by Gregg Allman
The first time we played at the Beacon Theatre was also in 1989. Our old friend, the legendary promoter Ron Delsener, took a chance on us, and it paid off big time. Ron has always been good to us, and he set the table for us to come back year after year. We got in there and just knocked ’em dead, man. From the first night, it was like, “Wow, guys, did that feel like the Fillmore to you?” The guys in the band were saying it was like an indoor Schaefer Music Festival, or an indoor Woodstock, on a small scale.
Not knowing their wants and needs, we came to town the first time and just raised the roof on the place. And they must’ve gone, “Whoa, what do we got here? A satisfying band that plays longer than thirty minutes?” Whatever happened with the chemistry of the Brothers and the people of New York, I’m so glad it did, ’cause they’re wonderful people. I’ll play there till I can’t play anymore. This I swear.
The Beacon started asking us, “Hey, can you come back next year?” Then they started wanting to contract us for two and three years at a time. I don’t know how long the damn contract is now—till death do us part.
In the early ’70s, Atlanta was our town. When we started playing the Fillmore East and the Fillmore West, we used to just bounce back and forth, and when we started doing that, then New York became our place. New Yorkers are no bullshitters. The Yankees get paid a lot of money, and I can see why. New Yorkers don’t want no old, watered-down crap, they want the real deal. They seemed to get satisfied when we get off the stage; they were totally worn out, and that’s just what we want.
After playing the Beacon more than two hundred times, you just feel at home, whereas other places that maybe you’ve played once or twice, it’s more like, they live here; we’re just visiting. Those feelings don’t get in the way of your playing, but it’s so much nicer to play in a place that’s not stiff. You don’t feel like you’re being judged and you feel at home. By the second or third time in there, we knew, this is our place—how often can we get in here?
By the time we finished that reunion tour in ’89, there was no doubt that having Allen and Warren in the band put a good, fresh wind in our sails. Those two together made the band really click. In fact, things were going so well that we went into Criteria in the spring of 1990 and cut Seven Turns, which I think is a very good record.
That album has a lot of songwriting and a lot of singing. There are songs written by me, by Dickey, by Warren, and by Johnny Neel, and we all sang as well. That gave me a vocal break, which left me all kind of throat to really do it right when I sang.
While we were making the record in Miami, Butchie says, “C’mon, guys, I wanna show you something. It’s down in South Beach.”
“I’m there,” I told him. This was when it was just bad women down there, just naked as hell—anybody’d wanna go down and take a look at that.
Me and Woody were hanging pretty tight about then, so he agreed to go too, and Warren also jumped in. I think Warren knew where we were going. We kinda went in the back way and come up a one-way street, and there were these two little guys with ball caps on and gloves, throwing a ball back and forth at the ass end of this club called Tropics International.
Butchie didn’t say nothing. I guess he’d already called and said, “We’re coming up the back way, just don’t say nothing and we’ll walk by.” We went in and it was one of those clubs, like in New Orleans, where you have the bar and the bottles and the band is back behind that. If you stepped forward, you’re right in the bottles.
So we’re sitting there and they announced the band back on and they said, “Derek Trucks.” Butchie looks over and gives us a shit-eatin’ grin and says, “Wait till you see who it is.” Suddenly I see the two kids from outside who’d been throwing the ball and they walked onstage. It was the same way with me when I’d started playing. If you’re underage, when you left the stage, you had to leave the building where they’re serving alcohol—as if somebody wouldn’t bring you one.
I said, “That’s your nephew—that’s your brother’s kid.”
And he said, “Yep, that’s my nephew, but hang on to what you got when he puts that guitar on.”
They came in and put on their gear, and Derek was just barely taller than that Gibson. He started with that slide—matter of fact, slide was all he knew how to play at that time, and I thought, “Well, that’s a first.”
But he blew the roof off that place. After the first song, Butchie leaned over to my ear and said, “And he’s not a bully.” I laughed—Dickey was such a fucking bully.
I said, “Man, how old is this guy?”
He said, “Well, he’s almost ten.”
I love Derek Trucks, and I always have. Derek has turned out to be a fine musician and a fine person, one of my favorite people in the whole world. Now he’s all grown up, has two kids, he’s outta sight—and his wife, Susan, is too.
Recording Seven Turns went so well that a year later we decided to do another one. We recorded Shades of Two Worlds at Ardent Studios in Memphis, and that went pretty well. Percussionist Marc Quiñones came in to play on a few tracks, and we loved him so much, he never left. It’s funny—my brother had always wanted a percussion player in the band, and we got one twenty years later.
I was mostly sober for that whole recording session, and that certainly helped. It was much easier for me, because I could concentrate on what I was doing. Tommy Dowd noticed it too, and he would say funny little things to me like “Thanks for not making me wait two weeks for those vocals.”
Let me tell you something; that man lived a full life up until he died in 2002. He had done everything I had done twice. He could run any technical stuff there was, and built some of it. People don’t realize that Tommy worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II. Good God, from the Manhattan Project to cutting rock and roll records, the man did it all. I had my heart invested in Tommy Dowd—I loved him like he was family.
IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME THAT I ALSO GOT INVOLVED IN ACTING. I’d done my first movie back in 1988, and it was called Rush Week. I’d played a guy who had been in college so long that they finally decided to make him a member of the faculty. His name was Cosmo Kincaid, and he was like the president of the student body, kind of a liaison between the students and the faculty. The movie opens with Cosmo sitting across from this girl who was naked and cross-legged. The truth is, I had some pretty fucking lame lines; it was a real B movie. We shot for three days in Los Angeles, and it was freezing the entire time.
Then in 1991, I did the movie Rush. We shot it in Houston, and collectively I was there about a month. I had to keep commuting back and forth from Houston to Memphis, where we were recording Shades of Two Worlds. The experience was great, because Sam Elliott and Jason Patric showed me the way and held my hand through the entire process. They told me not to sweat anything and really made me feel comfortable.
One night we all had a night off, so I looked in the paper for entertainment, and I saw “Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar: Live Band on Tuesday Night.” I thought, “Man, it’s Tuesday, and that’s the place.” I got Sam and Jason and told them, “C’mon, man, let’s go downtown and I’ll show you what I do in my spare time.” We go to the bar, I picked up a black Les Paul, and the guys in the house band knew every tune there was. We had a blast, man, let me tell you.
Rush was directed by Lili Zanuck, and she and I look like brother and sister. She is so sweet, and I’m just in love with that lady. From the moment I met her, she made me feel at ease. One day I told her, “If it wasn’t for Richard”—her husband—“you’d be in real trouble!”
There was one shot where they washed my fucking hair seventeen times. I finally told them, “Listen, if one more motherfucker washes my hair, I’m done. If you ain’t got the take in the can, then you ain’t got the fucking take, because this hair ain’t getting wet again!”
Despite that, I really enjoyed the whole process. It was a different facet of the entertainment industry, and I wanted to see how those people worked together. I didn’t have al
l that many lines in Rush; it was more of an attitude thing. Also, if I did another movie, I wouldn’t want it to be so serious. Rush was some serious shit.
That same time, I met a woman named Shelby Blackburn and we got together. I told her that I had four kids, and the way the world was going, I couldn’t see bringing another child into it. We were together for a couple of years, and everything was fine; she was on birth control and all that. Then, right when it was looking like we were fixing to split up, she got pregnant. It felt like entrapment, man.
Her family came out from Indiana to visit. Her father, mother, and two of her brothers were there. I sat them all down and said, “Now, look, your daughter is pregnant. I’ve been married five times, and I’m not getting married now. If Shelby wants this baby, it’s hers, and I will pay a certain amount to support her. So she can have it, or we can abort it while it’s still a little drop of water.” They all said, “No, no,” so this little drop of water grew into Layla, who is a singer and a songwriter now.
Her full name is Layla Brooklyn Allman. There’s no particular reason why her middle name is Brooklyn; Layla Brooklyn just seems to roll off the tongue, and I thought it was a really hip name for a girl.
Then one day in 1994, my daughter Island came to live with me in California. I really hadn’t seen Island since her mother, Julie, and I had split in 1981, and all of a sudden there she was. I’d been drinking off and on at the time, still trying to get sober, and the bottom line was Julie wanted Island to live with me.
So I took Island in, and at first it didn’t work. I sent her to a school nearby, and she just didn’t do shit. It was a Catholic school, because she had been raised as a Catholic by her mother. It’s one of the finest Catholic schools in the world, and it just happened to be right down the street. Her grades were terrible, and she would lie about things just for the sake of lying.
One night, after she’d been living with me for about five or six months, she was in her room, and when I went back there I could smell cigarette smoke. I knocked on her door, and she opened it just a crack. I asked what was going on, and I started to walk on in. She put her hand right in the center of my chest, and I asked her what she thought she was doing. I told her to get her hand off of me, but she didn’t. Man, I got madder and madder, and within five seconds, I was as mad as I could get.
“Island,” I said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go into the family room, and I’m going to sit down, and I’m going to cool out for about an hour, and then I expect you to meet me for a talk. Don’t be late.” If I hadn’t walked away, I would have done something violent, and I didn’t want to do that. I’m not proud of that reaction, but that’s where I was at that point.
Sure enough, she came out, and I told her that while she was living in my house, she would do as I say, and I told her that I loved her. After that, she stopped doing all that shit, because she saw that I really cared about her. She’d really thought that I was going to come in that room and beat her, because she could see how upset I was. When I didn’t, I showed her how much I loved her, and that really surprised her.
Eventually we got to liking each other, and somewhere in there, she grew up real quick. I don’t know when it happened, but it seems like it happened over a weekend or something. I swear to God, she got better and everything was fine. Thankfully Island overcame all that stuff, and she loves me—good God. She’s really proud of the fact that she’s the first Allman ever to graduate from college, and even from graduate school, and so am I. Island is the love of my life.
I moved out to Marin County for most of the ’90s; that was where Island and I lived during this time. The Allman Brothers never felt like we fit in musically in San Francisco, but I have a lot of real close friends out there, so it seemed like a good spot for a bit. I liked living out there; it’s just that there were too damn many people. You got a freeway with six lanes on each side. If I wanted to ride my bike, I had to load it up on a trailer. Everything’s either uphill or down. I had to load that heavy piece of iron up on the trailer and back it down a long driveway—which is all downhill. That was scary, but I made it every time.
I’d drive my hog up to the Sonoma area, up in the wine country, which was great. Sometimes we’d check into a bed-and-breakfast up there, and then I’d have Saturday and Sunday to ride. That was more worth it. But when I’d have only Sunday to ride, I had to get up early, load that thing up, take it down that long driveway, haul it all the way up north into Sonoma, unload the bike, ride around Sonoma all day—which was real fun. Then my tired ass had to load that sucker back up, drive it back down to Marin, load it up that hill, and take it out of the trailer. And I wonder why I have arthritis today.
I’ve loved motorcycles since I was little. I was riding one before it was legal to ride. When I was growing up, you would get a learner’s license at the age of fourteen, and you could drive a motorcycle on the street as long as it wasn’t above 10 brake horsepower. You didn’t get much sauce out of that—it’s like a scooter or a moped.
On the front of my Searching for Simplicity record, there’s a picture of me at the ripe old age of fifteen. When we would go back to Nashville to see my grandmother in the summer, this guy named Tim lived down the hill. He looked just like George Thorogood, same haircut, flopped down in his face. I loved that guy. He had a Harley-Davidson 125 Hummer. That’s when I learned to drive, sitting in front of him, way up on the tank. He must’ve had a lot of faith. But he said, “Once you get the hang of it, man, you got it.”
When the family—meaning my mother and me and Duane—moved from Nashville to Daytona Beach in 1959, there was no 1–75, no 95, there weren’t any interstates. Eisenhower was in office, and he’s the one who put in all that infrastructure. On the way, we were coming down 301, and we came through Savannah. It was in the early morning; I loved that time of day. We were going down the street and there were all these oak trees, it was like this tunnel. At the very end was a Harley-Davidson shop and they were all out there, different colors, looking like little pieces of candy. I thought, “I oughta come back to this place someday.” Sure enough, I did.
I didn’t hesitate to get back on after Duane’s accident, or Berry’s. Not at all. Think about it—it has nothing to do with me riding a bike. It only has to do with them. My brother had two speeds—ninety and parked. At one time, just about everybody in the band had a motorcycle. Mostly, we all had Triumphs. We’d go riding, and my brother would be like seven blocks ahead of us. We’d say, “We’re going to go to this certain beer tavern up here,” and when we got there, he’d already be there.
“Is Duane going?”
“Well, he’s kinda going, you know?”
He didn’t seem to get enjoyment out of riding; he got enjoyment out of speed.
Oakley had just learned to ride after we put the band together, and he was the same way. He had a Datsun 280Z, when they first came out, and he used to fly around in that thing.
You gotta let the motorcycle become a part of you, and of course, you gotta drive defensively. I don’t go on the freeway; I stay on the two-lane. I usually just putt. If it’s wide-open spaces, with nothing on either side of the road, I might open it up then. You gotta see what the ol’ boy can do—once, at least.
Riding a motorcycle will just blow the stress right off of you. It’s a total feeling of freedom, and having control of that much power just does something for you. It’s not an ego builder or anything like that, but it’s a real good feeling. Some people got it, some people don’t—some have the fever for it, and some people live their whole life and wouldn’t even go near one. That’s totally understandable, because not only can you get killed on one, but you can get just about drawn and quartered.
But that’s a rarity, and now there’s so many of them. Drivers used to ignore bikes on the road, but now there’s not a time I go riding I don’t see at least ten of ’em. Man, just talking about it has me itching to ride.
BECAUSE I’D JUST ABOUT DONE MYS
ELF IN BY DRINKING SO MUCH during the ’80s, I honestly wanted a change—it just took a while.
When the band got back together in ’89, I really did try to quit drinking, but I didn’t get any help from Dickey. He was drinking just as hard as me, and he looked at me like, “You poor trash.” He would call me a hypocrite, anything to make what he was doing right and what I was doing wrong. Of course, I tried to ignore it. I didn’t bear him any malice. I wasn’t judging anybody, and I never have. I’m not a judgmental person—I do not have the right to say anything about what other people do, because whatever it is, I’ve done it.
But we had some great years, despite Dickey. The name of this section could be “And one more time, it worked.” We were back in the saddle again. After Allen came in, we just steadily kept getting better and better. I started writing new stuff and everything was fine, except for Dickey. I would catch myself saying, “It’s always something”—you fix this end, that end goes wrong.
Still, I think it was the fact that the band was working out so well that allowed me to make the change that I really needed and get sober. Early in the ’90s, I was drinking real heavy. I’d given up on drugs, but I just traded one for the other. It’s such a sleazy way of living. When you sweat, you smell like vodka. You know, I say I “traded,” but if drugs just fell into my hand, if somebody came by and they had some killer blow, we’d do it. I just didn’t reach out for it, didn’t have to.
Musicians get famous and they’re sitting ducks for it. “Here, man, try some of this; it’ll get you going onstage.” Then, “Here, man, try some of this; it’ll settle you down after you get off of the stage.” And sure enough, it does for a while, and then it becomes a way of life. It’s insidious. And cigarettes are right in there with it.
The more you drink, the more you have to drink. At one point, I was up to one and a half, sometimes two quarts a day. And the whole time I was drinking I had no idea that I had hepatitis C, which affects your liver. I’ve often wondered, if I’d known back then that I had hepatitis C, would I have drunk as much? I’d like to think not. It was a rough ride.