Big Mouth Blues: A Conversation with Gram Parsons

On March 3, 1972, taped a lengthy interview with at , with the purpose of getting some background information for ' then-upcoming live album (even though didn't actually play on the recording). It's turned out to far outlive its original design, both since it was an extremely in-depth interview covering ' entire career up to that point, and since there wouldn't be many more opportunities for such interviews with him, as he died a year-and-a-half later. This CD doesn't have the whole interview, but it does have a 69-minute excerpt, in which talks frankly about , , and music. Along the way are some sharp criticisms of some of the people he worked with, including , and producers and , though some praise for is granted as well. He's particularly critical of fellow 's unsuitability, in his view, as players. The sound quality isn't great, and 's questions aren't clearly audible, but this doesn't matter so much, since ' answers are easily understood, and it's a spoken-word disc anyway. A much longer transcript of this interview, incidentally, appears in 's book . ~ Richie Unterberger