“I think I was pretty naive, and I didn’t see that side of Gram. I must’ve known about it, but I will say that when we were working together, he was on. He was so focused”: Emmylou Harris on working with Gram Parsons

That doyen of country soul, Emmylou Harris, returns to the UK next week to start what she says will be her final European tour and she’s taken the opportunity to talk to the Guardian about her long career.

The singer got her first break via Gram Parsons in the early 1970s. She contributed vocals on both his albums, GP and the posthumous Grievous Angel and claims that she had no idea about the drug-guzzling side to the ex-Flying Burrito Brother who died in September 1973.

“I think I was pretty naive, and I didn’t see that side of Gram,” she says. “I must’ve known about it, but I will say that when we were working together, he was on. He was so focused. So I guess I thought whatever trouble he might have been getting into, he was now on the right road. And I was completely wrong about that.”

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Harris started out as a folk singer and taught herself to play on a guitar that was given by her grandfather. She reveals that was given some early advice by one of the prime movers behind the American folk revival, Pete Seeger. “I felt very inauthentic and like I should be hopping box cars or something.”

So she wrote to him. “I asked: ‘Is it OK for me to sing these songs about people who have had a much harder life than I have?’” Seeger wrote back, assuring her it was fine and that “everybody has their hardships”

She turns 79 in April and has stated that the current run of dates will be the final time she plays in Europe. “I’m going to continue to sing and perform here in the States as long as they’ll have me.

"But I won’t be going across the Atlantic again. I’m a real road dog and I do still love being out there, but it’s hard. So I’m just keeping it local now.”

Harris insists she hasn’t thought of retirement. Not yet anyway. “Well, I don’t really know what winding down is,” she says. “I remember when Willie Nelson was asked when he was going to retire, he said: ‘All I do is play golf and play music. Which one do you want me to give up?’ I think when you’re an artist, you don’t ever really retire. As I tell my friends, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I sure am doing a lot of it.”