 With their new album now completed , the Byrds flew to England for an appearance at a charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall on July 7 , 1968 . Following the concert , just prior to a tour of South Africa , Parsons quit the Byrds on the grounds that he did not want to perform in a racially segregated country ( apartheid did not end in South Africa until 1994 ) . Hillman doubted the sincerity of Parsons ' gesture , believing that the singer had in fact left the band in order to remain in England with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones , whom he had recently befriended . Parsons stayed at Richards ' house in West Sussex immediately after leaving the Byrds , and the pair developed a close friendship over the next few years . After leaving the Byrds , Parsons would go on to produce an influential but commercially unsuccessful body of work , both as a solo artist and with the band the Flying Burrito Brothers ( which also featured Chris Hillman ) . He died on September 19 , 1973 , at the age of 26 , following an accidental overdose of morphine and alcohol in his room at the Joshua Tree Inn . 
