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

  Allman leans back on the couch, lets his long blond hair out of a thick ponytail, shakes it free, and looks up with a sparkle in his eyes decades later.

  “When I heard her yell ‘Melissa,’ I knew I had it and I just sung out, ‘But back home he’ll always run to sweet Melissa.’ I wanted to hug that lady, but I just dropped my milk and ran home to my guitar and played it through and it was perfect. I just knew that was it.

  “I made a little recording and played it for my brother and he said, ‘It’s pretty good—for a love song. It ain’t rock and roll that makes me move my ass.’ He could be tough that way. But we recorded a little version of it together.”

  That rough version was released on One More Try, a solo compilation heavy on outtakes and demos released in 1997 but quickly pulled from the market and now out of print.

  “I had that song in my pocket for years and after a while my brother started telling me how much he liked it,” Gregg says.

  A year after writing the song, the brothers Allman recorded it as part of a Florida demo session with Butch Trucks’s band the 31st of February. That version is thought to feature Duane’s first recorded slide playing. The sessions were eventually released under the misleading title Duane and Gregg Allman.

  When Liberty Records, who had the Allmans’ band the Hour Glass under contract, demanded that Gregg return to Los Angeles to fulfill a contract, he did not have enough money to buy an airplane ticket. He says that he sold “Melissa” and “God Rest His Soul,” which he wrote in tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., to the producer Steve Alaimo for $250.

  Recalls guitarist Scott Boyer, “Gregg came to me after Vanguard Records turned down the demos and asked what to do about needing money and having an offer to buy these songs so he could fly back. I didn’t know what to do and told him so and he just went, ‘Hell, I can always write another song.’”

  Years later, while recording Eat a Peach, Allman Brothers manager Phil Walden arranged to buy back half the publishing rights for Gregg.

  “I think Alaimo figured half of a song on an Allman Brothers album was better than 100 percent of nothing,” notes Trucks.

  Allman says he never brought the song to the Allman Brothers Band, in part because he no longer owned the rights and in part because he thought it too soft for the band. When Duane died, Gregg sang “Melissa” at his brother’s funeral, and when the band reconvened to finish recording Eat a Peach, the song was an appropriate tribute to his fallen brother. While everyone recognized the song’s appeal, it lacked an instrumental component as compelling as its chords, lyrics, and vocals.

  “I knew it needed something and told Gregg I would come up with a lead line,” recalls Dickey Betts. “I took a recording home and started playing around and I came up with that entire lead guitar portion that night, which was actually Gregg’s birthday [December 8].

  “I walked into the studio the next day and said, ‘Happy Birthday, Gregg,’ and laid that on him. Then we cut the song.”

  Allman has called Betts’s melodic lead line on “Melissa” the “finest guitar work” he ever heard his longtime partner play. Four years after it was written, “Melissa” entered the rock pantheon, quickly becoming one of the Allmans’ most beloved songs, used in movie soundtracks and commercials and forever a crowd favorite.

  “I knew it was good but never could have guessed it would impact so many people for so many years,” Allman says. “I’ve met a lot of Melissas named after the song.”

  * * *

  PERKINS: At that point we had some money and we were going to make an investment. That property was the first major expenditure and Berry was the driving force behind the purchase. He wanted a place for the people. At one point it was going to be called ABBville and everyone was going to live there. No one thought about logistics like: How would everyone have their property deeded to them? How are we all going to build houses?

  But when you walked down the main road into that place, it felt magical, like, “This is the place we need to be.” Dickey built a beautiful rustic cabin and moved in—before that he was often going back to Florida or Love Valley when we came off tour. Butch had a trailer and grandiose plans to build a house and stables. Everybody else was also thinking about building a place.

  LINDA OAKLEY: We had dreamed of getting this big piece of land where everyone could build a house and then it happened. I remember driving out there in our new cars. It was like, “Yes, it’s all happening. Our dreams are coming true.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Drunken Hearted Boy

  IN THE FALL of 1972, Gregg began recording his first solo album even as the ABB was recording a follow-up to Eat a Peach in the same Capricorn Studios. Sandlin produced both projects, and brought the pianist Chuck Leavell in to play on the solo album, which became Laid Back.

  LEAVELL: I had toured with the Allman Brothers when I was playing with Dr. John and we opened a lot of shows. I loved the band and I would stay to hear them whenever I could and would often sit down and play my piano behind the curtain, playing along with the band and just finding my place. Apparently, the road crew heard me and thought it sounded good and told the guys in the band, but I’m not sure how much impact that made on anyone.

  But I was around and Johnny [Sandlin] asked me to work on Laid Back. The Brothers were recording Brothers and Sisters at the same time, the sessions often overlapped, and we all hung around the studio an awful lot. Before I knew what was going on, I was working on that, too.

  SANDLIN: I was recording Chuck for Laid Back and he was just an amazing player, one of the best I’d ever heard. He came to some Allman Brothers sessions and he just seemed to fit. It did not start out with a plan for him to audition for the band or anything.

  LEAVELL: Things were pretty loose and I just found myself in the Allman Brothers. People were still grieving over Duane’s death. It had been almost a year but the grieving process was still very much under way. I think perhaps these sessions offered the way forward.

  SANDLIN: Chuck added another very strong voice, and another harmony instrument—and it wasn’t replacing Duane. They did not want to replace Duane.

  BETTS: Replacing Duane with another guitar player was out of the question.

  LES DUDEK, guitarist, played on “Jessica” and “Ramblin Man”: I originally came to Macon because the keyboard player in my Florida band was friends with Dickey and heard that he wasn’t sure after Duane’s death if the Allman Brothers would continue and he was looking for musicians to play with him. After a weekend spent jamming, I went home and Dickey called and asked me to come back to Macon. I started jamming with the guys all the time and everyone liked the way I played with Dickey and with the band.

  TRUCKS: Les Dudek came to Macon, Georgia, within weeks of Duane’s death and word got out that there was this guy walking around telling everyone that he was there to replace Duane. We went looking for this dude to kick his ass. Nobody was going to replace Duane and the very thought of it was infuriating to us.

  SANDLIN: Les was a really good guitar player, but he really knew it. He just pissed me off from the start, going around town telling everyone, “I got the gig.” If he had been the second coming of Duane he couldn’t have impressed me. I didn’t have anything to do with the discussions but I’m glad they did what they did.

  DUDEK: Phil Walden told me he was going to make me a star and put me in the Allman Brothers but Dickey was clear from the start that he didn’t want another guitarist and I told that to Phil: “You better talk to them before you offer me a job.” Phil thought it would be natural to add another guitarist because orchestrated guitar harmonies were at the heart of the band’s sound, and Dickey and I played very well together, but Dickey basically told me, “This is my band now and I want to pursue a different direction.”

  I thought a lot of it was Dickey being frustrated about having been in Duane’s shadow and being determined to shine and not share that. In the meantime, I was there jamming all the time and Phil
signed me up lock, stock, and barrel, as he liked to do: management, Capricorn Records, and publishing deals. I was twenty years old and didn’t really understand what that all meant.

  The sessions started strongly, as the band cut Gregg’s “Wasted Words,” with Betts laying down a hard-charging slide line, as well as “Ramblin’ Man.” The latter song was a left-field choice for the group, far more country-oriented than anything they had recorded before.

  “Ramblin’ Man” was not a brand-new song, however. Betts can be heard working through the song in embryonic form on The Gatlinburg Tapes, a bootleg of the band jamming in April 1971 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, during songwriting sessions for Eat a Peach. The chords and chorus are very similar to what emerged, though the lyrics refer to a “ramblin’ country man.” The tapes also include Betts working through the signature “Blue Sky” riff and the band learning that song.

  TRUCKS: During the Brothers and Sisters sessions, Dickey took over.

  PERKINS: It’s not like Dickey came in and said, “I’m taking over. I’m the boss. Do this and that.” It wasn’t overt; it was still supposedly a democracy but Dickey started doing more and more of the songwriting.

  SANDLIN: Dickey is a much more prolific writer than Gregg is and he had the songs ready to go.

  Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley, The Warehouse, New Orleans, December 31, 1971.

  TRUCKS: While Duane was around, we were a blues-based band that added John Coltrane and Miles Davis to the mix. After Duane died, we started heading in a country direction because that was Dickey’s background. We all thought “Ramblin’ Man” was too country to even record. We knew it was a good song but it didn’t sound like us. We went to the studio to do a demo to send to Merle Haggard or someone and then we got into that big long guitar jam, which kind of fit us, so we put it on the album and it became a hit. Then it more and more became Dickey’s band.

  LEAVELL: Dickey had a little more equal time in terms of songwriting and singing, but I don’t think there was major tension between Gregg and Dickey or anyone else at this time. We were all pulling in the same direction, during what everyone recognized were challenging times.

  SANDLIN: “Ramblin’ Man” was obviously a different sound for them, but it worked. I never thought it was going to be a hit single. I thought it was crazy to even be released as a single because nothing else sounds remotely similar, with the possible exception of “Blue Sky,” which had a similar, upbeat major-key bounce.

  Dickey Betts, driving near the Juliette farm.

  BETTS: I wrote “Ramblin’ Man” in Berry Oakley’s kitchen [at the Big House] at about four in the morning. Everyone had gone to bed but I was sitting up. Once I got started, I probably wrote that song in about twenty minutes but I’d been thinking about it for a year or two.

  LEAVELL: It’s definitely in the direction of country but that didn’t bother me in the least. I thought it was a really catchy song. I dug the harmony bits and what Dickey did with the guitars, especially at the end. I don’t think it was stone cold country and was proud to add some bounce with my piano and harmony vocals. I think our attitude was, “Let’s take this thing and make it as great as we can,” and of course it became the band’s biggest hit. I don’t think there’s anything we can complain about.

  DUDEK: I was in the control room when they were recording “Ramblin’ Man” because Dickey and I had worked out harmony parts together and he was going to track them all. He kept coming in and asking my opinion about different takes and approaches and finally he just said, “Why don’t you just come out and play?” And I did. We played it all live. I was standing where Duane would have stood with Berry just staring a hole through me and that was very intense and very heavy.

  SANDLIN: Les played a lot of the harmony parts on “Ramblin’ Man”—all those nice licks on the going-out part—and we knew when he and Dickey cut them that it was really good.

  DUDEK: We played all those guitar harmonies and when we went back and listened to the track, the room was packed with the road crew and management people, and after we listened, it was just silent. You could hear a pin drop. Then Red Dog said, “That’s the best I heard since Duane.” We pretty much knew we had a hit, and that was a very nice feeling.

  On November 2, 1972, after a few weeks in the studio, Leavell played his first gig with the band, at Long Island’s Hofstra University.

  LEAVELL: Berry was the coolest-looking guy and the most unique bass player I had ever played with. Rather than holding down the bottom end, he was very adventurous and constantly listening to the other instruments and popping out with great melodies. If he heard Dickey or Duane—or me—go to a certain scale or range, he was always there to support that improvisation. I could feel Berry following me if I started a melody, and it was just fantastic. He was not afraid to experiment, roam around and be adventurous, but he knew when to do that and when to go back and hold down the foundation. He also had the coolest bass sound; you could feel it inside. I’m just glad I got to play onstage with him.

  Despite his strong playing on the two new studio songs, Oakley had been a shell of himself since Duane’s death. Everyone around him was extremely worried about his escalating drinking and drug use.

  SANDLIN: He was in an awful funk after Duane died.

  LEAVELL: Berry seemed lost, but he was the first one to put his arm around me and say, “You’re my new brother. What can I do to help you, to make you more comfortable?” He was so sweet; he was truly like a big brother. But everyone was very concerned about him because he was quite visibly suffering the loss of Duane and drinking very heavily. He was certainly going through some very, very tough times and I only wish that something could have occurred to ease his pain.

  LINDA OAKLEY: He just felt like things weren’t right no matter how much he, me, or anyone tried. He felt that it would never be the same and he started drinking too much and doing everything too much. It was never enough. This happened over time—it wasn’t instantly after Duane’s death. I felt so helpless because it seemed like anything I did didn’t matter because I couldn’t bring Duane back, and it left an emptiness between us, too. It was like I reminded him of Duane and how things used to be, and would never be again.

  PAYNE: Everything Berry had envisioned for everybody—including the crew, the women and children—was shattered on the day Duane died, and he didn’t care after that.

  PERKINS: It was not pretty to watch. It seemed like his soul had been sucked out of him.

  PAYNE: He said over and over again, “I want to get high, be high, and stay high.” That was his mantra for life and he’d be fucked up when he said it. It was a sad situation. Before Duane died, Berry was the most positive person you’d ever want to meet. He was all unicorns and rainbows, just someone who made you feel good. He did things, but he never got loaded, and all that turned 180 degrees after Duane’s death.

  RED DOG: Unfortunately, when Duane died we were heroin users and the combination of both [grief and drugs]—one being the crutch for the other—made it very hard to overcome. When Duane got killed, it was easy to hide in the drugs. Then the drugs consumed you and even if you wanted to fight back, the mountain was three times as high.

  PAYNE: After a year, B.O. wasn’t really showing any signs of pulling out of it. We lived together. I was probably closer to Berry than anybody else at the time and he was in really bad shape.

  LINDA OAKLEY: Berry got involved with Julia Densmore, I think near the time of one of the first post-Duane shows. As months passed, I knew that this was something different than all the other women. That’s rock and roll. Berry needed someone to take care of him and I needed him to take care of me.

  PAYNE: After Duane’s death, he just lost all hope, lost his heart, his drive, his ambition, his direction. He was just lost and it was a sad thing to see. Hell, he probably didn’t weigh 115 pounds, and it never got any better.

  ODOM: Willie and I spent many, many hours talking to Berry after Duane’s death and trying to break through, to
no avail.

  SANDLIN: Berry asked me if I would go on the road with them, saying, “You can play the rest of the night if I can’t do it.” I was honored, but that wasn’t right. He was the one who created the parts and had to play them. But he knew he’d get too screwed up to play.

  PAYNE: Joe Dan [Petty, roadie and bassist who played in the band Grinderswitch] had to take over for him several times. Once we played in Chicago, Berry’s hometown, and all his relatives were there—grandma, grandpa, everyone—so they set up a special table by the stage and he fell right off the stage onto the table in the middle of a song. It was that bad.

  There was loads of concern, and everybody was walking around looking at the situation and wondering what we were going to do about it, but not doing anything. I was very close to him, and we talked endlessly but never really about that. It’s kind of strange to say that now, but that’s how it was. His sister Candy was my old lady and even we didn’t talk about that—and to her the sun rose and set on B.O.

  PERKINS: We all talked with each other about how concerned we were, but people didn’t know about intervention then. It was like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

  LEAVELL: Berry was still troubled, dependent on certain addictions and experimenting pretty heavily with drugs and alcohol. I would like to think that there was the opportunity to come out of it, turn the corner and focus on music instead of escapism. But that’s speculation. The facts are the facts and it was a very sad thing.

  RED DOG: When Chuck was hired I thought that Oak was showing some signs of coming out of it. Chuck’s presence gave him some new spark and life. Oak was pretty fucked up and a lot of people won’t agree with me, but I honestly think he was on the edge of straightening out.

  LEAVELL: Berry did gravitate towards me and went out of his way to make me feel comfortable. He seemed to be very excited to have me on board and to have some resolution about the band going forward. I think everybody felt a relief: “OK, there’s another option to having another guitar player and it seems to work.”