by Gregg Allman
I said, “Well, he’s coming to our beautiful new studio.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about that being built—are Mr. Walden and them through with that?”
“They should be totally finished, they’re probably testing it out now,” I said. “And dig this, Doc—I’ve been invited to play on a session, and the session is tomorrow night. If you would just give me a pass for one night, as soon as the session is over—and it will probably be kinda late—I’ll come straight back here.”
I must’ve put on the most honest face in the world, because he goes, “Well, sure, I’ll do that.” He was one of these doctors that asks, “What’s your name?”
“Gregory Allman.”
“Sure … sure. Where were you born?”
“Nashville, Tennessee.”
“Sure … sure … sure.”
After a while, I’m going, “Where was I born? What is my fucking name?”
So the doc gave me the pass to Capricorn Studios for the Martin Mull recording session. It’s all I can do to keep from laughing in that man’s face. By now they had issued me a set of jammies, kinda like scrubs, and a robe. It was real cold outside, but I just danced outta that place and went home.
Here’s the funny part: that was in late October. More than a month later, it came Christmastime, and they were having the Capricorn office party. I was there, back in Phil’s office. We were telling a bunch of lies, cracking jokes, smoking a little reefer, and what have you. There’s a knock on the door, and I said, “I’ll get it, Phil.” I opened the door and guess who it is?
“Hello,” I said, and then, seeing who it was, I gave, on the spur of the moment, one of my best performances. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Mr. Allman, don’t you remember me? I’m Dr. Sykes.”
And I said, “Sure … sure.”
“Please Call Home,” written by Gregg Allman, courtesy of Elijah Blue Music/Unichappell Music
Allman and Woman, 1975
© 1996 Gilbert Lee, [email protected]
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cher
WHEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS CAME OUT, IT WAS TIKE NOTHING that had ever happened before. I mean, none of us saw it coming—not like that, anyway. Everything that we’d done before—the touring, the recording—culminated in that one album, and the thing just fucking exploded, all the way to No. 1 on the charts.
In July 1973 we hit the road hard to promote the album, playing shows just about everywhere in the United States straight through to New Year’s. That tour was where we really hit our stride with Chuck and Lamar. We had great chemistry on- and offstage—everyone was just having a good time—and our playing was the best it had been since my brother’s death. Everything just came together, and we played some amazing music.
It was during that tour that we were visited by a young, and I mean young, reporter for Rolling Stone named Cameron Crowe. Of course, I had no idea he would go on to make Almost Famous nearly thirty years later, and that it would include some of our stories.
When that movie came out in 2000, my only thought was I wished my brother could’ve been there to watch it, though I’m sure he saw it from his big seat. The way they flipped our story around was very ingenious. They’d have whatever I was doing done by a guy with dark hair and a black mustache, and then they had another guy with blond hair doing something else.
The movie definitely got the spirit right—especially on that Brothers and Sisters tour. When I heard about it, and heard what it was supposed to be about, I thought, “Oh God, it could be anything—this could really tear down the Allman Brothers.” Now, some of those stories came from Zeppelin and the Eagles. But the jumping off the roof into the pool, that was Duane—from the third floor of a place called the Travelodge in San Francisco. I got up there with him, but I said no, this is too high—I might miss. My brother wanted to do it again, but the cat who owned the place came out shaking his fist, yelling at him. My brother was somewhat of a daredevil, and he and Oakley would do shit like that. We told that story all the time, and I have no doubt that Cameron was around for it.
The funniest thing, though, happened at the end of Cameron’s visit. Over the years, in part because of the movie, this story has been spun out in a dozen different ways. Cameron Crowe was so young, he was such a rookie—and of course, we all were once. He was following the tour and taking us one by one, getting a long interview on each of us. So the last thing he did was he came down to my room, and Dickey was there, and we talked for about two hours and it was serious too. We laid it on him.
After he left, we sat and cooked up this idea. We went to his room and said, “Man, we are so sorry, but there’s a couple of clauses in our contract. We were just reading it over, and we can’t let you have that interview you just did.” And we took it back from him, took his notebooks and everything.
We knew what time his plane was, and just at the last minute, just as he was going out to the cab thinking, “My ass is fired,” we handed it all back to him. Cameron was white as a ghost, and he was quite a sport. He’s gone quite a ways—he’s not “almost” anymore.
As that tour rolled along, the shows only got better. We ended 1973 with a monster New Year’s Eve show at the Cow Palace, out in San Francisco. That was a big old smelly place, and it always reeked of cowshit, but we did it for Uncle Bill, who descended from the rafters that night dressed as Baby 1974 and wearing a diaper. By the end of the night, we’d left it all up onstage—just one of those amazing nights. If that tour was as good as we ever played with that group of guys, then that show was our pinnacle.
After a few months off, we then hit the road again from May until August, doing about twenty-five shows, but by the time we stepped off that mini-tour, we were all pissed off at each other and ready for a break, so we did just that. From August 1974 to August 1975, we stayed off the road. We’d worked hard, but we also needed to get the fuck away from each other for a while, man. Dickey was also making noise about wanting to do a solo album of his own, so it just seemed to make sense for us all to get a bit of space. I decided to release another solo album—the live record that had been taped during those performances at Carnegie Hall and the Capitol Theatre in New Jersey on my Laid Back tour.
As it turned out, both Dickey and I released solo albums and went on solo tours during that fall of ’74, which caused some issues. It seemed like things between us became a sibling rivalry of sorts, which was ironic, because when I’d had a sibling we’d never been rivals over anything. But after I did Laid Back, I think Dickey wanted to put his own voice out there.
My album The Gregg Allman Tour and Dickey’s album Highway Call were basically up against each other, as were our tours, and there was a lot of talk about the competition between us. That was made worse by the fact that I had Jaimoe and Chuck in my band. I don’t think Dickey was too happy about that; he probably wanted Chuck to play with him on his tour. Butch seemed pissed off too, because he now had no one to play with. The whole thing seemed to frustrate everyone—and it didn’t help that we were all taking our turns with whatever drugs happened to be around.
Despite the state of things, I was satisfied with how my tour went—more scaled-down than when I was on the road for Laid Back with the string players and all that. It ended out on the West Coast in January 1975, and I sent everybody back home, except for me and Chank. I kept a wad of cash along with some duds, and the two of us stayed at the Riot House—the Hyatt House on Sunset in Los Angeles.
One night Chank and I were out, going to different places and having a drink here and there. I said, “Let’s go down to the Troubadour and see Doug Weston.” Not that Doug was really a friend of mine, but he’s a nice guy, and we’d known each other since the Hour Glass days. We went by and Etta James was playing that night. When I finally saw Doug, though, he wasn’t all that happy.
“I’m not doing worth a shit,” he told me. “Man, I got problems.”
“Shit, you got Etta James playing—you ain’t got no problems
,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but I got this other band that’s opening up, but they’re supposed to be finishing their record tonight in the studio, or the record company is going to take their contract away from them. I got to give them the night off—it’s just one of them things that I got to do.”
“Well, that’s pretty humane,” I told him. “Shit, I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it, I’ll play the son of a bitch by myself.”
“You’re on.”
“Now listen, man, I’ll have to charge you for this.”
“How much?”
“Well, now dig it, bro, I’m a union dude, and if they were to catch me doing any favors for a friend, they’d blackball my ass. It would be at least $2,500.” Bam! That money hit the fucking table, with neat little wrappers around it.
But then Doug hesitated. “Now, wait a minute—I need two nights.”
I hadn’t played by myself since that time in elementary school when those two ratfucks ran out on me, and believe me, mentally, I was right back there. It’s one thing playing in a band, but it’s a whole other playing by your lonesome ass, because if there are any mistakes whatsoever, it’s pretty obvious whose fault it is. However, I’d thought about doing it for years and years, so I said to myself, “Well, shit, I got myself into this.” Doug threw in an extra $500 for the second night, and I agreed to do it.
When I finally got up there, I played five or six songs acoustic, then Etta James’s band came on. They were one hell of a band, and we jammed on about five more tunes. Then Etta came out, and she looked good. She was in fine spirits, just real happy, and I stayed on for a few tunes before heading offstage. She kicked mucho butt for the rest of the night. That first night was pretty good, because I was able to relax. I was on autopilot for the guitar playing, and I could sing and actually hear myself, and not from the monitors either, but from the rafters of that old place.
It was a good show, but I didn’t think too much of it. As it turned out, a woman named Paulette Eghazarian was in the audience that night, and she was the secretary for Cher, who lived out in L.A. After that first show, she told Cher she had to come see me play. I think Cher went to the second show just to shut Paulette up. Cher wasn’t hip to the Allman Brothers at all—she had heard “Ramblin’ Man,” but everybody had heard that song.
She showed up with David Geffen as her date, but I had no idea she was in the audience. If I had, I would have had a fear in me. See, a long time ago, I’d had a dream about her. She was by a swimming pool, surrounded by all this beautiful ivy, with weeping willow trees hanging over it, and I’ll be damned if that same pool didn’t end up in our backyard when I married her.
After the show, Chank ran up to me, going, “Guess who’s here? Guess who’s here?”
“Who?” I asked.
“I want you to just ease over that railing and look to your right.”
Well, I did just that, and there she was, man, looking so good—I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. I wrote Cher a note, asking her to go out with me the next night. I went to Chank and asked him to give her the note.
“Oh noooo. I ain’t doing that,” he said.
“Come on, Chank, you’re my man. Take this note and give it to her,” I said. He finally took it down there, and he’s gone forever, and a little while past that. When Chank finally came back, he told me, “Man, she gave it back to me and told me she couldn’t read it …”
“Oh fuck,” I thought.
“… because there ain’t no light over yonder.”
“So what did you did do? Come up here to get some light from me? Go back and tell her to take it over by the cigarette machine, read it, and send me back an answer.”
“Man, I just got me a raise!” Chank said. (As a matter of fact, I think he got a white Corvette out of the deal.)
I got my guitar and headed down there like I was leaving, and, man, I had tunnel vision. I didn’t see no one else in the joint but her. I had met David Geffen on many occasions before, because he used to be Jackson Browne’s manager, but I didn’t acknowledge him at all—or anyone else, for that matter. I was so rude; I didn’t say hello, or kiss my ass, or nothing at all, because I was so blinded by her.
I was walking by, and she was down on the floor looking for something. She looked up and said, “Oh, I lost my earring.” Then she said, “Here’s my number—call me.”
God, she smelled like I would imagine a mermaid would smell—I’ve never smelled it since, and I’ll never forget it. So she split, and as I was leaving I looked around, and I saw David Geffen. I went, “Oh fuck,” and thanked God that his eyes weren’t locked on mine. I just eased on around to the car and split.
The next day, I called the number, and Paulette, her secretary, answered. I asked to speak to Cher, she asked who was calling, and I told her who I was. She told me to wait just a minute, and then Cher gets on and says, “Well, hello.” I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner, and she said yes.
I went to her house in a limousine, and when she came out she said, “Fuck that funeral car. Let’s go in my car,” and she handed me the keys to her blue Ferrari.
She really put me on the spot; for one split second, I looked at her like she was a star, instead of just a human being. That was the first and last time I ever did that. This she knows, deep in her heart, and I hope she never forgets it.
We went to Dar Maghreb, a Moroccan restaurant on Sunset. It’s a kick-ass place, man, really great. They have all the food in a big tray in the middle of the table, and you eat with your hands, using a piece of bread to grab the food. So we sat there, eating with our hands with the sitars playing. She didn’t have shit to say to me, and I didn’t have shit to say to her either. What could I say to her? What’s the topic of conversation between me and her? It certainly ain’t singing, that’s for sure.
We finally got through with dinner, and I said to her, “I’ve got a friend who lives up in the hills, and his wife is Judy Carne.” Cher knew Judy, who used to be on Laugh-In, from years before, but she didn’t realize that Judy was into heroin pretty heavy. We got up to Judy’s house, and I had just a little taste of doojee. I nodded out in the bathroom for twenty minutes or so, while Cher was out in the living room with Judy, who’s also nodding out.
I came out of there and asked her, “Okay, toots, what else would you like to do?”
“I want to get the fuck out of here as fast as I can,” she said.
I walked her out to her Ferrari, and as she got in, all I could think to say was, “Honey, be sure to tell your secretary that I said hello.” I really pissed her off when I said that.
I got a case of the braves, and I called her the next day. When Paulette answered the phone, I told her, “I just want to say something to her, and tell her that if she doesn’t get on the phone, she’s a chickenshit.” I knew that would get her, and when Cher got on the phone I said, “Wait, before you say anything—that was possibly the worst fucking date in the history of mankind. We might be ready for the Guinness Book of World Records.”
She totally agreed with me, so I said, “Well, listen, seeing how it was so bad, why don’t we try it again, because it can only go better this time?”
Cher agreed, and asked, “Where are we going to go this time?”
“Let’s go dancing,” I said.
“That sounds great!”
That did it, boy. We went dancing, and I don’t know how to dance, but I got drunk enough to where I did. I danced my ass off. She’s a dancing motherfucker, let me tell you. This is when disco was just taking off, so we did some dirty dancing; a little of this, and a little of that. She had one drink, while I had my twenty-one, of course.
After dancing, we went to a Polynesian place, which had really good food. It really was a glorious night, just a great time. When we got back to her place, she took me out to her rose garden, and all the roses were just starting to bloom with the scent jumping off them. We’re standing out there, and all of a sudden, she said,
“No, Honky!” This big Rottweiler was sniffing me, but she made him back off.
She had on this gorgeous Bob Mackie shirt made out of beads. Purple going into gold, going into green, back into purple, all beads, and they just covered her tits. That shirt must have cost thousands of dollars. We started kissing, and then she took the shirt off and grabbed my hand to go inside.
“You’re not going to leave that out here, are you?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it, it’ll be fine,” she told me. (The next morning we learned that Honky ate that motherfucker.) “You’ve got to stay here tonight.”
Part of me is thinking, “Gregory, you do not belong here, man,” but the other part of me is saying, “Come on, let’s go! Get your ass upstairs, boy!” We went up this big huge staircase to the third floor and she started ripping my fucking clothes off. She had this huge canopy bed, and her room had a marble fireplace along with these huge lamps—it was something else, man. All told, the house had thirty-six rooms; you’ve never seen anything like it. The first time Jaimoe went there, he said, “Shit, man, if this was my place, I’d be renting out them rooms!”
She was hot to trot, man, and we made some serious love. In many of her interviews, she said that I was the best—the best—in the bedroom. I always thought that was nice, because I’m certainly not the most endowed guy there is, but as the old saying goes, “It’s not what you got, it’s how you use it.” So I thank her for that.
AFTER THAT, I ONLY SAW CHER TWO OR THREE MORE TIMES, BECAUSE I had business to attend to. There was trouble with the band, and I needed to get right back to Georgia. So in February ’75, I went back to Macon for a band meeting.
We’d originally been planning to start rehearsing for Win, Lose or Draw, our next album, but from the start there was all kinds of bad blood. There had been a rehearsal scheduled and I got back a day late, so that gave them an excuse to get their panties in a wad.