Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons (Fong-Torres, Ben)

Used. Very Good. Cover has some scrapes and scuffs. Inside pages are clean. Price sticker on front.

Paperback. Pocket Books (1991).

Synopsis:

He lived hard, died young and never had a hit record. But nearly twenty years after his death, the music and style of Gram Parsons echo through the charts, in the songs of Emmylou Harris, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, Dwight Yoakam, and The Black Crowes. Who was Gram Parsons? The answers - and the helter-skelter life - are here, in this first major biography of the poor little rich kid who started a revolution in country-rock fusion and burned out in the California desert at the age of twenty-six, his body filled with drugs and alcohol. His friends stole his casket and took it to Joshua Tree Monument, where they torched it in the desert sands. It was a bizarre and sad end to an incredible career, but Parson's music and influence live on.

From the Publisher:

"The cream of the crop [of rock books] ... Fong-Torres writes a fan's appreciation of Parsons that does not skimp on the harsh truth." -Steve Morse, THE BOSTON GLOBE

"A remarkable job of tracking the life of Mr. Parsons... The writing is clear and the tales ring true as he follows a seminal figure of country rock from his birth into a citrus-moneyed family in Winter Haven, Florida, to his drug-related death in the high desert town of Joshua Tree, California." --ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

"A saddening piece of reading, but one which members of Parsons' large cult will find essential."

-MUSICIAN magazine

"The first clear picture of a musical genius." --SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE (Indiana)