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

by Paul, Alan

  Woody was hired, but once the group hit the road, the original members quickly began to worry about his playing.

  BETTS: Allen was a little shaky on his feet when he started with us.

  TRUCKS: The first month or so on the road, Allen was struggling and we were starting to have doubts. He had some rough nights. Jaimoe finally sat him down and said, “Remember how you played when you auditioned for this band? Well, you better start playing like that again.” And he did. I think once he got the job he was a little nervous about being in the Allman Brothers and someone had to get it through to him to relax and play. There’s no room for doubt up there.

  JAIMOE: He was confused, because he had Gregg telling him one thing and Dickey telling him something else—and not in as nice a fashion as Gregg. Between trying to please Dickey and please himself, he was going crazy.

  He was a much better bass player than what he was playing in the Allman Brothers Band and I just told him that: “You played your ass off in auditions and rehearsals and you’re not doing it on the gigs. Just go ahead and play—don’t be bothered by this, that, and the other. This is your gig.” We’d go to these jams and he was just killing it and I’d say, “That’s how you have to play on your gig!”

  HAYNES: Woody was going crazy because everyone was telling him what to play and giving him different directions. Dickey wanted him to come from the Berry Oakley tradition of the bass being part of the guitar line, while Gregg favors a more in-the-pocket R and B approach. Johnny Neel played a lot and was always telling Woody what to play to stay out of his way. And I was guilty myself of telling him what I thought he should be doing.

  JAIMOE: There’s no formula to this. You listen to the songs and play what’s right, and when it comes time to jam, you get a little more hyper. It doesn’t mean you don’t play the way you feel. It’s just that you have to make adjustments and play to the song.

  NEEL: It’s hard when one guy says one thing and another says something else. I wouldn’t want to be in that spot. Playing piano, I could fade in and out, pick my spots and just do my thing. Being the bass player is probably the hardest job in any band and in the Allman Brothers it’s even harder, because of the tremendous, unique legacy of Berry Oakley and how important that was to Dickey, especially. Berry had such a distinct style. You either got it or you didn’t. There wasn’t no in-between.

  JAIMOE: Betts was a dictator, man. He was always trying to tell the bass player what and how to play, and that’s not something that you do, unless it really, really needs to be done. You’re supposed to be a good musician and figure that out. Allen was a good musician.

  BETTS: There was an immense amount of material for him to learn and he was going through a learning process, but then he settled down and found his home.

  HAYNES: Woody and I had this talk and I remember saying, “Look, you’re the man. They hired you for a reason. Forget all of us. Follow your gut and go for it.” And once he did that, everyone loved him.

  WOODY: It was a lot to take in. The third gig I played with the Allman Brothers I was scared shitless and started feeling a little lost so I turned to look back and saw Jaimoe walking around his drums, adjusting cymbal stands in the middle of a song in front of twenty thousand people.

  NEEL: Rolling down the highway with two drummers, two guitar players, and a bass player is a good feeling. That two-drummer thing Butch and Jaimoe create is incredible. It was like riding a big old stallion.

  Johnny Neel, 1990.

  WOODY: Butch and Jaimoe listen to each other all night and they never contradict what the other guy is playing. They really complement each other and I realized I couldn’t reinforce either of them too much; I had to go somewhere down the middle, catching the groove they create together. You have to hear them as one drummer. Typically, Butch is the timekeeper and Jaimoe sits there waiting for a hole to erupt.

  MATT ABTS, Gov’t Mule drummer: Butch is a great, very unique drummer. I’ve heard countless drummers sit in with the Allman Brothers, including myself, and no one can replicate exactly what he does. That is testament to his creativity and being an equal part of the ABB chemistry. Butch in a different context might not be the same, but inside the ABB, he is indispensable.

  Jaimoe is like an encyclopedia of drumming going back to the jazz era. He just has such a history of the drums and you can hear it in his playing. He is the consummate listener with huge ears to play around what Butch does. What they have going on together is very, very unique.

  HAYNES: The reason that Woody brought all those basses to the audition is he was always looking to express different sides of his personality. Eventually I realized he was really a guitar player and guitar players do that: we switch sounds a lot, pick a different instrument and approach to match the song, whereas bass players, especially in the old school, stayed consistent. While this may have seemed odd at first, I think it had a lot to do with his style fitting in with the Allman Brothers—because Berry Oakley was also a guitarist and his style was very aggressive, not focused on playing in the pocket.

  Woody was psyched once he joined the band to utilize a wide array of sounds—and some of these sounds maybe weren’t welcomed with open arms. Woody always talked about how Berry liked to roughen up the edges of whatever was being done, to turn country or blues songs into rock and roll.

  NEEL: You have to bounce around a little bit and figure out who to listen to when you’re just a guy they hired to play and not a full member of a band. It’s a funny place to be and it could be hard to read anyone’s mood on any given day. I think anyone would say that in any job where you’re a junior staff dealing with four executive vice presidents. You never knew what was going to happen. There’s a lot of history between them boys and that’s about all I got to say about that.

  JAIMOE: Gregory’s biggest problem was he had run his own show and now he was back being one of four partners and he had to adjust to that. And Gregory don’t listen to music like the rest of us do, so he had gotten used to different arrangements and he would say, “That’s not the way it goes.” And Dickey pretty quickly got back to his bullying ways. The only thing I was paying attention to is that I was sitting at my drums playing music with the people I had played it with the most.

  GOLDBERG: Each of these four guys had their own quirks. Jaimoe was the easiest. He didn’t want to get involved in the business. He just wanted to come play. Butch was generally a very positive force. It really was just about keeping Dickey and Gregg happy and together.

  Dickey was the strongest willed, very forceful and very much the leader. In that moment, Gregg was basically just the singer. He’s obviously the signature voice in a very profound way and his name is Allman, but he was not the major creative force that Dickey was. Dickey said to me once that he wished he hadn’t agreed that the band be called the Allman Brothers, that he felt cursed and marginalized by that. He felt that he had written a lot of music and been integral to the band but because his name was not Allman, he would never have the clout, and that bothered him. And he certainly had a point.

  PERKINS: I was with Gregg through the 1989 twentieth-anniversary tour. After that, we spent a day shopping for houses with him in Nashville. While I was out with him, a fax came into our office saying that Strike Force would not be retained, a very personal way of telling us that we would not be representing Gregg anymore. We were so resentful and frustrated, because we had spent years building him back up and just as it was paying off, he jumped ship and we were out.

  GOLDBERG: With very rare exceptions like Van Halen, lead singers are a band’s most famous member and signature. The difference was the Allman Brothers were a guitar band and Dickey was a major guitar force and songwriter. And Dickey was a very brilliant guy in ways that were often underappreciated. He’s very knowledgeable about all sorts of things: jazz, blues, classical music, art, the worldly news of the moment.

  Gregg is obviously very smart, especially about the band’s career. But he was disengaged. He was not in his heal
thiest period. I’d love to know him the way he is today, judging by what I’ve seen and my brief, friendly interactions in recent years. The Gregg that was then was pretty inward, in his own world most of the time. He always sang great, but he was not that engaged. Butch also had ideas about what the band should do, but Dickey was primarily driving things.

  CAPLAN: Dickey was the bandleader. Period. He was the guy to deal with and he was capable of really being great, but also capable of getting really mean and physical. People were scared of him, especially when he was drinking. Gregg sometimes struggled in the studio to get his vocals done. It could be a painstakingly slow process.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Revival

  THE GROUP RETURNED to the studio with Dowd and produced 1990’s Seven Turns, a strong recording that made it clear that this reunion would be different than the ’80s efforts. The album kicked off with the slide hook and guitar harmonies of “Good Clean Fun,” establishing that Haynes and Betts were resurrecting the classic ABB sound and approach. Allman was in good voice, and Betts stepped up, writing or co-writing seven of the nine songs, including the title track, which was inspired by the Navajo concept that each person faces seven crucial decisions in life.

  ALLMAN: I felt like Seven Turns was timeless; it sounded like it could have come out in ’69, and one big factor in [that] was Tom Dowd. He’s very much like an eighth member of the band. He’s like a father to me: teacher, father, guru—take your pick. He was real supportive of us and was always real supportive of me with the drug thing. He helped me get through some tough times. He came out for most of the whole tour we did before recording Seven Turns and knew where we were and that made it real easy to get where we needed to be.

  Dickey Betts with his Navajo spiritual mentor, Stuart Etsitty.

  BETTS: Tom worked with Ray Charles when he was just starting out and he carried that kind of experience with him and offered so much. He played a huge role in helping us make a worthy comeback album.

  HAYNES: Tom was probably special when he started out, but he’s recorded with everyone from Cream to John Coltrane, from Aretha Franklin to Lynyrd Skynyrd. He’ll hint around at something and make you think it was your idea.

  BETTS: Tommy is so easygoing in his approach that when you finish an album with him you wonder what the hell he contributed. That’s because he makes you feel that you did everything yourself. He [was] really a genius psychologist, capable of getting you to pull things out of yourself that you didn’t even know were there.

  WOODY: Tom can pull you up way above your potential. He pulls things out of you and deceives you into thinking you did it yourself.

  BETTS: I’ve learned a lot by studying Tommy Dowd for many years, though I have a more assertive way of doing it. People definitely know when I’ve made a suggestion or told them to play a certain part.

  ALLMAN: Aside from all these great qualities, it’s just wonderful to work with someone when you know each other so well. You have to be able to communicate with the producer and vice versa. A lot of times you don’t even have to talk; you just make signs. Like, if you want to start at the top, you just put your hand on your head. You have to stay in the same frequency all day and that’s so much smoother with someone you’ve known for a long time like Tom or Johnny Sandlin.

  BETTS: Seven Turns was a tough album, because we knew that the critics would use it to determine whether or not we should have remained broken up. We were under pressure to show that we belonged back together. We never doubted it, but the album simply had to prove that.

  ALLMAN: To me, there wasn’t a lot of pressure on Seven Turns. It was more of an adventure: let’s see what a few years away from each other did for us. And it was good. We needed a break from each other and came out swinging.

  BETTS: I think all the expected things you’re used to hearing on an Allman Brothers record are there: the instrumental (“True Gravity”), the slide and guitar harmonies on “Good Clean Fun,” which is the first song Gregg and I ever co-wrote, and then “Seven Turns,” which is a nice light color to the heavier blues, similar to what we’ve done before with my songs like “Blue Sky” and “Ramblin’ Man.”

  HAYNES: Dickey, Johnny Neel, and I were working out the three-part harmony stuff for “Seven Turns” in the studio hallway and Gregg was in the lounge shooting pool. As we rehearsed the “Somebody’s calling your name” part, I heard Gregg answer it. I don’t even know if he did it on purpose. It wasn’t like he said, “Hey, check this out…” He was just singing along to what he heard us doing as he shot pool. And I said, “Hey, listen to that. This is what we need.” It was all very coincidental and it became one of the pinnacles of the tune, when Gregg comes in on the answer vocal at the end of the song.

  BETTS: One reason that group worked better than some of the others was Warren and Allen knew what we were after. They had studied us for years and understood where they fit into the band. And Warren was the first guitarist who came along since Duane who could really stand on his own and play off of me, which is the basis of our whole style. He’s a great player and he has his own style, so he was not pulled into constantly trying to sound like Duane, though he was plagued with that comparison from day one.

  TRUCKS: Warren and Woody really reenergized us and helped us get back to being the Allman Brothers Band.

  HAYNES: I had listened to the Allman Brothers since I was nine years old and I studied that music hard. But once I joined the band, some of the things that they were doing became obvious to me in a way that I could never have figured out as a listener.

  WOODY: I felt that the music was like a sacred trust and it couldn’t be violated. I had complete respect for the history and legacy.

  HAYNES: As much as Dickey loves to improvise, he was also very studied about the guitar parts, especially when I first started playing with him. We would sit in hotel rooms or backstage working out harmony parts and he would be very specific about nailing things. He was always open to my thoughts, but wanted to be precise about things like how long to hold the notes out, when to cut them off, that the length of a sustained note be in sync, as well as where to start the vibrato and when to not have vibrato and things of that nature. He had tremendous attention to detail.

  BETTS: We made changes we had to make in earlier versions of the band, but it was a little too much in the end. It wasn’t by any means all bad, but the band headed off the path of what the original players had envisioned from the first day. With Warren and Woody, we got back on that path. A big part of that was Warren being such a strong slide player. In between Duane and him, we didn’t have another slide guitarist so I played slide, which … removed the sound of my guitar, and to sound like the Allman Brothers Band you need the Dickey Betts guitar and a slide guitar together.

  JAIMOE: Warren gave us a lot of fire and energy. He is a master guitarist, with a range of talents. He’s a master songwriter, vocalist, and bandleader, and all of that impacts one another.

  ALLMAN: From the start, Woody and Warren were full-on Allman Brothers—much more so than some people in earlier incarnations. And that made a big difference, as did the fact that Warren and Johnny Neel had been in Dickey’s band and really understood what we were doing and the material.

  HAYNES: The fact that Dickey and I had played together for almost three years played a huge role in the band sounding so good from the start, because that relationship is central to the Allman Brothers. At the beginning I was constantly drawing the line about how much of Duane’s influence to show. It was always left up to me how much of it to insert.

  WOODY: There are a few songs where I play virtually the same exact thing Berry played—for instance “Midnight Rider” because a lot of his bass lines actually matched the voicings that Gregg played on acoustic guitar. And I couldn’t change the beginning of “Whipping Post” or they’d tie me to a whipping log. But in everything else I just try to capture Berry’s spirit. In any case, my playing has always been very similar to his, because he was
such a big influence.

  HAYNES: I’ve listened to Dickey all my life, so I understood what he wanted. When I first started with him, he would look at me when he was playing one of his great melodic riffs in a way that said, “I’m going to repeat this and I want you to play it with me.” The third time through, I would jump on it and play the harmony. That was Duane’s role when they played together, but my mission was always to interject my own personality. At times, maybe that required going against the grain a little bit and trying to forget how classic songs were played and try to take it somewhere else while sounding natural. That is a hard thing to do.

  BETTS: Warren was never really replacing a legend. A legend was killed over twenty years earlier, and that was the end of that. Nobody’s gonna replace Duane. We were just going on to the next day. And after those guys came on we returned to the sound that we always had in our heads.

  HAYNES: They definitely allowed me the creative freedom to interject my own personality into the music. They’ve always said, “Play like you. That’s what we hired you to do.” Not a lot of bands could or would do that. The Allman Brothers were very open-minded about that from the beginning, because the music was built on the foundation of two guitar players working equally together. If you don’t have that, the music suffers.

  WOODY: A big part of the Allman Brothers music is a jazz approach to rock and blues, which seems to be a dying art. Not many bands get up there and just jam anymore, but we are not looking to play things the same way every night. Our approach to jazz is a lot different than—and I hate this word—fusion. For instance, I play these descending lines at the end of “Kind of Bird” that are like bebop played through a Marshall.

  BETTS: Jazz has become this sacred temple. And there’s some people getting away with a hell of a lot on that account. I’m no musical genius, but I have ears. And if I can’t understand it, it’s probably ’cause it ain’t worth a shit. But a lot of people think, “Well, that’s over my head.” You should be able to understand jazz unless you’re so down and out that your mind don’t work. You don’t have to know what and why they’re doing, but you should be able to follow it. It’s just like art. If you look at a painting and say, “God, that’s a piece of shit,” it probably is—at least to you. And it very well may be that the guy’s fooling you.