The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969)

The Gilded Palace of Sin is the debut studio album by American country rock band The Flying Burrito Brothers, released on February 6, 1969, by A&M Records. It continued Gram Parsons' and Chris Hillman's work in modern country music, fusing traditional styles such as folk and country with other forms of popular music including gospel, soul, and psychedelic rock.

Although it was not a commercial success, peaking at number 164 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, The Gilded Palace of Sin has been widely regarded as an important album in the development of 1970s rock. It was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). It was ranked number 192 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2012 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", moved down to number 462 in the 2020 edition. It maintained the same placement in the 2023 small revision.

Background

We went down to Melrose Avenue to see the Flying Burritos. [...] There were odd things going around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. This mystical flirtation with the idea of "sin"—this sense that it was possible to go "too far," and that many people were doing it—was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full.

After spearheading the Byrds' foray into country music with the influential Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, Gram Parsons fell out with the band when he refused to accompany them on a tour of South Africa in 1968. Two months later bassist Chris Hillman left the Byrds as well and joined Parsons to form the Flying Burrito Brothers. As stated in the documentary Beyond Nashville, "Gram Parsons was passionate about country music's simple poetry. He was equally passionate about rock music. At a time when they were poles apart, he alone thought they belonged together."

Recording and composition

The Gilded Palace of Sin was recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood and produced by Larry Marks with Henry Lewy engineering. The sessions featured a variety of drummers. With harmonies that reveal the influences of the Everly Brothers and the Louvin Brothers, the songs on the Burritos' debut attempt to marry country music with the soul sound associated with Otis Redding and the Stax-Volt label, and singers such as Percy Sledge.

Another significant characteristic of the album is "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow's unorthodox steel guitar playing, which provides an almost continuous commentary throughout some of the songs. As guitarist Bernie Leadon (who wasn't a member of the band yet when this LP was recorded and released) explains to Meyer in Twenty Thousand Roads, "Sneaky uniquely played an eight-string Fender cable pull steel tuned to B6 instead of the more common C6. He played usually more jazz or swing tuning in a style that most other players use an E9 tuning for. His rationale was: B is the 'five chord,' or dominant chord, to the key of E. This resulted in absolutely-to-Pete steel licks. And no one else thinks like him anyway." Kleinow also utilized a fuzzbox and played the instrument through a rotating Hammond Leslie amplifier, adding a psychedelic touch to several songs.