My Cross to Bear (28 page)

I wrote fewer songs on
Brothers and Sisters
, and Dickey wrote more, because this is when he started acting like he was the five-star general of the Allman Brothers Band. I was acting like I was a member of the band, which is what I am today. I’m a member of the Allman Brothers Band, and although I’m president of the company, I remain one of the players who tries to make things sound better.

Dickey came to the sessions with songs in hand and just jumped right in, whereas I didn’t arrive with much. For some reason, Dickey was upset that more of my songs had been used on the previous records. Well, no shit; that’s how it had been since we started the band. I don’t know, maybe he had been trying to write since the Second Coming. So he was determined to get his songs on
Brothers and Sisters
, and by that time I was real tired. I was real strung out, and I’d been getting more into alcohol, which was starting to replace narcotics because I was getting tired of chasing that fucking bag.

Meanwhile, Dickey was becoming more serious about his writing; every day, he wrote. At three o’clock every afternoon, he’d sit down and write. I don’t write like that, I write when it comes to me. We just had very different approaches that didn’t mesh well. He and I did try to write together one time, but it really didn’t work.

In songwriting, the first thing that you write down is usually what you want. Dickey would change everything. In our attempt to write songs together, I could have written, “A rose by any other name …” and he’d want to change it. “‘By any other name, a rose.’ No, that doesn’t work,” and he’d try something else. Then he’d say, “Fuck it. I’m just fucking up your song, man. I’ll go away.”

About fifteen minutes, a shot of Jack, and a beer later, he’d be knocking on my door again. “Hey, man, how’s that song going? Listen, I had an idea. Dig it—if you take this and put it down here, and this over there. Oh, no, that wouldn’t match with that.”

I’d say, “Why don’t you read it like it’s written down?” Which should have been the first thing he did.

He’d say, “Well, you know, if you had this line here, and this much of that line up here … Oh, I’m fucking up your song again. Fuck this, good night,” and he’d leave.

Another half an hour and half a gram later, he’d be back, but I wouldn’t even answer the door. So that’s why you don’t see anything written by Allman/Betts, with the exception of “One More Ride”—we wrote that one during the
Idlewild South
sessions, when we really didn’t know each other, and we never really finished it, so there you go.

When something goes wrong or starts to get weird, you try to nip it in the bud. After seeing how he wrote, I thought that maybe Dickey hadn’t written before. Then he wrote a couple of instrumentals, and here comes “Ramblin’ Man.” The son of a bitch goes to No. 2 on the charts, while
Brothers and Sisters
gets to No. 1, our only No. 1 album. Suddenly in his mind he was a seasoned writer, way more experienced than myself. He was then ready to write the rest of the songs for the Allman Brothers for the duration of the band’s existence.

There was no power struggle or anything like that. He stood up, whereas I sat down. It’s hard to be a frontman when you’re sitting behind a 460-pound organ. Up until then, we’d never really had a frontman; Dickey took it upon himself to create that role.

Without Duane and without Berry, there needed to be a leader in the band, and the question that has been asked for years is why didn’t I take it? Well, the answer is because the first thing I would have done is fire Dickey and get another guitar player. When I think of the time and money he wasted in the studio and during rehearsal—I mean, there are twenty-nine takes of “Les Brers,” and we used the second one. We must have been pretty attached as a band to take that crap from him for so long before we finally said, “Hey, man, you’re out of here.”

Right before
Brothers and Sisters
came out, we played the festival at Watkins Glen with the Band and the Grateful Dead, in front of six hundred thousand people—the biggest show in history to that point. People always talk about Woodstock. Watkins Glen was like three Woodstocks. I think actually it might’ve been a little too big. They should have had people all the way around the raceway, and maybe had the stage in the center revolving real slowly, do a revolution in a minute. That’s not that complicated.

A show like Watkins Glen was uncomfortable, because you know that you’re getting the show across to this many people, but you still got two times that many behind them. You could finish a song, take your guitar off, put it in the case, and latch it up before the last guy heard the last note. Sound ain’t all that fast, not compared to light.

When you’re playing in that situation, you’re kind of thinking about the end. Not that you’re wishing it to be over, but you can’t even hear yourself—that was back before we had the in-ear monitors. Everything was so loud. You just walk out there and start to wince before you even start playing. It’s hard to get any kind of coziness, any kind of feel with the audience.

I guess there’s something about that many people seeing you all at once that’s real nice, but it’s just too much. You’re just like a little squeak in the middle of a bomb going off. But it was interesting, and it was a pretty fun day. People were OD’ing all over the place. And of course, Uncle Bill was there, which cured everything. It was exciting to be there and see it—and to be able to make ’em stand up, now that was something else.

Courtesy Jerry Weintraub

Layin’ back, 1973
www.SidneySmithPhotos.com

M
OST OF MY GOOD FRIENDS CALL ME
G
REGORY, BUT MY
mother still calls me Gregg—and I hate it. To me, the name “Gregg” sounds like a brand name for a product, especially put with “Allman.” Gregory, which is my real name, that’s all right. To this day, you can tell my good friends, because they always call me Gregory.

I always listen real hard to what people say to me, because if you listen hard enough, you can tell what they’re really saying. People will tell on themselves if they’re trying to blow some smoke up your ass. Not that I look for that all the time, but I’ve always picked and chosen my friends wisely. Now, when I was drunk, shit, I’d talk to anybody. But since I became sober, I’ve been more careful.

Considering all the people I’ve come in contact with over the years, you would think that I would have developed a lot more good relationships than I have. Some friends genuinely like me for who I am, and if both my hands got cut off tomorrow and I couldn’t sing again, they would still like me. Then there are the ones who show me off, and I can tell it just by looking at them. Like if I’m sitting there talking to them and the phone rings, they say, “Hey, I’m sitting here with Gregg Allman.” Wait a minute—they didn’t have to say that. They did that for themselves.

When you’re in a band with someone, being their friend changes things. I have a relationship with most of the people in the Allman Brothers, and I have friendships, and they might not be outstanding, but they’re okay. I’ve never really been tied at the hip with any of my bandmates. In the old days, Oakley was always with Duane. Where Oakley was, Duane was, and where Duane was, Oakley was. I thought it was kind of strange, but they were just like that—and at the same time, they were my cheerleaders. They would come and tell me how great my songs were, and other than Jaimoe, no one else said too much. They made me feel like I belonged, and they made me feel loved.

I think I know how to be a good friend, because I really work at it. Many, many times I’ve gone out of my way for people, and I still help people on a regular basis. Like my good friend Floyd Miles, who turned me on to rhythm and blues and good soul-moving music. Watching him night after night, I kinda got the idea that that was what I wanted to do. Because of that, he’s now one of the members of my band, and when we’re not playing, I still pay him. His knees are just about gone, and his wife is on disability, so I try to help them out by picking up their house note. I do think I make a pretty good friend.

I was married and divorced three times by age thirty, and looking back, I think I was trying to find a friend, even if I had to marry one. And that’s how I spent a lot of the early ’70s: chasing that feeling of friendship into marriage. I had a male friend in Chank, and I had the guys in the Brothers. I had everything I wanted, and that’s all well and good, but have you been to Jamaica by yourself? It’s not much fun. Even having a tricked-out motorcycle—one you can ride alone and turn a bunch of heads with—isn’t enough to make you forget that that’s not what life’s all about. It’s supposed to be you and somebody else, both cruising down the road, enjoying the ride together.

The thing is, I really love women. I always have. I think there’s nothing more beautiful than the naked female human body. Nothing else compares to that, and that’s the way it should be. The guys from the band back then would all say that I was such a pussy hound, and such a cocksman. My nickname was “Coyotus Maximus,” which Kim Payne gave to me. Sometimes after a gig, I would have women in four or five different rooms. Mind you, I wouldn’t lie to anybody; I’d just say, “I’ll be right back.” Lord have mercy, if I had a twenty-dollar bill for every time I told a woman, “I’ll be right back!”

I know some people have said that the Allman Brothers got the best-looking women out on the road, but I don’t know if that’s true. We might have just been a little more picky, you know? It’s like that old joke: What’s the difference between a pig and a musician? A pig won’t fuck a musician.

We did have some lookers, man. I thought we were doing just fine. As far as foxy ladies, there was oodles of them. The hippie days were part of it—that’s the way things were back then, free love and all that. And the band had a bit to do with it too: we were different, we had the cute little accents. So for our success level, I think we probably had a little more than our share.

Back then, of course, we didn’t have AIDS. I had gonorrhea once, but I never had syphilis, thank goodness. We all had crabs from having sex, but none of us ever had any head lice or body lice—that comes from not taking a bath. I feel bad for the kids today. It was a much easier time back then, in a lot of ways. There wasn’t road rage, people weren’t carrying guns all the time, and pot dealers wouldn’t shoot you.

Women to me weren’t something to conquer; it was more of a privilege to be with them. Sometimes, right in the middle of the whole throes, I would think, “My goodness, look at this pretty baby,” and I would wonder how I came to get something like her. I would think, “Man, this is too good—what have I done to deserve all this?” To get women, I didn’t have to play any role; I just had to play music. That’s why I didn’t think any of them were serious, because like I said, I didn’t get laid until I bought a guitar and played it.

For a time there, I was with at least three different women a week—at least three. They were wonderful, and I thank you, ladies. I liked the variety, and they say it’s the spice of life, but after a while that got old. Those crazed first few years with the Brothers gave way to a stretch of time where I felt like I should try to settle down. I went from sowing wild oats to looking for the right one. The thing is, you can’t go out there and look for the right one, because all you’ll find is the wrong thing, and it will do nothing but hurt you. I learned that the hard way—a few times.

I met my first wife, Shelley, in the summer of 1971 in San Antonio, where she worked for a local promoter. Boy, my brother couldn’t stand her—he hated her guts. When I told him that Shelley and I were going to get married, he asked me, “Man, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said, “Well, that’s really none of your damn business,” and he said, “Boy, it sure ain’t, and I’m sure glad.”