Lost Gram Parsons Movie Unearthed
Sci-fi footage exhibited in London...






It’s a bizarre story that could form the basis of its own fanciful film, but the fateful history of futuristic fantasy movie Saturation 70 has long intrigued curious music fans who doubted its existence.

There are a substantial amount of rumours and mysteries that surround the late country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, who died of an overdose aged just 26 in 1973. His all-too-brief career was cut short before he finally gained the recognition he deserved as the catalyst that fused authentic American country music with the cool strut of rock and roll, but in his lifetime he drastically altered the direction of ’60s superstars The Byrds, seriously influenced Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones, and set the template for the likes of The Eagles, who’d dominate the ’70s with the sound he envisioned. Now considered a cult artist, fans have very few tangible remnants of his life. It’s with great interest, therefore, that evidence has finally emerged of a movie project he was apparently involved in, and it’s there for all to see at London’s Horse Hospital this month.

It began around 1969, on the cusp of Parsons’ departure from his group The Flying Burrito Brothers. His friend, writer/producer Tony Foutz, who had just completed work on a film commissioned by and for The Rolling Stones, had conceived a script for a sci-fi film on ecological destruction, to be filmed around a UFO convention that was being held at Giant Rock, in the Mojave desert.  Its plot told of a group of aliens (the Kosmic Kiddies, who also included The Mamas And Papas bombshell Michelle Phillips) who arrive on Earth, intent on saving the planet from the deadly pollution that’s killing its population, and in the process come to the aid of a five-year-old boy (Julian Jones, son of The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones), who’s travelled through time from via a wormhole to a decadent, dystopian Los Angeles.

Updating The Wizard Of Oz for the ’60s counter-culture, the experimental Saturation 70 was co-produced by Douglas Trumbull, whose special effects were recently employed on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and filmed guerrilla-style by British cinematographer Bruce Logan, who’d later direct the special effects on Star Wars and Tron. Its agitprop concepts predated Blade Runner by a decade.

Gram Parsons was due to provide the film’s soundtrack, composing it alongside ex-Byrds colleague Roger McGuinn. However, funding for the film fell through, and eventually the footage was destroyed.

Subsequently, Saturation 70 became part of the Gram Parsons myth, with very few clues as to its existence (The Flying Burrito Brothers are pictured in the Kosmic Kiddie’s decontamination suits on the back of their second album, ‘Burrito Deluxe’, for example).

A new exhibition at The Horse Hospital in London, however, uncovers the fated movie’s background with exclusive production photos, stills, scripts and - most excitingly - the only surviving footage that remains: a five-minute compilation of scenes accompanied by the Burritos’ version of the Stones’ ‘Wild Horses’. Parsons is of course concealed by his suit, but the walls are adorned with unseen images of the artist, alongside portraits of his co-stars Michelle Phillips, Stash Klossowski de Rola (a notorious confidant of Parsons’ and the Stones), and Nudie Cohn, originator of the lavish ‘Nudie’ suits that adorned the Burritos and countless country stars.

The exhibition was launched this weekend with an acoustic set by legendary troubadour Donovan, who became Julian Jones’ stepfather in 1970. Performing on the intimate venue’s makeshift stage, his stripped versions of hits including ‘Catch The Wind’, ‘Sunny Goodge Street’, ‘Sunshine Superman’ and ‘Season Of The Witch’ were interspersed with personal recollections that heightened the spiritual genesis of the movie and the era in which it was created.

“It was a most fulfilling evening for me to perform in the art space of The Horse Hospital,” Donovan later told Clash. “The exhibit resonates with my family, who were so much a part of Saturation 70, the pioneering movie by Tony Foutz that pointed the way forward for so much that would follow in mythic sci-fi.”

An extraordinary insight to a lost ’60s relic and an overdue celebration of the avant-garde work of a group of like-minded creatives, Saturation 70 continues at The Horse Hospital until September 27th.

Saturation 70
Sept 6th - 27th
Monday to Saturday, 12-6pm

The Horse Hospital
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1JD

Words: Simon Harper


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