Customer Reviews

Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin (33 1/3)

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As a long, long time Parsons/Burritos fan, I have read everything there is to read on this subject, so it's not very often some new tid bit shows up that is truly enlightening. This book contains several, but the most revelatory one concerns a rift that developed between Parsons and Bernie Leadon on where to go musically on Burrito Deluxe. Gram adamantly continued to champion soul music as an essential ingredient to the Burritos sound, and Bernie felt it was hurting their commercial potential. Leadon wanted to smooth things out a bit and take them into a more country rock direction, which he ultimately did with great success as a founder of the Eagles. He and Gram deadlocked on the issue, and it was left to Hillman to break the tie. Hillman sided with Leadon, and eventually Gram got sacked from the Burritos after he clearly lost interest in where the Burritos wanted to go. And now, in 2009, we are left with one truly great Burritos album, The Gilded Palace Of Sin, and several more that are of interest, but by no means as earth shattering. And a nifty new little book of insights to help put it all in context. Essential Burrito reading.

This concise book should come with a cd copy of "The Gilded Palace of Sin," then you could listen to and read about an album which, although shunned at the time, proved to be one of the most influential records in popular music's history. Hillman, Parsons, Chris Etheridge and Sneeky Pete Kleinow completely abandoned the popular trends of the late sixties, and looked back to the purity and essence of American Country Music. While looking back, they brought their modern talents to the table: Hillman and Parsons could sing and harmonize like country Everly Brothers, and Sneeky Pete tore the cover off of what was normal pedal steel playing, he created waves, almost symphony like, and then could just as easily play the best sounding honky-tonk music you ever heard. There's rock overtones in their music for sure, but the influences of country, r & b, and gospel bring it all back home. Reading this book will help you to understand just how audacious a project this was, and how brilliantly the Burrito's performed. It's the story of one of those magic moments when artist's follow their visions and lay down something for the ages! Don't miss it.

This book is definitely well written and the author goes out of his way to give Chris Hillman his due whose contributions to the Burrito sound and 'country-rock' in general tend to be overshadowed by the more flamboyant and ultimately tragic story of Gram Parsons. Parsons formative years and his short but significant tenure with the Byrds are described in great details and so is his relationship to the Rolling Stones and Ketih Richards in particular. Because of this I found it very strange that Gram Parsons two solo recordings - for many including myself his greatest achievement- are hardly even mentioned. While we get a short glimpse of Gram's association with Emmylou Harris, Gram's first solo record ,G.P' is not even mentioned, though ,Grievous Angel' is discussed in association with Gram's untimely death.

This is too bad because these records go against the portrait of Gram as a bloated casualty and undisciplined musician, he managed to hire Elvis' TCB band for those sessions.

While I do enjoy the author's slightly sarcastic tone in general - he certainly has the writing chops to pull it off- quite a few of his opinions are highly debatable. According to the author, the Byrds country masterpiece 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' is a mere novelty record by wannabees. He fails to mention that it was also a hugely influential recording that featured killer Nashville players like future Byrd Clarence White and Lloyd Green, who's steel guitar magic rarely was featured on mainstream country records as much as it is here, worth the price of admisson alone! And much is made of Roger Mc Guinn replacing some of Gram Parsons original vocals for either legal or petty reaosns depending on who's story you believe. While the original Gram Parsons vocals are clearly superiour as can be heard on the 'Deluxe' CD issue of the album, the difference is hardly as earth-shattering as the author makes it out to be.

Pretty early on, the author takes a stab at the Eagles, not being a big Eagles fan myself I found this quite funny and in tune with his slightly sarcastic tone throughout. But he keeps on dwelling on the subject time and again and it becomes pretty childish I think. The biggest 'offence' for me though was his take on the Band's great song 'The night they drove old dixie down'. The author makes the bizzare point that it was only the Band's 'old-timey' style of dressing and their 'apolitical' stance that let them 'get away' with the lyrics of the song. I couldn't believe reading this! TNTDODW was written by canadian Robbie Robertson and sung by US southener Levon Helm and it as far away from a right-wing, hawkish attitude as you could ever get. It tells the story of actual PEOPLE suffering in the Civil war and losing all their belongings in the process. The catch being that the story is told from the point of view of the South and it alludes to the vast impact this had on US politics up to this day. Oh boy, I thought that 'music critics' would be able to see through tyring cliches....

As a guitar player, I also would like to point out a mistake on the author's part when discussing Gram Parsons impact on Keith Richards: It's highly possible that Gram introduced Keith to 'Nashville tuning' which is a technique that was widely used on mainstream country records where regular acoustic guitar was 'enhanced' by a second guitar playing the same part but tuned differently by replacing 4 of the 6 strings with thinner gauges that sound an octave higher. The final effect is much like a single 12-string guitar but with greater control and a much more 'shimmering' sound. Listen to the Stones 'Wild Horses' for a great example of it.

But it DEFINITELY is not what's being used on 'Street Fighting Man' like the author claims. Inspired by old blues ercords and also by Ry Cooder, Keith Richards got deeply into 'open tunings' around the time of 'Beggar's Banquet', finally settling mostly on a 'open G'- tuning, something used on most of the classic Stones songs/riffs like 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Brown Sugar', Start me up' and many more. But the author got that mixed up with 'Nashville Tuning' I think - I guess its excusable if you're not a guitar fanatic but anyway I wanted to set the record straight.

What does this all have to do with 'The Gilded Palace of Sin'? Well, that definitely is the problem here as the main subject which should be that specific album takes a backseat in the fractured story of Gram Parsons. The creation, recording and release of the album ARE being described in detail but it becomes merely one of several chapters and hardly much more room is given than say the story of 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' and its reception by the Nashhville mainstream.

To be truthful, the latter point is something I noticed again and again in other books in the '33 1/3' series (all done by different authors): A mini-bio of a band/artist's whole career is attempted but suffers because of the limitation of the book format here. But since so much room is given to the bio it weakens what should be the main course which obviously should be the album that gives the book its title. Although this is mere speculation on my part, I wonder if this is a consequence of the editing process done by the publisher.

Ultimately I found very few of the 20+ entries in the '33 1/3' series I've read so far to be truly great, even though a lot of them are entertaining and sometimes provocative in a good way.

I still recommed the book here for the excellent writing and the interesting details of the story espepcially when it comes to the Hillman/Parsons partnership. And it reads very well despite the reservations I have regarding some of the content.

This slim book gives good essentials to the great Burrito myth, how it came together and came apart. In many ways a better take than the "Hot Burritos" book that is out now - a fairer take than that Gram bashing tome.

This 331/3 one though, is slightly off-putting by the author's seeming distaste for country rock as a genre, and for the Burritos' legacy (the Eagles)