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

by Paul, Alan

  A lot of that was settling on a tone that blends in with what you’ve heard all your life without stealing anyone’s tone, because the last thing I want to do is cop Duane’s sound. That’s his tone and it’s very distinct. I faced the same challenge when playing with Phil [Lesh] and the Dead and dealing with Jerry Garcia’s legacy.

  BETTS: I don’t think I’d be nearly as good a guitar player today if I hadn’t been working with Warren. When I wanted to get Warren in the band, everybody thought I was crazy. All the business people said, “Are you sure you want him in the band? He … you know … I mean…” They wouldn’t quite say it, so I asked, “Are you afraid he’s going to blow me away?” And they said, “Well, he’s awfully good. Are you sure you want to deal with that?” And I said, “I don’t want to get some fucking lackey in the band.” If I had somebody in the band that I couldn’t get anything out of, we might as well not have another guitarist. Warren drives me to play things that I wouldn’t otherwise. And hopefully I do the same thing for him.

  Warren Haynes and Dickey Betts.

  HAYNES: It’s cool, because there’s a healthy thing that goes on onstage where all seven of us at any given point are capable of kicking one another’s ass, which makes all of us play better. And that’s the way it should be.

  In a larger band, you have the comfort of being able to lay out and it still feels great. We all do it. That’s part of the beauty of a big band. It can be a trio, a quartet, a quintet, a sextet, or a septet at any given moment depending on who’s doing what. And I think that’s wonderful.

  JAIMOE: If you’re playing something that’s not adding anything to the music, it don’t need to be there. If you can’t hear an instrument then it’s distracting to the music.

  BETTS: I feel that I’ve been given a gift, which is a knack—maybe genetic—to play music. I don’t take it for granted and I’m very grateful for it, but I always knew that this was what I wanted to do. When people asked what I was going to be when I grew up, before I was in first grade, I would say, “I’m gonna be a guitar player on the radio.” But along with that gift comes an obsessed kid who plays six hours a day. You have to do that in order to really apply yourself and discover what talent you might have.

  HAYNES: I think most people who come this far share that. Before I could get a guitar in tune, I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And it really is an obsession. We all go through phases where we play for hours upon hours every day and you just don’t want to put it down. You’re never going to get there unless you apply yourself that way.

  I knew I was going to play guitar for the rest of my life, whether I did it professionally or not. It’s a release that I’m very grateful to have in my life. And even if, God forbid, I fixed computers for a living, I would still go home and play guitar. I always know that if I’m in a shitty mood I can pick up my guitar and feel better. And sitting in your bedroom playing does the same thing for your soul as playing to ten thousand people.

  BETTS: I always knew that I’d play my guitar all my life—but I never knew I could make a life out of it. And I never dreamed that we would be accepted the way we are. You have to be just truly grateful for that. I mean, saying you knew you were going to be a guitar player is one thing, but to be accepted the way the Allman Brothers Band has and be blessed with such a long career—we seem to have the longevity of an elephant—is just something you could never anticipate. It’s really more than I ever dreamed could happen. You have to be grateful every day when you get up that people still want to come pay money to hear you play guitar. And that keeps me going when I’m not feeling that strong at a concert. I look out there and say, “They paid money to come hear me.”

  Blues giant Albert King and Dickey Betts, Memphis, 1991.

  We’ve always tried to remain a band of the people in terms of the way we dress and the way we conduct ourselves. And that’s worked out well for us. The Dead are the same way. People come to hear you play and for the feelin’ that they get from the band, not for how we look, thank God. I would feel really stupid trying to dance around and look like a young man, but that was never what we were about anyhow.

  Playing music the way we approach it, there’s gonna be good nights and bad nights and that’s all there is to it. And what we do on a good night is something that you just cannot rehearse. We could rehearse for twelve weeks like the Stones did before they did the Steel Wheels tour. But five days of playing means more than five years of rehearsing for us.

  HAYNES: We always sound like shit at rehearsal unless someone we want to impress comes walking in. But you can’t really rehearse for these lengthy shows. We rarely play under three hours, and sometimes we go as long as four or four and a half.

  BETTS: We put in our contract that we’re gonna play two and a half hours or we ain’t playing. So we never play less than two and a half hours. Ticket prices being what they are, you want to give those people their money’s worth. And, besides, that’s the only time it’s any fun for us on the road. The dead time just kills you, but when we finally get on stage, the fun begins.

  ALLMAN: I think somebody somewhere marked us for playing three hours or more every night and it can be overkill. Three hours is too long. I mean, it’s very, very few nights, especially at the age of fifty and up, that you are into it enough to play for three hours. I don’t know why we do this. The crowd gets you going and keeps you up—they keep pulling that energy out of you, but afterwards, you need a goddamn walker to get back to the bus. You are totally exhausted, man.

  BETTS: It very difficult to go out there and try to play the same song different. And if we don’t do that we feel like we’ve failed. I feel like hell if I go out there and I just don’t have it. That usually happens if I didn’t eat properly and I suddenly feel weak or tired. You have to take care of yourself on the road, especially when you’re not doin’ drugs to overcome that. No matter what you ate during the day, you can do a nose full of cocaine, and have plenty of energy for the show. Well, that works short term, but, of course, long term is a different story.

  Riding through the turmoil, the Allman Brothers Band continued to tour with greater frequency. In 1994, they played 91 dates, the most since they performed 127 times in 1971. No one was more surprised by the band’s ongoing resurgence than the members.

  HAYNES: The Allman Brothers was a year-by-year thing. There was no indication that it was capable of staying together for years to come. We all looked at it as each tour could be the last one, and there was no reason to think otherwise. I’m sure each member of the band was thinking about his own future and what was best for themselves, because it was always fifty-fifty if next year was going to happen.

  CAPLAN: There were a lot of people making their living off that band. It’s not unique to them, either. This happens often with groups—they need to play dates to make their payroll.

  HAYNES: I personally felt many times that taking a year off here or there would have helped the band creatively and maybe even been the right thing to do in a business sense. I think things might have played out differently if we had done that, but a lot of people worried that if we took some time apart we might never get back together. A lot of the gigs happened because people wanted to pursue the opportunity while the band was hot and sounding great, knowing that we might turn around and it would all go away.

  HOLMAN: This is just what they do. If they had taken a break, Gregg would have gone and played bars. Warren wanted to take a break because he had other ambitions, but the band wanted to perform.

  In 1994, the Allman Brothers Band cemented their legacy as one of the forefathers of the jam band universe, headlining the burgeoning HORDE Festival, performing most of the thirty-three shows with Blues Traveler, Sheryl Crow, the Black Crowes, and the Dave Matthews Band. The Allmans seemed to be solidifying their bond with older fans while also reaching out to a new generation.

  BETTS: We started seeing more young people at our shows around the time we did the HORDE tour. What�
�s really nice to see is it’s the first time I can remember a situation where there’s no generation gap. I like watching the kids and also the guys my age unbuttoning their shirts. As a human being, you can have fun and be innocent no matter what your age. You’re not making a fool out of yourself by having fun. So many people get to a certain age and they think they have to be reserved all the time. Well, when you come to our show, it’s your chance to just get loose and have fun for a while.

  HAYNES: The one thing that was really frustrating to me through those years was that we had a pretty limited repertoire. That became more obvious when we started having younger crowds drawn in by HORDE and other things and especially after Jerry [Garcia] died [in August 1995] and Deadheads started coming to our shows more. They would like what they heard, but then come back again and hear more or less the same show and that was not acceptable. Kirk West started really pointing this out to us, and Woody and I began trying to get the guys to expand the set lists.

  BUTCH TRUCKS: This was a massive issue. It was boring to play the same sets night after night. The bottom line is Dickey insisted we put a set together at the start of the run and play it every night because he had a hard time remembering songs. I started going online on the ABB forum and talking to people and picked up how upset people were with us playing the same damn set every night. So many people would come to multiple shows and as much as they liked it, it got boring seeing the same show. I started really hounding everyone, “We got to do something,” and finally Dickey caved in and we had an A set and a B set and then we got up to three sets. People at the Beacon looking to buy tickets would try to figure out which night we’d be playing which set so they could see different shows.

  JAIMOE: Playing the same sets wasn’t a big issue for me. We did that a lot with Duane, too, but there was a big difference; we may have been playing the same songs but we weren’t trying to play them the same. We weren’t playing an album to promote it. It’s not really what you play, it’s how you play it, and I felt like when we were in that stage of playing those rotating set lists, we were playing things too crystal clear and clean, without enough fire and passion. What I try to do is find the groove in anything we do; to block out everything else and play the groove. It’s no different than a drum kit, where you have eight pieces but may only need the snare and tom for a particular song.

  During the Beacon run in 1996, years of tension between Betts and Allman came to a head and almost caused the cancellation of a performance, an incident that could have had much larger implications than a single missed show.

  HOLMAN: We were sitting in the Beacon and Gregg wasn’t there and no one knew what was going on and Dickey went, “I’m getting out of here before there’s a riot. When Gregg’s ready to play, somebody call me and I’ll come back.” And he walked out. So there we were with no Dickey or Gregg at the Beacon. We decided that Jonny would go after them and I would stay at the Beacon and try to keep things calm.

  PODELL: Bert and I look at each other and I go, “What are we gonna do?” And Bert goes, “What do you mean we? I’m going to stay here and hold down the fort. Go do your thing.”

  WEST: The whole structure was they’d show up at the last minute—ten minutes before they’d be on stage—and Gregg and Dickey both always wanted to be the last one there. So it took a while until most of us realized there was an issue. Then we started scrambling.

  PODELL: I am a pretty cool customer, not easily intimidated, but I was shitting bricks as I walked into the hotel. It was eight o’clock, the crowd was filling up at the Beacon, and there’s no show as I go walking into the valley of death. I’m Jewish, but I kept saying, “I will see no evil, fear no evil.” I was thinking, “Dude, you are walking into the Philistines. What am I going to do with Dickey?” His reputation for violence was well known for many years—though never directed at me. And what would I do with Gregg? He was a full-blown alcoholic, fighting the urge to drink every minute of his life and not winning the battle at that moment.

  I go to Dickey first. I walk in and the Betts posture in times like this—and I bailed him out of jail a few times—is he would sit profile to you, giving you the side of his face, unwilling to acknowledge you, with the cowboy hat very deep over his eyes.

  He goes, “What do you want?”

  I go, “Dickey, come on. We’ve got to do a show.” I had an amazing relationship with Dickey and convinced him to come back and he goes, defiantly, “Fine. Who are you riding back with?” That was an “Oh shit” moment, but I said, “I have to go with Gregg … you’re a big boy. Go.”

  Now I go to Gregg’s room and say, “Get dressed, dude. We’re going back to the Beacon and I am not fucking with you. Come get in this cab with me. There’s a full house. If this show don’t play, the whole run’s over.” And I wasn’t being macho. I could talk to Gregg like this because we have always been very close and I have never felt threatened by him. He goes, “Fine, but I got to have a drink.” I said, “OK. One drink at the bar.” Then the fun begins. He has a quick shot, then tries to take another one. I knock it down and that continues on and on. We finally get in the cab.

  HOLMAN: I was back at the Beacon trying to keep [promoter] Ron Delsener calm and telling him the show would go on. At the same time, we were trying to get the [equipment] trucks there to load out because if they didn’t play, the Beacon run was over. Every night, it’s a possibility that it could be the last time they ever play and we were certainly staring into that abyss. We were half packing up the gear. The crowd was pretty restless.

  WEST: In those days there were an awful lot of standing-room tickets sold and many, many people coming in the back door. There could be a few hundred people in there without seats and things could get unruly real fast.

  PODELL: It was extremely dramatic, because we all knew what was on the line—it wasn’t just a show. The whole credibility with the history of drugs, animosity, breakups—the whole Allman Brothers soap opera—was being played out and how it would end would determine their future. It was potentially not only Beacon-ending, but career-ending.

  WEST: Podell could talk straight to them, and say, “This is what’s going to happen to your career.” They would listen to Podell. They respected him as someone who knew them from the start and who was sober, too. You’re going to listen to somebody who’s been there and he told them exactly what time it was. He made the point that if they don’t do this, it’s the end of the line.

  HAYNES: After the word started spreading that the show might not happen, we were all thinking, “This could be it.”

  BUTCH TRUCKS: We were upstairs in our dressing rooms and had reached a point where we decided we’re probably going to have to cancel the show—and the rest of the Beacon. I’m sitting there thinking, “This is it. This is how it finally ends.” We had thirty cops out in the lobby just in case.

  HAYNES: There was nothing to do but sit and wait and see what happened, but those folks were quite confident it would work out.

  PODELL: I remember Delsener saying we have to start giving money back and I said, “Dude, do not. This show is going to play.” I was all bluster. I really didn’t know what was going to happen. I was totally bluffing. I just knew that if you give the money back, you are totally out of control.

  BUTCH TRUCKS: Just as we’re about to make an announcement, Jonny called and said, “Gregg had a few drinks and we’re on the way.”

  WEST: Jonny Podell earned every penny he ever made from the Allman Brothers Band that night.

  Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts in the Late Show with David Letterman dressing room celebrating their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, January, 1995.

  This incident was more than a year after the band’s January 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which Allman remembers primarily for what he didn’t do: speak coherently. A drunk, bloated Gregg, looking exposed with his beard shaved off, took the podium after Betts gave a humorous, moving speech thanking Bill Graham, Tom Dowd, Steve Massarsk
y, Jonny Podell, and Bert Holman. Looking down at the notes in his hand, Allman paused and muttered a thank-you to “the greatest friend, brother, guitar player, and inspiration I’ve ever known, my brother Duane. He was always the first to face the fire.”

  ALLMAN: I could barely stand up. I meant to say something about my mother and something about Bill Graham. I meant to say a lot of stuff and I was too gone to say any of it. All day I tried to be really cool about it but you just cannot. Afterwards we played and I started feeling a little better so that night wasn’t a total loss, but I watched it on TV and I was mortified, and that’s what it took for me to get serious about cleaning up.

  BETTS: Substance abuse is an occupational hazard of being a musician. It’s like working in an industrial waste factory. That shit is around, and it’s so easy to get—and it’s so easy to get your energy where it should be anyway, but it ain’t. And you can go for three hours and feel like a king, but it doesn’t work in the long run. And, man, I’ve been there.

  The morning after the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Allman got into a limo at his New York hotel and went to a Pennsylvania rehab facility. The stay got him over his acute illness, but his next, more significant step came the following year at his California home. With the support of his sixth wife, Stacey Fountain Allman, Gregg made a determined attempt to get sober, and was soon proclaiming that he had quit everything, including cigarettes.

  “I hired a private nurse to come in to my house and it was rough … but I sure needed it,” Allman recalled in 1997. “There’s no way I can even explain it. It’s like having a five-hundred-pound weight lifted off me, or like I was blind in one eye and now I can see out of both. I can see better, taste better, smell better—all five of my senses are waking up and I’m appreciating them all.