Hearts on Fire: The strange tale of Gram Parsons
By Hunter60
With luck on their side, Martin and Kaufman continued towards the desert until too drunk to go any further, they stopped at Cap Rock, a geological landmark and unloaded the hearse. In his account of the incident, Kaufman downplayed the choice of Cap Rock for Gram's cremation. "Later on, people said that Cap Rock was Grams favorite place and Gram wanted to be buried near Cap Rock. The only reasons we stopped at Cap Rock were a) we were too drunk to go any further; and b) it was a large enough place to turn around and make our escape. That's the only significance of Cap Rock. It was a coincidence."
They drug the coffin out into the desert a short ways and were in the process of saying their good-byes to Gram when they saw lights off in the distance. Thinking it was the police, they quickly doused the coffin with gasoline and lit it on fire. After the fire had reduced the coffin to nothing but ash, the pair returned to the hearse and headed back to L.A.
Initially the papers reported that the body theft and burning had been 'ritualistic' in nature and threw a little more fuel to the oft attempted tie between Satanism and Rock and Roll.
Kaufman and Mitchell knew that the police were looking for them and a few days later, they turned themselves in to authorities. Appearing in Municipal Court on Grams birthday, November 5th, 1973, the two were essentially slapped on the wrist with a $300.00 dollar fine for each for stealing the coffin and a total of $708.00 for the damages to the coffin.
According to the law at that time, it was found that a corpse had no intrinsic value and no charges were leveled against the pair for the theft of Parsons body.
Bob Parsons did eventually secure a small amount of Gram Parsons ashes and had them buried at the Garden of Memories cemetery in New Orleans. However it did him little good. A judge in Florida ruled that Gram was a resident of Florida at the time of his death and awarded Bob Parsons nothing from Grams estate. He died a year later from complications from alcoholism.
If you listen to Gram's last album, 'Grievous Angel', released four months after his death, it's hard not to smile at the irony of one of the tracks titled 'Hearts On Fire'. I'd like to think that Gram is smiling about that too.
By Hunter60
With luck on their side, Martin and Kaufman continued towards the desert until too drunk to go any further, they stopped at Cap Rock, a geological landmark and unloaded the hearse. In his account of the incident, Kaufman downplayed the choice of Cap Rock for Gram's cremation. "Later on, people said that Cap Rock was Grams favorite place and Gram wanted to be buried near Cap Rock. The only reasons we stopped at Cap Rock were a) we were too drunk to go any further; and b) it was a large enough place to turn around and make our escape. That's the only significance of Cap Rock. It was a coincidence."
They drug the coffin out into the desert a short ways and were in the process of saying their good-byes to Gram when they saw lights off in the distance. Thinking it was the police, they quickly doused the coffin with gasoline and lit it on fire. After the fire had reduced the coffin to nothing but ash, the pair returned to the hearse and headed back to L.A.
Initially the papers reported that the body theft and burning had been 'ritualistic' in nature and threw a little more fuel to the oft attempted tie between Satanism and Rock and Roll.
Kaufman and Mitchell knew that the police were looking for them and a few days later, they turned themselves in to authorities. Appearing in Municipal Court on Grams birthday, November 5th, 1973, the two were essentially slapped on the wrist with a $300.00 dollar fine for each for stealing the coffin and a total of $708.00 for the damages to the coffin.
According to the law at that time, it was found that a corpse had no intrinsic value and no charges were leveled against the pair for the theft of Parsons body.
Bob Parsons did eventually secure a small amount of Gram Parsons ashes and had them buried at the Garden of Memories cemetery in New Orleans. However it did him little good. A judge in Florida ruled that Gram was a resident of Florida at the time of his death and awarded Bob Parsons nothing from Grams estate. He died a year later from complications from alcoholism.
If you listen to Gram's last album, 'Grievous Angel', released four months after his death, it's hard not to smile at the irony of one of the tracks titled 'Hearts On Fire'. I'd like to think that Gram is smiling about that too.
[FONT=Tahoma]"All I can do is be me ... whoever that is". Bob Dylan [/FONT]
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