Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel

(Rhino / BBC)

Video Review by Adam McKibbin

Gram Parsons is a unique character in music lore.  More than 30 years after his death, he’s revered as a cult figure, and maintains plenty of hipster cred.  But during his lifetime, he was anything but an underground underdog.  He had the advantage of a family fortune, and fashioned himself not as a humble country boy but as the next Elvis.  By the time of his fatal drug-and-booze overdose in Joshua Tree at the age of 26, he’d been a key member of two bands—The Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers—that withstood the test of the time and left handprints on plenty of descendents.  He was in the midst of a solo career that continued to plant seeds for country rock and, later, alt-country.  He took country to Hollywood, and made country cool for rockers.

Gandulf Hennig’s excellent Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel charts the course of this star by getting as close to him as possible, considering the tragedies that have pared the singer’s family tree.  It’s geared toward people who already have some familiarity with Parsons and his music; although some welcome performance clips are peppered throughout, it isn’t a documentary that relies on dredging up an hour of concert footage in order to compensate for a lack of narrative or insider perspective.

Insider perspective is amply provided in Fallen Angel, thanks to key cooperation from the Parsons family—well, both of his families:  the biological one and the musical one.  Even Keith Richards felt compelled to pull up a chair and discuss his old mate at length, as did Chris Hillman and Emmylou Harris, two of the most central collaborators in the Parsons discography.

Parsons comes across as prodigiously talented and, at least in the beginning, enviably ambitious.  But, despite being directed by an admirer, Fallen Angel isn’t a valentine.  Hillman particularly is useful in pointing out the significant scuff marks on the Parsons legend, painting a picture of a man increasingly scrambled and made selfish by fame and drugs.  In an accompanying interview on the DVD, Hennig talks about wanting to not romanticize addiction, and his desire comes across clearly.  The warts-and-all approach, in the end, is more sympathetic than a cleaned-up revisionist approach because it is much more human.  Genius can extract a heavy toll, not just from the person it afflicts, but from the people around them.  Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel serves as both a rare tribute and an all too common warning.