Post by Graveyardbride on Sept 12, 2015 8:42:05 GMT -5
Room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn
Through the curves of the Morongo Valley pass in San Bernardino County, Calif., and across a desert that shifts from a sandy void to a land dotted with Seussian plants, there’s the Joshua Tree Inn. It’s a normal motel on the side of a highway, albeit one washed in a buzzing ochre light that comes in by sundown. It is also haunted, some say, by the ghost of Gram Parsons. The Country Music legend died in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn on September 19, 1973, succumbing to a stupendous amount of drugs and alcohol curdling inside his broken system. The room where he died rents just like any other single-bed unit in any other motel, for $109 a night. (This sort of necro-tourism is common: One can stay in Room 16 of L’Hotel in Paris, where Oscar Wilde lost his battle with the wallpaper, or rent Bungalow No. 3 at the Chateau Marmont, where John Belushi lost his battle with speedballs.) “It’s definitely our most popular room,” said the man at the front desk, walking to Room 8 on an evening last month. “It’s amazing how much it means to people – people of all ages, really. Some of the people weren’t even born when Gram died here.”
Parsons, born Ingram Cecil Connor III on November 5, 1946, in Winter Haven, Florida, lived in Waycross, Georgia, until age 12 when his father committed suicide. He was only 26 when he died and not yet widely known because he didn’t become the godfather of alt-country until after his death. He was, however, Country’s greatest emissary to Rock’s louche titans: His friendship with Keith Richards led to the band’s embrace of Country and Western style (e.g., “Honky Tonk Woman,” “Dead Flowers,” “Sweet Virginia”). He was with the band during the Exile on Main Street sessions, those famously lush days in a chateau in the South of France, until Anita Pallenberg kicked him out because he was constantly drunk and high. He was an integral member of The Byrds, pushing the band members to go full-outlaw on their greatest album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. He made country-fried jangle pop in the Flying Burrito Brothers and did the world a favor by discovering Emmylou Harris.
Parsons died during an interim period between his second solo album, Return of the Grievous Angel, and the beginning of a European tour. While those who knew him admitted he “lived hard,” drinking heavily at times and allegedly using heroin, friends and business associates were shocked when they learned of his death. A few of his friends were even more shocked when they learned his parents planned to transport Gram’s body to New Orleans for burial, knowing that wasn’t what the singer/songwriter/guitarist had wanted. So, they proceeded to steal the casket containing his corpse from Los Angeles International Airport, built a bonfire in the desert near Joshua Tree and cremated Gram’s body in accordance with his wishes.
Outside Room 8, there’s a small memorial to Parsons, a guitar-shaped stone, the base of which is littered with small tokens: prayer offerings, beer bottles, string tied into bows, candles, incense, guitar picks, metal crucifixes, an animal skull, vinyl records, violin bows, a stone angel, warped bark, cowboy boots, cigarette butts and a big hunk of sage that when lit launches a heady plume into the air, stuck there without wind. The room is small and stuffed everywhere with memorabilia: posters for Byrds gigs, guitar picks with little messages on them, a fan-made painting of Parsons with hair sun-streaked and shoulder-length, stickers on the walls. And there’s a big mirror that was in the room when Parsons died, a mirror in which he saw himself for the last time.
And on one table there’s a guest book, where those who have stayed in Room 8 can write a note or share a memory. Some of the notes are brutally gorgeous, not unlike the music. “Gram,” reads a note from earlier in the month, “it’s good to be back in Room 8. Five years ago I almost died here. You kept me company in the early morning hours while I recovered and watched the sunrise & listened to the mourning doves.”
Sources: Nate Freeman, The New York Times Style Magazine, September 10, 2015, and Patrick Sullivan, Rolling Stone, October 25, 1973.
