\n<\/p>\n
After he was adopted by his mother\u2019s next husband, Bob Parsons, the musician\u2019s teen years were spent gusting in and out of schools \u2014 a North Florida prep academy; a semester at Harvard \u2014 and, even more disruptively, bands. Parsons was a social leap-frogger, unashamedly quick to move on, blissfully ignorant of the messes left in his wake.<\/p>\n
He quit one group he fronted, the psychedelic- and country-influenced International Submarine Band, right before its only record was released. The Byrds had just fired David Crosby, and Parsons somehow convinced them that he would be a drama-free replacement, content to just hang in the background. Little did they know he was about to hijack the band, steer it in an unexpectedly traditional country direction and help create a 1968 record that still has a rabid cult audience to this day, \u201cSweetheart of the Rodeo.\u201d Roger McGuinn put it memorably, and saltily: \u201cHe turned out to be a monster in sheep\u2019s clothing. And he exploded out of that sheep\u2019s clothing. God! It\u2019s George Jones in a sequin suit!\u201d<\/p>\n
Parsons, ever in a hurry, was soon gone, but not before he released his first classic song: \u201cHickory Wind,\u201d<\/a> co-written with the Submarine Band\u2019s Bob Buchanan. No matter who\u2019s singing it \u2014 Parsons\u2019s late-career duet partner Emmylou Harris; Gillian Welch; some random guy on YouTube \u2014 it\u2019s a stunner, but there\u2019s a particularly devastating power to Parsons\u2019s delivery. He sounds like a precocious child doing an impression of an adult, exaggerating the depths of his twangy baritone. There\u2019s an unshakable pathos to the performance, too, a pure but impossible yearning to return to a gone-too-soon Eden of childhood. \u201cI started out younger, at most everything,\u201d Parsons sings at the beginning of the second verse, the \u201cmost\u201d delivering the bulk of the devastation \u2014 a concession that there are still a few unspoken ways in which we start out old.<\/p>\n In a time of cultural division, Parsons had a lofty and idealistic aim for his union of country and rock. He wanted, as Fong-Torres wrote, to \u201cchampion the idea of hippies playing country music for a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll audience.\u201d When the Byrds were invited to play the Grand Ole Opry in March 1968, Parsons pulled a stunt that briefly united country fans and hippies, because it made everyone<\/em> mad at him: Instead of playing a rehearsed cover, he led the band into playing the as-yet-unreleased \u201cHickory Wind.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back, I now view that night as a missed warning,\u201d Chris Hillman of the Byrds wrote in his recent autobiography. \u201cI should have known that night what I was in for, working with an impulsive guy like Parsons.\u201d And yet, even Hillman couldn\u2019t resist Parsons\u2019s pull. They started a new band together, the Flying Burrito Brothers, within the year.<\/p>\n Hillman, for a moment, was a stabilizing collaborator: While sharing a house in Reseda, they wrote the original material that would appear on the group\u2019s brilliant debut album, \u201cThe Gilded Palace of Sin,\u201d<\/a> somewhat shoddily recorded but featuring some of Parsons\u2019s most impassioned singing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n