BYRDS/BURRITO'S VERLANGLIJST

Nu het binnenkort weer uitdeeltijd wordt, hierbij wat informatie over een paar boeken die de Blauwe Oren interessant kunnen vinden.

Het Byrdsboek is een soort dagboek, vol foto's en memorabilia, waar ik ook wat informatie voor geleverd heb. Het Flying Burrito's boek van John Einarson ken ik niet, maar hij heeft een aantal fraaie biografieen geschreven over o. m. Gene Clark.
The Gilded Palace of Sin zit in een serie van soms mooie, soms onbegrijpelijke en soms onzinnige verhandelingen over een bepaald album, eerst even inkijken dus.

Hier een bespreking van het Burrito's boek van de Byrdmaniax groep.

Hot Burritos: The True Story of The Flying Burrito Brothers

By John Einarson with Chris Hillman

(Jawbone) www.jawbonepress.com

At this stage it would probably take a wrecking ball's worth of seamy revelations to topple the towering, mythic image that is Gram Parsons. But now along comes Hot Burritos, and although it doesn't purport to be that wrecking ball, it still puts a few dents in the Parsons legend.

John Einarson, who's previously authored bios of Neil Young and Gene Clark, teamed up with Parsons' Burritos co-founder Chris Hillman for an in-depth chronicle of the country-rockers who, despite never hitting their stride commercially, have come to be acknowledged as true pioneers. Hillman's contention is that Parsons shined blazingly bright but - due to a rock star fixation, a terminal lazy/unprofessional streak and a creativity-sapping fondness for booze and drugs - only sporadically. He's backed up by the recollections of scores of musicians, producers and former band mates, many of whom grudgingly agree with Hillman when he claims Parsons had already shot his artistic wad by the time of the second Burritos album (1970s Burrito Deluxe) and dismisses Parsons' post-Burritos solo work as uninspired.

Some may call this sour grapes; Hillman freely admits that "it drives me up the wall" how Parsons' lived-fast/died young mystique has reduced the Burritos in the eyes of many to "just his backing band." But there's a genuine affection and respect levelled by Hillman when he talks about his initial partnership with Parsons.

Einarson brings together a massive quantity of quotes and firsthand observations to what likely will be deemed the definitive word on the band in all its incarnations. Hot Burritos won't sit well with Parsons fans, but then, no acolyte is happy when it's pointed out that his personal Emperor has no clothes - pot-leaf Nudie suit, or otherwise.

Fred Mills

Excerpted from Hot Burritos: The True Story Of The Flying Burrito Brothers

............ ...."When you add the Phil Kaufman escapade to the death of Parsons and the whole myth surrounding it," says Hillman, "you've got this creepy thing surrounding Gram that people love to glom onto. In hindsight, other than some brilliant songwriting, I don't think Gram was that good. He just wasn't that good of a player, a singer, or band-member. He couldn't even sing that well. Other than bringing some really good songs to the party on that first Burritos album those are his best songs, the ones that he co-write with me and with Ethridge. The rest of the stuff he wrote, like 'Luxury Liner' and 'Ooh Las Vegas', are okay but they didn't have what 'Sin City,' 'Juanita,' or 'Devil In Disguise' had. That was his best work ever. Many people will disagree with me but I stand by it. His later recordings with Reprise don't stand up to Gilded Palace Of Sin. They're not that good. He brought great songs to Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, the ones he wrote, but his finest moment was The Gilded Palace Of Sin. Other than 'She,' I didn't hear anything on those two albums with Emmylou. They didn't work for me."........
....... "Gram was the most unprofessional guy I ever worked with. That's the truth. But I stuck with him because I believed in him and I liked the music. I still like the songs we wrote together. I like the songs he wrote without me, 'Hot Burrito #1' and 'Hot Burrito #2.' Those are brilliant songs. Gram's best lead vocals ever on record are those two songs. That stuff he did later, some of it makes my skin crawl. It's just bad country music. So I stuck with Gram and I believed in him because the bottom line was that I liked the music. I was doing something I was comfortable with because that's how I started out."....... ....."What was going to happen to Gram Parsons if he had managed to survive?" asks Jim Bickhart. "It's hard to speculate on that because the way he lived and died are so much part and parcel of who he was. It's kind of hard to separate the notion of him being 60 years old with the way he was at the time. Maybe the Burrito Brothers and elements of Sweetheart Of The Rodeo would have been the things that Gram Parsons would still have been defined for. As good as a few songs on his two solo albums are, it's really the songs on The Gilded Palace Of Sin that define his vision."....

Hot Burritos: The True Story of The Flying Burrito Brothers

John Einarson with Chris Hillman

11.19.2008 -- Review by: C. Eric Banister

The roots of the genre now referred to as Americana are varied and deep, but one band is often cited heavily in that long list of originators - The Flying Burrito Brothers. Or more specifically, one member is cited more often, that member being Gram Parsons. But the band never really was that successful ("We're more popular now than we ever were in our time," co-founder Chris Hillman says in the book), and never really had a consistent line-up. More myths about the band, and, again, specifically Gram Parsons, seem to spring up each year. This is one of the reasons Hillman felt it was time to set the record straight. The story of the Byrds and their contributions to what became country-rock have been told many times and in several books. Gram Parsons himself has been subject of a few books. But not until now has the story of the Flying Burrito Brothers as a band been told in full.
Author John Einarson has authored twelve books, many of them associated with the California country-rock scene of the 1960s and '70s, including Desperados: The Roots Of Country-Rock and books on Buffalo Springfield, ex-Byrd Gene Clark, Neil Young and others. He is an acknowledged expert on country-rock and its origins and influence, but to tell the Burritos story he enlisted the help of co-founder Chris Hillman.
While many people think strictly of Parsons when they think of the Burritos, Hillman was an equal partner in the forming of the group and in fact had a much deeper pedigree when it came to country and roots music. Born in 1944 in Los Angles, Hillman grew up listening to folk and rock 'n' roll until he came across records by The New Lost City Ramblers and Flatt & Scruggs. He quickly fell in love with the sound of the mandolin and began to study instrument. In 1962 he joined the regional bluegrass group The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers, based in San Diego. Around a year later the group began to break apart and Hillman was asked to join the Golden State Boys with Don Parmley on banjo and Rex and Vern Gosdin on bass and guitar, respectively. In late 1964 Hillman was invited to try out for a new group called the Jet Set and included Jim McGuinn, David Crosby, Michael Clarke and Gene Clark. After he joined the group they changed their name to the Byrds and their popularity soared with songs "Turn! Turn! Turn!" "Eight Miles High" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the band was labeled the American answer to the Beatles.
After some member turnover, the group was stripped down to McGuinn (now called Roger, following a religious conversion) and Hillman in 1967 and they released the country-tinged The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Just after the albums' release Hillman had a chance meeting with Gram Parsons. Months later Parsons showed up at an audition for Byrds band members and Hillman found he has met a musical kindred spirit.
The group went on to record Sweetheart of the Rodeo, an album now considered a masterpiece, but was at the time the poorest selling Byrds album to have been released. During the recording and promoting of the album, Parsons ego and selfishness began to show through in little ways. After he had sung several tracks on the album, the record label was informed that Parsons was under contract to a small label owned by Lee Hazelwood, something Parsons failed to tell the group. As a result all of his vocals had to be taken from the album and hastily replaced. At an appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, a rare opportunity for a band still considered by most to be a rock band, Parsons changed the song they were to sing after Tompall Glaser had already announced the scheduled selection.
Hillman notes in the book that this was very insulting to Glaser and very poor etiquette on Parsons' part.
But those flashes of self-involvement would pale in comparison to Parsons next stunt. After meeting and opening for the Rolling Stones, the group went to visit them in England before the Byrds were to tour South Africa. On the day they were to embark, Parsons decided he was not going, citing apartheid as the reason and claiming that he was opposed to it after growing up in the South. Hillman calls that argument "ridiculous" and claims, "He wanted to stay with the Rolling Stones." And with that, Parsons was out of the Byrds.

Einarson and Hillman take the reader through the good times and the bad leading up to the founding of the Burritos. Like the excellent researcher that he is, Einarson doesn't rely simply on Hillman's voice but interviews many other people, from label staff to band members to critics, to round out the story.
The story continues as Hillman and Parsons cross paths again and slowly begin to get together to play music and write songs. It seems that all is forgiven, but maybe not completely forgotten. The duo begins to slowly assemble a band and is signed to a label. Even in this early stage, history has been tainted to tell that it was Parsons vision of melding country and rock that got them their break, but as Einarson tells us, Parson was at that time a virtual unknown and it was Hillmans name that opened the doors. The book reminds us that Hillman had been playing country and bluegrass for years before he met Parsons, who had only discovered country music in the past few years of his life. Perhaps it was because Parsons had the zeal of a new convert that he is remembered as being such a passionate catalyst.


























As the story unfolds, it is easy to see that Parsons was often times more interested in being the "rock star" than with being part of a group. After their first album, Gilded Palace of Sin, was released and didn't meet with huge sales numbers, Parsons began to drift, losing interest in what they were doing. He began to drift away from his bandmates and further into drugs and alcohol. Hillman admits that he was no angel, (indeed the book doesn't paint Hillman as a saint or hide any warts) only that he knew where to draw the line and was always able to maintain a level of professionalism, two things Parson couldn't always do.
During the recording of the second Burritos album, Burrito Deluxe, Parsons sank even further, eventually missing practices and recording sessions. The story goes that Parsons outgrew the band and left them behind to spread his wings and create his "Cosmic American Music." But Hillman tells the story of a Parsons that was so wasted that he would sing a ballad after the band had started an up-tempo number. One night it came to a head and Hillman fired his partner. And with that, Parsons was out of the Burritos. From there Gram went on to a brief solo career and is credited with discovering Emmylou Harris, but Hillman recounts the real story of Rick Roberts and Kenny Wertz, both playing with the Burritos at that time, seeing Harris sing and bringing Hillman in to see her. Later Hillman told Parsons about her (they had made amends by then, but were not working together) because he knew Parsons was looking for a girl singer to join him.



But the story of the Burritos doesn't end with the departure of Parsons. Hillman soldiered on and with new ensembles released two more Burritos album, The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1971 and the live set Last Of The Red Hot Burritos in1972. Hillman then joined Stephen Stills in the country-rock forerunner Manassas. Hillman's side of the story differs at many points with the popular myth that has become fact in many circles. Hillman says that is because certain people in those circles stand to make money off of the "Parsons as originator" story.
Bernie Leadon, who played guitar in the second incarnation of the band and would go on to co-found The Eagles, puts it bluntly: "How can you compete with a dead guy? You just can't. It's a martyr thing."
But Hot Burritos isn't a book slamming Parsons or looking to diminish the contributions he might have made to the music. Hillman and Einarson, give plenty of credit where it is due. What this book sets out to do, and does wonderfully, is give a balanced account of a band that stood at the forefront of a new movement in music. A movement that still has repercussions today be it in the Americana genre and even the mainstream country genre.
Einarsons well-researched approach gives a fantastic overview of the music the band made and of the scene from which it came from and to which it eventually contributed. He was able to speak with nearly all of the principles involved with the obvious exception of Parsons. The book stands as a cornerstone in the written history of the country-rock movement and the eventual Americana genre.

New book analyzes 1969 country-rock album

Bob Proehl, owner of No Radio Records, recently published his first book, "The Gilded Palace of Sin" an analysis of the Flying Burrito Brothers' 1969 album. The book, number 61 in the 33 1/3 series published by Continuum, explores the relationship between Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman in this seminal country-rock band that has influenced generations of musicians.
Proehl thought "Gilded Palace" was worth writing about for a couple of reasons.
"It's always been treated as part of the Gram Parsons Legacy or as an artifact of the Country Rock Movement, and as soon as you move it into those categories, you lose a lot of the particulars that make the album brilliant," he said. "So one of the first things I wanted to do was establish the album as a collaboration between Parsons and Chris Hillman, who is as important as Parsons to the album.
"But also, there's this kind of timelessness or atemporality that attaches itself to country rock in a weird way, and I wanted to establish 'Gilded Palace' as more of a product of a particular moment, a particular scene," he continued.
"So a lot of the book is devoted to sketching out the context that surrounds and informs the album. The album becomes a great way to talk about the influences of things like geography, economics, gender issues and racial politics on music and the way these things can work behind the scenes to have lasting effects on music and art."
Why does he think Parsons and the Burrito Brothers have been so influential on generations of musicians?
"I think there's a spirit of experimentation and inclusion in a lot of what Gram and the Burrito Brothers did that continues to appeal to musicians," he said.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20090207/BOOKS03/902070311/1024/RSS04