GAMCTB
Gregg Allman, My Cross To Bear – I must admit first that I’m not a fan of the Allman Brothers. Mainly, I am a fan of Gregg Allman, especially the vision of him as the silent drug dealer Gaines in the 1991 film Rush, and the fact that Duane Allman, Gregg’s brother, who died in 1971, is routinely voted one of the best guitarists of all time. I desperately need to know more about the Allman Brothers band. But, since I’m addicted by autobiographies, this is a way to get exposed to one of the really great bands of all time.
The book’s been criticised as being more about Gregg bickering with his brother Duane over drugs or women, and not enough about the creative process and making great music. I found it to be plenty about the music, to the extent that Gregg would skip the drugs and women for whole chapters as he told the musical story, then devote a chapter to his sad tales of drug anarchy, to band dissoluton, to fighting with Dickey Betts, or to getting married to seven different women.
The story starts with tragedy – his father is murdered at the side of the road by someone stealing his car. Mum never re-married, raised the two kids, sent them off to military boarding school when she was unable to look after them while doing her CPA. Nice stories of growing up down south, swimming in watering holes, chasing pretty girls, and meeting budding musical geniuses and getting into all sorts of trouble. “One day a delivery boy named Elvis Presley came by with some car parts. My mother came home and said, ‘this deliveryman came in, and he looked funny. He had one of them riverboat haircuts, and his name was Elvis.’ Sure enough, he came on the TV, and Mom said, ‘that’s him – that’s Elvis!’” “My grandfather made whiskey al his life and sold it tot he state police. He told me one time, ‘Gregory, there’s two things that gets you in trouble and one of ‘em’s your mouth.’ I was way too young to understand, but later it hit me.” He mentions that the first band he formed at school was called The Misfits (!?!?!).
According to Gregg (Gregory to people close to him), he picked up the guitar before his brother Duanne… who quickly outshone him. The band played and played and got tight. “One night, the whole damn Rolling Stones filed in, and my brother, being the ballsy son of a bitch that he was, launched into ’19th Nervous Breakdown,’ and we just smoked it, man, smoked it. I sang it, and I did my best. They liked it – they were going, ‘All right, all right.’” It was right around that time that the boys met a girl called Mary Jane. And after that, some of Mary Jane’s sisters and relations. And things got out of hand until all of them were using. He wasn’t much of a hippy, though, and didn’t did acid, which he says “is a brain douche, if you ask me; I’ve got no use for it, because it just scrambles your brain. It would take me three days before I could even think straight, so I haven’t tripped in over thirty years.”
Gregg goes into a passage where he talks about hanging out with the Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Ike and Tina, the works. Not every band was cool. “[Gerry] Garcia called me a narc at one point, so I never really gave two shits for him, but him and my brother got along because they were guitar players. Mostly I just ignored them.” “I didn’t see that much of [Jimi Hendrix], and I don’t have anything to compare it to because that’s the only time I ever saw him, but in all honesty, I thought he could have done better. From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t always all that much when he played live.” Brave words. Even his ex-wife, Cher, doesn’t get off lightly.
I was really glad that she never asked me what I thought of her singing, because I’m sorry, but she’s not a very good singer. When she talks, she has the sexiest-sounding voice, and I tried to tell her that that’s the way she ought to let it out when she sings. If she sang like she talked, good God. I guess Sonny must have been on her every move, because he saw the gold mine in he. Without her, he would have been nothing – he certainly never would have become a congressman.
He’s also down on “English blues”, and how “a lot of British guys you meet are real cocky, especially about the blues issue.”
There was some Brits playing some blues, but there aint no such thing as British blues – that sounds like blues that was made in Great Britain. Rock and roll and blues is America at its finest. British blues like a parrot that lives in Greenland, man.
Then there’s a Bill Graham anecdote:
I remember one night when Jeff Beck wasn’t going to play because there was no shower for him. Bill picked him up off the floor, pushed hi up against the door, and told him, “You get your little Limey ass out there and play. “Quite whining, or Ill give you a fucking shower.”
But Gregg and Duane had a pretty weird relationship. “Duane was really encouraging me with my songwriting. He would compliment me, pat me right on the ass, or actually kiss me on the mouth, right in front of the other guys. He let me know how much he loved my singing and how proud he was of me.” Wow… not a lot of hairy tattooed tough guys would admit something like that.
A great quote about music making:
A note has to have enough time, even if it’s in a fast song, to start nasty, get nasty, stay nasty, and end nasty – and do it all in a millisecond. That’s easy to do on a guitar, and possible to do with the human voice. You need a certain length of time to allow a note to come up from out of your soul and have it emanate to the microphone, and every now and then you know that you’ve really touched a nerve.
Or thoughts about life. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life isn’t a bowl full of cherries, but it’s not a bowl full of shit either.” Or thoughts about wives. “My next wife, Danielle, was just from another planet. I don’t know why I married her. That was a midlife crisis, I guess, because I was doing really well.”