Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music

by David N. Meyer

Book Overview

"A terrific biography of a rock innovator that hums with juicy detail and wincing truth. . . . Page after page groans with the folly of the '60s drug culture, the tragedy of talent toasted before its time, the curse of wealth and the madness of wasted opportunity." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES * NAMED ONE OF THE FIVE BEST ROCK BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ROLLING STONE As a singer and songwriter, Gram Parsons stood at the nexus of countless musical crossroads, and he sold his soul to the devil at every one. His intimates and collaborators included Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Fonda, Roger McGuinn, and Clarence White. Parsons led the Byrds to create the seminal country rock masterpiece Sweetheart of the Rodeo , helped to guide the Rolling Stones beyond the blues in their appreciation of American roots music, and found his musical soul mate in Emmylou Harris. Parsons' solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel , are now recognized as visionary masterpieces of the transcendental jambalaya of rock, soul, country, gospel, and blues Parsons named "Cosmic American Music." Parsons had everything--looks, charisma, money, style, the best drugs, the most heartbreaking voice--and threw it all away with both hands, dying of a drug and alcohol overdose at age twenty-six. In this beautifully written, raucous, meticulously researched biography, David N. Meyer gives Parsons' mythic life its due. From interviews with hundreds of the famous and obscure who knew and worked closely with Parsons-many who have never spoken publicly about him before-Meyer conjures a dazzling panorama of the artist and his era. Praise for Twenty Thousand Roads "Far and away the most thorough biography of Parsons . . . skewers any number of myths surrounding this endlessly mythologized performer." --Los Angeles Times "The definitive account of Gram Parsons' life-and early death. From the country-rock pioneer's wealthy, wildly dysfunctional family through his symbiotic friendship with Keith Richards, Meyer deftly illuminates one of rock's most elusive figures." --Rolling Stone "Meticulously researched . . . Though Meyer answers a lot of long-burning questions, he preserves Parsons' legend as a man of mystery." --Entertainment Weekly "Meyer gives Parsons a thorough, Peter Guralnick-like treatment." -- New York Post

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345503368
• ISBN13: 9780345503367
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive and excellent biography of Gram Parsons

This book has all the elements of a well written biography--it's incredibly comprehensive in Grams' details from birth to death and the aftermath, it's easy to read and follows smoothly, it doesn't judge and presents many contemporaries' and close friends' points of view, and it provides a lot of data for proposing that Gram was one of the main and most dedicated creators of the blending of country, soul and rock music in the mid-sixties--Which were at great odds with each other culturally at that point in time. For folks like me who lived through the era it reveals how a lot of the connections I saw occurring in music--why the Rolling Stones went roots-country-blues on Exile on Main Street (after sucking at psychedelia), where Poco, Manassas, Pure Prairie League and especially Emmylou Harris suddenly sprung from in the early '70's etc., etc A great read of a sad, short but fruitful life--and an encyclopedic rendering of the beginnings of alt-country, outlaw country music...

Fanatstic Rendering Of A Frustrating, Brilliant Enigma

I consumed David M. Meyer's fantastic biography of the enigmatic, deeply destructive and hugely gifted Gram Parsons within weeks of having also read Jim Walsh's likewise excellent oral history of The Replacements "All Over But The Shouting". Quite the double bill- there is much that overlaps in the two stories- enough to cause one to really ponder the relationship between challenging art, marginal personalities, and the contrary and self defeating nature of so many artists in different mediums who have exhibited a very particular sort of attraction/revulsion towards a wide, mainstream acceptance in the market place. In a strange, if entirely appropriate coincidence, Keith Richards occurs as a kind of chimerical figure in both books. Keith bonds with Gram, appreciates his extraordinary talent, and shares his penchant for excess. Only too haltingly does he assist Gram in getting his music heard- a long held promise to produce a Gram solo record goes mournfully unfulfilled- eventually Gram succumbs to the high wire lifestyle that both men are driven to but only Keith survives. A decade and a half later, he's a Replacements fan and has them open for the X-Pensive Winos at Madison Square Garden. But immediately it becomes clear that the stage is too big for the Mats and they too wilt in Richards Shadow. All of this occurs to me as a single illustrative instance of what is so peculiar about the dichotomy between the relatively few great artists seemingly programed to survive and even thrive in the hothouse of public notoriety and the larger number who seem unable to weather it's various excesses and deprivations over the long term. In addition to it's being impeccably researched and delightfully rendered in the knowing but never condescending argot of a passionate music fan, there is a special excellence in Meyer's unsentimental contemplation of Parsons grim fate. For all of the posthumous mythologizing and tireless legend making that has gone on during the three and a half decades since his death, it remains true that even in the asinine context of early exits in rock music, there was something uniquely senseless, avoidable and frustrating about Gram's demise at the age of 26. Meyer's work is an essential history in many respects, but perhaps most importantly because it correctly challenges us to esteem Parson's great music, while impugning the notion of his "romantic fate". Finally and for the perhaps the first time we have here the true, slighlty pathetic story of Gram Parsons: a massive talent, feckless and heedless, whose greatest work no doubt laid ahead of him.

Beautifully written portrait of a man and a time

This is a wonderfully crafted biography with a broader scope than the already-compelling life of Gram Parsons. David Meyer has captured Parson's time, place and musical era in beautiful, evocative prose. You have to make yourself slow down enough to savor the fine writing even as you are swept up by the saga.

A great read

This is a wonderful book. It is passionate, obsessive, brilliant, sometimes very moving, often screamingly funny, an amazing portrait of a talented but wounded young man and of a time when everything changed. The biographical detail has the richness of a good novel, backed by a wealth of insight into the broader musical and cultural context that Parsons shaped and was shaped by. I am totally biased, of course, but I think "Twenty Thousand Roads" is a marvel.

Meyer's "Gram" Bio in the Pantheon of Rock Bios with Guralnick, Marcus

This is a passionate, well-researched rock bio of Gram Parsons. It's an easy read, wonderful for those who love the music, great for those who are learning it. An amazing saga. Meyer's other books contain some of the funniest, incisive criticism of film; as he turns his attention to the fabled rocker, few old myths are left standing, but Parsons emerges as a human figure who we now know as never before.