Part 4 (2/2)

In those poster sat and watched TV, sometimes horror movies with the sound down An empty chair was soer insisted that a spirit sat in that chair-and that he knew that spirit well In fact, he said, he and the ghost were on a first-nahost even shared the sa inal Allman Brothers Band, and you walk into the othic story of family ties-of both blood brotherhood and chosen brotherhood-and it is also a story of aly bad fortune Indeed, the four uitarist dickey Betts, and drummers Jai Jaimoe and Butch Trucks-are people who helped make history: They once personified what rock & roll and blues could achieve in those forination, and they also once played a significant role in the American South's social and political history But like anybody who has made history that matters, the members of the Allman Brothers were also bruised by that history They do not seeant or proud; rather, they seem like men who have learned that proud moments can later form the heart of indelibly painful memories

It has been several years since these ether, but on this sultry afternoon in e at Mia the final work on Seven Turns-a record that they boldly claim is their most important and accomplished work since 1973's Brothers and Sisters In ht they would share In 1983, after a restive fourteen-year history, the Allman Brothers dissolved into the caprices of pop history The band had broken up before-in the mid-1970s, on rancorous terer wanted theshi+p band,” says dickey Betts, pulling nervously at hisscan of the other faces in the rooers and record coer use terms like 'Southern Rock,' or that we couldn't wear hats or boots onstage, that it was e to a modern audience We finally decided we couldn'ttodiscoback, splitting up was the best thing we could have done We would have ruined whatever pleasant i”

The band members went separate ways All mainly clubs and small venues, and even teamed up for a tour or two Butch Trucks went back to school, opened a recording studio in Tallahassee, raised his faht to stop record labeling in Florida Jai Jaimoe packed a set of dru around the South, playing in numerous jazz, R & B, and pop bands Occasionally, the various ex-All, but nobody spoke much about the collective drealory days were behind the thean going through one of its periodic revisionist phases Neo-blues artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray began attracting a ers like Lyle Lovett and k d lang had started attracting a broad spectru, brandy-voiced Bonnie Raitt enjoyed a htforward renditions of blues and R & B music As a result, dickey Betts received a call fro a Southern Rock LP? Betts thought Epic was joking, but nope-the label even wanted hiuitar frontline, and yes, if he really wanted, he could wear his cowboy hat onstage Betts put together a solo act, and eventually he and Trucks received calls from Epic that led to an invitation to re-for Allendary, and they weren't sure about touring or playing with him under those circumstances But Betts, who had seen Allood shape and better voice than ever, and that like the rest of theether So Betts called Epic back and asked: For a Southern Rock band, hoould the label like to have the Southern Rock group, the Allman Brothers Band? Epic was thrilled-until it was learned that the band planned to tour before recording

”They were afraid ould break up again before we ever finished the tour,” says Betts, laughing Actually, touring was reportedly part of the deal the band a studio to work on newa fewwould handle the road; in fact, they wanted to see how everybody would handle working together again Mainly, they wanted to see if they could still play like the Allman Brothers, rather than as a once-removed imitation

”It would have been pitiful to have put this band back together, just to be an embarrassment,” says Betts ”I don't think we could have dealt with that The trouble is, we'd already been coood way”

As it turned out, the ti Stones, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Ringo Starr, and Paul McCartney were hitting the road in 1989 with largely retrospective tours, and PolyGra a multidisc historical overview of the Allmans for imminent release For the first time in nearly a decade, the Allmans had a context to work in Betts and Alluitarist Warren Haynes, bassist Allen Woody, and keyboardist Johnny Neel-and the Allman Brothers Band was reborn More i their hard-hitting brand of improvisational blues with the sort of vitality the band had not evinced since the early 1970s ”Oncecompared to ourselves,” says Betts, ”but this time in a positive way The ideal, of course, would be to have all the original members of the band still alive and with us, but that can't be But I'll say this: This is the first lineup we've had since Duane Allman and Berry Oakley were in the band that has the same spirit that we had in those days”

Butch Trucks-who can be themember of the band-puts it differently ”It feels like the Allain,” he says, ”and it hasn't felt that way in a long, long time I like it It makes my sticker peck out”

Periodically, as Betts and Trucks talk, Gregg Allman tries to seem interested in the conversation He will lean forward, clasp his hands together, look like he has sole question After a bit, he settles back into the sofa and simply looks as if he's in his oorld He see into some private, inviolable space In the entire conversation, he will say only one complete sentence: ”It's hard to live those ten or twenty years, and then try to start all over again with another band”

Abruptly, Gregg is on his feet, excusing hiin final vocals today, and he is restless to get started When asked if it's okay to watch hi won't let anybody in there when he's singing,” says Betts, co to Allman's rescue ”Vocals are real personal, you know You're just standing there naked”

”Yeah, with your dick hanging out,” says Trucks After Gregg leaves, Trucks adds: ”I've never seen anybody so nervous about letting others listen”

Recently, there had been so's vocals Reportedly, producer Tom Dowd-the owner of Criteria Studios, and the producer of the band's early classics, At the Fillet workable complete performances froether froh tracks nobody knows at thehe will sing-indeed, any All's trade's current unease bodes for the band's upcoain after all these years,” says Trucks, ent through a drying-out period of his own ”At a ti probably doesn't even know if he can talk to people,is, he did it for too o for it now”

AROUND MIDNIGHT, a war heavy sheets of rain all over north Miami Drummer Jai Jaimoe (as once known as Jai Johanny Johanson, but now prefers to be called simply Jai a crate of new cyleareen knitted African cap; bright green baggy pants; and knee-length black T-shi+rt bearing the statement, ”The objects under this shi+rt are s All passes at his vocal on ”Good Clean Fun,” and fro more confident, more vibrant by thean acoustic guitar for so he has written about the Alle, Butch Trucks sits watching a golf tourna to explain the Zen principal of the sport to his wife, who does not seeirlfriends-including Gregg's neife, Danielle-sit around talking or reading true-cris wander in and out of the action, sniffing e perplexedly at the downpour outside Also drifting in and out are producer Tom Doears a perpetually ruendary All womanizer, a terrific dirty-joke teller, and plainly the band's most devoted fan It must see ”Iwith these people,” Jaiether that I could never find with other bands”

Between stor lot to a nearby studio, where it will be possible to talk with less distraction People in and around the Alleneration, he has been perpetually reclusive, inscrutable, even spacey But they also make awed references to the drue of jazz and rhythine atte a reunion at this time without his involveinal member of the Allman Brothers-or at least that he was the one who had always been waiting for a band like the All ”All my life I had wanted to play in a jazz band,” says Jaihted studio control booth ”Then I played with Duane Allman”

Like Allman, Jaimoe had harbored a special passion for Southern-based ular session drummer at the Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama-where some of the most renowned Southern soul music of the period was recorded-and he perfor Percy Sledge, Otis Redding, Joe Tex, and Clifton Chenier ”I think I had been preparing to play in this band without really knohat I was preparing for,” says Jaiht on the sofa ”I think it was froot all that fiery stuff that people hear in ”

In the course of his studio work, Jai the principal driving forces behind the All entrepreneur naia, a riculture for much of its economy, and that still maintained much of its pre-Civil War architecture (General Shernificant to plunder or ravage) In the 1950s, Walden had grown enamored of Memphis-style rock & roll and, in particular, black R & B of singers like Hank Ballard and the Five Royales, and by theSae, Al Green, Johnny Taylor, Joe Tex, Arthur Conley, and,

Walden's affection for blackbusinessmen and church officials Walden didn't present hihts activist, but he did bristle at provincial racism, and he refused to ko to local pressures The South, he often told his critics, would have to change its attitudes, and what's er of that change ”I think rhythion around on race relations,” he would later tell an interviewer ”When people get together and listen to the sa kind of harder”

But Walden's involvement in R & B was cut suddenly and brutally short In Dece-a few months after his triumphant appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival, and on the verge of a long-anticipated ine plane from Cleveland to Madison, Wisconsin, when the plane went down in a Wisconsin lake, killing Redding and four members of his backup band, the Bar-Kays Walden was known as a proud, a's death was more than the loss of a prize client, and more than the ter artistic careers of the period It was also a devastating personal loss, and according to reater emotional distance from his clients

Duane Allman had also had his life and sensibility transformed by sudden death In 1949, when Duane was three and his little brother Gregory o, the All in Nashville, Tennessee That Christmas, the boys' father, an Army lieutenant, was on holiday leave fro Christmas, he picked up a hitchhiker, who robbed and 's father The All children in a military academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, and then, in 1958, relocated the fa teens, the Allman brothers rarely talked about their father's death-they were too young to know hie: Duane hated school, and quit in a hot te to his favorite possession, a Harley-Davidson 165 Gregg, h school and was reportedly a fair student and athlete, though he regarded it as a thankless ordeal

Early on, both Duane and Gregg found the-particularly the high-lonesome wail of country music, and the haunted passions of urban and country blues Gregg had been the first to leap in: He had listened to a neighbor playing old-tig worked a paper route and saved uitar at the local Sears and Roebuck While Gregg was slogging his way through school, Duane started playing his brother's guitar-and to his surprise and Gregg's initial annoyance, discovered that he had a gift for the instruuitars, and Duane would hole up with his instru the uitarist Kenny Burrell Around that ti a visit to Nashville, and Duane'sto for to uitarists, including King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf's Hubert Suo Reinhardt, as well as the e firebrand na for soul artists like Ja attention to saxophonists like John Coltrane, to hear how a soloist could build a melodic momentum that worked within a coan favoring jazz organists like Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond, and developed a special passion for sophisticated blues and R & B vocalists like Bobby ”Blue” Bland, Ray Charles, and Roy Milton

But there was more to the brothers' quest than a s and turned them into a joyful release The All bands as an extension of family ideals, and they often invested these bands with the saer, loyalty and rivalry, that they had practiced at home In a way, this family idealism was simply a trend of the era: The 1960s were a time when rock bands were often viewed as metaphors for a self-willed brand of consonant community But in the Allmans' case, the sources of this dream may have run especially deep Their real-life fa a band was a way of creating a fraternity they had never really known

But the Allforced to reexamine so were unusually open to ideals of interaction and equality To their mother's initial displeasure, the brothers preferred theplayed by local black talents, and in 1963, they helped forrated bands, the House Rockers It was a period of fierce feelings, but the Allmans, like Phil Walden, would not back off froo radical and deeply needed social change

In any event, Duane and Gregg went through a rapid succession of blues-oriented rock bands, including the Allman Joys, who toured the Southern teen circuit and recorded two albu several Yardbirds and Crearoup had been overhauled into the Hour Glass and had relocated to Los Angeles, where they recorded two LPs for Liberty Both were better than average cover bands, and they gave Duane a chance to hone his flair for acco develop as a sultry organist and an unusually inventive roups matched Duane's boundless auitarist quit the Hour Glass and accepted an invitation from Fame Studios' owner-operator Rick Hall to work as a side in LA to fulfill the Liberty contract, and in Muscle Shoals, Alaba Curtis, Arthur Conley, and Ronnie Hawkins; in New York, he played with Aretha Franklin By 1969, Duane Allained a reputation as one of the uitarists in contemporary music

It was in this time that Jai Johanny Johansonsession ith Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin,” says Jaiot a white boy down in Alaba” Ally hair,' he said, 'but you've got to hear hiht in Macon-there wasn't anything else to do there; everything was closed up-and this Aretha Franklin thing, 'The Weight,' caht, 'That's got to be ”Skydog” Alluitarist, but he wasn't any Barney Kessel or Tal Farlow, and those were the only Caucasian cats that I heard who could really play the instru a King Curtis session and sought out Allman The two musicians beca out in one of Fa for hours head-on Then one day, another skinny, long-haired white boy-a bassist named Berry Oakley, who on the jams ”Man,” says Jaimoe, ”when Berry joined us, that was some incredible shi+t I remember that people like [bassist] David Hood, [pianist] Barry Beckett, and [dru Muscle Shoals' most respected session players] would coet them to join in But none of them would pick up an instruuys”

Somewhere around this time Allman attracted the attention of Phil Walden, as in the process of for his own label, Macon-based Capricorn Records, to be distributed by Atlantic One day, Rick Hall played for Walden a new albu a cover of the Beatles' ”Hey Jude” Walden was transfixed by the work of the guitarist on the session, and after traveling to Muscle Shoals, he eventually ht he had found his Elvis Presley: a white musician who could play black, blues-based forms in a way that would connect with an entire new mass audience

There had been talk of All a trio based on the sparse but furious improvisational dynamics of the Jied Allman to seek his own mix of style and texture Allman kneanted to ith Jaimoe and Oakley, but he had also been drawn to a few other uitarist dickey Betts (who had played with Oakley in a band called the Second Co, and hom Allman had played several twin-lead ja and Duane had played in Jacksonville) One day, these five an playing It turned into a relentless jam that stretched for four hours and left everybody involved feeling electrified, even thunderstruck When it was over, Duane stepped to the entrance of the roo a hu to have to fight their way out of this room,” he said

Duane told Walden and Atlantic vice president Jerry Wexler-who had advanced Walden 75,000 to for back froroup, but the company heads initially balked Says Jai, ”Man, Jerry and them, they don't want me to have my brother in the band They don't want no two brothers in the band It's always been trouble Ithat much-I don't like him You kno it is: Brothers don't like each other' And then Duane would say, ”But Jai like my brother In fact, I can't think of anotherin this band except my brother That's who I really want' ”

In the end, Duane All Allman had been lonely in Southern California, had endured a troubled love affair and had even, he would later report, contemplated suicide When Duane called hi saw the invitation as deliverance froht with hinature attractions: a powerfully erotic, poignant, and authoritative blues voice When Gregg All Post,” he did so in a voice that er were the personal possessions of the singer-and that he had to reveal those dark e about

Phil Walden moved the band to Macon, and then put it on the road year-round He and Duane didn't always see eye to eye on : The Allest band in the country-or die trying

ANOTHER DAY into the new sessions, dickey Betts is seated on a worn sofa in the foyer at Criteria Studios Down the hall, Gregg All on his vocals, and it is apparent fro well

Betts had stayed up late the night before, listening to a cassette of an Alle in Cincinnati PolyGram's Bill Levenson (who compiled the 1989 Allmans retrospective, Dreams) had recently reht was the first time Betts had heard the performance in twenty years ”I knew if the quality was anywhere above being eood,” he says with a fast sets up and moves around while he talks, his eyes s-but behind that manner, he is amiable and honest, and he clearly possesses a reence For arded as the real heart of the Allh he often tends to downplay his leadershi+p role Right now, he seeanin its early days ”If I recall,” he says, ”Ludloas like a dungeon: a cee Real funky As I remember, it was recorded around the ti anywhere We were still underground at that point We had a private, al”

The Allround” in 1970, but they had already developed their h-flown invention that would becoroup was trying to sue of rock, blues, and jazz traditions, and at the same time extend those traditions in new unanticipated directions In contrast, though, to the Grateful Dead or Miles Davis (both of whom often played i structure), the Allmans built treht of enuinely attuned to the es of blues and the stylistic patterns of rock & roll-that is, group members not only found inspiration in the music of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson, they also understood how that rified in the later music of Chuck Berry, James Brown, and other rock and soul pioneers At the same ti at not only the prowess of musicians like Davis, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy, and Roland Kirk, but at how these visionaries had taken the same primitive blues impulses that had thrilled and terrified Robert Johnson and Louis Ar and turned them into an elaborate art form, capable of the most intricate, spontaneous inventions Plus, there was an exceptional confluence that resulted frohtahead blues mode, the band could barnstorm and burn with a fervor that even such white blues trendsetters as John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Crea Stones were hard-pressed to match And when the Allmans stretched their blues into full-scale, labyrinthine iely instru Post,” and ”Mountain Ja were students of the urban blues,” says Betts ”Their thing was like a real honest, truthful, chilling delivery of that music, whereas Oakley and I may have been influenced by the blues and were students of it, but ere more innovative We would try to take a blues tune and, instead of respecting the sacredness of it, ould go sideith it But on our own, Berry and I were alwaysdidn't quite have the adventurous kind of thing So e all caave each other a new foundation”

It proved to be a unique a into frenzied and intricatefor a ork of rhythuitars The only other band in rock that atteh in the Dead's case, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzuitarist Bob Weir was never quite inventive enough to engage Jerry Garcia's considerable skill Likelier prototypes were the double-saxophone and double-drum sextets and octets led by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleuitar-fiddle lineups of nu and country-western bands ”I was always real fond of the twin guitars that Roy Clark and Dave Lyle played in Wanda Jackson's band,” says Betts ”But it wasn't that we consciously copied any of these sources It was just that later we realized that people like Clark and Lyle, and Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, had been pursuing the sah, it was a pretty new adventure I s about the Allman Brothers, we listened to jazz and were influenced by it without ever pretending ere jazz players

”But h to see that potential and responding to it He was absolutely in charge of that band Had he missed that possibility or that chemistry, there would have been no Allman Brothers Band”

Betts also cites Berry Oakley as a key shaper of the Allular bassist Like such jazz hero-bassists as Oscar Pettiford, Jimmy Blanton, Ray Brown, or Scott LaFaro, Oakley had a profoundpercussive touch; and like the Dead's Phil Lesh or Jefferson Airplane's Jack Cassady, he kne to get under a band's action and lift and push its motions ”There were ti a line or phrase, and Duane would catch it, then ju harmony Then , and ould all three be off That kind of thing was absolutely unheard of froive us the melody”

In fact, says Betts, it was Oakley who ca Post,” the All in it that none of the rest of us heard-this frightening kind of thing He sat up all nightaround and ca in eleven/four ti fro always happened with him”

By the end of 1970, the Allman Brothers had acquired a formidable reputation They had recorded two critically praised LPs of blues-rock, interlaced with classical- and country-derived eleained pop renown for his contributions to Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dos But it was as a live unit that the band enjoyed its greatest repute, and in the year or so ahead, they would play somewhere around two hundred concerts In part, to sustain their energy during the incessant and exhausting tours, and in part as a by-product of a time-old blues and jazz tradition (and a by-product of rock culture), the Alls-at first, primarily marijuana and occasional psychedelics and, in tiht the band some short-term potency, maybe even inspiration, but it would also eventually cost thes about the whole experience, and its legacy ”The drugs that were being done back in the sixties and seventies,” he says, ”were a lot easier to have fun with and be open about, and to find acceptable, because they were drugs to enhance your awareness, instead of an escape into so qualities, but at least that was the idea that people had at the tio even further

”Today, though, the drugs are so da about the to enhance your awareness at all The whole idea is to kill your awareness, to escape It's just a perverted thing, and that's why I think that nowadays it's absolutely irresponsible and ignorant to sing in a positive way about doing drugs”

It was in this period that the Alllehandedly pioneered a style and demeanor that would becoressive yet could swing gracefully, played by acies Though later bands would reduce Southern Rock to a reactionary posture and a crude parody of an the movement as a blast of musical and cultural innovation In fact, their outlooks and