Artists

Gregg Allman's Restless Soul

The spiritual leader of the Allman Brothers is feeling the blues––in a good fashion

Apr/May 2011

photo: Peter Yang

"C'mon, you tin practice it!"

Duane Allman was goading his younger brother, Gregg, in the backyard of their house in Daytona Beach, Florida. Duane had been drinking all twenty-four hour period, and he was growing impatient. "Well, you're just a chicken," he scoffed.

It was 1965, and Gregg and Duane were at a crossroads. Not even twenty, they had crisscrossed the South playing in a band chosen the Allman Joys. They did gigs at rough joints similar the Stork Club in Mobile, Alabama, where they played six nights a week, v sets a dark, 40-v minutes per set. Gregg was weary of the road and ready to surrender and go to dental school—later on a calendar week of playing the Stork, he and Duane each pocketed only $111—but if he pursued dentistry, he would be in debt and stay in debt. He decided to go on with the ring. The only trouble was, Gregg was eighteen and about to get drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Duane—who was exempt because their father was dead and he was the oldest son—had cooked upwards a scheme to go his immature brother out of the draft: take Gregg shoot himself in the foot in order to get a medical laissez passer.

"I've invited these nice ladies over hither to see a pes shooting and you're going to allow them downwardly?" Duane screamed. The girls began to weep. Gregg had fatigued a target on his moccasin, placing information technology carefully between 2 of the bones in his foot so as to cause minimal harm. After more than berating by Duane, Gregg slammed down 2 more than shots of whiskey, made a quick phone telephone call, and came back outside with his Saturday night special handgun. In the distance, a siren wailed. And so, BAM! Gregg had done it. In a remarkable moment of lucidity, he had called the ambulance earlier he pulled the trigger. The next solar day, he hobbled into the Regular army recruitment office and got his medical exemption. The Allman Brothers Band was born.

Southbound

Today, just a few weeks before Christmas, Gregg Allman is grimacing in pain for an entirely dissimilar reason. He had a liver transplant terminal summertime and isn't supposed to lift anything heavier than twenty-five pounds. Just information technology'due south unseasonably chilly in littoral Georgia, where he at present lives. Yesterday he went out and gathered some firewood and tried to bring it into the business firm. "I had to accept infant steps," he says, shifting uneasily in an upright chair. His cozy blue-and-white-painted living room is loaded with artifacts, everything from Grammy Awards to photos of his father to books of verse past Poe and Tennyson besides equally an ornately decorated Christmas tree with piles of presents underneath—simply at the moment none of that is comforting. "At one point I heard my stomach rip and now I'm in then much pain," he says. "Information technology was just stupid."

Afterward years of living in California's Marin County, Allman moved dorsum to Georgia in 1999, to Richmond Hill, a sleepy fishing boondocks about xx miles from Savannah. (The "Big Business firm," in Macon, where the band lived in the seventies, is now a museum.) After you enter through a gate and drive downwards a winding road covered by giant oaks dripping with Spanish moss, you arrive at his large chocolate-brown-wood-paneled and brick house—not a mansion past whatever means. A sign at the finish of the driveway reads "Valhalla," and it's here that Allman has constitute his sanctuary. He has admission to the water and loves to head out with friends on his fishing boat, spending hours in the Lowcountry marshes or just sitting on the deck chairs watching the sunset from the dock. "I just had to get dorsum to the South," he says. "Information technology's non as hectic, I'chiliad close to my mama, and this is where it all began and where it volition eventually end." He winks. "Just hopefully non for a long, long time."

His recent liver transplant was necessitated by his having contracted hepatitis C back in the sixties—probably due to an unclean tattoo needle. Back in the hippie heyday, sharing needles was commonplace. The disease lay dormant for years before worsening in early 2010. Constant drug and alcohol abuse in the seventies and eighties didn't help matters (this is a human being who once received a brick-size block of pharmaceutical-course cocaine as a wedding present). He gave upwards alcohol in 1996 afterwards he was then drunkard at the 1995 ceremony to conscript the Allman Brothers Band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that the presenter, Willie Nelson, had to help him onstage and asked, "Damn, Gregory, you all correct?"

"I wasn't all right; those were the bad-boy days," he says. "And I don't miss them one bit. I didn't spend a whole lot of money on drugs. Sure amounts, simply a lot of people just gave them to me. Give thanks you very much." Now that he'due south completely sober, the only drugs Allman takes are antirejection meds such equally Prograf.

"I was one of the start people he told [nearly the transplant]," says Allman Brothers guitarist Warren Haynes, "and it was serious stuff. But that same night we were laughing and cutting up simply like nothing had ever happened. That's a testament to his resilience. He'due south faced everything head-on. I'yard very proud of him and the manner he's handled everything."

photograph: Peter Yang

Southern Man

Allman, photographed at his habitation outside Savannah, on January iii, 2011.

Feeling Low

Like anyone who has undergone major surgery, Allman has adept days and bad. Today is not one of his better moments. He speaks slowly and deliberately, frequently closing his optics for then long he almost seems to accept fallen asleep. But and so he snaps out of it, becomes engaging, and chortles with a gravelly laugh. "Sorry, human, these drugs can really mess me up," he says. "They make me tired and brand my hands milk shake." He has to drinkable more than than ii quarts of water a day, and he gets up to become to the bathroom a one-half dozen times in less than two hours. "I detest it," he says, picking at a plate of fruit his housekeeper and correct-hand woman, Judy, has brought out for him. He'south more than exhausted than usual, coming off a string of Allman Brothers dates in Nov also as a promotional tour for his new solo album, Low Country Blues.

Consisting well-nigh entirely of covers from legends like Muddied Waters and more obscure (but as revered) blues artists such as Sleepy John Estes and Skip James, Low Land Blues is stirring and emotional, a low-key companion to the more raucous, ballsy jams of the Allman Brothers Ring. "Y'all don't have to be an ABB fan to like this," says Haynes, who cowrote the only original, "Only Some other Rider." "It's moody, merely it'south Gregg living his life through these songs." Allman hadn't recorded a solo tape since 1997 and had no interest after Allmans producer Tom Dowd, a shut friend, passed away in 2002. But in 2009, afterward a summer Allman Brothers tour, Gregg's manager convinced him to become to Memphis to meet with T Bone Burnett. The producer and his crew were in Memphis measuring the dimensions of the metropolis's legendary Sunday Studio so Burnett could build an exact replica next to his house in Los Angeles. "I had never heard of T Bone, and I thought he'd just jive me," Allman admits. "But the first matter he said to me was 'Tom Dowd was such a hero of mine.' And I thought, well, this cat might be all right."

All the same, Allman was hesitant, just Burnett gave him a hard bulldoze of more than than nine thousand songs, and listening to them transported Allman back to the one-time days of touring in a van with Duane. "Nosotros used to heed to this radio station, WLAC from Nashville, Tennessee, that you could only get at night," he says. "They played Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf—you lot proper name it, they played information technology. It was the showtime time I heard [jazz organist] Jimmy Smith. I always fantasized playing a Hammond, but at the time in that location were too many damn buttons to push."

Allman flew to Los Angeles and cut Low Country Blues in 2 weeks. "We took the album comprehend photo right on that route near where Forrest Gump runs and runs in the moving-picture show," he says, laughing. "This area means so much to me. I just wanted to requite respect with these songs. I think Duane would accept actually liked it, too."

photo: Peter Yang

The Lost Brother

The specter of Duane hovers constantly over Gregg. In add-on to being the older blood brother, Duane had likewise assumed the function of de facto dad after their male parent, Willis, was murdered by a hitchhiker near Norfolk, Virginia, in 1949. Given that it'south close to the holidays, there's a flutter of activity at Gregg's house: He has five children (with v different women), each of whom he has a tight relationship with, and he's prepping for a visit from his ninety-three-year-old female parent. "Mama A, she'due south my queen," he says. It's all the same a little eerie when Galadrielle, Duane's only kid, pops into the living room to say hello to her uncle. Skinny similar her father, with long, curly brown hair, she peeks around the wall. "You lot sleep all correct, darling?" Gregg asks. "Oh yeah," she says. "It's and then peaceful here. Y'all sleep all right?" "I did, finally," Gregg answers. Galadrielle disappears into the kitchen and Gregg closes his eyes. "Duane is always hanging around," he says. "At to the lowest degree I sure want to call up he'due south here. I feel a lot of him coming through me, more than and more than, especially after I got sober. Sometimes I hear myself say something and think, Wait a infinitesimal, that's not what I meant to say, that's what Duane would take said. It's real freaky."

"Gregg is a quiet giant; he'south the kindest soul you'll ever meet," says guitarist Derek Trucks, a member of the ABB since 1999 and the nephew of band drummer Butch Trucks. "Duane was the get-in-your-face guy. Gregg talks about Duane a lot, only he's comforted by the fact that he and the band are playing better than ever. Duane would have been real proud of him."

Duane died in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, in 1971, just months after the band released At Fillmore East, considered by many to be the greatest live record of all time. The band—then including bassist Berry Oakley, guitarist Dickey Betts, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johnson—sputtered, but released the 1972 classic double album Consume a Peach, which contained several songs on which Duane played. After calculation keyboardist Chuck Leavell a year after, the band was dealt another blow when Oakley died in another motorcycle blow in Macon, three blocks from where Duane was hit. Simply this time, there was no dubiety about continuing on. Duane and Drupe were buried next in a Macon cemetery, and less than 2 months later the Allman Brothers played a New Year's Eve evidence in New Orleans, with Lamar Williams taking the place of Oakley.

Despite losing two founding members and the guiding force of Duane, the Allman Brothers chop-chop became one of the nearly popular bands in the country. But with success came volatility. Every member aside from Johnson was using drugs heavily, and Gregg married Cher (his third wife), going all Hollywood and separating himself from the rest of the group. Betts and Allman dove deeper into their ain solo careers earlier disbanding the Allmans in 1982, then reuniting in 1989 to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Still, the lineup constantly inverse. Warren Haynes was an off-and-on member, and while the rest of the band was now sober, Betts continued to corruption substances (though Betts denied information technology). In 2000, the ring fired Betts for "personal and professional person reasons," after which Haynes rejoined total-time and Derek Trucks assumed Betts'due south role.

Rambling On

The wounds of Betts's and Allman'southward disintegrated relationship are nonetheless raw. "Dickey loved to fight," Allman says. "All of us were sober and we just got ill of it." Sometimes significant events can help bygones be bygones, but Allman says he hasn't heard a word from Betts since his transplant. "I idea I might," he says. "I got nix against the guy. I hope that he finds himself." He ponders his words for what seems like an eternity. "I wish him well."

Since Betts's departure, the Allmans take recaptured the glory of their belatedly-sixties and early on-seventies heyday. Listen to At Fillmore Due east, and so listen to a recording of a testify from final November. Sure, Allman's voice is more gravelly, but it'south still a powerhouse, and the combination of Haynes and Derek Trucks is positively dynamite. "The infinitesimal he opens his oral fissure you lot know it'south Gregg Allman," Haynes says. "And that's the best compliment yous can receive."

Despite Allman's upwardly-and-down days, there'southward no slowing down. The band is once more holding court at New York's Buoy Theatre in March for a nearly monthlong series of dates. It volition headline the Wanee Music Festival in Live Oak, Florida, in April. A summer tour will follow. "Warren and Derek, they're merely perfect," Allman says. "Sometimes I await over at Derek and can see Duane. I beloved them to death. Oteil [Burbridge, the band's electric current bassist] the same fashion." Despite Allman's legendary status, he remains extremely shy. He still gets phase fear before every show, merely as soon every bit he gets behind his Hammond, the shaking in his hands stops.

Now, save for his two dogs, Maggie and Otis, the house is silent. He lives solitary (he was recently divorced for the 6th time and vows never to ally again, though he admits he would like to detect a companion), and though friends come in and out of the house, you go the feeling that he's much happier on the road. "I am, I really am," he says. "It can get tiring, but I love playing and being around the guys. This business firm is peachy, but it tin can get lonely." Almost on cue, his road managing director, Vid, comes in to tell him that Gregg's new earphones for sleeping on the double-decker are set up. In a few hours he'll caput to Asheville, Due north Carolina, to play with Steve Miller and Haynes, at Haynes'due south almanac Christmas Jam benefit show. "That'due south peachy, human, thank you and so much," he says to Vid. He shifts in his seat again. "I'm so glad that I wasn't gonna exist an invalid. Or accept this thing take my playing away. I prayed on that 1. I would have been lost."

But he's here, and the playing—and his health—will only become improve. "I want to do this at to the lowest degree ten more years," he says, standing upwards and gesturing to the garage, where he'll show off his drove of motorcycles. "I nevertheless have something to show, if only to myself." He gives a quick tour, then goes back inside, not wanting to linger in the chilly stillness of the garage. But at about 5:45, merely equally the lord's day drops behind the marsh, Allman boards the tour motorbus for the overnight bulldoze to Asheville. For now, at least, the road indeed goes on.