Jars Beginner Guitar Lessons

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It’s safe to say there would be no Eagles without Gram Parsons. Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon even played alongside him for a while in the Flying Burrito Brothers. In terms of more contemporary music, Parsons is one of the patriarchs of what we now call alt-country and Americana. His own preferred phrase was “American Cosmic Music.”

As a member of the Byrds in 1968, Parsons urged founding member Roger McGuinn to cross the boundary between country and rock with Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

“Gram was really a strong musical force,” McGuinn said in 1990. “I just let him go and went along with it because it was fun. I was having a good time with it. I started listening to country radio and talking with a southern accent. It was like Halloween or something for a long, extended period.”

Parsons was a brilliant songwriter and interpreter of country within the rock and roll context. But he was also drawn to good times, and drugs were never far from reach.

“Gram was a party kid,” recalls Fred Walecki, owner of Westwood Music, who commissioned Parson’s ornate David Russell Young dreadnought. “He was in love with the spike. but he wasn’t like some horrible nodding-out drug addict. Gram was like an angel. He was so innocent in a lot of ways.”

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