The International Submarine Band
Safe at Home

If it's true that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, if it's true that love and hate stem from the same feeling, if it's true that one hates when one perceives that loving will lead to suffering, then I hate Gram Parsons.

I hate him for how he died and I hate him for how he lived. I hate him because he stole the girl, back in the day, from David Crosby, not exactly an Adonis. I hate him because he is representative, or perhaps he is precisely the emblem of the disconnect between talent and success: so great the former, so little - at least while alive - the latter. I hate him because his pursuit of success in Los Angeles, chasing record companies and aspiring actresses, exhausted the patience of the rhythm section of his band, the International Submarine Band, which decided to return to the East Side to form a new band: the Flying Burrito Brothers. And Gram? Not long after, with the Byrds experience over, he formed a new band and called it what? Flying Burrito Brothers, of course, "forcing" his former friends of the time to add "East" to their name, all in the name of friendship.

I detest him because, back then, he took Chris Hillman from Roger McGuinn, and the Byrds had no more masterpieces; because he had conflicts and love-hate friendships throughout his career, even with the good Clarence White, at whose funeral he sang "In My Darkest Hour" for him. I hate him because he wasted time making Keith Richards fall in love with him and his musical and compositional style, time in which he could have worked on further albums of his own, and thus here we have only a handful of original albums and a whole confusing series of outtake collections, leftovers, sessions, or we find ourselves dealing with tribute albums, anthologies with one single unreleased track, etc., all stuff that you have to brace yourself for with a pinch of salt, for fear of inhaling the noxious air of posthumous exploitation.

I hate him because first he bickers with McGuinn post "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" and then he takes him to Stonehenge at Keith Richards' house like an old buddy. I hate him because he always and only made messes, and when he didn't make them, well, the messes found their way to him, like when he was on stage the day the Summer Of Love ended.

It's 1967 and the International Submarine Band no longer exists. The two less famed quarters fly toward the Atlantic. A few days after the split comes the twist: a girl with ambitions in the music world notices the ISB and proposes it to her boyfriend, and who was that precisely? A certain Lee Hazlewood, one of the absolute fathers of modern country, as well as a label owner then. Time is tight, and it is necessary to put back together the lineup around the survivors Parsons and John Nuese, the rock guitarist who first encouraged Gram to approach country, and who disappeared from the music world after this album (usually friends who make it help those who don't, but only usually). Session men arrive, among them Jon Corneal and Chris Ethridge who will be in the Burritos. Just to give you further proof of what was the common denominator of Parsons’ life, even during the making of this material we can witness all kinds of changes. Where there is the painful angel there is no peace.

Obviously, as per tradition for Gram, who searches for and finds trouble, the album already nice and ready in December does not come out. And when does it see the light of day? In the spring of '68, when Gram is already under contract with the Byrds and is working on "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo," leaving the ISB without a leader, vocalist, chance to promote their own album and change their lives in the way every musician dreams of.

"Safe At Home" is, very likely, the first true country rock album in history. An album that combines revamped country classics with a couple of Johnny Cash tracks, at the beginning of his beautiful rock ‘n’ roller career by day and country man by night. To seal it, four Parsons compositions, starting with the opener "Blue Eyes" in which, even without the beauty of Hillman's vocal harmonies or, even better, Hammilou Harris, it is already possible to discern what musical ingredients have changed compared to the tradition and how they have done so, starting with a slide guitar that travels virtually on its own, and some traces of real rock in the short solo. It is the first taste of Parsons' cosmic American music, and Hazlewood's "cowboy psychedelia," which leaves his girlfriend appearing in the credits under "production."

The immersion of the submarine band into this new liquid is gradual: in the following "I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known" guitars and piano follow rock standards, and even Parsons has flashes of rock star interpretation "temporarily lent" to country. A thundering and incessant drum in the medley "Folsom Prison Blues/That's All Right, Mama"; inserts of pure rock, original guitar solos even to this day ("I Still Miss Someone" among them all), mid-tempos and ballads that seem distorted, estranged, bewildered, first among all "Miller's Cave": there had never been this much air in a country song before, but soon the rodeo lovefest will arrive.

"Luxury Liner" is the A-side of his first 45 single, a bluegrass stripped of banjo that accelerates three times in the first ten seconds. "Strong Boy" also has a clamor and a desire to play loud that had never been heard before in a cowboy band.

From that moment on, simply, more and better than with the undoubtedly deserving "John Wesley Harding," we can affirm that country rock was born for what it is in the common sense. It's just that this band did not survive, not even scraping by like the Flying Burrito Brothers did, the chaotic restlessness of its leader.

The submarine band ended up forever on the seabed of those waters. And Gram Parsons forever was the angel who to fly higher plunges everything and everyone down.

That's why I hate him, unable to remain indifferent to him.