Well, GP fans, for your reading pleasure, the last of Brian's Burrito Brothers reminiscences...<

Many thanks to all those who have received my long GP/FBB posts so eagerly. I wish I had more material to share, but this last segment is pretty much it. Like many of us who grew up in the 60's, my memory looks more like Swiss cheese than solid titanium alloy, and I guess I'm lucky to be able to relate the few anecdotes I can remember. This segment will also probably be part of Jason's book. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have or trade noteson GP/FBB or whatever- email me at fallendevil@cabocasa.com if you'd like. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy this final segment.

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The Last Real Burrito

I wish I could say I was completely loyal to the Burritos and Gram Parsons throughout the years, but it would be untrue. There was a long stretch after Gram died that I didn't listen to the Burritos or Gram at all. I did keep following country-rock in general, and I've always been an Emmylou Harris fan, but after pop culture moved along (I'm not using the term "evolved," because a strong case can be made that it actually "devolved.") and music like disco and punk became dominant, Gram's Cosmic American Music just slipped out of my life. Some of my favorite San Francisco bands like The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver and the Starship (ex-Airplane) et al- were still gigging, but 60's-based stuff seemed really out of touch with the cultural and social changes the United States was going through.

Oddly enough it took a bunch of imposters and one real Burrito to rekindle my love of Cosmic American Music. Sometime in the late 80's our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, ran a tiny ad for the Sweetwater Saloon in Mill Valley that read "One night only! Direct from L.A.! The Flying Burrito Brothers!" My first thought was, "Gee, how did they re-animate Gram?" But I wanted to see the show, intregued by who would have the balls to pass themselves off as the Burritos fifteen years after Gram Parsons died. By this time Chris Hillman had his own strong solo career, and I don't know what happened to the others, but I strongly suspected there wouldn't be too many real Burritos at the Sweetwater...

The Sweetwater is indeed a sweet Mill Valley bar in Marin County, a snug, wooded little area North of San Franciso about 20 minutes. Lots of musicians live in the hills nearby, and the Sweetwater has a long and rich history of presenting talented artists in a relaxed club setting. I once missed a free performance by Van Morrison, for example, who apparently played for a couple of hours after simply calling the Sweetwater and asking if they wanted a "little piano entertainment" that evening. It's an old fashioned pubby place, all dark wood and gilt beer mirrors, lots of stuff hanging on the walls, just the sort of place you'd snuggle into on a cold and rainy evening. But it is very small- 120 people would pack the Sweetwater to the rafters, if you could get that many inside at all.

I was a little late getting to Marin, and the "non-Burritos" were already playing by the time I opened the door and pushed inside the Sweetwater. The club was packed, every table taken, lots of folks standing around the long bar, around the walls and in the aisle. There were plenty of musicians, some of whom I knew, and it was an attentive crowd. Standing far back from the stage, I tried to identify the players. I saw Sneaky Pete right away. His steel had been crammed against the stage wall and so far to the left that his elbow was almost in the aisle that led to the bathrooms in the back. He was literally trapped behind his instrument, and it must have been claustrophobic as hell. I wondered what it felt like for Pete, who once had played venues where the stage was the size of the whole Sweetwater itself.

I didn't recognize any of the other musicians, but it was the standard lineup of bass, steel, drums, two guitars, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. The lead singer/rhythm guitarist was a big guy, with blowdried salt-'n-pepper overstyled hair and neatly trimmed beard, loudly patterned boots, the whole standard "I-are-a-country-rocker" gaudy costume. Can't remember much about the others, except the bass player had a better voice than the lead singer when they let him sing some numbers. I'm sure they introduced themselves, but I can't recall anyone except for Sneaky Pete Kleinow.

I've always thought that Pete is the world's best pedal steel guitar player. I just haven't heard anyone else as innovative and original. Many people have no idea how fiendishly complicated pedal steel guitars are on a technical level, and how difficult it is to play them at all, let alone as brilliantly as he does. Double-neck Emmons steels can have multiple foot pedals and knee levers, each one lowering or raising one specific string a specific partial note. The instrument has return springs, bellcranks, lots of tiny set screws for string tuning, assorted push & pull rods, pedal racks, electronics and pickups, etc. Both your hands are busy doing complicated and precise movements and your feet and knees are flying all over the place. Playing a 6-string guitar is relatively easy by comparison.

The non-Burritos at the Sweetwater played well, I do remember that, but I also remember getting fairly pissed off when the fancy-dan lead singer introduced songs like Sin City, Christine's Tune, Wheels, Juanita and Hot Burrito #2 as being from "our first album..." Excuse me fellas, they might have been from Sneaky Pete's first album as a Burrito, but you were all probably working as busboys or sulking in 7th grade detention when the unstable genius of Gram Parsons brewed up a musically alchemical stew that became The Gilded Palace of Sin. Yeah, I could get pretty huffy and self-rightous...

The non-Burritos had the the Gilded Palace of Sin album songs down note-for-note, and I suppose if you'd never heard the originals you'd think these guys were an ok country-rock band. Except, I'd heard the origins of Cosmic American Music being created, sometimes painfully, sometimes transcendentally, always quirkily. I'd seen the menace, fire, and depth in Gram Parson's eyes, and I'd experienced firsthand the conflicting relationships the real Flying Burrito Brothers shared with each other. These guys at the Sweetwater were simply following dance-lesson footprints that Gram had painted on the floor.

But Sneaky Pete... ah, yes, Sneaky Pete. From the first verse of the first song there was no doubt that Pete still had it. Trapped in his eight-square-feet of working space, Pete took his arrngements and yanked them around like taffey, sometimes spidery and elongated, sometimes compact and fat. He spun out snakey, tortured, bone-chilling riffs on the faster up-tempo numbers. His steel buzzed, screamed and howled, the notes expanding and resonating, reached out like malicious ghostly sonic tendrils caressing the reptile part of my brain. On slower songs he would play softly, sweetly, with a great deal of taste and restraint, the licks superbly complementing the songs and the other players. Sneaky Pete was The Last Real Burrito that night, and I think most of us in the crowd would have paid the price of admission just to hear him. I've often thought that his playing had the potential to be some of the most apocalyptic instrumental music on the planet. Even now when I hear it trapped on vinyl, a pale imitation of the real experience, it sets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and gives me the willies. Perhaps he's interpreting messages from another dimension and feeding them to us in a form we can absorb pleasurably, but not fully understand.

Pete would get ovations after many solos, and you could see that the crowd was really in awe of the licks this man was laying down. But then I had to pee, and at the Sweetwater, having to pee meant running the gauntlet of a tiny aisle to the left of the stage, in effect almost having to get on stage to access the bathrooms in back of the stage. Making things more complicated was the fact drunks or groupies would often just hang out in this little space, or there would be a line of people trying to get into the bathrooms and you'd be right there in the stage lights, being stared at by everyone else in the bar, so you had to try and squeeze by or wait until your turn came up... you avoided having to pee at the Sweetwater, but nature was calling me.

I got stuck about a foot away from Sneaky Pete while he was playing. The line had stopped dead for some reason, the band was cranking out song after song, and I was standing right next to Pete in the hot, bright stage lights. I was so close I could have touched his fingerpicks and he never would have noticed. But I didn't have a clue about what to do. Should I not look at him? Could I look at him? Maybe a sideways glance once in a while? Could I watch his feet and knees push the pedals, but not look at his face? Maybe just watch his hands? I mean, he was an artist I was absolutely in awe of, and he was performing, and it wasn't like approaching him in the parking lot for a casual conversation. I looked at all the parts of his instrument, then his feet, then his hands, then the strings, and finally over at his face and he looked right back at me. He smiled a little road-weary smile and shrugged his shoulders as if to say"what can you do?" and then the line moved forward and that was that.

Hearing the old songs and especially Sneaky Pete's stunning playing, the last remnant of something so special, energized me. I got out my International Submarine Band, Byrds, Burrito and GP albums and started listening to them again. They sounded so fresh and new to me after all that time. They had just as much appeal as when I had actually seen the band and Gram live. Most importantly it was crystal-clear that the material was important from a historical perspective as well as in a musical sense, much more important than I had realized when I had first been attracted to it and seduced by it. I knew how incredibly lucky I was to have been present at some of the creation, to have seen and heard the original lineup, to have simply been in the same room with Gram Parsons, Sneaky Pete, Chris Hillman, and the rest of the boys when they were making music and history together.

Brian Day October 2, 2000