by Gregg Allman
Before we recorded Brothers of the Road, Jaimoe and Dickey got into it over where our money was going, and Dickey fired Jaimoe. After Duane died, Dickey’s crown had gradually gotten bigger and bigger, and it only got worse when we’d gotten back together. At first, things had been better, but I think he took reuniting as a sign that he was going to be running things. He certainly didn’t have much finesse when it came to dealing with people. He’s just not a natural leader, and firing Jaimoe was the prime example of that.
Now, the Allman Brothers have had our share of conflict over the years—hell, show me a band that’s been around as long as we have that hasn’t fought. But one of the real blights on the history of the Allman Brothers Band was that Jaimoe, this gentle man, was fired from this organization. The thought of that makes me want to throw up, but sadly I was too drunk to put a stop to it before it happened. I thought that Dickey Betts had pulled some pretty low shit in his day, but that was the worst. Old Man Time has a way of coming back around, and now Jaimoe is right here with me, and we’re having a hell of a good time without Mr. Betts.
When Dickey axed Jaimoe, I should have checked out then. It was 1976 all over again, but I wasn’t together enough to see what was happening. Thankfully, this time the end came much more quickly.
We appeared on Saturday Night Live on January 23, 1982, and that was it for the Allman Brothers Band. We had a gig scheduled in Sarasota, and I heard that Dickey said he wouldn’t play in Sarasota with me because he thought I would get drunk and embarrass him in his own town. Now, mind you, I’d lived there for six and a half years, and he says some shit about “his town.” Excuse me, you know?
We were supposed to play at the Playground South, so I accepted the gig and decided to play it with the Gregg Allman Band. I think it was all for the best, so I put a band together and hit the road, and didn’t look back. We were released from our contract with Arista, which was a good thing—with all the shit going on in the band, it just wasn’t working anymore.
By that point, I didn’t like to think about the Allman Brothers, I didn’t like to talk about them, and I damn sure didn’t like to play with them. You would figure that they would have appreciated all the songs I had given to them, but because of the alcohol, they pretty much lost all respect for me. They just kinda put up with me because of my last name, and I’m pretty sure that’s why they kept me in the band. I mean, they couldn’t fucking fire me and still call it the Allman Brothers Band, could they?
The breakup of the Allman Brothers in ’82 wasn’t all about me, though. The ’80s saw the onslaught of electronic music—synthesizers, electric drums, disco, all that bullshit—and our kind of music just fell by the wayside. That decade wasn’t worth a shit musically. There was hardly anybody playing live music, and those who did were doing it for not much money, in front of some die-hard old hippies in real small clubs.
It was like going back to square one. It wasn’t like I was washed up—I never thought about that shit. To this day, I don’t ever think about being washed up. I don’t waste my time thinking about where we lie in the public’s eye. Who gives a shit? The only thing I think about is where we are going to play next. Two hundred people or twenty thousand people, I just want to play.
I actually first started thinking about writing this book in the ’80s, when the Brothers broke up. Between ’83 and ’89, when we got back together again, I started writing stuff down, a little bit every day. I kinda wanted people to know me past what they see onstage. I’ve watched John Wayne all my life, I’ve always dug the Duke, but I know nothing about the man.
What got me started was the thought that maybe the band was really over. The first time we broke up, in ’76, I thought there was at least a chance that we’d get back together. When we got back together in ’78, we figured that’d been enough time. But the second time we broke up, that’s when I thought it really might’ve been over.
It was a relief to be out of the Allman Brothers. It’s like having a constant pain, and you get so used to it that when it finally goes away, you realize just how much pain you were in for all that time. It’s like what my brother used to say about banging your head against a wall, because it feels so good when you stop. I couldn’t deal with all the hypocrisy, and we just let the band fade away. Nobody called anybody, it just kinda ended.
As I was trying to figure out what to do next, I had a whole different thing to think about. One day I get a letter from Mary Lynn Green. Back in 1965, there was a club in Daytona called the Bat Cave A Go Go, of all things. It had a great stage and great sound in it; they built this place perfectly, and it was out of sight playing there, except for the fucking name.
Mary Lynn was one of the waitresses there, and, to be real blunt, I punched her ticket in the car out in the damn parking lot one night. Twelve years later, I get a Christmas card. I open it, and there’s a picture of a little kid, sitting behind these drums. The card says, “This is your son, Michael, and he’s doing fine.”
A few years go by, so it’s about 1981, and I was living on Anna Maria Island. I get this letter from Mary Lynn, and it said, “Gregory, some things have come up. I would greatly appreciate it if you would take Michael and keep him for the summer.”
So here comes this guy, and he’s about six foot four, and he knows shit about shit. We did have a great old time; I bought him a fishing rod, and I took him out one day. We hit a damn redfish hole, and he was catching them right, left, and in between, just having the time of his life. He’d never been to a strip joint, he’d never been on a motorcycle, so we did all that. It came to be the end of the summer, and time for him to go home. He was like, “Oh, Dad, can’t I stay here? You can put me in school down here.”
Michael stayed for a while, and I tried, man. I really did. It just wasn’t a good situation, so after a time he returned home, and that was the end of that.
WHEN I STARTED PLAYING WITH THE GREGG ALLMAN BAND, there wasn’t as much money, but everybody was in a good mood, and how much is that worth? I got on the phone, put a band together, and started rehearsing, because we weren’t going to play Allman Brothers songs, we were going to play my songs, and so we had to learn them real quick. Eventually I put together a solid lineup, with the Toler brothers—Danny on guitar, Frankie on drums—Bruce Waibel on bass, Tim Heding on keys, and Chaz Trippy on percussion. We went out there; we were tight, and we hit it hard.
I used to call Frankie Toler “Franklin Delano Crash Pad” for some reason, even though his real name is David. They called him Frankie because one night some chick mistook him for somebody else and called him that, and it just stuck. Frankie was a lot of fun, and boy could he fight. Me and him were in the French Quarter one night, at a place called Black Beard’s, shooting some pool. We were getting ready to leave when these three black guys came in. They started in on us, giving us shit, and we tried to ignore them, but they wouldn’t have it. They grabbed Frankie and took him down, and one of them stomped on Frankie’s hand. Another one was holding me back, but Frankie got loose and grabbed a pool cue, broke it in half, and stuck one of those dudes right in the gut with it. We got the hell out of there, and I don’t know what happened to the guy he stuck, but, man, they might have killed us.
Bruce Waibel went from roadie to guitar player to bass player, and that’s when the band really started cooking. Bruce played just what needed to be played, and he caught on so fast. I couldn’t believe it when I found out he committed suicide in 2003. I wish he had called me before he did it, because I would have told him that there’s nothing worth killing yourself over. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life isn’t a bowl full of cherries, but it’s not a bowl full of shit either.
For his part, Tim Heding was a great keyboard player. There isn’t a horn on either one of those records; Tim played all those parts on keyboard. The thing about Tim was that he was a cheap drunk—three beers and he was done for the evening!
That was a good band—I really had a lot of fun working w
ith those guys. Frankie and Danny were both good at bouncing ideas off of each other and helping the creative process. That band was really good when it came to arrangements. There was never any arguing about this part or that part. It was one of the most easygoing organizations that I’ve ever been in, and it’s too bad that we were so poisoned, because it took away from the direction we had going. For me, the poison was alcohol; for the other guys, it was Quaaludes. We’d play a gig, and after it was over we would look for whatever we could to get a nod going with. It wound up being anything from cough syrup to pills, but it was more me than them.
During this time, we did some shows with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and good God almighty, what a player that man was. The people just loved him, and they gave me credit for bringing him, since he was opening for me, but I had nothing to do with the talents of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was real heavy into drinking, and Stevie was just getting sober, so he and I drifted apart, but, man, we had some nights.
I enjoyed the playing, but the pay sucked. My manager at the time was Alex Hodges at Strike Force Management. Alex had been at Capricorn before it all fell apart, and I’d thought he was the only person who came out of there that I could trust, but I was wrong. Strike Force Management, my ass—the only person who got struck was me.
I couldn’t believe that Willie Perkins, who was my road manager then, let that go on for so long. Willie wasn’t as bad as Hodges was; I think that Willie’s an honest man at heart. He didn’t tell lies; he just didn’t say nothing at all. Here’s a man who we picked up on Twiggs’s recommendation, and who I thought was a real friend. What those guys made off of me, you could probably retire on. I hope they still have some of their stash left.
When you’ve got a band, a tour bus pulling a trailer, and you’re staying at a Holiday Inn, you’ve got to get paid $5,000 a night just to break even. Every now and then we’d made $10,000 for a gig, but for most shows we got paid $7,500. I was getting paid a certain amount, but with all the things that were being taken for various expenses, I was bringing in about $150 a week—just enough for smokes, basically.
One thing that really helped was going over to Marcia and Chuck Boyd’s house, where I’d been staying during the rehearsals for Enlightened Rogues. I finally wound up living with them so I would have somebody to talk to. When I moved back in with Marcia and Chuck I’d been living in this damn one-room apartment with all these yuppies around the communal pool, and I needed to get out. I just didn’t fit in with the scene there at all. Before I moved in with Marcia and Chuck, I was never really happy living in Sarasota. When we would come in off the road, I would think, “Well, shit, now the damn tour is over, where do I go now?” That’s why it was so great when I moved in with them, because it gave me a place to call home.
Marcia and Chuck made me feel welcome, and I loved Marcia’s cooking, especially her chicken and biscuits. I lived with them for the majority of the seven years that I lived in Sarasota, and they were so good to me. They had a bunch of dogs and gave one to me, whose name was Professor Dodsworth.
I have a real thing for animals, and I always have. I’ve never been without an animal. My first dog was a little black dog, and all four paws were white, so we named him Boots. I have a picture of me and Duane and Boots sitting on my grandmother’s steps. I really enjoy having God’s creatures in my life. Not too many, though—I don’t take in just any animal.
When I wasn’t hanging with Marcia and Chuck, the Toler brothers lived just a few blocks over, which made it easy to go down to Telstar Studios for rehearsal. We’d call them up, and they would open up for us. They would turn on the big speakers, and all the instruments were set up, ready to go. We got a lot of shit written in there, including most of the songs for my next two albums. I wrote a lot with Tony Colton, and he also provided the comic relief. Tony is the funniest British cat I have ever met in my life—that guy could make me laugh like no one else.
In between the laughs, though, there was no doubt that I was having a tough time. I might have been playing in a band I liked, with a good group of guys, but we were making peanuts and I just kept on drinking. The cops down in Bradenton/Sarasota didn’t like me too much either, and everybody knew it. I played a lot around town, because I’d get drunk and go jam anywhere. I was well-known, of course, and the cops were just gunning for me—they were always looking to pop me for drunk driving, or just to be a general pain in my ass.
I remember the only time I had to go to jail was back in the ’80s. I got five days because I had a DUI. It was the middle of the night and I had just gotten this new Pontiac, one of those 6.6 Trans Ams, a real heavy car but a lot of engine. And I was boogying, man.
They made me go down there and sleep it off. The judge gave me five days and fined me a grand. He almost made me serve another five, because when I came to serve I showed up rotten drunk. He didn’t appreciate that, but somebody spoke up and saved my ass. Maybe there was a fan in the crowd.
Doing those five days, I got sick as a dog. As I remember it, you didn’t have a room and a bed; you had to just sleep on the hard floor. Thank God I had a big heavy coat. I was in there with a bunch of other folks and then they moved me in with three other guys. And I got so sick. I don’t know if it was the food or if it was nerves, probably a combination of both, but I about went nuts. Incarceration? I can get through a lot of things, but not that. Just the thought of incarceration makes my tummy kind of flip-flop.
No two ways about it, the ’80s were rough. When the Brothers were broken up, from ’82 to ’89, my drinking got much, much worse. It was seven years of going, “What is it that I do?” Being self-employed your whole life, that becomes a certain rock, a reinforcement. When that’s gone, not only are you bored stiff, but you just want to cry—“What do I do? I know I used to serve a purpose.” And subconsciously, there’s that fear of everybody forgetting about you.
Despite that, I always kept writing, always kept looking for more ways to make music, but with the music of the time being what it was, it was just hard to find an audience. The thing is, no matter what I did with my solo career back then, no matter how much I clicked with my band, it never was the Allman Brothers. I knew it as well as anyone. And it was that, as well as the money, that kept pushing me back to familiar places.
In the spring of 1986, my band did two runs with Dickey and his band, which allowed us to play bigger venues. Much as I knew the troubles that came with Betts, the money was good, and I was just tired of not making shit. We’d each do a set with our own bands, and then both bands would come out and play some Allman Brothers tunes together. Everybody was really fucked up. Dickey was cussing his guys and bossing them around like they were a bunch of field hands.
It wasn’t how I ran my band, but it was typical Dickey. Still, hard as it was to watch all that, that tour led to two Allman Brothers reunion shows later in the year, one in July at the Charlie Daniels Volunteer Jam, and then the “Crack-Down” benefit show at Madison Square Garden on Halloween.
The bottom line was, musically, me and Dickey needed each other, so we would put up with each other as long as we could. It would always ease things out when we had new material—but it had to be good material, not just something thrown together or contrived. Even with decent material, though, everything was always temporary. Something would happen, tempers would flare, and once again we’d go our separate ways.
BEFORE THAT RUN WITH DICKEY, I HAD GOTTEN A CALL FROM Forrest Hamilton, who is not with us anymore. Forrest was the younger brother of Chico Hamilton, the famous jazz player. Chico was a good friend of my brother’s, and a good friend of mine for that matter. At that time, I didn’t have a recording contract or nothing, so Forrest called me up and said, “Man, I got three songs that I’m going to send to you—tell me what you think.”
I’d been in California at the time and I liked what I heard, so I called him back and Forrest said, “Listen, why don’t I fly you out here to Los Angeles, and let’s see what happens.” I’d taken Danny Toler with
me to Rock Steady Studios, and we’d cut those three songs in two days, recording my version of the Beatles’ song “Rain” with a huge choir singing background. We also brought “I’m No Angel” out there and did a demo of that one.
In September 1986, with those songs in hand, Epic Records offered me a recording contract, and we headed into Criteria Studios to record I’m No Angel. I had a lot of hope for that record, I really did. The sessions went well, and it felt good to be back in Criteria again. Frankie Toler, at one time, was one of the finest drummers around. If you listen to I’m No Angel or my follow-up, Just Before the Bullets Fly, there’s some incredible drum work on those albums.
When we got to Criteria, Don Johnson called me up and said, “Hey, man, it’s Don. You need some help with that record over there?”
I told him, “Yeah, I do. I’ll tell you what—I’ll leave three songs that you can pick up, then give me a call after you listen to them and tell me which one you want to do.” He chose “Evidence of Love,” and we worked for four hours on it, and we got it. The key was really bothering him, but we worked it out.
Don was really Dickey’s friend, from back in the Macon days, so I wondered about that phone call, because we were never really that close. I think he might have done it for the exposure, because he had just finished cutting a record, in the same room at Criteria that we were using for Angel. Maybe he did it just to see if he could, I don’t know, but whatever his reasons were, he did his very best. The best that was in that man came out on “Evidence of Love.”
I’m No Angel was a good album, overall. The title song had a good hook to it and did well on the radio—thanks to Tony Colton for writing that one for me. The album eventually went gold, and led to the recording of Just Before the Bullets Fly in 1988.
Those two albums are really just one long one. We got in such a groove making Angel that by the time we were finished we had four or five songs left over. Rodney Mills was the producer, and while I didn’t know him that well, we worked very well together. There was no bullshit, and it was a comfortable experience. He caught on real quick to how I work in the studio, and he was very attentive to all the instruments. He treated the other guys very well, and I liked that.