How Gram Parsons Steered the Rolling Stones Toward Country Music

In the late 1960s, the Rolling Stones were already flirting with Americana—think “Lady Jane” or “Dear Doctor”—but it wasn’t until Keith Richards struck up a genuine friendship with Gram Parsons that the band fully absorbed country music’s bones. Parsons, fresh from the International Submarine Band and headed toward the Flying Burrito Brothers, basically became the Stones’ informal Nashville consultant. He introduced Keith to Bakersfield country, Buck Owens, and the mournful cry of pedal steel, which completely changed how the guitar player thought about open tunings and chord voicings.

That crash course in honky-tonk and heartbreak directly spilled onto Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers. The steel guitar work on “Country Honk” (the loose, country version of “Honky Tonk Women”) came from a Parsons-influenced mindset. Even more telling is the piano sound on those records: that slightly out-of-tune, wooden honky-tonk thump on “Wild Horses” and “Dead Flowers” wasn’t an accident—it was the Stones deliberately chasing the Gram Parsons aesthetic. Mick Jagger even adopted a fake Southern drawl on some verses, and the band recorded at Muscle Shoals for Sticky Fingers, partly because Parsons had talked up Southern studios.

They didn’t go full country—they never were going to—but Parsons gave them permission to be sentimental and twangy without losing their edge. Keith later admitted Gram taught him more about country music than anyone else. The seeds of Exile on Main St.—the gospel, the slide guitar, the loose jam feel—were planted right there in those late-night jams with Gram at Keith’s Redlands estate.