My Cross to Bear (29 page)

Sure enough, he was right. When I went to Jamaica after Duane’s funeral, it was to get away from the madness, but it was also to get away from Shelley. She actually missed the funeral because she was too messed up. That was just one of the problems, though. In the end, the only good thing that came out of it was my son Devon. That marriage turned into a living hell, and it didn’t last very long.

Every woman I’ve ever had a relationship with has loved me for who they thought I was. Maybe they were in love with whatever was onstage, but when the lights are out and the sound goes off, you’re left with this dude, and that’s me. Obviously, that’s the person they didn’t get to know, and that certainly was the case with Shelley. She loved me for what she thought I was, and as soon as that knot was tied, she started to try to change me.

I’ve always wondered why women just don’t go down the aisle and pick the model they want. If they want some pussy-whipped whiner who just doles out the money, then go to that aisle. I’m in the “I ain’t changing for no one” aisle. Of course, everybody gets older and set in their ways, but I’d really like to think that I have an open mind, because I know I do musically.

In 1972, I met a girl named Jenny Arness when I was in New York. Deering Howe’s girlfriend introduced us. She told me, “I have a good friend that I’d like you to meet, and as a matter of fact, she’s Marshal Matt Dillon’s daughter—you know, the guy from
Gunsmoke
. She’s very pretty, very nice, and I’ll hook you up on a blind date.”

We went out, and she was all right, but the woman really was crazy. I’m sorry to talk about the dead that way, but it’s true. She did a lot of blow, and then started giving excuses for why she was doing it. That would drive me nuts, man. I don’t know if she was in awe of me or if she thought she had to prove herself.

We weren’t together very long—we weren’t even really together. She went to Miami with me, when we went down there to finish
Eat a Peach
, and Deering had come down to add some moral support. We were staying at the Thunderbird Motor Lodge in North Miami Beach, and while we were there, one day Aretha Franklin came walking through carrying a five-gallon jug of pickled pigs’ feet and wearing a mink coat. She dropped that jug on the tile floor and it busted all over the place. She just kept on truckin’, though.

Once I went out to Jenny’s father’s ranch. As a matter of fact, we did a photo shoot out there, but I have no idea why. We looked like death. It was really horrendous. But I really liked James Arness a lot. One night, I sat in his living room, and he would name off the songs that he loved, and if I knew one I’d pick it for him. He sat there, and I lulled him off to sleep. I played Marshal Matt Dillon to sleep. How about that?

It didn’t take long to see that me and Jenny weren’t going anywhere. I tried my best to let her down easy. I tried to be Henry Kissinger; I tried the most diplomatic way I knew to cut off this thing with her, because we really didn’t have a thing. We didn’t have any plans for the future, we weren’t going to get married, we weren’t even in love. The next thing I knew, I was getting information that she had swallowed forty or fifty Tuinals and killed herself.

A friend of hers called me and said, “You son of a bitch,” blaming it all on me. Then the phone rang again, and it was James Arness.

He said, “Mr. Allman, don’t listen to any of that crap. She committed suicide. I found her, and I found the note that had your name in it. I’m really sorry that these people are calling you and bugging you to come out here for the funeral. I knew how it stood between you and her, and I think I’m right in telling you that you don’t have to attend. You will not offend me, sir.”

“Thank you, sir. You are such a gentleman,” I told him.

“Well, you are too. There ought to be more like you.” He went on to tell me that she had tried it before, so I don’t think it was all about me. It was nice of him, but I was still really upset about what happened. The last thing I ever wanted was for anyone to hurt themselves.

N
ONE OF MY MARRIAGES HAVE LASTED VERY LONG
—
THE LAST ONE
was the longest, which was about ten years. Before that, the longest I had ever been married was to Cher, which was for a little over three years. That’s about the average—three years—but I don’t know why that is. I don’t think I make bad choices.

I would say that with four out of six of ’em, everything was cool until we got married. We’d be together for a while and it would be the epitome of being in love—going on picnics and all those sappy, romantic, movie-type things.

But eventually they would start talking about getting married. I would say something like “We both really enjoy each other’s presence, and now you—not me—you want to go downtown and have some guy with a big gold badge on say, ‘All right, you guys are legally in love now. You’ve got a contract.’ And you want to do that so fast and so quick that I asked you to sign a prenuptial paper and you signed it, just like that? I know you’re not after my money, so what’s the deal?”

And they didn’t seem to have an answer. But sure enough, after we got married, within six months things started going downhill.

I can’t tell you the number of nights I wondered where some of my wives were. One time, one of them took off for seven days, and I didn’t sleep a single night. Do you know what that does to your brain? You become crazy, man. I cried and cried, and then I stopped crying. Then it was over and the pain was gone. It was a painful lesson, but it was over, and she was out of my life.

While I was working on
Laid Back
, I met a woman named Janice Blair who had just moved to Macon after a divorce. Her father was there, and he was kind of a jack-of-all-trades—he had some furniture stores, he owned a limousine company. She met one of the apprentices from Capricorn Studios and when I saw her, whew, it just clicked. So I showed off as much as I could.

I had this Triumph motorcycle, and I was out driving it one night after I got out of the studio at about three thirty, four o’clock in the morning. I knew where her house was, and I pulled up to the phone booth outside and called her. I said, “Listen, I was just in the neighborhood and I wondered if you’d like to go for a ride.”

She said, “Turn that thing off,” because she could hear it out her window.

I said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I get used to the sound.” I was hoping like hell it would wake her up.

She said, “Just let me throw on something and I’ll be out in a minute.” So she came out and, man, she saw that bike and how could she not take a ride? Next thing you know, she’s got on her cowboy boots.

Janice was so gorgeous, and I was completely in love. I just worshipped that woman. She’s the one on the
Laid Back
sleeve, riding a horse I’d bought her not too long after I met her. We got married in 1973 and started living together in an apartment in Macon. Just like the others, though, it didn’t last.

The problems were always the same. They would come to the gig and I would think, “Man, they must be really loving my music,” until one night I watched one of ’em. Sometimes in the wings of the stage, there are chairs set up, with a tape line in front that you can’t cross. One of them would get a little chair there every night and she would be watching me; when I would lift my head up to sing, well, of course you look at the audience. I’m not gonna lie to you; I’d look at some pretty women. The day you stop looking, there’s something wrong with you.

Backstage at halftime, she started reading it off to me: “Yeah, I saw you looking at that bitch!”

A couple of times I had to have that one removed. She was beautiful too, but she got a whiff of that cocaine, and that was the end-all, be-all. I can’t say as I turned her on to it. It was just there, around.

I took her out on the road once and she stole a whole ounce from the head roadie. She went and got a key from him by saying, “I’m Mrs. Allman; I have to go in there and get some papers for him.” She went in there, and while he was sleeping—I wish to God he’d woken up, but he didn’t—she grabbed a whole ounce of blow out from under his bed and took off.

I guess in the hall she did a couple of big whacks, and when she got back to the room she said, “Look, honey, look what I got!”

“Where in the fuck did you get that?” I asked.

“Oh, that don’t matter” was all she said back. I’d seen her pal up to this roadie, and she was a coke whore, so I didn’t think too much of it. But after the truth got out the shit hit the fan, and I sent her off the tour.

I’m telling you, some crazy shit has happened during my marriages. One day, I came home off the road, put the key in the door, and opened it up. I noticed that my one and only plaque was gone. It wasn’t even a gold record, just a piece of press that was so good I’d had it laminated, framed, and hung above the fireplace. I thought “Oh shit, we’ve been evicted while I was gone and she hadn’t gotten to me to tell me, and now I’m breaking into these people’s house.” I could hear the bedsprings going, and I thought, “Not only am I breaking into somebody else’s house, but they’re in there fucking.” Then I heard this little sound that I recognized, and I went, “Oh no, this only happens in the movies.”

This was a strangely set-up apartment; it was an old Victorian manor that had been changed into three or four different apartments, which they did a lot of down south. I heard another little guttural sound that I recognized, and I just walked on into the bedroom. Not only was she fucking somebody else, doggie style, but it was a musician friend of mine.

“What’s the deal now?” I said.

He turned around and said, “Listen, Gregory, we’ve been friends for a long time; don’t be walking in on me when I’m taking care of business.”

“Man, I got some seriously bad news for you,” I said, and I held up the key. “I didn’t walk in on you, this is my place.” He had no idea; that’s why that picture was gone.

He looked back around at her and said, “You fucking bitch.” He got up and ran into the kitchen, and she got up and ran into the bathroom. I’m left standing there, and all I can think about is getting the fuck out. He came back, with his naked ass, knelt down in front of me, gave me the biggest butcher knife from our kitchen, and said, “Put it right there.”

“Man, get up and cover that shit up,” I told him. “I don’t wanna look at it. Maybe she does, but I don’t.”

Then he starts crying, so now I’m trying to console him because he’s crying—he put a lot of stock and trust in friendship and stuff like that. I had off my shoes and socks, and my shirt was off, so all I had on was these white Levi’s. I hadn’t seen my wife since she’d run into the bathroom, but as I came out of the kitchen, I looked under the bathroom door and there was blood just rolling out. She had slashed her wrists, and on the way down she’d locked the door.

I busted down the door and it was a fucking mess. I had blood in my hair, I had blood all over me. I called the hospital and prayed to God she wouldn’t die. They came and got her, took her to a hospital that was pretty much right out back behind my house. I went back to console this guy and found Chank. I had called him and he arrived, and of course he made everything a little bit better; he always does.

Bad as that whole scene was, it wasn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened with one of my wives. One morning I woke up and my wife at the time said, “Honey, let’s go shopping. I think you need to get some new stuff, some new boots, what have you.”

I thought, “Aw shit, she ain’t been nice like that to me in a while,” so I went and got showered, shaved, and all that. She already had my boots shined and everything. We go outside, and it turned out she’d called a limo. I get in the limo and the window goes down by itself, and I thought, “What the hell is this?” This white sleeve comes in the window, and bang, hits me with a needle. And I was out.

When I woke up, I was getting loaded onto a Learjet. Here come that sleeve again with a needle one more time—bam, I’m out again. I wake up and we’re in a three-passenger jet. I could see the runway as we were coming into Macon. We landed and I thought, “What the hell’s wrong?” My head hurt. Here come that damn sleeve again and I said, “Wait, wait.”

Bang. Out.

The next time I woke up, I was in a room that had a cot with a skinny little mattress on it. I didn’t know what they’d been shooting in me, but I had to hold on to the damn thing because I was going round and round. This big, huge linebacker-looking black man with big gold teeth was turning the key and locking us in. He looked over at me.

“You might’ve been free out there to do whatever, but your ass is mine now.”

I laid there and there’s a big sign that says, “Do not give sharp objects or laces or matches to the patients.”

“If you don’t mind, my man, what’s your name?” I asked.

He told me his name and then said, “You in the big house.”

“Wait a minute now, the big house is a prison.”

“Well, you in the biggest nuthouse in Macon, Georgia—don’t be trying to get out ’cause I’ll catch you.”

“Hey, why would I wanna leave here?” At least I knew I was in Macon.

Then he said, “If you want your wallet, I’ve got it.” That was good—it meant I had all my phone numbers to all my friends. I called Johnny Sandlin and asked him to help me out. I made an appointment with the house doctor, and his name was Dr. Sykes. Dr. Sykes in the psych ward! I kept thinking, “This is all a fucking practical joke. Okay, you got me, now could you end it?”

I went down to see him, and they patted me all down and I said, “Dr. Sykes, could somebody tell me why I’m in here?”