It lasted just a few months, but an extended "lost weekend" in 1968 helped transform American country music into a modern, daring and even trendy creation.

The setting was buried deep in the sprawling, picturesque countryside and the men responsible were risk-taking outlaws in the grand tradition of booze-soaked country godfather Hank Williams.

Yet this was not a desolate Tennessee dustbowl nor a sun-scorched Californian cottonfield but a respectable Sussex village overlooking the English Channel.

With legendary rock hell-raisers Gram Parsons and Keith Richards taking up residency, this was never going to be a cosy sojourn in the sticks.

Parsons, who died 30 years ago yesterday, has been immortalised in music mythology as the founding spirit of modern country-rock music - or what he called "cosmic American music".

His short, eventful life - as well as his death and its bizarre aftermath - will come under renewed spotlight not only with the anniversary but also a film due to be released later this year.

Grand Theft Parsons, starring Johnny Knoxville from TV comedy Jackass, focuses on how a strange pact meant Parsons' body was hijacked after his death and burned in the desert.

Another film about him could soon be in production after his Rolling Stone pal Keith Richards bought the movie rights to a biography of Parsons.

Parsons, with his love of country music, has been credited with having a huge influence on the Stones and their late-Sixties and early-Seventies albums such as Exile On Main Street and Let It Bleed.

Parsons is also rumoured to have written the Stones classic Wild Horses with Richards, but a dispute with Mick Jagger meant his name was left off the songwriting credits.

Conversely, Richards, with his well-documented indulgence in illegal substances, has been accused of inadvertently helping Parsons on his way to an early death at the age of 26.

However, biographers have stressed that Parsons was already a hard-living, drink-and-drugs-abusing loose cannon years before abandoning his well-behaved country pals for the English rock-and-roll ruffians.

The close bond between Parsons and Richards meant the American star spent significant periods at the home in West Wittering which the Rolling Stone has owned since the mid-Sixties.

Parsons, the heir to a citrus-growing fortune built up by his grandfather, dropped out of Harvard in 1966 and released his first records with a group called The International Submarine Band.

Their debut album, released in 1968, fused the patterns and themes of traditional country music with a harder-edged rock-and-roll spirit.

Within months he had been signed up by The Byrds and veered them headlong towards country music with their August 1968 album Sweetheart Of The Rodeo.

Richards convinced the politically-naive Parsons not to join The Byrds on their forthcoming tour of apartheid-era South Africa and to hang out with him instead.

The pair retired to Richards's Redlands home on the Sussex coast, where they combined jamming, plenty of booze and cocaine, and stoned trips to Stonehenge.

After breaking with The Byrds and becoming increasingly seduced by the trappings of rock-and-roll, Parsons returned to America with Richards, his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Stones road manager Phil Kaufman.

Parsons formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with his newly-determined manifesto of stripping country music of all cliches and producing definitive "cosmic American music".

This blended the virtues of country, rock, soul and bluegrass, all delivered in Parsons' cracked angelic singing voice.

But Parsons' cocaine and heroin habits caused ructions within the band, with collaborator Chris Hillman once smashing Parsons' brand new Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar to pieces.

Parsons then took on unknown singer Emmylou Harris as a backing vocalist and recorded two legendary solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel.

By the time Grievous Angel hit the shops, however, Parsons was dead.

He and new girlfriend Margaret Fisher booked into the Joshua Tree Inn in California on September 17, 1973, where they began drinking heavily while taking marijuana and morphine.

He also took some medication he had been prescribed for seizures he had been suffering since a motorbike crash in 1972 and fell asleep - never to wake up.

Parsons's life had an unusual coda when Kaufman and valet Michael Martin hijacked his coffin from LA airport and burned the body in the Mojave desert.

Parsons had apparently once told Kaufman to "take me the desert and burn me" after his death. Kaufman was arrested when the remains were found but released without charge.

Country music writer and broadcaster Neil Coppendale, of Shoreham, said: "So many people regard Gram Parsons as an icon, which is quite an achievement for someone who lived for such a short time and had such a short career."