Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman

by Galadrielle Allman

  Suddenly, Granny looks up from her crocheting—another pair of slippers for Gregory—and asks me if she has ever told me about the night Duane died. She was home alone when she got the call, in this very room. She was in such deep shock when she hung up the phone, she had to sit down. The nearest chair was pulled up to the dining table, so she gathered up her knees close to her body and sat there for a while. Then she heard Duane’s unmistakable approach.

  “I was sitting with my knees up and my head down at that table there, and I heard his boots on the driveway. I could always tell my boys by the sound of their walk as soon as they hit that driveway. Duane popped through the door and said, ‘Mama, you’re crying.’ I said, ‘They told me you were dead.’ He said ‘Look at me. Now, who would have told you a thing like that?’ I know he was telling me that his spirit is here and always will be, and I wasn’t the least bit afraid. He came to comfort me. When it’s happening, and they’re here, you know it’s them. Without a doubt.”

  Jerry stayed with Jo Jane and her husband, Penn, and daughter Eden after Duane’s death. She grieved deeply with the numbing aid of whisky. It took her many years to return to herself, but once she did, she got sober and seemed truly healed. I have always wondered how she found the strength to weather so many losses, but I see she keeps them close and it helps her.

  She says Duane came that night to tell her he was not dead and would never be. Whatever work he was here to do was still undone. I will put the Allman Brothers Band on my headphones and sleep in my father’s bedroom tonight, breathing the same air as his mother in the room down the hall. I will imagine him sitting up late in the living room playing along, his boot heel tapping out Jaimoe’s eccentric patterns, smiling in the dark. Let this house flip back and forth through layers of time so we can share this roof tonight.

  “Duane is still here around us in spirit, because he’s not finished with what he came to do,” Granny says. “Maybe he’s here to protect you, or maybe he’s here to inspire Gregg to write more music, or we don’t know what it is. He’s inspiring people in the world, all over the world.” She stands up and hugs me tightly before going to bed. I press my cheek against hers and try to memorize its softness and warmth. “I love you and I always have,” she says.

  “I love you, too, Granny.”

  I fall deeply asleep and have an incredible dream.

  I am standing at the foot of a staircase with my father and I am really looking at him. His eyes look tired, his left eye slightly off center, drifting. He is delicate somehow, or refined, like he took great care in dressing. His buttoned dress shirt is very white and pressed; his black pants break over his boots and barely graze the floor. He is warm and solid and his shoulders are relaxed and even. We stand between the closed front door and the empty stairs and talk. I tell him I am in love with a young man, and I ask if it is ever possible to know if someone is truthful. I notice his hair is cut the same way as mine, softly framing his face. He says it’s nothing he doesn’t understand, this situation I am in … young love and its games. He doesn’t say anything more, not dismissive exactly, but strong. His presence and the way he is looking at me draw my confusion out of me and I relax. I feel how well he knows me.

  Then, we walk through the door and into the night. It has rained and the city street is slick and shining with bright red blurs from reflected taillights. I look down and see a sturdy black guitar case balanced at the handle, resting naturally in my father’s hand. I hadn’t noticed it before. He says it’s his good guitar and he needs to lock it in the trunk of his car and points up the street. I wait for him, watching as he walks up the block to a white car. He unlocks the trunk and lays his case inside.

  A yellow taxi is idling right in front of me, beyond the parked cars at the curb, and it seems it is waiting for us. The driver gets impatient, rolls down the window, and whistles loudly after Duane. Under his breath, he calls my father a lowlife.

  We slide quickly into the slippery vinyl seat of the cab, closely tucked together. It suddenly feels that a spell has been broken and the formal mood we were in is gone. Sitting close, we are very happy, laughing in the middle of a funny conversation. His eyes are shining and looking right into mine. His cheeks are high and rosy, his red whiskers like curtains pulled back from a stage, revealing the main show—his crooked and beautiful smile. He says he is so happy to be looking at me. We hug and I feel the raindrops warming on his back, the cloth soft and damp under my palms. I grip him so tightly, I start to cry.

  “I can’t live without you. I won’t,” I say.

  He tells me again how good it is to be here with me right now, and tips my chin up to look into my eyes. He says if it had been the way it was before—if he was dead and we were apart—it would be impossible for both of us.

  I see then that we are saying goodbye. Panic starts to fill me like static rising to the surface of my skin. I feel my back against the bed and hear my pulse quicken. My face is wet and my heart is desperate. I push my feet against the covers and raise myself up until I am leaning against the bedroom wall, awake now. I have wrapped both arms around myself while sleeping, gripping my own ribs tightly, an echo of his arms around me, but they are only my hands, and he is gone.

  A bit of wisdom comes into my mind, like a song breaking through static on a radio, and I know it came from him:

  Do what you love and own who you are.

  Time is precious and death is real.

  So is Art: It defies them both.

  Outro

  If you have ghosts then you have everything.

  —Roky Erikson

  There is something in this night’s quiet and the way my hair feels against my face when I sit up in bed that brings you to me. The blood in my veins sings and our story feels alive in me now. I no longer feel ennobled by my reluctance to let you go.

  The tone of your guitar is the voice you use to call out to me: warm, round, and resonant. It is my substitute for you standing in the street calling me in to dinner. It is your half of the argument we would have had about bad boys and what they want. It is how you would have sounded saying, No you cannot, you will not, this is my house and these are my rules. It is the voice you would have used to soothe my fears when dark dreams shook me at night. It is the sound of your praise when I do something well and it is your wisdom handed down to me. The sound of your guitar tells me all I will ever know of your love.

  In the force of your intention and the perfection of your tone I can hear everything that ever happened to you, good or bad, the raw and ragged edge and the center worn so smooth and kind by the tireless efforts of your hands. Your fingers pulling, floating, teasing each note, sound as direct as your eye trained on me. Listening to you, knowledge is gained, and help is received.

  Before I could speak the words your brother sang, I knew the spaces the music created intimately. You built me a house of familiar rooms and I marveled at the distant rafters, the dark corners, the vines curling and blooming up the high walls. You wander beside me here as long as the songs play on. If I could I would ask you: Do musicians know what they give us? Do they know where they take us, only to leave us to find our own ways home, back from the depths of their dream?

  Before there was a fence around your grave, I sat beside you, and now I can only stare through the black bars, down at the inscribed marble slab and the little carved angel, replaced, after being repeatedly stolen, with money raised by your fans. My name is carved on the marble pedestal under her feet. The angel is my tiny proxy, invoking my love. An identical angel stands over Brittany’s name at the foot of Berry’s grave beside you. When we were little, we lay on the white marble slabs above you, Brittany and I making beds of our fathers’ graves. I pictured you inside like Snow White in her glass coffin, your heart still but visible, a red bloom in a cage of bone, your face perfect and calm like a prince, asleep.

  I have carved out a place inside me where I keep everything I know about you, each detail a colored piece of glass in the window of a c
hapel built for dreaming. This is the closest we can be, when I’m on my knees, felled by the pain, trying to find you down in the flood of feelings. I go to this temple in my mind when I don’t know where else to go.

  Did you light a candle for your father and sit in a worn wooden pew where children like us carved their names with secret pocket-knives? When you were sick with fever, did you ever feel the weight of his warm palm resting on your forehead, relief passing through you whether you imagined it or not? Did you give his love to yourself and call it grace?

  I wonder. Maybe you were always stronger than me, and turned outward instead of in. Maybe your father lived in the clouds, a god of distant thunder, a keeper of cold stars who inspired only independence in you. Maybe you never imagined Bill at all, and used every part of your body and mind only for music, speeding away from the pain on your motorcycle.

  I know you would not approve of the uncountable days I have spent in bed, curled toward the wall whispering to you, picturing your hand reaching out to me while hot tears roll from my eyes. I used to believe the pain of losing you would kill me with my own hand. I want to be where you are and I am so tired of waiting. You would say just what your mama said when I told her how much sadness I carry around. She fairly shouted, “Get rid of it!” There is no bringing you back here. You won’t come down again, not even for me. There’s no use in crying.

  I feel like the window is closing now; the breeze blowing you back to me is flagging. The writing, the traveling, the daily consideration of your life will wind down and I will be alone again, without the shadow of you resting beside me. I want to believe you will stay close to me. I tell myself you live in my blood and bones and you will come when I need you. I will stop seeking you constantly now. I will know you are in me and not out in the world. I know there is more than being left behind.

  We are tied together as surely as a string is wound tightly through the tuning peg of a guitar. The connection between us is physical, actual, real.

  I want you to know I understand you better than I used to. There is detail to my longing now. There are moments fully imagined in places where questions used to be. I have walked down streets where you walked, and I carried you with me as I traveled. Instead of feeling the weight of you in the center of my chest like the echo of a punch, a new sensation has bloomed in me. It is a longing I do not recognize, for a life of my own. I suddenly want the speed of life to pull me forward; I want to live unafraid. I missed the lesson you played so clear and strong every night of your own grown life, the lilting line from “Joy to the World” winding wild through your hands in the middle of your song. You tried to tell me from where you are to live my life. I am sorry it took me so long to hear you.

  Geraldine “Jerry” Robbins, 1945.

  Willis “Bill” Allman, in his official army portrait, 1945.

  Duane Allman with his parents, Bill and Jerry, Nashville, 1947.

  Duane, Gregg, and cousin Jo Jane Pitt, Fort Story, Virginia, 1950.

  Gregg, Jerry, and Duane Allman, Nashville, 1954.

  Duane Allman, Castle Heights Military Academy, Lebanon, Tennessee, 1963. (photo credit i1.1)

  Donna Roosmann, Parkway Central High School, 1967.

  Gregg and Duane at the Martinique, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1966.

  Aretha Franklin and Duane, Atlantic Studios, New York City, 1969. (photo credit i1.2)

  Duane and King Curtis, Atlantic Studios, New York City, 1969. (photo credit i1.3)

  Duane playing cork ball on Orange Terrace, Macon, Georgia, 1969. (photo credit i1.4)

  Duane and Galadrielle, Macon, Georgia, 1969.

  Donna and Duane, impromptu baby shower, 1969. (photo credit i1.5)

  Jerry and Jo Jane, Daytona Beach, 1970.

  Duane and Gregg with “Mama A,” 1970.

  Duane and his Dobro, 1971.

  Donna wearing Duane’s pants in their bedroom at the Big House, 1970.

  Linda, Brittany, and Berry Oakley in the yard at the Big House, 1970.

  Twiggs Lyndon and Candy Oakley, 1970.

  The Winnie: Jaimoe, Dickey, Gregg, gas station attendant, Joseph “Red Dog” Campbell, Butch Trucks, and Duane, 1970. (photo credit i1.6)

  Jaimoe in the Winnebago, 1970. (photo credit i1.7)

  The whole crew. Back row (left to right): Michael Callahan, Kim Payne, Berry, and Duane; front row (left to right): Butch, Dickey, Red Dog, and Gregg; Jaimoe is down in front. Los Angeles, 1969. (photo credit i1.8)

  Duane and the goldtop Les Paul, 1970. (photo credit i1.9)

  Bonnie Bramlett, Delaney Bramlett, and Duane at WPLJ radio station, New York City, 1971. (photo credit i1.10)

  John Paul Hammond and Duane, California, 1971. (photo credit i1.11)

  Duane trading the cherry-burst Les Paul for the tobacco burst, June 1971.

  New York City, 1970. Back step (left to right):

  Dickey, Gregg, Butch, and Jaimoe; front step (left to right): Duane and Thom “Ace” Doucette. (photo credit i1.12)

  Goofing with Eric Clapton, Criteria Studios, Miami, 1970. (photo credit i1.13)

  The Allman Brothers Band, in an outtake from the Fillmore East album cover shoot, Macon, 1971. (photo credit i1.14)

  The road crew, At Fillmore East cover shoot, Macon, 1971. Left to right: Red Dog Campbell, Kim Payne, Joe Dan Petty, Michael Callahan, Willie Perkins, and photographer Jim Marshall. (photo credit i1.15)

  Berry (right) and Duane, wearing the shirt Eric Clapton gave him at the Layla sessions, 1970. (photo credit i1.16)

  Jerry and Gregg Allman at the annual Capricorn picnic in Macon, Georgia, 1973. (photo credit i1.17)

  Donna and Galadrielle, St. Louis, 1971.

  Donna and Galadrielle, St. Louis, on the day Duane died.

  Twiggs Lyndon, with tattoo of Duane, at the Capricorn picnic, 1977. (photo credit i1.18)

  Gregg, Jo Jane’s daughter Eden, and Galadrielle, Greensboro, North Carolina, 1972.

  Jerry, Galadrielle, and Donna, Macon, 1974.

  Donna Allman and Linda Oakley on the ferry to Gibraltar, 1975.

  Brittany Oakley and Galadrielle Allman, the Sahara Desert, 1975.

  This story is for the rambling men, the lovely children, and every hungry woman who’s been in my place before.

  Acknowledgments

  Every detail found in these pages was given to me by a person who loved my father. The moments that we shared enriched my sense of who Duane was, and for that I am grateful. I am humbled by their generosity, openness, and honesty.

  Thanks to my family, in all of its permutations. I love you all so much.

  Granny A, your wit and grace inspire me every day. This book and this family would not exist without your strength and love.

  Mama Donna, thank you for allowing me to trample through your delicate garden of memories in my dirty boots. You are beautiful, fierce, and talented beyond measure. We made it through together.

  Jo Jane Pitt, your memories, letters, journals, and photographs are the life’s blood of this book. It would not exist without your love and support.

  Joanie Callahan, you are the one I could always count on to talk to me about my father. I am so grateful for that and for your constant belief in me. And yes, I know, you used to kiss my butt.

  Tommie Jean, Grandma, thank you for all of your support and love. Your belief in me means more than you know. I see your heart.

  Linda Miller, you were a maternal force in my life before memory. Your words and insights carried me through the darkest moments. I feel I know Berry because of you. Thank you for always being there.

  Candy Oakley, thank you for our walks and talks through Rose Hill. I carry some of your strength and determination with me always.

  Brittany Oakley, my sister, we have shared so much on this long hard road. You understand in ways no one else ever will.

  Linda Trucks, thank you for sharing your stories with absolute honesty.

  Rachael Interdonato, my girl. You live in my heart, sun-kissed and running down the beach. Than
ks for sharing your beautiful family with me. You are my home.

  Gregory, you are beautiful inside and out. Thank you for sharing your love for my pop with me, and for answering my many questions during a time of healing. You handle everything with such kindness, humor, and strength. Your voice is the sound I carry in my heart every day.

  Jaimoe, you are wise and full of love. More than anyone, you brought the process of making music into focus for me. I am so thankful for you—the backbeat and the backbone of this whole circus.

  Butchie, you are always first in line to tell the world about what made Duane so special and powerful. Thank you for reminding me I am still Gragrie, the same kid who asked you, “What are you lookin’ at?”