The Allman Brothers were a unique group when they first swept the ballroom
and festival circuit in 1969-71. They had a mix of rock, down-home blues
and soul, all layered with Coltrane and Miles Davis jazz washes. The double
drums and twin guitars made for a thick mesh that could be simultaneously
funky and righteously rocking. The soaring, endlessly inventive lead/slide
guitar work of Duane Allman (a Muscle Shoals sessionman who'd backed up
Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter etc) paired with the gritty
vocals of brother Gregg, who presided over a hulking Hammond B3 organ, made
for emotional and brain tweaking music. They could navigate the
psychedelic shores with depth and breadth, weaving dense aural tapestries.
Before the year-apart deaths of Duane and bassist Berry Oakley, (both on
motorcycles, eerily only a few blocks away) they made seminal albums,
criss-crossed the US and laid the groundwork for every southern rock band to
come.
Now, two books by early crew members go into their beginning history.
NO SAINTS, NO SAVIORS-My Years With The Allman Brothers Band
Willie Perkins was working as an auditor in a Georgia bank when he got a
call in May of 1970, asking if he wanted to work with the ABB as road
manager, replacing his college buddy Twiggs Lydon, who'd been busted for
knifing to death a NY club owner who'd tried to stiff the band on payment.
He moved into the Big House, a 6000 foot, 19 room place the band rented,
sharing the space with Duane, Berry and Gregg and their various wives,
girlfriends and kids. His job description called for him to plan and arrange
all travel reservations for band and crew, get them to the venue on time for
the gig, collect money from the promoter, and get them to the next town in
time for the next gig. His salary was the same as everybody else's--$90 a
week.
The band was just finishing work on their 2nd album, when producer Tom Dowd
showed up at a gig with Eric Clapton, a fan, in tow. The after-concert
studio jam resulted in Duane taking a big part in Clapton's LAYLA album,
providing a soulful spark that drove Clapton to new levels. Perkins
recounts the pervasive drug use that affected both band & crew, beginning
with Duanes Fall 1970 accidental opium overdose--he was near death but
rejoined the tour a day later. There are tales of wretched excess and
busts, interwoven with the recording of the historic LIVE AT FILLMORE EAST
double album in March 1971. This gave audiences the chance to hear how the
band could stretch out, and to really savor the guitar lacings of Duane &
Dickie Betts, it went on to be a best seller, to this day. Three months
later, the band would play there the night that the Fillmore doors closed
forever.
Perkins touches on the drifting and disintegration that eventually began.
Over a couple weeks off in late October much of the band and crew checked
into an upstate NY rehab clinic to combat the heroin dependency that was
rife. Late in the month, back in Macon, the now clean Duane rode his bike
into a crash and died a few hours later, just shy of 25. The band was
shattered, but finished up work on their next album and continued to tour,
yet it wasn't long before the energy began to disipate. Oakley died in 1972
after his bike tangled with a bus. Gregg & Dickie Betts had ego clashes,
both made solo albums, and embarked on separate tours. Gregg married and
divorced Cher, and Perkins resigned in early 1976, not long after grand jury
investigations into Gregg's drug usage evolved into bitter feelings when he
testified for the prosecution against an aid, Scooter Herring. Perkins next
went on the road with Sea Level, a spin off band involving several of the
ABB newer members. In 1983 he was back with Gregg's band, which was playing
smaller clubs, eventually talk grew about a 20th year band reunion. But
Perkins contract was dropped without explanation in 1989, and he went on to
form his own small label and booking agency, working out of Macon.
The book is slim, Perkins leaves the histories of how the band all came
together to others, but there's some real meat here. He has facts and
figures on a long span of shows, and puts it all together in chronological
order. He tends towards a rather dry, just-the-facts style of anecdotal
writing, and he is generous to those he has a right to hold bitterness for.
As Red Dog put it, "he was and still is a class act."
THE LEGENDARY RED DOG-A BOOK OF TAILS
Red Dog was an ex-Marine, wounded in Nam, when he first heard and fell under the thrall of Duane's guitar on a jukebox playing Aretha Franklin's "The Weight". When he found out that
Duane would be doing a local gig, he showed up and was knocked out by the
sound of Duane & drummer Jaimoe.. Sharing a joint with Duane in a back
room, Allman told him about his plans for a new band which would include
brother Gregg. Not too much later the group did all come together, and with
four roadies (including Red Dog, who in the early days contributed his
government disability check towards the general welfare) they became a
brotherhood of ten rogues on the road.
Red Dog's "tails" are brief, scattered anecdotes, telling of sex, drugs and
rock & roll in all its hard-core glory. Dog was in school when they met,
studying pre-law and dealing weed on the side, and the band was into that,
as well as mushrooms, and not too much later, dooji (heroin). There are
little snapshots of road life; like getting stuck in Mississippi when a
misfire U turn wound up with the equipment truck blocking a road, red-neck
natives getting testy about the mouthy black woman riding with the boys, or
trips up and down the East Coast to gigs in NY in a 12' Rent-A-Van, with
mattresses in the back. (If you need a visual, Red Dog is on the far left in
the photo of the crew on the LIVE AT THE FILLMORE album). A lot of exploits
get recounted; the time the cops hauled the band thirty miles back to a
Washington DC hotel, where Duane had destroyed a headboard in his room,
using it for his knife throwing practice. Or the time road manger Twiggs
Lydon told the band to meet him in a school playground to celebrate his
birthday. At 4 PM a plane flew over and out jumped Twiggs, skydiving with a
flare strapped to his leg. (He'd die skydiving some years later.) Or going
thru highway toll booths with ladies in full mount atop driver and
passengers alike. Dog concentrates here mainly on the early days of the
band, tho he worked for them into the 90's.
As time goes on and drug use increases, things get a bit less fun-there are
stories of OD's and life saving tactics, there are busts and small town cops
to deal with. Red Dog tells of kicking his three year smack habit after an
old girlfriend sneered about his lack of sexual satisfaction due to dope
use. But overall the tone is of a man with some good times to share, which
he does conversationally, with little held back. His warmth and generosity
are evident. Perkins says, "Red Dog was and is an old school street dude,
and a major contributor to the chemistry, both on and off stage that made
the original band a success".
Dog began writing the book in 1994 when he was laid off by the band, it was
self-published in 2001, and is only available directly from him. With each
book comes a CD single called "A Warriors Song", a poem written and sung by
Dog with guitar accompaniment. He wrote it after watching the beginnings of
the Iraq war on TV and thinking back to his days in Nam. The tune is a
moving, Spanish flavored tribute to the battle corps--and the cover photo of
him in uniform is worth it, all by itself. ("Red Dog-A Book Of Tails", $25
(includes shipping) from Joseph Campbell/2112 West Clinton St/Tampa FL
33604.}
Together these books capture a place and time in it's ragged despair and
glory. The early music of the Allman Brothers band touched many mainstream
ears and drew them into blues and soul-the words here lay a background for
where the music came from. Those jams--in clubs, concert halls and at
festivals are unequaled, even today.
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