In 1972 Gram Parsons signed a recording contract with Reprise Records. At the time, Parsons saw singer Emmylou Harris performing at a Washington D.C folk club. Parsons hired Harris and the core of Elvis Presley's TCB Band with James Burton, Ronnie Tutt and Glenn Hardin for the recording of his solo debut album, GP. In the spring Parsons formed his road band, The Fallen Angels and started a tour. In the summer of 1973, Gram Parsons' Topanga Canyon home burned to the ground, the result of a stray cigarette. Nearly all of his possessions were destroyed with the fire. Following the incident, Parsons left his wife and moved into a spare room in Phil Kaufman's house. While not recording, he frequently hung out and jammed with country rockers Quacky Duck and His Barnyard Friends. At the time, Parsons took the role of producer and recorded new songs with his road band. He then grouped again the musicians he used for his GP album, and called for a new set of sessions in Los Angeles in the late summer. For the recording of "Return of the Grievous Angel", Eagleslead guitaristBernie Leadon joined in, while Al Perkins played steel guitar and Byron Berline the fiddle. Parsons sang the lead, while Harris joined in harmony.
Content
Parsons was inspired to write a song by Boston poet Tom S. Brown, who gave him his composition entitled "Return of the Grievous Angel". Brown wrote the lyrics with Parsons on his mind to sing them. Parsons revised the poem and adapted it for the song. Recurrent in Parsons compositions, the themes of the song include instances of wandering, homesickness and experiences with road life. The song depicts a truck traveling through the United States, with the name of the unit being the "Grievous Angel". The singer tells "sweet Annie Rich" of his experiences on the journey, and his ultimate decision to return home based on his gained wisdom. It contains references to Presley as "the king" who wore "on his head an amphetamine crown" and his change of musical scene to Las Vegas. Parsons states that " talked about unbuckling that old bible belt and lighted out for some desert town". The music style included a mixture of folk revival and traditional country music. During the musical breaks, the song is led to a temporary harmony and melodic cadence, which progressively is restored to a four-measure phrase.
Release
"Return of the Grievous Angel" became the opening song of Parson's second and last album Grievous Angel. In 1982, the song was reissued as a single, featuring "Hearts on Fire" on the B-side by Warner Bros. Records. Mojo called the song "terrifically cinematic", a "country rock standard". BBC Radio stated that the song offered the casual listener "an easier way into modern country". Allmusic called the song a "beautiful and marvelously literate distillation of Parsons' musical style and the myth he created for himself". Meanwhile, it praised Brown's writing, determining that " an almost cinematic feel to his broad, sweeping narrative and lending a perspective that's impressionistic while still maintaining a firm grasp of the iconography of classic country music". The A.V. Club described its content as "surrealistic imagery ... swooning romanticism and playful sincerity that establishes a hypnotically dreamy mood". Popmatters felt that the song had "the right amount of self-mythologizing to make Parsons seem like his place in the pantheon had always been assured". In 1999 it was covered by Lucinda Williams with the participation of David Crosby for .
