My Cross to Bear

by Gregg Allman

  They must not have given a shit about me, because they kept looking straight at Duane. Every now and then, they’d gaze over at me as they tore into us about our addiction. Duane just sat there and listened to them, because what could he say? They were trying to help us, and they were doing it in such a way to try and really get through to us. It was delivered in a very stern, fatherly manner.

  “Do you have any fucking idea what you are messing with?” they asked. “It killed Charlie Parker, it killed Billie Holiday, and it will kill you too.”

  They hit us with horror story after horror story, and they said, “And now it’s you all—barely twenty years old. That doesn’t give you a very long time left, because no one survives the fucking shit.”

  They went round and round, and they didn’t miss a fucking base. Duane tried to be cool about it, saying that he wasn’t worried about anything, but we were all worried. It was just like a kid getting his ass chewed out about something and trying to get a few words in edgewise. They kept saying, “Just listen to us,” so Duane didn’t get to say too much.

  I felt like a fucking dog by the time they were done, because I was the one who turned the rest of the guys on to heroin. I had that guilt to deal with, and I had this image of Jaimoe—sweet, nice, pure, clean, wonderful, collard green–eating Jaimoe—lying in bed, a heroin addict, thanks to me. “Thanks to G.A., he’s fucked up”—we all were, and I had that responsibility resting on my shoulders.

  None of them knew I felt that way, and they told me later, “Man, what do you mean you’re responsible? We love it, and we went and bought it ourselves. It would have got to us eventually, you just happened to be the first one in line.”

  Later on, Tom Dowd got on our asses too. His eyes could bitch you out by themselves, because he wore them big thick glasses. We deserved it, and Tom wasn’t trying to do nothing but help. I thought to myself for a minute, “Shit, we really had a great producer, and we fucking blew it,” because I was sure that Tom was fixing to say, “I’ve had it with you.” He brought up the party, because he was there when we got bitched out, but he didn’t go back there, because he figured that two was enough. But now he had the floor, and there was no getting away from him.

  Tom shamed us, man, he did. “You’re throwing your fucking life out the window, because you’re rolling the dice every time that you do it. Worst of all, you’re fucking up your music, and you’re wasting my goddamn time.”

  When Tom used that kind of language, I almost started crying. All of a sudden, I felt like a little kid, and I was really embarrassed. He told us, “If you don’t fucking listen and stop now, you’re not going to be able to.” Little did he know, it was already too late.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t too late, because we had a band meeting and discussed going to treatment. Everybody was there, crew included. No one had ever gone into treatment, so nobody knew what it was. I thought you went in there for two or three days and they gave you some pills or something, and then you walked out, completely cured. No one tried to deny that they had a problem; everybody copped to it. So it was decided that Duane, Oakley, Red Dog, and Payne would go into treatment up in Buffalo, while I headed home to quit cold turkey.

  I got into bed, and rolled round and kicked, man. I went and saw my doctor and got some ’ludes, but they only helped when they knocked me completely out. By the time the guys got home from Buffalo, I was all right. They were there for a week, and they were given methadone, so I don’t know if you can say they were really clean or not. That shit is nasty, because it just totally shuts down your endorphins, and it takes more than just quitting to get them to open up again. You gotta wait until they want to come out and play again, and that can be a long wait.

  When everybody got back into town, they came over to my house and let me know that they were feeling better. But even though we’d all stopped with heroin, it didn’t mean we were clean. Before they’d gone into treatment, I’d given Duane a hundred-dollar bill and asked him to pick me up a gram of blow when they were done because he was going to spend a day or two in New York after treatment. When they got back, I asked him about it, and he told me, “I’m sorry, bro. We saw Buddy Miles last night, and he did all of your blow.” That really pissed me off, and I stayed up drinking most of the night.

  The next morning, I drove over to Duane’s house and I walked in, because he never locked his door. I was going to get some blow or my money back, one or the other. He was asleep in bed, and I mean gone, with his clothes still on. On the nightstand was a little vial, almost completely full with blow. I took me a dollar bill, poured out about half a gram, and snorted it up. He had plenty left, and I put it back on the nightstand.

  I got home, and the phone rang. It was my brother, and he was fighting mad. He said, “You little cocksucker, did you come over here and steal some of my blow?”

  The last thing I ever said to my brother was a fucking lie, man.

  “No, I did not,” I told him.

  “Okay, man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you up, accusing you of some shit like that. I sure do love ya, baybrah,” and he hung up.

  That was the last time I ever spoke to my brother.

  I have thought about that every single day of my life since then. I told him that lie, and he told me that he was sorry and that he loved me. I was so dumbfounded, I couldn’t say nothing back to him. You never know, man, and right then is when I learned about the power of words.

  Let’s say that something worse than Hitler happens, and somebody comes over, takes over this country, and places us all in camps. They take all our possessions away—our houses, our cars, our clothing, everything. All you have is the skin on your body, and you only have one thing that’s worth something. You know what that is? It’s your word.

  I had never lied to Duane like that, because there was no reason to. Even when we were kids, and I knew there was an ass-whipping coming, I couldn’t lie to him. I could try, but he would see right through me.

  I have thought of that lie every day of my life, and I just keep recrucifying myself for it. I know that’s not what he would want—well, not for long, anyway. I know he lied to me about the blow in the first place, but the thing is, I never got the chance to tell him the truth.

  My brother

  © Stephen Paley

  CHAPTER NINE

  October 29, 1971

  I REMEMBER WHEN IT HAPPENED.

  I was home and I got a phone call. A woman’s voice said, “Your brother had a slight”—she used that word, “slight”—“motorcycle accident.” And the way she said it, I just knew. I threw on some clothes and I ran down the hill to where the hospital was. When I got there, Oakley, Dickey, and Jaimoe were already there, and Butch came in soon after.

  They didn’t take us to the waiting room, they took us in the chapel—that’s when I really knew. And there wasn’t nothing “slight” about it. Another guy, a surgeon, came out, and he said, “We brought him back up for just a minute or two, but he’s gone.” He said Duane was just too busted up. I’m so glad that I didn’t see him like that, because I don’t have to live with that memory.

  We set the funeral for the next day. Somebody came up with the notion of putting the casket in front of the band and having us play a gig, and I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I really thought that was ridiculous, the idea of having an audience in a chapel, with a casket covered in roses, and us playing rock and roll behind it. But all the other guys wanted to do it, so I went along with it.

  The next morning, I got the news that my mother had arrived, and I was upstairs opening the closet door, getting ready to put on my black suit. There was a tap on my shoulder, and it was Deering Howe. He had been in St. Barts or St. Martin, and he hopped a Learjet and came right to Macon. Deering had a big beaker of the most kick-ass Peruvian flake, and you cannot cry when you do coke. That was the only way we were able to play at the funeral home.

  We buried Duane with a silver dollar in one pocket, a thro
wing knife in the other, and his favorite ring on his hand—a snake that coiled around his finger, with two eyes made of turquoise. Chank told me that someone stuck a couple of joints in his shirt pocket along with a mushroom lighter, and Chank would know, because he went down there and saw him. I just couldn’t do it.

  There were a whole lot of people at the funeral; people came in from everywhere. And even though it didn’t sit right with me, I got up there with one of his old guitars and played “Melissa.”

  “This was my brother’s favorite song that I ever wrote,” I said, and it was hard, but I got through it.

  After we played at the chapel, we all went out back to smoke a joint. We were standing together, and I think we were all wondering what we were going to do.

  “Look, boys,” I said. “If you’re thinking about stopping, don’t. We need to get back to Miami, because we’ve got some unfinished business down there. If we don’t keep playing, like my brother would’ve wanted us to, we’re all gonna become dope dealers and just fall by the wayside. I think this is our only option.”

  Some of them answered me, some of them didn’t, but they all got what I said planted in their heads. Of course, they all felt the same way. When you’re in a situation like that, it’s great if somebody speaks up and says what everybody is thinking. It’s not like I came up with some big profound statement, because I didn’t.

  After we got home from the service, though, I just fell apart. One of the worst things I saw was, after giving the eulogy at Duane’s funeral, Jerry Wexler came back to the Big House and took the dimes out of the pay phone that Oakley kept in the kitchen. Berry kept eight or ten dimes in the little change thing on the phone, for people making calls. Wexler was making a call, and he opened the change thing and pocketed all those dimes. Callahan and I saw the whole thing, and we just started laughing at him—the fucking president of Atlantic Records, pocketing some dimes. Boy oh boy.

  Chank hung with me the whole time, and then Deering decided to take me to Jamaica, just to get me away from the madness. Chank saw us off at the airport, and we headed off.

  When I got back from Jamaica, it was rough. In my grief, I probably didn’t help the band too much at all. I tried to play and I tried to sing, but I didn’t do too much writing. In the days and weeks that followed, I began to wonder if I would ever get back that feeling of “Wow, let’s go play, man.” I wondered if I’d ever find the passion, the energy, the love of making music and making it better—all of that good old stuff.

  You get real wicked after somebody dies, and you get pissed off. I was pissed off at Duane for dying, for leaving me behind with all that shit to deal with. Then you get pissed at yourself for being pissed, because you loved them so much. You snap at people for no reason—you just get basically pissed. When that finally gets out of your system, then you’re back in the human race. It takes some time, and probably a few glasses of spirits, but somehow the five of us got it together.

  We had to take some time off because of our health and everything. We were skinny already, but after Duane died, we got down to nothing. As soon as we were able, though, we got back out there.

  I had a lot of other doubts as well after Duane died. I was worried that the Waldens and such were going to take over the band, that it was going to become another McEuen and Dallas Smith situation, because Duane was the assertive one of the band—maybe “assertive” is a little too light of a word. He was the liaison between Capricorn Records and us, between Phil Walden and us. Walden knew better than to bluff my brother, but I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to have to play those games. The reality, though, is you have to—the world is full of it, and the music business is riddled with it.

  Then, on top of all this, the week after Duane died, the Fillmore record blew the top off the fucking charts. To be clear, the record took off because of the music, not because Duane had died. In the weeks before his accident, it was already starting to go, but the volcano finally erupted right after he died. It was raining money. There were times when we had been getting by on three dollars a day, which is pretty hard to do, and then suddenly I started getting five-figure checks in the mail, twice a week. That was a real mindfuck, because my brother never got to live to see the big money start rolling in. What we had been trying to do for all those years finally happened, and he was gone.

  It’s good to sit sometimes and wonder what would have happened if Duane had lived, but that’s a hard thing to ponder. Who knows? There might not even still be a band. We could have gone on, but we might not have been what he was looking for. I could say that about anybody else in the band as well, because in this band, nobody is an island.

  I’m pretty sure that my addictions would have torn us apart, or his addictions, or both. But I think after we got straight, it’s possible we would have gotten back together. I don’t believe we would have stayed together continuously for more than forty years, but I know we would have made some great music.

  Everybody talks so highly of Duane because he’s not with us anymore, and when people talk about him, all they remember is the good parts. Well, there were some shit parts to my brother as well. When he would wake up in the morning, his hair would be all over his head, and God help him if he ever got the damn flu. Nobody in the world had ever experienced a fever and feeling like shit but Howard Duane Allman. Nobody who had ever existed had ever had the shits and the barfs at the same time—nobody. “You don’t know what it’s like!” So we would just leave him alone. If Duane felt shitty, he wanted to make everybody else feel shitty too.

  My brother was a Scorpio, through and through. When we were kids and went to the fair, there wasn’t a ride he wouldn’t get on. Good God, he was fearless. There was one ride called the Bullet, this thing that just went round and round, real fast. We were just little shavers, man, and I’m hollering, “Let me off this thing!” But my brother was just cackling. I knew I was going to die, but he was having the time of his life. Every time my grandma was around, she’d say, “That boy ain’t going to live to see twenty-five.”

  Duane lived hard, fast, and on the edge, and if you ever heard any of his interviews, you could tell he had a little taste for speed. Somebody listening to my brother today might go, “That’s just some fucked-up, crazy hippie.” Wrong. He was so intelligent. It would be amazing to see what he would be into today.

  When I got over being angry, I prayed to him to forgive me, and I realized that my brother had a blast. His footprints are so deep that he’s still being talked about today. In 2003, Rolling Stone voted him the number two guitar player of all time, behind Hendrix. That made me feel all warm inside. I wish there was some way I could’ve shown him, but I know he knows.

  Not that I got over it—I still ain’t gotten over it. I don’t know what getting over it means, really. I don’t stand around crying anymore, but I think about him every day of my life.

  It was my brother who got me through the first part of my life. Although he was only a year and eighteen days older than me, it seemed like he was much older than that. I looked at him like Merlin the Magician, because he had so much charisma. He had his weaknesses too, but I had the deepest, closest personal relationship with him I’ve ever had with anyone, because we went through heaven and hell together. Without him, there’s no telling how I would have turned out.

  I admired my brother so much when I was a kid that it turned into fear—fear of losing him, more than anything else. I was afraid that he would get out of school, he’d take off, and I’d never see him again. They ought to have a mandatory class in school to teach kids how to deal with loss, because sooner or later, somebody dear to them leaves this earth. Children just don’t understand that, so they could tell them, “Look, your puppy is designed the way he is designed, and they just don’t live very long,” because kids don’t know that. They want to know why their doggie died, and they don’t understand that twelve years is a long time for a dog to live.

  It took me a very long time to deal with grievi
ng over anything. I didn’t learn to grieve until my brother had been dead for ten years, maybe longer. Before I learned to grieve, every day, every single day I would relive his death. Playing seemed to be the only thing that helped, and being on the road. When we went home and I had nothing to do, my mind would start to run away with itself.

  That’s why I became addicted—to slow my fucking mind down. I can’t stand it when shit gets overwhelming, when you’ve got this and that happening, and the phone is ringing—I can’t deal with it. My brother’s way of dealing with that was to just say, “Fuck it, fuck all of you,” and he’d just cut. Not cut and run, he’d just cut. He figured out in his soul that life was much too precious to waste worrying about bullshit. That’s why he walked out of Castle Heights—he wasn’t going to take their shit.

  Duane just refused to put up with anybody’s shit, and he didn’t dig any kind of violence. As for confrontations, they were real quick, and if they weren’t quick, he’d just cut out of the situation. Now me, I couldn’t do it the way he did. I didn’t like confrontations. Of course, I knew confrontations were a part of life, but I wanted to keep them down to a dull roar. I could do them when I had to; I could face the fire, and I could fire a motherfucker.

  Whether it was worrying about confrontation or something else, there was always too much happening in my mind. I would get into bed, and I’d have about nine different thoughts spinning all through my head. I would have ideas of how to cut costs for the band, ideas to make the routing of the tour easier. Then there were the pending disaster thoughts: the wondering why you’re even bothering to plan shit, because you’re going to die anyway. Thoughts of what was I going to do without him, what all of us going were to do without him.