Die Young and Have a Good-Looking Corpse

Jordie Lane refuses to be put in a box. After all, there is something irresistible about keeping your creative options open. 

Now in Melbourne, the 27 year-old Australian singer-songwriter has put his writing life in Los Angeles on hold to play legendary musician Gram Parsons in Grievous Angel: The Legend of Gram Parsons.

Playing Parsons is close to Lane’s heart. Describing the opportunity as “an honour and privilege” Lane has taken inspiration from Parson’s refusal to let “musical stereotypes get in the way of making good music”.

Not only is Lane a year older than Gram Parson was when he overdosed on morphine and tequila, but much of his latest album was written in Room 8 of the hotel at the edge of the Mojave Desert, where Parsons died.

Gram Parsons’ life and death reads like a Greek tragedy. His father committed suicide when Gram was 12 years old, and his mother drank herself to death five years later. His stepfather, Bob Parsons, had Gram's younger sister, Avis, committed to a mental institution, and she was later killed in a boat crash. Bob died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Parsons was not a star in his lifetime, but the bizarre theft and burning of his body in the desert by his manager Phil Kaufmann made him an overnight sensation. It’s an angle that annoys Lane, but it's unavoidably part of the story.  Continue reading

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