Gary James' Interview With
The Byrds' and The Flying Burrito Brothers'
Gene Parsons



He was a member of The Byrds from 1968 to 1972 and member of The Flying Burrito Brothers. He's a multi-instrumentalist who plays drums, guitar, banjo and harmonica. And, along with Clarence White, invented the String Bender. Gene Parsons is his name and he talked to us about his musical career and the String Bender.

Q - Gene, who's buying this String Bender device of yours? Famous guitarists? Are you able to name "names"?

A - Well, I mean I have had some pretty famous people purchase these things, like Jimmy Page and others. I don't keep track of names very well, especially at 80 years old. But mostly it's professional or semi-professional folks are playing out in the field, working on weekends. A few touring musicians. A few collectors. A few wanna-be musicians and some closet musicians. They send me their guitars from all over the world and of course all over the United States, and I install String Benders for 'em and send 'em back.

Q - How expensive is this String Bender? Would Jimmy Page's String Bender be more expensive?

A - I've got a set price. All my supplies and tooling have gone up, up, up. The prices now: the Standard Long Stroke B String Bender is $2,050 installed, and of course there's return shipping. The Double Bender is $2,739. The Acoustic Bender is $2,739.

Q - For a guy like Jimmy Page that's no problem.

A - No, for someone like that I wish it could be less money, but I have to actually be able to pay the bills and the insurance and the tooling and pay myself a little bit of a stipend too to keep going. I realize it's a bit of a haul for the average Joe out there that many times the guitar they're playing didn't cost them as much as the String Bender does. I've had nothing but good reports. Once they get the String Bender and incorporate it into their style they're happy they did it.

Q - And you handcraft each one?

A - I do.

Q - Why wouldn't you hire a small group of people to help you out?

A - I've done that in the past and I've kept this business pretty small. It's just at my age I am more comfortable just working alone in my tiny, little shop. I've even had some of the parts made mass production, but I don't do that many to warrant having a thousand of these things turned out every few months. So, I have the shop set up with basically old style machine techniques, turret lathes, manual lathes, and a lot of turret style tooling which if you're familiar with machine style practice you'd know what that was. So, I have jigs and so forth for the amount of these things that I do, which is probably around a hundred a year or so, maybe less. It's funny how the patterns go. I'm happy just to do 'em myself. I make all the parts. Do a run of fifty or a hundred and they're good for the year. The other aspect of that is I don't like to ride on my name so much, but the instruments will gain value undoubtedly because I've personally installed them. And so, that's one aspect of the installation that works to the musician's benefit.

Q - You and Clarence White have this name String Bender trademarked. Is that the same as saying you own the patent on it?

A - No. Completely different. The original patent had my name on it 'cause I'm the inventor, Clarence is on it 'cause it was invented for him, he invented the style of playing and also our manager, Eddie Tickner was on the original patent. That was patented in 1976. Patents are only good for twenty-one years. So, there have been subsequent patents taken on this, but mostly those have gone public domain at this point. What we do have that we maintain is a trademark, String Bender.

Q - So then, other people are making String Benders?

A - There's people out there doing exact copies, they're trying to do exact copies, but of course I would have to say that mine are much higher quality and put together with a lot more care, I think. But, there are people out there doing that. There's also some similar devices, one which I designed for the Fender Company called the Fender B Bender, which is now the Hip Shot Parsons Green String Bender. Fender used to do it and put it in their guitars, but they stopped. They licensed it to the Hip Shot Company and they build a kit. It's sort of an entry level String Bender that's a little more economical and it can be installed fairly easily. Of course there's some companies, as far as the function of it, like I said, it's an entry level. It's not a Long Stroke. It probably doesn't work as smooth as Parsons White, but it's a very good entry level String Bender that a musician on a budget can afford.

Q - Could you live anywhere doing what you're doing? Do you have to live in Casper, California to have this String Bender business? I take it Casper isn't too far from L.A.

A - It's quite a ways from L.A. Thank God! It's way up in the northern part of the state. It's on the coast about one hundred, seventy miles north of San Francisco.

Q - You told one interviewer you were writing your autobiography. Are you still doing that?

A - I'm trying to finish it up. It's mostly written. We're in the editing process right now. It's probably going to be awhile yet before it's released. I found the writing is the easy part. It's the editing and the compiling and the structuring of the book that seems to be the most difficult. So, we're in that part of the process right now.

Q - You probably have a lot of stories in that book of yours and somebody is telling you to trim it down.

A - Yeah. I have several people and one is a professional editor. He's been helping me with that.

Q - I see you played on records by Arlo Guthrie, The Everly Brothers and Randy Newman. So, that means at one point you were a studio musician?

A - When I lived in Hollywood I was. I was touring with The Byrds and also after that touring with The Burritos, although I lived up here when I was touring with The Burritos. I wasn't doing that much studio work in Hollywood. But when I was with The Byrds and before being in The Byrds I did quite a bit of studio work around Hollywood.

Q - You were in a house band called Nashville West.

A - Yes.

Q - At a club called Club Nashville West. Did you have to play seven nights a week, four to five sets a night?

A - We played seven nights a week, five sets a night and we did a double session on Sunday. We'd come in after lunch and play until dinner time, take some time off for dinner and then we'd go back and play from nine 'til two in the morning.

Q - That kind of situation doesn't exist for any bands today.

A - You know, it's sad, but true. There was a time when in many towns all over the Unites States on a Saturday night you could go down the street in one part of town and there might be half a dozen bands playing, good bands, and that doesn't exist anymore. It's really too bad.

Q - And that's probably how you got so good as a drummer, a banjo player, a guitarist and a steel pedal player when you're in a situation like that.

A - Well, yeah. I kind of outlined that process in the book. I started out with string instruments, banjo and guitar. I got kind of roped into doing, playing bass and drums by my good, dear departed friend Gib Guilbeau. I ended up playing drums more than any other instrument for quite awhile, even though I started playing pedal steel back in the '60s. I did a lot of sessions where I played stringed instruments, but mostly I played drums.

Q - How would your life have been different had you not met Clarence White in Nashville West? Do you ever think about that?

A - It would have been different for certain. Maybe not as wonderful a life as I've had. I have no idea. I know when I was a kid I loved music, but I never thought I would be a professional musician. Never had any aspirations of being a professional musician. I got kind of pulled into it by Gib Guilbeau. I grew up in a machine shop and I'm a a self professed, terminally incurable motorhead. I probably would have just been fine going on with that, but I got pulled into the music industry and that's quite a long story that we couldn't cover in this interview. That is in the book.

Q - People might say you had something to fall back on. In your case, you liked it just as much as music.

A - It's true. Actually, music and being a trained machinist, welder and I supposed an engineer, have kind of duck tailed with one another in many parts of my life where music and the mechanical traits were beneficial for one another.

Q - Did you like being in The Byrds more than say in The Burritos?

A - I wouldn't say that one was as good or bad as the other. They were much different. The high points of being in The Byrds was working with Clarence White and with Skip Battin, and of course John York when he was there. That was a very high point in my life, to be able to do that. Clarence and Skip of course became very dear friends. I treasure those times. In The Burritos, playing with Sneaky Pete, who I'd played with before. Actually he used to come and sit in with us with The Nashville West. Pete was a dear friend and I have many fond memories of playing with Pete in The Burrito Brothers. It was just a different experience. The Burrito Brothers was an out and out Country band, Country Western / Rock. The Byrds were a little bit different setup there, even though we did do some Country and a little bit of Bluegrass / Folk of course. They were just different, but I really enjoyed being in both those bands. For the most part I'm really happy that I was fortunate enough to be able to be involved.

Q - In 1994 you were part of a Byrds tribute group called The Byrds Celebration. How long did that group last? About a year? Did you like that?

A - That was put together by some other folks and I can't even remember the name of the fellow who actually spearheaded that. It was a short term endeavor and I'm glad that it was. It wasn't that much fun honestly.

Q - Your father even told you, "The whole universe does not revolve around you." Now see, I've been told the exact opposite. You have to think that you're important to get to the top. Was your father wrong then?

A - (laughs) No. He was not. God bless him. I hope that maybe he instilled some amount of humility in his son. My dad always told me, "Before you do something, think how it affects the people around you. Put yourself in their shoes. See if what you're about to do is going to affect them in a bad way, in a negative way. If you see that it is a negative thing, don't do that." I've tried to follow that through my life, that sort of ethic. I always hope that more people think that way.

Q - The world would be a better place if only people would follow that advice. He did give you some good advice.

A - I'll tell you Gary, when I was born there were less than two billion people on the planet. Now there's eight billion people. What's wrong with this picture? That's a problem and then it amplifies the bad characteristics of human nature. Humans are wonderful. There's no doubt about that. They're wonderful in some ways and terrifyingly awful in other ways, as war witnessing right now in the Middle East and Ukraine and Somalia. Just everywhere. It goes on and on. There's too many of us now. We have too many highly dangerous tools now to manifest our insanity on each other. I think nature has a way of balancing all this stuff out and I think we're coming to a recoining point very soon.

Q - What does that mean from your point of view? Do you think the Earth will no longer exist?

A - From my viewpoint Gary, I'm optimistic that we will continue to exist as a species, but I think we're going to have some really, really hard times. Here we've gone for literally thousands of years and we haven't learned how to take care of one another. We haven't learned how to not be greedy and terrorize one another. That hasn't happened. Technologically we've advanced incredibly, but spiritually we have not, for the most part. Now there are people in the world that have advanced that way, but there's simply not enough of them. And the greed is prominent everywhere. Nature is looking at this and God bless Mother Nature, she is imposing some things on us that we haven't had before, like global warming and like pandemics. Pandemics we have had before, but I think we're going to have more and more of them as a result of our misbehavior. I think if you look at nature with other species where there's blooms where they're out of control, nature has a way of balancing that. I think that's going to happen. I believe the only way we're ever going to evolve to a higher state of humanity is when we realize that we have to take care of one another. We have to cherish the earth we live on and we have to nurture it and we have to nurture our fellow human beings and our fellow animals, plants and living things on this planet. Darwin said evolution doesn't occur without stress. And that's been proven to pretty much be the case. The Lung Fish didn't come out of the ocean and begin to crawl on land because it was just a passing thought. It was because they had to do it to survive. It was a matter of stress that caused him and her to evolve. We all are coming on a period of time when we will be subjected to stress and many of us will perish. The ones that survive will only survive when they learn how to take care of one another and exploit one another.

Q - I haven't heard anyone talk like you in awhile. There was a time in the 1960s when it seemed anyway that everyone was on the same page. In music you didn't hear a lot about money. Case in point, The Beatles. It was about their music. Now, it's all about how Taylor Swift is a billionaire and the first person to gross $4.1 billion dollars on a tour. See where we're at?

A - Yeah, and you've got Elon Musk coming up on being a trillionaire. Capitalism is a good thing, but there has to be a limit on these kinds of things. I come from a family where we were very much advocates of a balanced, Socialist society.

Q - I could almost do an entire interview with you about politics!

A - (laughs)

Q - I'd like to say I appreciate the fact that a guy in your position is willing to talk about the past. I know it's not easy.

A - Fame is not all it's cracked up to be. I have not reached the degree of fame that many people did that were involved in the music industry back when, and I'm glad. I live in a little town where I'm known for not only playing music globally, but my skills as a machinist and a welder. I like it that way. We have a really nice community here. I still get the old questions and I have to smile and grin and bear it. Goodness gracious, if you were someone like Taylor Swift, how do you get along in a world when you're that famous? It seems like there's such a penalty for being so famous. What is fame that sets you so aside as wonderful and different from anybody else? It's really just a weird phenomenon. It seems so false because we're all just people, human beings. We all have the same needs and the same emotions. Who's to say that one of us, although they may have certain skills or talents or gifts, how is it that we're so much different than another human being?

Q - The difference Gene is publicity.

A - Well, that's right. Publicity is so a corporation can make big money.

Q - They can make or break you.

A - I remember going to a CBS convention in the Bahamas and Clive Davis was talking about groups like they were a product, not like human beings or artists. We're talking about units sold and a product. That was kind of an awakening for me, a twenty-year-old kid. This guy is really not that much into music. He's into making money.

Official Website: www.StringBender.com





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