One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band

by Paul, Alan

  JAIMOE: How do you say thank you to a guy for giving up his disability check? He supported us at the beginning before we were making any money.

  ALLMAN: We lived off the [government] disability checks of Red Dog and Twiggs. It was like, “Want a job? Great. You got any money?”

  JOHN LYNDON: Twiggs was in the Navy but he was never injured and didn’t get disability checks. He did often donate his own salary back to the band when they were first in Macon.

  Twiggs was still in jail awaiting trial at the time of the photo shoot. An individual photo of him was superimposed on the wall above the crew.

  PAYNE: We felt like we were part of the band. It was truly indeed more of a brotherhood than any kind of employee/employer relationship. Everyone was equal. I heard through the grapevine that Duane put out a presidential law that the roadies would get paid before the band when money was tight—which was always in the first few years. He was just that kind of a guy.

  RED DOG: The brotherhood was so strong. I can’t talk for the musicians, though I truly believe that in Duane’s heart it was just as strong as it was for us in the crew—especially Twiggs and me. I had only been back from Vietnam for less than a year when I met up with them, and I was pretty messed up from the heavy shit I did and saw over there. I lost a lot of friends. I couldn’t hold a decent job. My marriage was breaking up. All that probably made me very open to this group of guys. They gave me a home.

  PERKINS: Everyone, band and crew alike, got paid $90 a week. When I started, the band was advancing the road manager an extra $50 salary. I pointed that out and Duane said, “You deserve it!” And his ironclad rule was, “If everyone can’t get paid, the crew gets paid first.” Once, on my birthday, he asked for a hundred-dollar advance. I said, “Are you sure? You’ve already taken a lot,” and he said, “I’m sure.” So I filled out the receipt, he signed it, I gave him a hundred, and he handed it to me and said, “Happy birthday. Make sure that goes to my account and not the band’s.”

  JAIMOE: Duane truly appreciated everybody and understood that everybody was a piece of a puzzle. We all play together and every part is equally important and that goes for the bus driver, too. What you gonna do? Play all night and then drive the bus?

  I remember one time Walden tried to get him to have a meeting and said he didn’t need the rest of us in there, and Duane said, “Wait a minute, this is our band and there’s nothing else to talk about. You can talk to all of us.” They were trying to get it to be the Duane Allman Band and he said, “No. We’re all equal in this band.”

  RED DOG: Duane would often bring us all into meetings and I’m sure Phil didn’t quite understand what me and Kim and Callahan were doing in there. He wanted to talk to Duane and he had ten people in his office and was no doubt thinking, “Not only do I have talk to the other musicians, but I’ve got these road bums in here.”

  ALLMAN: They were part of the band, no doubt about it. We were always a little closer with them than the average band.

  STEVE PARISH, Grateful Dead crew member: From the time we started running into each other at the Fillmore East we had a kindred spirit with the Allman Brothers and their crew—and a big part of it was that they were the only other group we came across where we saw a similar relationship and dynamic between the crew and the band members. We were very similar in the sense that we all hung out as equals. Most others we came across, there was a clear line and there was no doubt that the crew were employees.

  PERKINS: The band was like a family, with a hierarchy, and Duane was the father.

  JAIMOE: Berry was maybe like the big brother of the band. He was my man and the three of us had quite a bond going back to the time jamming in Muscle Shoals. He was a little bit more lenient than Duane. If someone started some shit, Duane wanted to knock him down. He couldn’t have hurt a fly, but he’d go up against anyone who challenged him. Berry would be more like, “Let’s work it out, bro.”

  DOUCETTE: Duane and Berry were so close. Their relationship was unbelievable. Duane would say, “It would be nice if we could do this … I was thinking we should get that…” and Berry would just nod his head—and do it. Duane had the vision. Berry got it done.

  Big Brother Berry Oakley.

  RED DOG: I called Berry “the Deacon.” He was a remarkable person also. He had a grip on things and was a great philosophizer, with a way of putting things that made sense to everyone. He helped keep things together in the rough days, always saying, “We’ll weather this storm.”

  BETTS: Berry was also a huge personality. He was the social dynamics guy: he wanted our band to relate to the people honestly. He was always making sure that the merchandise was worth what they were charging, and he was always going in and arguing about not letting the ticket prices get too high, so that our people could still afford to come see us.

  Berry Oakley, Alabama bust, 1971.

  Just after the Fillmore photo shoot, the band was back on the road traveling from a gig in New Orleans to one at the University of Alabama, when they were arrested at a truckstop near the town of Jackson, on March 22, 1971. A police officer reported that he saw one member—Betts—behaving oddly, so he searched the car, where he found a pharmaceutical cornucopia. Every member of the band, along with Perkins, Joe Dan Petty, and Tuffy Phillips, was arrested and faced various charges, including possession of marijuana, heroin, and phencyclidine (PCP). They spent a night in jail before being released on $2,000 bail.

  Butch Trucks, Alabama bust, 1971.

  The charges hung over their head for months. The Buffalo defense attorney John Condon, who was retained to defend Lyndon, flew to Alabama to meet with the district attorney and assist in the case of State of Alabama v. the Members of the Allman Brothers Band.

  Dickey Betts, Alabama bust, 1971.

  Condon traveled there in September 1971 and reported back in a letter to Walden that the DA found himself in a bind because the public wanted him to deal harshly with these hippie invaders, but he knew the case was flawed due to “the nature of the search.” He also said the band gave the impression upon arrest that money was not a factor, and that the fact they had $4,000 cash on them influenced him to seek a $4,000 fine per man.

  Brother Duane Allman, Alabama bust, 1971.

  According to published reports, Condon eventually arranged for the charges against Petty and Perkins to be dropped; the others pled to drastically reduced charges of disturbing the peace and paid a combined total of about $4,000 in fines and court costs. Gregg would sometimes introduce the instrumental “Hot ’Lanta” by saying, “We dedicate this to the people of Jackson, Alabama.” To which, Oakley would quip, “We met some of the nicest people down there.”

  Just three months after the band recorded their album at the Fillmore East, and less than two weeks before its release, Bill Graham decided to close his landmark venue. He chose the Allman Brothers Band to headline three final nights, billed with the J. Geils Band and Albert King, and to be the theater’s final performers, at an invitation-only performance on June 27, 1971, that also featured special guests Edgar Winter, Mountain, Country Joe McDonald, and the Beach Boys.

  Brother Gregg Allman, Alabama bust, 1971.

  PERKINS: Bill Graham never paid anyone top dollar at the Fillmore and a lot of bands went off to other promoters as a result and Bill would feel like they had turned their back on him. But we loved playing there. The guys hated most promoters, but they loved Bill.

  ALLMAN: He closed the Fillmore with three nights and wanted us on all three, which I thought was the kindest gesture and coolest thing.

  TRUCKS: The next-to-last night we played until the morning and we did things that we had never thought of before or since. Those are the moments that have always made this thing work, the reason we’re still doing it and talking about it now.

  ALLMAN: The second night we played up there for hours and hours, and walked out in the morning. The last night, everybody was already whipped from the night before. On one of the recordings we did, you can hear
my brother saying, “It’s awfully quiet in here.” Everyone was burnt out.

  TRUCKS: We were just dumbstruck when we found out that we were gonna close the Fillmore. Can you think of a bigger honor at that time? Jesus. Everyone wanted in on that gig. The Beach Boys showed up and unloaded all their stuff and said they’d have to play last, and Bill Graham said, “Well, just pack up your shit. I have my closing band.” So the Beach Boys had to swallow their pride.

  Bill was never one to talk much when he introduced bands—“Ladies and gentlemen, the Allman Brothers Band”—but that night he got up and read this speech about us and it was just incredible.

  This is in part how Graham introduced the Allman Brothers Band for their—and the Fillmore East’s—final set: “Last night, we had … them get on stage at about two-thirty, three o’clock and they walked out of here at seven o’clock in the morning and it’s not just that they played quantity … I’ve never heard the kind of music that this group plays—the finest contemporary music. We’re going to round it off with the best of them all, the Allman Brothers Band.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Push Push

  AT FILLMORE EAST featured just seven songs spread over four vinyl sides, capturing the Allmans in all their bluesy, sonic fury. “You Don’t Love Me” and “Whipping Post” both filled whole album sides, while “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” clocked in at 13 minutes. The album included Doucette on a number of songs, including “Done Somebody Wrong” and “You Don’t Love Me.” His solo was edited out of “Stormy Monday” and put back for later reissues, such as The Fillmore Concerts.

  The years of relentless touring, hard-driving rehearsals, and single-minded devotion had paid off: More than forty years after its release, At Fillmore East still sounds completely fresh, totally inspired, and utterly original. It is the gold standard of blues-based rock and roll.

  Duane’s constant faith seemed to be paying off with the album’s strong initial sales—but things were far from calm within the band, or with Duane himself.

  TRUCKS: Duane never stuck a needle in his arm, but he would snort heroin a lot. One night in the summer of ’71 in San Francisco, Duane followed me to my hotel room and jumped in my face. He said, “I’m pissed off! When Dickey gets up to play, the rhythm section is pumping away and when I get up there you’re laying back and not pushing at all.” I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Duane, you’re so fucked up on that smack that you’re not giving us anything.” He looked me in the eye and walked out the door. I think he knew I was telling him the truth and that’s what he wanted to hear. He needed someone to tell him what he already knew, and it was one of the few times I had the balls to get in his face.

  DOUCETTE: It was nuts. Everything was everywhere. The drugs never seemed to have a really bad effect on Duane’s personality, but the drinking didn’t work for him. I thought the booze affected the band a lot more than anything else we did. We were doing things, but the music was so far out in front of everything else.

  JAIMOE: When Duane wasn’t clearheaded to me, it certainly wasn’t from doing heavy drugs. Duane did not need to drink alcohol—just like Gregory, he would become a different person. Drinking made them both somebody completely different. Duane could be so fucking nasty you wouldn’t even want to admit you knew him. The other shit did not do anything like that to Duane. Doing smack may have slowed down his playing or made him not be able to control exactly what he wanted to be able to control, but he never did so much until he couldn’t play and sound great. Duane moved five times faster than normal anyhow, so that stuff might have normalized him a bit.

  PAYNE: Duane had two speeds: stop and wide open.

  Duane’s love of speed and his reckless motorcycle driving were no secret. As early as December 1969, Rolling Stone ran a news item reporting on him being busted in Macon on eleven counts, including speeding (60 mph in a 25 zone), reckless driving, having no helmet, running two stop signs, an expired license tag, having no driver’s license, and failure to obey an officer.

  DR. JOHN, pianist, friend of Duane: Duane was so special, man, a real sweetheart. He was out there past left field, but he was as sweet as they come. In some way, Duane knew he lived on the edge. I don’t think he had a death wish, but he knew that he was pushing it—that his lifestyle wasn’t necessarily compatible with life. I remember being in Miami with him and he got an Opel because that was supposed to be the car you couldn’t turn over and he just wanted to prove that he could flip it.

  PODELL: Duane Allman is the only person who ever intimidated me in my life. If he walked into a room, I became instantly speechless … which for me was extremely unusual. Bill Graham, one of the most intense men in the world, was my best friend. I dealt with every rock star and promoter you can think of, but only Duane impacted me in that way. I don’t know why. It wasn’t his words; he didn’t say much, at least around me, but he had such a huge, huge presence.

  HAMMOND: Yeah, Duane was out there—but we all were. These were heady, heavy times and bizarre behavior was somewhat the norm.

  MCEUEN: It was crazy times. I gave a guy a ride to Long Beach one day and said, “Hey, what have you got in the briefcase?” And he said, “Seventy-five thousand hits of acid.” It was a big drug culture, but out in L.A., the Allmans also brought something that was a little different to people in that culture: Jack Daniel’s. They went, “If we drink this and smoke that, wow.” I’ll never forget the time when Duane did that too much and couldn’t hold his guitar at an Hour Glass session. But I’m sure that was because he was unhappy with the music. Duane was generally dedicated to playing his music and doing it as well as he could.

  BOYER: He kept everyone in line. Duane wasn’t that in line himself; he didn’t miss out on anything, but he kept the focus on the music. It was the most important thing to him.

  TRUCKS: Duane was strong, confident, and honest. He wanted to experience everything, good or bad, and when he realized that what he was doing was negative, then he would stop.

  JAIMOE: Shit, we all were doing too much of everything. I did a lot of things, as much or more shit as anyone, but the music always came first. I wasn’t going to be stopped by anything—no women, no drugs—which is why I was forty-two years old before my first child was born. What saved me was paradiddles [drum exercises] and push-ups. I was into bodybuilding and playing drums. I loved sports and being healthy and nothing came before the music. Anything that started to impact the music, I pulled back, and Duane was like that. There were times when he got to the point that he knew shit was getting in the way and he would pull back.

  RED DOG: Duane was just very keen, very observant, especially about feelings. If you believe in ESP, he had it. He was very in tune with people and very mature. I was five years older than him and had done serious combat in Vietnam, but I never questioned him as someone to listen to and follow.

  RICK HALL: I was thinking about today and he was thinking five years from now.

  RED DOG: I was going through a hard time with the band at one point real early and was thinking of leaving because of some stuff Gregg had said to me. I did not discuss this with anyone, but Duane seemed to know what I was thinking. Me and him and Dickey were tripping on Coleman Hill in Macon, and we were down in these hedges, with a canopy of old-growth trees above us swaying together in the wind, and Duane said, “See that, Augie, no matter how hard the wind blows, it can’t separate those trees.” I looked up at them in the moonlight and nothing could replace the feeling of what he was saying without us ever directly addressing anything.

  TRUCKS: When I first met Duane he was taking Black Beauties all the time until he realized it was messing with his music and he stopped. He’d go through these phases where he’d get really into something and push it too far; I saw Duane experiment with every drug there was but once he realized it was affecting his music, he would stop and he had the strength to do that.

  JAIMOE: I just think about how great a band this was, how great the sound was, and it
makes me think how great it could have been if we hadn’t slowed ourselves down with all that shit. We’ll never know.

  DR. JOHN: We were there [in Miami] doing a session with Ronnie Hawkins and the three of us was havin’ a drink with a hurricane comin’ up and he said something like, “If I’m not here, could you look after my brother?” It wouldn’t have been his style to be that direct ’cause he wasn’t that clear about anything—but that was the gist of what he said. He knew he might not be around for real long and we both understood that’s what he was saying. It was eerie, man.

  PERKINS: Duane had told Phil, “Don’t put all your money on me.” He did not have a death wish, but he danced pretty close to the edge of the cliff and he knew it.

  BETTS: Now that I look back after all these years, it was like he knew that he only had a certain amount of time to get things done.

  In September 1971, Twiggs Lyndon went to trial for first-degree murder. He pled not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

  PERKINS: Phil called Atlantic, who put him in touch with Mr. John Condon, who was with the premier criminal defense firm in Buffalo.

  ODOM: Someone at Atlantic Records—likely Jerry Wexler—turned Phil on to John Condon. He was a remarkable attorney. He said to me once, “I’m a defense attorney and I represent those that steal and those that don’t.” He was very good at his trade.

  JOHN LYNDON: Mr. Condon decided that they needed to bring in Andrew Watson, who was a lawyer and a psychiatrist on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law and Medical Schools. They told him they would need him there for three or four days and Dr. Watson said that would not be possible for a year. Condon told Twiggs that it was his opinion that it was worth the wait to have Watson involved. Twiggs said he had no problem waiting and so they delayed the trial for a year.