazzo dello Sport, a 30,000-seat arena in Rome—an interesting idea on paper, but so badly planned that it ended up in complete chaos. We did manage to play a date in Rome at the Piper Club that became the refuge of the broken pop festival.
We took an unplanned detour to England after our Roman holiday, playing at the Middle Earth Club to solid reviews. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was on the English charts and doing really well for me and Roger. We ended our short British run with a show at Blaises, the club we had played on our disastrous first tour. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull were in the audience that night. After the show, Mick and Keith invited us to take a drive out to Stonehenge to watch the sun come up, and we invited Gram to come along, too. Mick hired some cars to pick us up at 2:00 a.m. for the drive to Salisbury where the Stonehenge monument was located. Wandering around out there in the dark with the Stones was like a Middle Earth fantasy trip—except that Gram was so enamored with Mick and Keith that he was behaving like a schoolgirl with a crush on the teacher. Roger and I couldn’t help but roll our eyes as we watched Gram scurrying around in an effort to keep up with them as we hiked around the monument. It was embarrassing. The actual sunrise was a little disappointing. Instead of getting a great view, we got damp feet from walking through the wet grass. Mr. Jagger, ever the consummate host, sent his driver off to buy everyone dry socks.
Two days later we were headed to New York to play the Fillmore East. When we finally returned home to Los Angeles we were offered a spot on a fundraiser for Robert Kennedy that was scheduled for May 24 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Billed as “SRO For RFK,” a large cross section of entertainers came out to support Senator Kennedy’s presidential campaign: Andy Williams, Gene Kelly, Mahalia Jackson, and Henry Mancini, to name a few. We, along with Sonny and Cher, were the pop acts booked to appeal to the younger set. I had an opportunity to meet the senator after our show, but I passed, feigning fatigue. It was less than two weeks later that he was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel after being declared the winner of the California Primary. Missing the opportunity to say hello is one of many regrets in my life, as I always felt Robert was the Kennedy tough enough to handle the nation’s highest office.
We continued to tour the States until July when we returned to England without Doug Dillard to play a charity event for The British Boys Club at the Royal Albert Hall in London. From there, we were scheduled for a two-week tour of South Africa and Zimbabwe, which was known as Rhodesia at the time. We had been warned by our friend Hugh Masekela to avoid South Africa and their racist policy of apartheid. Miriam Makeba, on the other hand, had told Roger many years before that if he ever had the opportunity to visit South Africa that he should go and see what was really happening down there. After some debate, Roger and I decided that we should go over and try to open up the country to our music. We resisted the concept of playing for segregated audiences and were assured by the promoters that the crowds at our shows would be mixed. Hugh told us that would never happen. He said the Afrikaner white majority rule would never allow blacks and whites to sit with each other, but we thought we would break through that barrier. We believed we could make a difference.
Gram traveled to London with us, but the morning we were scheduled to leave for Johannesburg, he refused to go. He said that, having grown up in the segregated South, he didn’t believe in supporting the racist policies in South Africa. He claimed that he never had any intention of going with us because it would violate his ethics. That sounds like a reasonable and principled stand, but I wasn’t buying it for a second. Gram knew for weeks that we were planning to go to South Africa, and though we’d all raised concerns, he never indicated that he would boycott the trip. We all had been issued work visas. We had no reason to believe that Gram was anything but fully on board and committed to doing the tour with us when we all got on the plane headed for the UK. What happened is that we got to London and the Stones told him that British acts all refused to go to South Africa. His new friends strongly advised him to skip it, and Gram was desperate to impress them. Was there room for a musician to have legitimate concern regarding the South Africa question? Of course, but in Gram’s case, the truth was that he really just wanted to stay in England and hang out with his new buddy Keith Richards. The real Gram was emerging. This was pure selfishness and dishonesty on his part. I was furious, and Gram was fired immediately. This should have been my second warning about a guy I really loved but who only thought of himself.
Angry and feeling betrayed, we boarded the flight to Johannesburg. It was decided that our road manager, who only knew a few basic chords, would fill in on rhythm guitar. Roger taught him the songs during the flight—a rocky start to a tour that ended up being nothing short of a disaster. It was far worse than The Byrds’ first tour of England. McGuinn caught a serious case of the flu and had to leave the stage one night. The road manager certainly couldn’t cover Roger’s parts, so Kevin and I were left to carry on. It was pretty bleak. Just as Hugh had warned us, the audiences were segregated, and we weren’t happy about it.
There were no television stations in the country, even though they possessed the technology. It was just another way for the minority population in power to control the masses by controlling the media. For a country as rich as South Africa in 1968 to have no television, to ban all Beatles records because of John Lennon’s remarks to the press, and to encourage the black population to smoke pot as a control mechanism was not only surreal, but totally outrageous. Their policies resembled Nazi Germany in the late ’30s, and the only “information” outlet for the citizens was the newspaper. After we were interviewed in the press and stated our objection to racial separation, we were threatened on a daily basis, usually by angry calls to our hotel rooms that were a variation on, “Get out of our country if you don’t like how we treat our blacks.”
The whole experience was a living hell, usually with two grueling performances per day. Plus, we felt constantly threatened. Roger, Kevin, and I were at our hotel’s bar in Johannesburg one evening when we were immediately accosted by four guys. They were ready to do battle, and as I looked over my shoulder, Roger and my dear cousin Kevin w
ere beating a hasty retreat. I should have led them out the door since I was suddenly standing there alone, facing four crazy, drunk South Afrikaners. Summoning up all the courage I could conjure—and well aware of an impending punch out—I eventually managed to calm the wild and ignorant beasts. I somehow won them over, and we all sat down for drinks. Crisis averted. To this day, South Africa is the scariest country I have ever visited, and, in hindsight, we should have heeded Masekela’s warnings. On top of all the other problems, the promoters were thieves, and I don’t think we ever recovered the money they owed us from that tour.
Rhodesia was the only bright spot. Only recently having broken away from the British Commonwealth, the country was a new experiment in complete integration, and we had the opportunity to play for mixed audiences. There was a sense of hope and freedom in the air. This moment, too, would later pass as the country was taken over by the authoritarian Robert Mugabe and renamed Zimbabwe.
After having endured sickness, bad gigs, intimidation, death threats, and the possibility of arrest during our two weeks in Africa, we couldn’t wait to fly out of Johannesburg and touch down again in London. We all flew home to the States on separate flights out of the UK, but each of us was subjected to an intense search and questioning at customs. This was probably the result of the controversy stirred up by our scathing press interviews in the South African media. Thankfully, the country has radically changed since the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela who singlehandedly managed to bring the country into the twentieth century. Though South Africa has continued to experience racial strife, at least now there is freedom of the press, and the apartheid laws are gone. Those were important major steps.
Our country album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, was released in August of 1968. Though Parsons was gone by the time the album was released, his lead vocals were featured on three of the songs, including his own “Hickory Wind.” He originally sang six of the songs, but his voice was replaced by Roger’s on half of them. There’s been all sorts of speculation, analysis, and overanalysis about this over the years, but there were several factors at play. As it turned out, Gram was still contractually obligated to Lee Hazelwood, whose production company had signed Gram’s International Submarine Band prior to his coming to work for The Byrds. On top of that, Parsons was never signed as an artist to Columbia Records. He was a salaried musician, and Roger and I were the only two official Byrds with contracts with the label. I don’t even know what conversations might have taken place, but Roger’s voice was a major component of The Byrds’ sound. It’s possible the label wanted to hear more from the guy whose voice was strongly associated with the band rather than from a hired gun who had already been fired by the time the album was being finalized. In later years, the versions with Gram’s vocals were released, but I think Roger’s vocals were better in the end. The album—as it was originally released—included just the right balance of singers.
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