“The only guy I ever slept with”: How Gram Parsons almost broke up The Rolling Stones
Though it has lost much of its impetus in the modern day, rock ‘n’ roll was much more than music in its heyday. Session musicians could have twice the technical ability of a rock star and find themselves sidelined from stage-borne dreams. From the days of Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips to those of Johnny Rotten’s acerbic sneer, rock music was about rebellion and revolution. Thus, to be regarded as a rock star on the level of The Rolling Stones, life would demand a few wild ups and downs.
Early in their careers, The Rolling Stones were lucky enough to hire the aspirational producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham. The shrewd youngster marketed the band as the bad boy alternative to The Beatles, which put them in good stead in winning the affection of young fans across the UK. Over time, the group consolidated this image with songs like ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Sympathy For The Devil’.
In February 1967, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were arrested at the latter’s home in West Wittering, Sussex, for possession of drugs. The incident was a pivotal moment in the UK government’s clampdown on rock stars and the dubious example they set for young people. Just a few weeks later, early bandleader Brian Jones was arrested on similar accusations.
These arrests were the first in a series of spanners that threatened to break The Rolling Stones apart at the seams. Miraculously, Jagger and Richards always found a way to overcome challenges and keep The Rolling Stones on the road and in the studio. Following Jones’ tragic death in 1969, the Stones recruited Mick Taylor and entered their most critically lauded spell. Even at this point, financial woes threatened to destabilise the brand when they realised they owed HMRC £250,000 in tax.
Following the release of Sticky Fingers, the group famously decamped to the South of France for a now-legendary period spent in tax exile, during which they wrote and recorded the masterpiece album Exile on Main St. Photographs from this period display some heady days for the band and their entourage of famous friends. Visitors to Richards’ rented castle, Nellcôte, included William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Gram Parsons, John Lennon and Marshall Chess.
Some of the visitors were conducive to creative harmony, while others threatened the Stones’ existence. Throughout the Stones’ exile period, Richards’ heroin addiction spiralled out of control and was compounded by some of his visitors who had similar addiction problems. His friendship with country-rock star Gram Parsons was particularly problematic and ultimately came between Jagger and Richards.
In his 2010 memoir Life, Richards remembered his friendship with Parsons as partly romantic and entirely unique, owing to their shared addictions. “We took this cure in Cheyne Walk, and it was Gram and me in my four-poster bed, the only guy I ever slept with,” he wrote. Beyond the questions this statement asks about Richards’ sexuality, it reveals the extent of the pair’s attachment.
According to groupie Pamela Des Barres, the relationship between Richards and Parsons, which had begun during the late 1960s, rubbed Jagger up the wrong way. Similarly, Chris Hillman of The Flying Burrito Brothers took issue with his bandmate’s hedonistic association with Richards. “Mick was freaked,” Des Barres recalled in Confessions of a Groupie. “He didn’t let on: he’s Mick Jagger, for god’s sake – but I could feel it. It was, ‘Oh, man’. Both sides were waiting for them to get over it. […] Mick was of the same sort of mind that Chris was; he didn’t like the fact that they’d teamed up.”
Further detailing Richards and Parsons’ closeness at the time, Des Barres remembered when Jagger nearly quit the band during a tour in the US. “There was a scene I’ll never forget. It was a tense room: Mick was talking about quitting,” she said. “And over in the corner, sitting on the floor together, kind of hanging and leaning into each other, wearing each other’s clothes, were those two. Gram had Keith’s eye makeup on, Keith had Gram’s cowboy belt and scarves on, Gram had Keith’s bracelets on. It was just incredible.”
The intensity of Parsons and Richards’ relationship petered out with time. However, their heroin addictions prevailed. Against the odds, Richards finally got clean from heroin in the late 1970s and remains active with the Stones to this day. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Parsons. The Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers legend passed away in September 1973 from a morphine overdose.
