YMMV / The Flying Burrito Brothers

• Broken Base: Some fans feel that the band effectively ceased to exist after Gram Parsons' departure; others think that the addition of Rick Roberts revitalized them, and that their self-titled third album is actually a substantial improvement over Burrito Deluxe.
• Common Knowledge: "Christine's Tune" is often stated to be about the Laurel Canyon hanger-on Christine Frka. However, Chris Hillman has gone on record as saying that the "Christine" of the song's title is actually Christine Hinton (see Harsher in Hindsight below).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, who was arguably the architect of the group's distinctive sound on The Gilded Palace of Sin since his pedal steel, played through a variety of effects pedals, was their main lead instrument.
  • Chris Ethridge, for the R&B influences he brought to the band as well as originating two of their best songs (the two "Hot Burritos").
• First Installment Wins: While their later albums certainly have their fans, The Gilded Palace Of Sin is almost universally considered to be their best work.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Christine's Tune" is about Christine Hinton, a Byrds groupie whom both Parsons and Hillman had apparently had negative experiences with, and who would become David Crosby's girlfriend. Seven months after the song's release, Hinton was killed in a car accident, an incident which devastated Crosby and sent him on a downward spiral of drug abuse. Hillman, who had remained friends with Crosby even after having helped fire him from The Byrds, felt bad about the whole thing, and on the Burritos' live album Last of the Red-Hot Burritos, the song was credited with the less accusatory title "Devil In Disguise." More recent releases tend to list both titles.
• I Am the Band: Averted. Gram Parsons is often seen as being this, in large part because Dead Artists Are Better, but in reality most of his work with the Burritos was co-written with Chris Hillman (or Chris Ethridge), not to mention that Parsons and Hillman were a Vocal Tag Team.
  • In fact, the perception that the Flying Burrito Brothers were Parsons plus a few sidemen became, not unjustifiably, something of a Berserk Button for Hillman over the years.
• Misattributed Song: "Wild Horses" is often assumed to be a Gram Parsons original that was subsequently Covered Up by The Rolling Stones, partly because the Burritos' version came out first. In reality, the song was written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, and it was about Richards' young son.
• Narm: "Hippie Boy," or nearly five minutes of Chris Hillman preaching a sermon over a gospel-influenced backing. While the track was meant to be an Affectionate Parody of overly serious spoken-word country songs, the joke hasn't aged particularly well and nowadays the whole thing just comes across as kind of corny.
• Refrain from Assuming: No, they never did a song called "Devil in Disguise", that would be "Christine's Tune".
• Unintentional Period Piece: While the actual music on The Gilded Palace of Sin is fairly timeless—with the possible exception of Sneaky Pete's fuzzed out steel guitar—the references to the draft for the Vietnam war ("My Uncle"), the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy ("Sin City"), and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago ("Hippie Boy") clearly date the album to the late sixties in America.