by Paul, Alan
“There’s a whole lot of stuff that I used to take for granted that I don’t anymore, and one of them is being alive. I’ve come so close that … That life of being wasted day in and day out all pretty much seems like a dream, or something that happened to someone else.”
Though Gregg’s road to sobriety would prove to be more winding and complicated, there was immediately a marked change in his appearance and onstage demeanor following this ’96 cleansing. Allman was in notably better condition for most of the next decade.
CHAPTER
24
Stand Back
AS ALLMAN STRUGGLED with sobriety, tensions with the band continued to simmer, boiling over on a late summer 1996 West Coast tour. On September 1, the band traveled from Las Vegas to San Francisco, where they had an off day followed by a performance at the Fillmore West that was a fund-raiser for the Bill Graham Foundation. (Graham died in a helicopter crash on October 25, 1991.)
QUIÑONES: After a very long ride, Dickey wakes up and goes, “Where are we?” Bert says, “About an hour from San Francisco.” And Dickey goes nuts: “I need to go to Pebble Beach. I have a tee time there. I pay for this bus. Turn it around!” So we all grumble but have to go back down to Monterey to drop Dickey off to play golf. Then we drive back to San Francisco and enjoy a day off before the next night’s benefit gig at the Fillmore.
WEST: Dickey loved Bill Graham and even thanked him in his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech, but he did not show up for this gig and everyone was embarrassed and furious at him. He arrived in San Francisco from Pebble Beach the night before in a limo with some new friends he had picked up and was a total mess and then he vanished again.
QUIÑONES: We had to play without him again and this time we had no idea where he was. When he disappeared before, we knew he was sick, arrested, whatever. Now there’s no rhyme or reason and Bert is calling the airport and anyone he can think of; we’re putting out the search party for Dickey Betts.
WEST: No one knew where he was and the next gig was in Idaho, and we get on the buses and start heading there.
QUIÑONES: Eventually, Bert got Dickey’s wife on the phone and asked if she had heard from Dickey and she goes, “Oh, he’s here sleeping in bed.” And we were like, “What the fuck?” He went home to Sarasota without telling anybody.
WEST: They got ahold of Derek, put him on a plane, and he flew out there to play for Dickey.
QUIÑONES: He went home and we figured he’s staying home and Butch had Derek on the way to sub for Dickey. Butch was so angry. He called back Dickey’s wife, who refused to wake Dickey up, and Butch was yelling, “Wake that motherfucker up! I’ve got a few things to tell him. How dare he leave us in the middle of a run!”
Then, at some point, Dickey calls Bert and says, “I’m coming back out and we’re going to have a band meeting.” So in a day and a half Dickey flies home to Florida and back to the West Coast.
WEST: After this long drive from San Francisco, like twenty-four hours, we get to the place in Idaho and Dickey shows up.
QUIÑONES: We’re all in a normal double-bed room in the hotel that Bert had booked for this meeting and here comes Dickey Betts. He walks in with his hat pulled down so you can’t even see his eyes and sits down in the corner chair next to Butch. He looks around the room and says, “If you guys think this is a fucking intervention, you are highly mistaken.”
And we’re like, “Dude, you called the fucking meeting.”
He looks over at Butch and goes, “You got something you want to say to me?”
And he goes, “No, I don’t.” He said later he figured if he said anything else, it would be another broken nose.
Dickey goes, “Does anyone else have anything they want to say?” I raise my hand and he’s like, “What?”
I go, “I just want to know why you fucking left us without any notice.”
And he goes, “I’m not gonna fucking answer that!” So I’m thinking, “This is going to be very productive.”
Then Butch goes, “As a matter of fact, I do have something to say.” He starts to say that he was pissed off that Dickey would leave just like that and Dickey interrupts him and says, “No, you listen to me! You owe everything you have to me, Dickey Betts, motherfucker! That Jaguar you were driving in 1974 was because of me.”
And I’m thinking, “Nineteen seventy-four? This is some pent-up anger.” He starts throwing all this shit in Butch’s face.
BUTCH TRUCKS: All I remember is a half-hour drunken tirade that didn’t make much sense but boiled down to “Butch Trucks owes me every penny he’s ever made.”
QUIÑONES: He ends that tirade by walking to the middle of the room and saying, “Fuck you! Fuck you!”—pointing to every one of us and giving us the fuck-you. Then he goes, “I fucking quit this band. If you want Dickey Betts to play in the Allman Brothers Band, you’re going to have to pay me forty thousand a show.” Then he storms out.
We’re all dumbfounded, looking at each other like, “Wow. What just happened? What do we do now?”
Butch goes, “Derek’s on the way already. Let’s just finish this run and show the motherfucker this is not the Dickey Betts Band. He’s been holding us hostage for years. Fuck him.”
I’m going, “I think this is a bad idea. We should fold up the tent, go home, and assess the damage.” But they’re like, “I don’t think so.”
WEST: It was an unworkable situation. Derek couldn’t play with Dickey sitting on a bus and no one would play with Dickey, because they were so pissed, even before that meeting.
BUTCH TRUCKS: Ever since Duane died, anytime anyone challenged anything Dickey said, he’d either threaten to beat you up or threaten to quit. If I heard it once, I heard it a million times.
QUIÑONES: We’re still sitting in the room trying to figure this out, and there’s a knock on the door. “It’s Dickey! Open the fucking door!”
BUTCH TRUCKS: Bert opened the door, Dickey came in, went, “Where’s that son of a bitch?” and came charging right at me.
QUIÑONES: Allen Woody was sitting on one bed and I was sitting on the other. Woody gets up to block him and Dickey goes, “Woody, get out of my fucking way!”
And Woody goes, “No, I’m not going to do that.”
And Dickey cocks his arm back and punches Woody in the face. Woody was stunned. He was an intimidating figure but he was the sweetest guy that I knew. I never before saw a violent bone in Woody’s body, but the last thing he expected was to be punched in the face by one of his idols. He grabs Dickey by the throat and cocks his arm and I jump up and grab Dickey in this armlock from behind, telling Woody not to do it, it’s not worth it, and Woody’s holding him by the neck, screaming, “I was your fucking friend!” over and over. Dickey’s yelling at me to let him go and I’m going, “No, I can’t do that. This is not going to go down like this. The only way I’m letting you go is if you walk out of this room.”
I turn him around and inch him toward the door and he leaves. That moment for me was like, “What the fuck am I involved in here?” I grew up with relatives who drank and did hard drugs, so joining the band was like being back home, except with some crazy white guys. I thought I understood all that, but hearing the anger behind this old history was stunning. I couldn’t understand how these guys could make such fucking great music and be in that place personally. Gregg stayed out of the whole fray. It was almost like he wasn’t there. And I think he and Dickey went down to the bar and had a drink together, if you can believe that.
BUTCH TRUCKS: They didn’t go to the bar together. Gregg went to the bar and started drinking and Dickey joined him and said, “You and me are the Allman Brothers, so fuck everyone else. Let’s go out and tour.” Gregg was thinking, “Yeah, right,” but saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Gregg is not known for his confrontational abilities and never has been.
WEST: The gig was canceled at show time, along with the next two, in Portland and Seattle. The next morning I was rounding up people to get on the bus a
nd go to two different airports to fly home, and Dickey was milling around the lobby. Warren got on the bus, managing to do an end-around and not see Dickey.
QUIÑONES: When Dickey showed up in the lobby, he called me over and goes, “Quiñones, I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. That was a little crazy.” I got along great with Dickey. He never messed with me and we respected each other, so I tried to give him some loving guidance: “Look, maybe you should take this time to try and get some help and clean up.” And he goes, “Fuck you, man! Don’t you ever talk to me like I’m a child!” So I just got on the bus.
WEST: Woody comes strolling through the lobby and I send him onto the bus. I was at the back of the bus when Dickey comes around the corner and stops Woody at the door, which is standing wide open. Dickey reaches out, touches Woody’s shoulder, and grabs his hand to shake in a seeming gesture of friendship.
While standing very close, making direct eye contact and holding tight to Woody’s hand, with his other hand he reaches into his back pocket, opens a knife, and holds it behind his back as he keeps Woody there while he’s talking to him. Apparently it goes well enough and Dickey closes the knife and slips it back into his pocket. It was a very scary thing to witness.
JAIMOE: After Woody stood up to Dickey, Dickey was deeply intimidated by him and became determined to get him out of the band. We all knew that getting Woody out without Warren was going to be impossible.
WEST: Woody always played too loud and there was off-and-on complaining about that throughout his tenure, and it was used as an excuse, but everyone knew what was really happening.
In interviews at the time both Betts and Allman referred to the band getting too loud—a persistent Allman complaint often directed at Betts as well. Woody and Haynes remained with the ABB for a pair of private parties over the winter and for the thirteen-show Beacon run in March 1997. During these shows, however, it became clear to band insiders that a break was imminent. Shortly after, Haynes and Woody announced they were leaving to focus on Gov’t Mule, the power trio they had formed in 1994 with drummer Matt Abts.
BUTCH TRUCKS: It became obvious that Woody and Dickey could not be in the same band together, and we knew that Warren was sticking with Woody. I will always regret that I went and met with Warren at his apartment in New York and told him what was going down. I said, “If I was you, I would focus on Gov’t Mule and resign from the Allman Brothers because Dickey is not going to work with Allen anymore.” That was the point where we should have said, “Fuck it, enough of this guy. It’s time to try it without him.”
HAYNES: I don’t know how much he knew that Woody and I had been contemplating leaving the Allman Brothers for a long while at that point, but one of the things I remember Butch saying is he wished he had built himself a back door. He was basically saying, “I wish I had a Gov’t Mule” and I think that’s part of what led to him forming Frogwings [a band with Derek Trucks, Jimmy Herring, and Oteil Burbridge].
BUTCH TRUCKS: Gregg wasn’t there to help; he was still in such bad shape that I couldn’t even have a real talk with him about things like that and Jaimoe just wanted to play music, so it was me and only me having to make all these difficult decisions. I wish I had not had that talk, but I have a wife and kids and I was doing everything I could to hold the damn thing together.
QUIÑONES: Warren and Woody had already started having conflicts with scheduling and whatnot with the Mule, and after that shit went down, I think they just collectively decided it was time to focus on the Mule.
MATT ABTS: It got really intense with Woody and Dickey … It got to the point where Dickey was maybe going to fire Allen and no one knew what was going to happen. It was very comforting to them that they had Gov’t Mule to turn their attention to, and very exciting to me that they were willing to say, “OK, we’re out of there.” We had a record out that we thought had wings and they were like, “We don’t need these guys. We can fly.” Regardless of the situation, splitting the Allman Brothers was a ballsy thing to do.
HAYNES: There was so much negativity in the Allman Brothers camp and so much positivity in the Gov’t Mule camp that it became more and more untenable to stick with the status quo.
ABTS: They had been talking for a while about how stagnant the Allmans were and how they were growing frustrated.
HAYNES: The Allman Brothers weren’t rehearsing, we couldn’t work up new material, people weren’t talking to each other … and Gov’t Mule was at the opposite end of everything. We were bursting with ideas, dying to work out songs, to rehearse, perform, record as much as possible. Things had escalated in the Allman Brothers to a point where we knew it was time to make a change, which we had been talking about for at least a year, maybe two, but had been procrastinating.
It’s not an easy decision to leave an institution like the Allman Brothers behind. On one hand, yes, it can fall apart at any moment and we’re going to be wondering what’s next—which in our case was cool because we were building a back door. On the other hand, if it was something that could be salvaged and get back on the right track and continue to make great, legendary, timeless music, then you want to be a part of that—especially if it could coexist with what you’re doing. That’s where we were for a couple of years but as things changed and the negativity got more intense in the Allman Brothers camp, we said, “We have a lot of faith in what we’re doing and now is the time to give it one hundred percent.”
Guitarist Jack Pearson, who had played in Gregg’s solo band and filled in for Betts for those nine shows in ’93, was hired to take Haynes’s place. While that was an easy, natural fit, the Aquarium Rescue Unit’s Oteil Burbridge was such an outside choice to replace Woody that even he was surprised to get the call.
BUTCH TRUCKS: Dickey asked me if I thought Derek was ready and I said no. I really had not played with him yet and while I knew his slide playing was more than ready, I was not sure about the whole package.
OTEIL BURBRIDGE, ABB bassist since 1997: I got a call to go down to Dickey’s house in Florida to play with him for a few days. I went out and bought all their records, but I barely knew where to start. I listened to everything to get a feel, knew that I could learn it all and figured I’d just pick up the songs as we went, which was, of course, a big mistake. If I had been savvier and smarter, I would have figured out which tunes Dickey wrote and learned all of those parts.
Jack [Pearson] was also there at Dickey’s house. He played an acoustic blues and when he finished, Dickey just got up and walked out of the room. He came back and handed him one of Duane’s glass slides [an original Duane Coricidian bottle]. Just like that, he was in.
PEARSON: I played a Blind Willie Johnson song—on Duane’s Dobro, the one he recorded “Little Martha” on. Dickey and I had played a lot of electric guitar together, and then he said, “I want to hear how you can play slide,” and went and got me the Dobro. We had a good time. Obviously, receiving Duane’s slide was a very special moment.
ALLMAN: After he played with him, Dickey said, “Either we hire him or I ask him for lessons.” That’s [how] we all felt.
TRUCKS: Jack is a great rhythm player. From the get-go, he played great comps behind Dickey’s solos and innately understood when to play with us [the drums], when to play with the organ, and when to play counterpoint to Dickey or the bass line. That happened immediately, and with every gig, he established his solo voice more and more. He concentrated on learning and even improving the song first and establishing his identity second, which I think is appropriate.
BURBRIDGE: Jack had the gig, but I handled the whole thing poorly. I had my six-string, which Dickey didn’t like, and I had not learned enough songs properly, arrogantly thinking I could just pick them up. So Dickey would for instance say, “Let’s play ‘Jessica,’” and I’d go, “OK. Show me how that goes.” And we did that for a few songs and he was rightfully annoyed and he said, “Don’t you know any of these songs? How did you grow up in Birmingham (where I lived) and not learn some of these
?” And I was like, “I’m from D.C.!”
Dickey was taken aback, and was thinking that he could get a guy who had these songs in his fingers. I lost the sure gig and Dickey wanted to bring in other guys and have us all audition. I hadn’t even touched a four-string in ten years, and I hadn’t played with a pick in nearly as long. But in between playing with Dickey and this audition, I listened more and more to the albums, focusing on Berry’s parts, and also on Lamar Williams and Allen Woody’s, for the material from their era, and realized that to nail those parts, I had to play what they were playing.
God bless Joe Dan Petty [Dickey’s guitar tech and a longtime crew member who was also the bassist in the band Grinderswitch]. He took me to buy a Mexican Fender Jazz bass that I used in the tryouts; it was $185! He not only altered the course of my life by reintroducing me to the four string—I didn’t even own one at the time—but he showed me some crucial fingerings that Berry used, for instance on “Leave My Blues at Home.” Unless you finger it that way, it will never feel the same. What a gift.
WEST: Everyone knew that Oteil was a hell of a player. They had done the HORDE tour and seen him up close and he was playing all over Atlanta, but there was some concern if he was the right fit. They flew him and two other bassists down to Sarasota. I was driving them all to the tryouts and Oteil was pretty nervous. Joe Dan knew that Oteil had the chops and the spirit and he wanted him to get the gig and just took him under his wing to help him any way he could.
BURBRIDGE: Playing with this band is a real challenge, because you have two drummers, plus a percussionist, as well as two guitarists and Gregg’s organ. There’s so much going on in the music that you really have to work to find something to lock down on.
PEARSON: It was pretty easy for me to fit in and settle down, having played with the band before and worked with Gregg a bunch. Basically, I knew all the songs and understood the dynamics.