Gram Parsons and the Fire at Cap Rock

One of the strangest true stories in rock and roll ended right here in the park. Gram Parsons was a gifted young musician who did more than almost anyone to blend country music with rock. He played briefly with the Byrds, helped shape their landmark album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, co founded the Flying Burrito Brothers, and mentored a young singer named Emmylou Harris.

He was also deeply in love with the desert around Joshua Tree, where he came to unwind and search the sky for flying saucers. On September nineteenth, nineteen seventy-three, Parsons died at the Joshua Tree Inn in room number eight from a lethal mix of morphine and alcohol. He was only twenty-six years old.

What happened next has become legend. Parsons and his road manager, Phil Kaufman, had made a pact that whoever died first, the other would take the body out to Joshua Tree and cremate it. So Kaufman and a friend drove a borrowed hearse to the Los Angeles airport, talked their way into taking possession of the coffin bound for a funeral, hauled it out to a formation called Cap Rock, and set it alight with gasoline under the desert stars.

Because no law at the time actually forbade stealing a corpse, Kaufman was only fined a few hundred dollars for taking the coffin. Fans still leave notes and offerings at Cap Rock to this day.