One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band Page 14

  The University of Michigan Law School biography for Andrew Watson, who died in 1998, includes this description: “Andrew S. Watson, M.D., was a pioneer in bringing together the fields of psychiatry and law, helping to establish an interdisciplinary approach … Watson brought his training as a psychiatrist to bear in legal cases, using psychiatry to explain both criminal behavior and the legal negotiation process.”

  Twiggs letter to Bunky Odom, 6-20-70: “I am still enjoying my rest here in jail, with no bail, leaving no trail and unable to sail. Blessed!”

  Twiggs letter to Phil Walden, 1-22-71: “I still have my head well together … This jail time I’m doing is no problem at all. In fact, I dig it more than ever. The time really does go quickly and I have plenty to do.”

  JOHN LYNDON: Watson came up with the idea of tracing Twiggs’s life from the moment he was born until the moment he killed Aliotta and establishing that Twiggs had no option but to commit the crime. He interviewed Twiggs along with two psychiatrists who were to testify for the state. At the end of the interview, they both agreed Twiggs had been temporarily insane, and the DA had to find other expert witnesses. Condon always gave Watson all the credit for the results, but he was obviously a brilliant lawyer as well.

  “[Twiggs] was burned out from life on the road, and his whole existence was getting the band its fees,” Condon told Dan Herbeck of the Buffalo News in 1995. “And when Aliotta refused to pay what the band was owed, he snapped.”

  JOHN LYNDON: The next thing [Condon] did was waive the jury trial in favor of having a judge decide the case. Condon said he thought the trial judge was a straight shooter and he knew that finding twelve unbiased jurors in the area was going to be very difficult.

  PERKINS: John Condon and his team did a brilliant job. The key to the case was putting Berry on the stand. He could barely speak.

  JOHN LYNDON: Twiggs said that Berry was nodding out as he was testifying so there would be a long pause between each question and Berry’s answer. The district attorney was attempting to impeach Berry’s testimony with his prior drug history and the cross-examination proceeded.

  DA: Mr. Oakley, have you taken LSD before?

  Berry: Yes.

  DA: Mr. Oakley, have you taken LSD on more than twenty-five occasions?

  Berry: Yes.

  DA: Mr. Oakley, have you taken LSD on more than fifty occasions?

  Berry: Yes.

  DA: Mr. Oakley, have you taken LSD on more than a hundred occasions?

  Berry: Oh, lots more than a hundred times.

  Although Twiggs never used these words, the implication was that instead of impeaching Berry, Berry’s testimony actually enhanced his credibility by his making no attempt to deny his drug history.

  Twiggs also told me that the district attorney towards the end of cross-examination was getting more and more frustrated with Berry. He accused Berry of being under the influence of drugs, which Berry denied. The DA in an accusing manner told Berry that during his testimony he had repeatedly pulled pills from his pocket and taken them, and asked Berry to tell the court what those pills were.

  Berry pulled out a roll of Tums and said, “Tums, for my tummy.” The DA responded, “No more questions,” and sat down.

  Twiggs Lyndon was found not guilty due to temporary insanity, and sentenced to confinement in a mental hospital.

  PERKINS: The judge concluded that life on the road with these guys was enough to make anyone insane.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Sweet Lullaby

  AT FILLMORE EAST was released to critical and commercial acclaim on July 6, 1971. The record was certified gold on October 25.

  ALLMAN: All of a sudden, here comes fame and fortune. In a three- or four-week period, we went from rags to riches, from living on a three-dollar a day per diem to “Get anything you want, boys.”

  PERKINS: Phil and Capricorn had advanced the band over $150,000 over the years and they had finally paid it off. They were in zero territory and could start making some money. I remember Duane saying, “Boys, we’re going to be farting through velvet underwear.”

  ALLMAN: You don’t do it because you want to be rich and famous, but hell you get hungry working it out there. I don’t think money ever even came up. It’s not like we said, “I wonder if we’ll ever be driving Cadillacs.”

  A couple of weeks before the gold certification, the band entered Miami’s Criteria Studios with Dowd to work on their third studio album, which they had begun the previous month by laying down the initial tracks for “Blue Sky,” Betts’s sweet, country-tinged tune that would be his first vocal with the band.

  DOWD: They only had a few songs ready to track and we never wrote in the studio. That was one way we saved money on studio time.

  BETTS: I wrote “Blue Sky” for my then-wife Sandy Blue Sky, who was Native American, but once I got into the song I realized how nice it would be to keep the vernaculars—he and she—out and make it like you’re thinking of the spirit, like I was giving thanks for a beautiful day. I think that made it broader and more relatable to anyone and everyone. That was a bad marriage but it led to a good song.

  Dickey Betts at his wedding to Sandy Blue Sky.

  TRUCKS: Dickey wanted Gregg to sing “Blue Sky” and Duane just got all over him. He said, “Man, this is your song and it sounds like you and you need to sing it.” It was Dickey just starting to sprout his wings as a singer.

  We were just starting to use sixteen tracks and did not yet have automated mix down, so Tom had eight tracks and I had eight tracks, and we were sitting there punching things in as we needed to. It was like a four-hand piano piece that Ravel would write. We were in sync and running through the song, when the studio door burst open and Stephen Stills [who was recording next door with Crosby, Stills and Nash] burst into the room, holding a tape. He ran over and hit fast-forward, completely losing our spot. Knowing we’d have to start over again, I leapt out of my chair and Duane ran across the room, tackled me, and said, “Don’t kill him. He’s crazy!” Duane dragged me outside and finally calmed me down.

  The band worked on three songs—“Blue Sky,” an instrumental track tentatively called “The Road to Calico,” which would eventually have vocals added and become “Stand Back,” and “Little Martha.” The latter, a sweet, lilting Dobro duet, was the only composition ever credited to Duane Allman.

  BETTS: Duane and I played acoustics together all the time backstage and in hotel rooms and buses. Duane usually had his Dobro, I had a Martin, and Berry had a Gibson Hummingbird. The three of us spent plenty of time sitting around playing blues—Duane loved Lightnin’ Hopkins and we both loved Robert Johnson and Willie McTell. We also worked out things for our own songs. “Little Martha” was not at all typical of what he played—it sounded more like something I might do, really—but he had shown us pieces of it for years, so it wasn’t a shock.

  ALLMAN: My brother loved playing that kind of stuff, and I have to think there would have been more music coming out of him. He put “Little Martha” together piece by piece.

  BETTS: The song is played in straight E. I played the low third and Duane played the higher third. He wrote that song for his girlfriend Dixie; she’s “Martha.”

  Betts’s insistence on this title is at odds with what most others believe; that “Little Martha” is named in honor of Martha Ellis, a twelve-year-old girl buried in Rose Hill, with an eerie late-nineteenth-century statue atop her grave.

  TRUCKS: Until that time I had always been sort of the lead drummer in the studio, but “Stand Back” was a perfect song for Jaimoe because it was this funky R and B style he’s so good at, and I said, “You play the drums on this. I’m not even going to play.” Jaimoe took the lead.

  JAIMOE: “Lead drums?” I don’t really call it that. What I was playing fit the song more than the kind of feel that Butch plays. It was a simple funk thing that fit what I was doing. There’s a lot of things that maybe he shouldn’t have played on, but that kind of decision wasn’t m
ade. There’s always a positive and a negative to everything you do, so what’s the sense of even bringing this kind of stuff up? Well, it might be interesting for people listening to us to know these things, just like Miles Davis or Elvis Presley, or anyone else people listen to and care about.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Mean Old World

  WITH THREE SONGS recorded in just about a week, the band took a break and returned to the road for a short run of shows, ending on October 17, 1971, at the Painter’s Mill Music Fair in Owings Mill, Maryland. The Allman Brothers sold 2,219 out of 2,500 available tickets and made $12,647.

  With many members of the band and crew struggling with heroin addiction, four of them flew to Buffalo and checked into the Linwood-Bryant Hospital for a week of rehab: Duane, Oakley, Payne, and Red Dog. A receipt shows the band’s general bank account purchased five round-trip tickets on Eastern Airlines from Macon to Buffalo for $369. Gregg was supposed to go as well, and a receipt from the hospital shows that he was one of the people for whom a deposit was paid. He apparently changed his mind at the last minute.

  JAIMOE: If one person did something, we all did. If I listened to Coltrane, everyone listened to Coltrane. When the drug thing started, everyone was doing it, and it really wasn’t marijuana or wine. Certain things you better not get involved with—however strong you are, you better know what not to fool with, when to leave shit alone.

  PERKINS: Duane had an aversion to needles. He would not use them and he always said, “There will be no needles in this band!” But there were needles in the band.

  RED DOG: Duane came out to the camper one time and said to me, Payne, and Callahan, “Don’t be shooting this stuff up.” On the one hand, that was kind of hypocritical considering how fucked up he was. On the other hand, it was a big brother telling his little brothers to be careful: “This stuff can kill you. Just snort it and get off that way.”

  PERKINS: Almost everybody had a problem with heroin except me. We could have called it “Willie and ten junkies.” I’m not sure about Butch, either; he definitely had the least issues with this.

  TRUCKS: I never got into smack. I snorted it for three days at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. It was absolute bliss. Then I went back to Macon and suffered for about a week and I knew myself well enough to know that if I touched that stuff again I’d never get out. That’s the last time I ever touched it. Everyone else started getting into it.

  PERKINS: Dickey and Joe Dan decided to go cold turkey on their own, and went into the woods together and did it. Jaimoe was Jaimoe.

  JAIMOE: When they all went up to Buffalo, I didn’t go up there because I didn’t think I needed to go. Simple as that.

  RED DOG: Gregg was supposed to go but pulled out at the last minute. Me, him, Berry, and Kim, we had a habit. Nothing else you could call it. The other guys, I don’t know, everyone was different. Butchie had the least issues.

  PAYNE: Red Dog was never really a junkie, with the jones, the monkey on his back that drives you to go out hunting for the stuff, like some of us.

  JAIMOE: Was Duane doing worse than normal? Yes and no. There’s no simple answer to that.

  PAYNE: I don’t think Duane’s drug addiction was getting worse at all. He was on a real positive upswing, moving away from using so much of anything that passed by him. The way he ended up there, to the best of my knowledge, is Delaney [Bramlett] came to town and [was] staying with Duane and … brought an ounce of coke with him. Duane was like a one-eyed cat in a seafood shop; he couldn’t help himself, and that led to this trip.

  LINDA OAKLEY: It was obvious to the girls at home that things were getting worse. Instead of coming home, relaxing, and having family down time, they’d come back and immediately start looking to score, waiting for the man. We used to get so excited for them to come home. We’d scrub up the kids and put them in their best clothes, and pretty up ourselves and then the kids would go to bed and we’d all disappear into our rooms for our little reunions. Then they just started coming back and only being focused on scoring and getting high again.

  ODOM: They were in such bad shape that they were struggling even to do a forty-five-minute set. Duane recognized that and that was the reason to go to Buffalo and clean up.

  PERKINS: They all needed help and everyone knew it.

  LINDA OAKLEY: Duane just put his foot down and said, “This is what we need to do.” When Berry was up in Buffalo testifying for Twiggs, Duane came upstairs at the Big House into the room where Dixie and Candy and I were playing beauty parlor, putting pin curls in our hair.

  We were embarrassed for him to see us like that, but he just said, “I know we’ve been treating you all really bad. It’s not us, it’s the dope and we’re gonna quit. We haven’t been fair to you, but we’re gonna go up there and get clean. Condon found a place and I want you to know it’s going to be different.” And we took that seriously, because when Duane declared something, he meant it.

  DOUCETTE: I had left the band in the middle of a tour, because my drug problem was getting out of control and I had to kick. I had been down in Florida for a few months when Duane called and said he’s going up to New York to get squared up and I said, “Thank God for that. Take care of business, then get your ass down here and we’ll go fishing.” I was happy he was dealing with the problem.

  PODELL: I was sitting with Duane on a bed in a hotel room in Buffalo as he was about to check into rehab and he said, “Podell, you know why I’m stopping this shit?” I gave a sarcastic “Why?” expecting some song and dance and unsure of where this was headed—because my real relationships were with the other guys, not so much Duane. But he looks right at me and says, “Because I’m not doing it anymore. It’s doing me.”

  RED DOG: I cold turkeyed myself for six days before we went. I didn’t really need to go to Buffalo, but where Duane went, I went.

  PAYNE: That rehab was a joke. It was before real drug rehab existed, and it really was just a nuthouse, a psych ward.

  RED DOG: It was a real nuthouse, with guys in white jackets and shock treatments going on behind some doors.

  PAYNE: The ladies came up to visit us. Me and Berry busted out of there one night … and went and got some dope. Then we snuck back in. That gives you an idea of what it was like.

  LINDA OAKLEY: Dixie, Candy, and I went to visit and support them. We missed them and they missed us. It was a conjugal visit. We went to the facility to see them and they were staying four to the room. I had Brittany with me and we had a nice little reunion. Then we went back to the hotel, and prepared to get some supper. There was a knock on the door. It was Duane, Berry, Kim, and Red Dog. They busted themselves out; to hear them tell it, they climbed out of the window. Every one of the guys had a lady there, except Red Dog, who had evidently had a little romance with a patient at the facility. More hotel rooms were secured and we were so happy to be together. Pretty exciting little adventure!

  During this time, Twiggs Lyndon, post-trial, was serving his time in another Buffalo mental hospital.

  RED DOG: They would take me out of there and drive me across town to the city sanitarium, where Twiggs was being held, so I could visit. I wasn’t crazy or convicted, I was there for a drug thing but still they transported me in a special vehicle, with no door handles inside the screen cage. We get there, they take me out, escort me in, as soon as Twiggs and me are in there, they leave and I visit alone with Twiggs. Duane was supposed to go, too, but he didn’t want to see Twiggs in there, like that, and I don’t think Twiggs wanted to be seen by Duane. He was a very prideful person.

  Duane checked us out of there and I was his excuse. They had put us all on methadone, and I was nodding off. The doctor was talking to Duane, who looked across at me and said, “Look at him. He quit before we came up here and he’s nodding.” That upset him and he was packing up minutes later.

  LINDA OAKLEY: Hope springs eternal and I hoped they had turned the corner with this thing. Then Mr. and Mrs. Condon took us out to a very nice dinner. W
e were all kind of in a daze and the guys were on methadone. Candy was about to lose it because Kim was just showing his ass. We were sitting at a long table and Kim put these chairs together and just lay there with his arms folded across his chest, like he was laid out for his final viewing. Candy was trying to be sociable and show her gratitude to these people for all they had done for us. Perhaps because of the recent craziness, Kim wasn’t cooperating.

  JAIMOE: I guess they got a handle on whatever they went up there for, but it really didn’t make nobody no saint.

  During the visit, someone stopped at a liquor store, saving the $3.79 receipt for a bottle of J&B scotch so as to be reimbursed by the band’s bank account. After checking out, everyone in the group returned to Macon, except for Duane and Dixie, who traveled to New York City.

  ODOM: I went up to Buffalo and checked them out and Duane was clean. I do believe that Duane went to New York just to say “I’m clean” to anybody and everybody, and he wanted to visit his friend John Hammond Jr.

  HAMMOND: He came over to my loft and we played acoustic guitars and had a blast for hours. I so wish I had taped it! He seemed to be in really good spirits, his head clear and excited to go on. Things were happening for them. The live album had come out and was a hit and they were playing bigger places. Their star was rising—which seemed exactly as it should be.

  We talked about him perhaps producing an album for me. There were all these songs that I played in my show that I talked to him about recording and he said that he would like to be involved. There was nothing concrete, but he was talking business, what percent he would take and this and that. I was not a business guy like that, and he was very together about the band, his finances, dealing with the business end of things. He was a very bright guy who knew how talented he was and wasn’t going to take himself lightly.