Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band & the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the '70s"/Alan Paul [Episode 143]

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"Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band & the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the '70s"/Alan Paul [Episode 143] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Oh, we're totally booked in rock and roll. I mean, I'll leave
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you do you're reading Little Hands, It's time to run and roll road.
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We are totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for
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though it's about to read and rock Online at booked on rock dot com,
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Exclusive videos, blogs, links to all of the social media sites, including
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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. You can find every episode of
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Booked on Rock there, along with links to your favorite listening platforms. New
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York Times best selling author Alan Paul is this episode's guest to talk about his
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new book, Brothers and Sisters, The Allman Brothers Band and the inside story
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of the album that define the seventies. Brothers and Sisters is the Allman Brothers
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Band's most successful album, selling over seven million copies. It's influence, both
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musically and culturally continues to be felt today. I asked Allan about what's in
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the book, including his personal interviews with members of the band and the previously
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unheard interviews conducted by Allman Brothers band archivist, photographer and tour mystic Kirk West.
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He also getting to the backstories to Allman Brothers classics like Rambling Man,
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Southbound, and Jessica. Alan also reveals how the Allman Brothers came to the
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aid of Jimmy Carter's failing presidential campaign, contributing to his election. Alan is
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also the author of the phenomenal twenty fourteen book One Way Out, the inside
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history of the Allman Brothers Band. There was a product of twenty five years
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of reporting on the band and was hailed by Rolling Stone as a thorough account
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and by Guitar World as definitive. The Brothers and Sisters album in its entirety
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can be found on the show notes page. Alan Paul, Welcome to the
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Book Down Rock Podcast. Thank you, thanks for having me. You are
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the author of the best selling book on the Allman Brothers band titled One Way
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Out. Now you're back with another phenomenal book on one of my all time
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favorite bands. This time it's about their album that defined the set and these
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Brothers and Sisters released fifty years ago next month actually August of seventy three.
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And there's a secret weapon you have for this book, and that is what
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you found inside of a suitcase given to you by Kirk West. So who's
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Kirk West? And once inside that suitcase. Kirk West is the Allman Brothers
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band tour mystic And some people always say, what the heck does a tour
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mystic mean? And people who are big fans of the Allman Brothers in the
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nineties and through two thousands, No, but Kirk was basically their tour manager.
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He did the job that is so important to every rock band that you
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know and love, you know, making maintaining the stage, working out tickets,
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backstage passes, making sure the band gets to the venue on time,
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coordinating with the venue, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But he did so
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much more than that that that title just didn't didn't suffice. So he was
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also their photographer. He's a great photographer. He has a gallery and making
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Georgia. He was their archivist. He was their historian. He was the
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guy who bought the Big House at twenty three twenty one Vineville Avenue, and
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which had been their group house in nineteen seventy to seventy two and then was
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just sort of a house, and he bought it with the concept of making
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it into a museum, the original collection of which was his obsessive collection,
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his own member video collection. It is now Museum, the Alman Brothers Band
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Museum at the Big House. That all is because of Kirk. So before
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all of that, when the band was broken up in the mid eighties,
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Kirk was already getting to know them all. As a photographer. He worked
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with a lot of them. He did photoshoots with a lot of them,
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and he decided to write a book and he had some time and some funding,
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I guess, and he drove around the country, interviewed everyone in the
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band, Greg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jamo, Butch Trucks, the drummers,
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Chuck Lavell, everyone met just everyone you could think of, Bill Graham,
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Phil Walden, who was the band's original manager, and he was going
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to write a book, and then they reformed in eighty nine, they hired
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him. He became an employee of the band, and so it was no
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longer really enable to write this book, and so eventually he just shoved these
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tapes in a two sided suitcase underneath his desk and making and they gathered dust.
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He himself didn't listen to most of them. He was the publisher for
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a bunch of years of hitting the Note magazine, which was a great sort
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of Allman Brothers Fansy, and that became something more than an Allman Brothers Fansy
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and covered this whole world of music and hitting the note. Did use some
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of these tapes for some features, but very few so most of them really
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nobody had ever listened to. And after I had already signed to contract and
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was starting work on the book, you know, Kirk said, Hey,
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would you like to use my tapes? And it was incredible, you know,
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I didn't quite realize at first he just met all of his tapes.
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He gave them to me. I went down to making and September of twenty
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twenty one with my son Jacob, and I mentioned Jacob because he took some
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pictures of Kirk and I handing off the SATs and looking at them together.
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I used three of him in the book, so I was really happy about
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that that he was there. I mean, of course, at that moment,
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we just thought we were documenting it for posterity. But they became such
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a central part of the book that I wanted to include pictures of them.
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You know, in a way it felt self indulged to have a picture of
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myself, but it wasn't about me. It was about Kirk. To me
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and about the cassettes, and they just were a gold mine. I mean,
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I already was working on the book. I already had the contract.
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The book would have been done either way, but it's hard for me at
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this point to imagine just what it would have been, how it would have
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been different, because it would have been very, very different. Well,
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would these tapes ever be officially released? There's probably legal aspects to that.
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No, there's not really legal aspects. I mean the legal aspect is Kirk
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he on some and he would like to have the relief. So we are
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working on We have some ideas for ways to get them out the people.
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But I will say that the audio book of Brothers and Sisters is something really
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really cool and different. And I did the narration, but that's not what
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makes it cool and different. It's We used forty clips of the guy's talking,
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and most of them are from the tapes. A few of them are
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from my own interviews over the years with the guys. There were some specific
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clips I wanted to use for my interviews, but most of them are from
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Kirk's interviews, And you know, I was really pleased to make it.
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The audiobook was done by McMillan Audio, and my book is published by Saint
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Martin's, which is a part of McMillan. They did a great job.
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I mean, they we're all in. You know. I've had experiences over
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the years with publishers where they don't quite get how to be a little bit
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creative and flexible. I mean, my first book was called Big in China
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with HarperCollins, and it was about my experiences in China. I lived there
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for three and a half years and I formed a blues band and we ended
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up being really successful, and so I owned all the music and I suggested
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to them at the time, you know, people are still buying CDs,
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and I said, why don't we put a CD inside every book? You
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know, I own the music, we can do this. And they were
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kind of like, what, you know, we're publishing books, not music.
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What are you talking about. It was just beyond their Yeah, you
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know, but that was absolutely not the case here. They were really creative
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and flexible and when I said maybe we could use a clip or two,
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they fully embraced it. And there's forty of them. So, I mean,
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I love audiobooks. I want people to buy the book because I put
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so much effort into caring. But if you're an audiobook fan, you know,
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you know, if you're a huge Ahma Brothers fan, you're gonna want
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book because you're gonna want the book with the photos. But the audiobook it's
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really special. I mean, I you know, I don't know enough about
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audio books that definitively say like nothing like this has been done or any I
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don't know if that if that's true or not, but I do know that
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this product is really special, and it is a glimpse into those tapes,
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and Kirk is game for getting them out to people. And we're talking about
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some different plans, so stay tuned. I first ever like big rock star
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interview while I was in radio was with Greg Allman, and they warned me.
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They said, well, I'd be careful. He could be moody because
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back when he was in a rough way, you know, with the drinking
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and stuff. I guess he could have been. But with me, he
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was nothing but nice. And I said, and I did like the unprofessional
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thing. I said, man, I can't believe I'm talking to you right
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now. And his response, he goes, well, why is that?
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You know the Southern accident? Greg could be sort of a little moody.
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But just just to clarify, because I interviewed Greg a lot and was around
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him a lot, he never was angry or scary or mean. He's just
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sometimes he didn't feel like talking that much and he could be a little withdrawn.
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Yeah, he never was scary. You know, he had an acturally
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intimidating presence in person, and certainly more so because you know, you you
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looked at Greg and read so much into him. But he wasn't ever angry
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or violent or scary in that kind of way. There were just times where
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he just would sort of withdrawn. He did so many interviews, and one
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time that was funny. It was one of the last main big interviews I
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ever did with Gregor was after his books Crossed the Air came out. I
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was sitting right at the same desk I'm sitting it now, interviewing him.
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My little dog who had just locked out of the room. I have an
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eight and a half pound I think she's a Marky, She's a pound dog.
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She was sitting at my feet, sleeping and talking to Greg on the
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phone. And Greg was in one of those moods where I wasn't getting much
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out of him. He was sort of given yes and no answers. And
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at some point, I guess somebody came to the door or something, and
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my dog starts barking, yapping like crazy. So I'm so embarrassed. I
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mean, I'm talking to Greg Allman and here's my dog barking. But Greg
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perked right up and he said, hey, what kind of kitty you got?
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You know, And I had heard him we had talked about dogs before.
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I had seen him with his dogs. He had little dogs like that
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and he called them kitty. So I said, well, you know,
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I think she's a morky and he said, well, I had worky,
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and you know, we started talking about that, and I said, you
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know, Greg, I know you have a murky and little dogs. And
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you know when people make fun of me for having a little dog, I
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always say, hey, Greg Allman has little dogs. Yeah. Yeah,
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he loved that. He just cracked up and he said, well, he
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used to have big dogs, used to have a Saint Bernard in fact,
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and uh, you know, they're not that practical if you're a musician on
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the road. And he said it was bb King who told me one time,
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you ain't never experienced the love at the dog of a dog until you
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have one that can sleep in the crook of your arm. I've quoted that
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repeatedly, so I said Greg, now I cannot only say Greg Almon has
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little dogs, Greg olmen little dogs because BB King told him to have little
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dogs. I'm good, I'm bolden. Yeah, and he loved that and
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we had a good laugh and the whole interview got better. Yeah. Yeah,
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pulled him right out of that. Yeah. Yeah, so I being
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from New England and just the southern, the accent, but also the terms
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he's you know, he's they were coming to playing hard for Connecticut and he
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says, we'll be loaded for bear. Yeah, in all those terms.
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Yeah, Greg was a very colorful that way, Dicky. That's due to
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a certain extent, I think Greg Moore. You know, I remember Greg
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saying I remember talking to him about, you know, the songwriting techniques and
11:20
how you write songs, and he said, you know, I wish there
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was a pattern. Every song is different. Sometimes you have a song like
11:26
Midnight Writer. That thing hit me like a sack of hoe handle. Yeah
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that's right, Yeah, yeah it is. And that was that quote and
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some other things like that. That's in a one way out that that was
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part of what made decided to do in oral History, because I had so
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many great interviews with them, and I thought, if somebody can just come
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up with lines like it hit me like a sack of hoe handles, who
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am I to put my words? And that? Well, getting back to
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the book, you say, to understand the events that occurred between the release
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of Brothers and Sisters and the band's demise in eighteen seven six, you have
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to understand the roots. You have to understand Dwayne and the band he led.
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So readers can get a detailed backstory in the book, but can you
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give us the abbreviated version of the band's backstory and where they're at by the
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time they start working on Brothers and Sisters? It's interesting, I mean I
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laid that right out in. I think that's like the preface you're reading there.
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And the reason I did that is because I was just trying to make
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clear right away to the readers. I mean, the book really is about
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the post Dwayne band. It primarily covers the era from nineteen seventy one,
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right when Dwayne died until nineteen seventy six, when they broke up. For
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the first time. And so when I first started writing the book, I
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just kind of dove in and started there, and I realized at some point,
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well, everything I've written is cool, but there's no context to it.
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I mean, you can't understand that the suffering they were going through,
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for instance, until you understand what they had lost with Dwayne, And you
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can't understand what they had lost with Dwyane until you understand in this significance in
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the band, you have to understand where it came from, how the band
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formed. So I started at the beginning, and you know, I just
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gave a little bit of history there. So where the band was is.
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They had put out two albums. Their self titled debut in nineteen sixty nine,
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didn't do much of anything, but they kept touring. They had money
13:18
put behind them by their manager, Phil Walden. They kept them out of
13:20
the road. They put up their second record, Idle While South. It
13:24
did a little bit better, you know, it did make a little bit
13:26
more of a mark, but it still really wasn't like a hit. They
13:31
kept touring and they were out there. Their crowds were growing. They're playing
13:33
the Filmore East in New York a lot they're playing in the Filmore West in
13:37
San Francisco, played some shows with The Grateful Dead. I mean, they're
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starting to build things. And then a couple of things happened. Dwayne records
13:43
Leila with Derek and the Dominoes. You know, I e. Eric Clapton
13:48
that you know, people don't realize now, but was not an immediate hit.
13:52
I mean, it took a while for that to grow. But at
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the same time that that album was starting to grow a little bit, the
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Owner Brothers released their third album, which was at Filmore East, a live
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album that you know now people call all the time the greatest live album ever,
14:07
and it was greeted as a pretty big hit, and it was a
14:11
pretty ballsy thing. I mean, for a band who had put out two
14:16
not really popular albums to release a live double album is pretty audacious, really,
14:22
But it worked, you know, because they were establishing themselves on the
14:24
road and that was where they really felt they thrived. So that album was
14:30
just starting to become a hit. At the same time, in that fall
14:33
of nineteen seventy one, the band The Filmore East was recorded in March seventy
14:37
one, but came out and by the fallow seventy one, the band was
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in kind of a bad shape. Dwayne. Almost everyone in the band except
14:46
for Butch Trucks was suffering from various degrees of heroin addiction, along with a
14:52
lot of the crew members, so they took a little pause. Dwayne and
14:56
Barry Oakley went to rehab in Buffalo, New York, work along with Red
15:00
Dog and Kim Payne, who were a roadie. Greg was supposed to go.
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They had a ticket for him and a room reserved and stuff, and
15:05
he just didn't show up at the airport for the flight. So they got
15:09
cleaned up. How clean they were as a matter of debate. They were
15:13
really only there like five or six days. By today's standards what we know
15:16
about rehabit would be considered really a joke. I mean, these guys mostly
15:20
brought wives and girlfriends with them, and they snuck out at night and had
15:24
conjugal visits at the motel. So it wasn't the most rigorous of rehabit,
15:30
but it was an attempt. Dwayne apparently was pretty clean, and then he
15:33
died a film where he's had just gone platinum. After all that, After
15:37
he gets clean, the struggles are finally starting to have success and he dies
15:43
in this horrible motorcycle accident. He was twenty four years old. So they
15:48
were a meth They very briefly considered pausing or taking a break. They never
15:52
really considered breaking up, and they kind of get back together. They toured
15:56
for a year. Well I'm sorry. They finished either Peach. That was
16:00
important. They had recorded half of You to Peach with Dwayne, then they
16:03
record the rest of You to Peach that comes out padded with live tracks from
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the More East and I patted makes it sound negative. I mean it was
16:11
great. It was finished, completed. I mean they could have done a
16:15
double album. They could have done a single album that would be mostly studio
16:19
tracks and it would have been great, includes Blue Sky and Melissa and Wasting
16:22
Time No More. But they wanted they made it a double album and they
16:26
included Mountain Jam. Anyone who goes back to Vinyl, well remember that took
16:30
up two sides of a vinyl album. Yeah, so they were certain.
16:34
They toured for a year as a five piece band, the exact same band
16:37
minus Dwayne. They did surprisingly well. I mean Dwayne was the absolute emotional
16:42
leader, he was the on stage leader. They were okay to keep going
16:48
because Dwayne was very unusual in the sense that he wasn't the lead singer and
16:52
he wasn't the songwriter, and that's unusual as as a band leader, but
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that was the situation. They had two singers and two songwriters. Always Thinky
17:00
Bets and Greg Almond, so they still had that. They toured for a
17:04
year. They held it together. They played some great shows, but the
17:08
strain was showing, and as what Struck said to me, it became hard
17:12
to focus on what was there rather than what was missing. What was missing
17:18
was Dwayne. So they didn't exactly set out to add a pianist, but
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they ended up atting Chuck Lavelle, brilliant pianist, which was a way to
17:25
replace Dwayne without replacing Dwayne. Greg had started working on a solo album and
17:30
it became laid back, and Chuck was brought in. He was at nineteen
17:33
or twenty years old. He was a piano prodigy. He was brought in
17:37
to play on the Greg solo record. That led to some jam sessions and
17:41
everybody could hear with the Alman Brothers bandy everybody could hear something was happening there
17:47
with Chuck, and so they asked him to join, you know, initially
17:49
they thought they'd do some reporting with him. They cut two songs, which
17:53
was Wasted Words and Rambling Man. And while they were cutting that album,
17:57
very Oakley dies based player in an eerily similar motorcycle crash less than a mile
18:03
from Dwayne's crash. He was also twenty four, so demand is a complete
18:08
emotional wreck. They replaced him with Lamar Williams, who was Jamo's best friend
18:12
from childhood, and they just go right back to work. They finished that
18:17
album. So the reason I said, you know, you can't understand what's
18:22
happening unless you understand the origins and you understand Dwayne is both because to understand
18:27
the timeline and to understand sort of the emotional devastation they were in and the
18:33
fact that they powered through that and the way they did is pretty amazing.
18:37
But it also if you understand them and their psyches, and this is some
18:41
of the stuff that became so clear listening to Kirk's interviews with the guys.
18:48
It wasn't just the parts of Kirk's interview that I directly quote in the book,
18:51
but just hearing them talk and learning so much about their state of mind.
18:56
And their interactions with each other was fascinating, And basically it was the
19:02
music. Everybody says, how could you play music? And the question was
19:07
they, as they saw it, how could we not? If they hadn't
19:11
continued, if they hadn't been able to keep being creative, they hadn't been
19:14
able to be together and grieved together through the music. They weren't very good
19:18
at openly grieving. They didn't really even talk about Day that much. He
19:22
was this hovering presence through all of them. They would they would have been
19:26
a meth that they hadn't been able to do all those things. So the
19:30
music that you hear on brothers and sisters, the music that they were playing
19:33
live during that time, became everything to them. I mean, it was
19:38
like without that they would have been completely lost. One thing that's interesting that
19:44
in the book that I didn't know, because the popular story about Barry Oakley
19:47
is that it was Duane's death that really set him into a downward spiral cause
19:52
of depression and ultimately the substance abuse. But his sister Candice, I believe,
19:56
told you that there was a bigger rob them than that. He had
20:00
some serious concerns about the band's business. Well, that was actually from one
20:03
of Kirk interviews. I didn't talk to Candy directly. That was on the
20:08
tapes. There's some contourist to Barry's struggles that I should lay out and then
20:15
and then I'll tell you things that everyone agrees on and things that everyone doesn't
20:18
agree with. So what everyone agrees on is that the day Dwayne died,
20:22
Barry became a mess. They were all a mess. Everybody dealt with it
20:27
in various ways. But months after it, Barry had really not come out
20:33
of this depression. He was drinking very, very heavily. I mean,
20:37
all of them again struggled with substance abews, but nobody quite liked Barry,
20:41
who seemed to like never really be sober. They were constantly worried about him.
20:47
Greg said, and this is also one of the Kirk interviews that at
20:51
one point he walked in and Barry was passed out and his lips returning blue
20:56
and he and he slapped them so slapping them around and get up, get
21:00
up, And he said, you know, don't you understand if you if
21:03
you lay here like this, you're going to die. And Barry said,
21:06
what makes you think I don't want to die, So that was his state
21:11
of mind. Now what Candy says, and and Butch Trucks said something similar
21:15
in a way. But Butch said that he felt that Barry was starting to
21:19
go downhill a bit before Dwayne died. So the narrative has always been that
21:25
it was Dwayne's death that put Barry into this horrible place. But Butch,
21:30
and to some extent Candy, Barry's sister, you know, raised the point
21:36
that he really wasn't in such a great place even before Dwayne died, and
21:40
then that that had put him over the edge. Andy says that Barry was
21:44
obsessed with their business and that they were getting ripped off. Now I assume
21:49
that that she's correct when she says that, I'm not I'm not doubting her.
21:52
She felt that he became more and more depressed because nobody would listen to
21:57
him and take him seriously. Barry and Dwayne were very much the leaders of
22:03
the band. Dwayne was the leader of the band. Barry was sort of
22:07
his lieutenant. He was the guy he spoke to all the time, and
22:10
so by most accounts, none of the other guys were really too involved with
22:15
any of that stuff. I think Butch was sometimes Jamo never ever has cared
22:21
about things like business. He just wants to play his music and be left
22:23
alone. Gregg was always in his own world, never really cared about this
22:27
thing. So Barry did find himself sort of without anyone to talk to about
22:32
that, and he was becoming increasingly paranoid and negative about their business situation.
22:38
Everyone sort of agrees with that. Candy points suit as being like the main
22:42
source of his pain, that he had these insights and nobody was really listening
22:48
to him a little hard to say, but it's certainly true that that was
22:53
at least somewhat the case, and even Butch admitted it. And Butch said,
22:59
you know, he raised some good points, but we had come out
23:02
of this period of depression ourselves and negativity, and we were trying so hard
23:07
to move forward to be more positive, and you know, he was just
23:11
sort of dragging us back, and that's what we were trying to get out
23:17
of. So none of them really wanted to deal with that and be a
23:19
part of that, really focusing on on the problems because they were trying so
23:25
hard to move forward. And Greg Almer was creatively frustrated. Queen of Hearts
23:30
was a song he offered for an Alman Brothers band song and they turned it
23:34
down. Where was Greg's mind at creatively during this period? Greg said,
23:41
at one point, and he didn't say it to me or to Kirty,
23:45
I didn't use this, but he said, well, they turned the song
23:48
down. I'm not going to say who it was. But his initials were
23:49
Butch Trucks. He had Queen of Heart. There was a song that he
23:56
really loved. He brought it in. They weren't even sure yet if they
23:59
were going to be doing another album, although they were starting to talk about
24:02
it. They were kind of starting to gather this stuff together and the band
24:07
just rejected Queen of Hearts and it really hurt Greg, and so he decided
24:11
to do a solo album. I think to a certain extent he had always
24:15
been thinking of doing a solo album. Greg was never really into all the
24:21
jamming that was Dwayne's thing. Greg's thing was much more about, you know,
24:26
he was into Jackson Brown, he was into Neil Young, he was
24:30
into Tim Buckley, and of course, as most people know, I think
24:34
he was into R and B and blues, So he was into Bobby Bland
24:38
and Ray Charles and BB King and Little Milton, and his concept a bit
24:45
was to mix and match the two of those. And I think if that
24:49
sounds obscure to you or to anyone you know, you could give a listen
24:53
to laid Back, which is his first solo record, and which is you
24:57
know again heavily ward in this book, and I think you'll you'll hear it,
25:03
and it makes sense. It was sort of like being a singer songwriter,
25:07
like like Jackson Brown or Neil Young, backed by an R and B
25:11
band, you know, or with some R and B swing. So that
25:15
was sort of his vision. So it wasn't that he wanted to break up
25:18
the Alman Brothers band or leave it, but he wanted to do something something
25:22
else. So I think he probably would have done it anyhow, sooner or
25:26
later, but the rejection of Buena Harts is what directly pushed him in that
25:33
direction. The book done Rock Podcast will be back after this. There's some
25:38
great stories in the book, like Lamar cutting his finger. You know.
25:42
One of the unique things about the Alma Brothers band Bassis starting with Barry Oakley.
25:47
Barry played with picks most based players in rock and R and B and
25:52
Blues played with their fingers, phil leshblades with a pick and The Grateful Dead
25:56
and Barry played with the pick. He played with a thumb pick, which
26:00
you know kind of goes on over your thumb. Lamar also played with the
26:03
pick, but he made his own picks. He'd liked to take Clarox bottles
26:08
and he would take a big knife and cut picks. He used these very
26:12
large triangular picks that he made himself from the necks of Clarox bottles, and
26:18
he liked He only liked the plastic in the neck for them, because if
26:22
you pick up a Clarks bottle, you'll feel that the plastic is thicker.
26:26
So the Only Brothers needed a bass player after Barry path thing, and they
26:30
were auditioning bass players. He played with Mark Andyes, who went on to
26:34
play in Firefall and Heart. They tried Kenny Gradney, who had just left
26:40
Delanium Bonnie and then would soon join Little Feet. They played with this guy
26:44
Stray Stratton, who was a friend of Dickies who would then be the bass
26:48
player at his solo band, and they weren't quite sure who was even in
26:52
the league. None of them felt exactly right, although they were good musicians
26:56
and whatever. So Jamo said, I'd like you to try out my friend.
27:00
So they all said sure. So Lamar came to town. He was
27:03
up in New York at the time. He had been sort of kicking around.
27:06
He was in Vietnam. His story is fascinating, you know, an
27:10
explored at length in the book, which was really a lot of fun for
27:14
me to do. And before they went into the actual tryout, Lamar was
27:19
making himself some of these new picks and he slipped and he slept his finger
27:25
very badly, and Jamo was really upset. I mean, Jamo really really
27:30
wanted Lamar in the band, and he said, you know, his exact
27:33
quote to me was, oh shit, that's exactly what we need, you
27:37
know. And he later said, I guess this is a quote from Marvin
27:42
Gay. Marvin Gay said about James Jamerson, the famous bass player at Motown.
27:48
He was one time drunk at a gig. He was sort of out
27:52
drinking and Marvin Gay just wanted to do civil cording, so they called him
27:56
Jamerson and they said, well, he's a few drinks, you know,
28:00
I don't know if he should be the guy. And Marvin Gay said,
28:03
I don't care. If he's drunk and standing on his head, I want
28:06
him to be the base player. So that's what that's what jam was in
28:11
about Lamar. He said, if we were so worried about the thumb,
28:14
but you know, he could have been drunk and standing on his head and
28:17
he would have been fine. So they were playing the songs and Butch Trucks
28:22
stopped things and he said, hey, do you know these songs? Have
28:25
you ever played them? And he said, well, I've listened to them,
28:29
but I never played them. And he said, you know, could
28:32
you leave the room please. Lamar said sure, so he left the room,
28:36
and Butch said, listen, guys, he's never even played these songs,
28:40
and he's playing them like he wrote them. Why don't we just end
28:42
this charade and turn this rehearsal, I mean, turn this audition into a
28:48
rehearsal. And everybody agreed. I mean, and when I questioned a couple
28:53
of the guys about that, and they all said, well, you know,
28:56
basically, of course we agreed. It was obvious. There was no
29:00
questions about it. So that was it. Their search for bass player was
29:03
over. They called Lamar back end, they offered hitting the gig and they
29:07
started rehearsing the Warner Brothers. They make a mistake early on. They not
29:11
only had the wrong release date promise, but they had the wrong album title
29:15
right one thing. So the album was advertising South can be called Lightning Rod
29:21
one thing. And you know, I got to the heart of a lot
29:23
of mysteries here. I never really got to the bottom of where that title
29:27
came from. Like, you know, if it ever was even considered as
29:32
a title, you know, probably not. Maybe in passing somebody once said
29:37
it. I would guess. I doubt that somebody from Warner Brothers completely made
29:41
it up. I don't think it was ever really seriously considered. And yes,
29:45
there was confusion about the release date. It's not so much that they
29:49
put out an early release date. It was that they kept saying they would
29:52
get it done, and before they really knew what was going to be done,
29:57
they advertised it and so they were her ads for an album that didn't
30:00
exist. And you know, it created a lot of confusion. The change
30:04
from Lightning Rod's brothers and sisters that comes out of the album cover image,
30:10
well, yeah, it was sort of all a package deal. I mean,
30:12
it was a Judy Reeve at the time was Twigs Linden's girlfriend. Twigs
30:18
Linden was their tour manager. Basically he has such a complicated role with the
30:25
band it's aren't even described. But she had this idea that the album should
30:29
be called Brothers and Sisters, and that it should picture the kids on the
30:32
cover. You know, I don't know if she had the specific idea that
30:34
it would be Baylor Trucks, which is three year old on the front,
30:37
and Brittany Oakley, who was but Strucks his little toddler daughter on the back,
30:42
But she had the idea of the kids and that the center should be
30:45
a picture of all of them, meaning husband's, wives, friends, the
30:49
kids. And she thought that Dickie would be more likely to take it seriously
30:56
if it came from Twigs rather than her. You know, she was just
30:59
this new girlfriend around and Twigs was his trusted confidant. So she told Twigs
31:04
about it and got Twigs to go to Dicky and present it, and Dicky
31:10
loved it immediately and he said that's great, great idea, Twigs, you
31:12
know, and he, to his credit, immediately said well, actually it
31:17
wasn't my idea, it was Judy's idea. And so that's what the title
31:22
of the album cover all came together as one concept. And if you look
31:26
inside the album she credited. Dickie was still tickled by it that he insisted
31:32
on crediting her. So it says something like graphic concept by Judy Reeve.
31:36
So yeah, so you know, it just shows it's always good to ask
31:41
people their ideas and listen to other people's ideas. Because nobody was like looking
31:45
for Twigs, you know, young new girlfriend to come up with a title
31:49
and a graphic concept, but she did. Has there ever been a book
31:53
written on Twigs Lindon because his story is quite interesting. So the ending is
32:00
sad, yeah, because he was only devastated by Duane's death. Right.
32:06
Phil's brother Allan put out a great book and Alan Waldon was talking about the
32:10
end. There were like he intentionally it was a accident. Yeah, So
32:16
okay, let me back up at least a little bit. So Twiggs was
32:20
an extremely loyal employee of the band. Twiggs went all the way back he
32:25
had worked for Phil Walden, the band's manager, back with Otis Redding.
32:30
Um. Twiggs was dispatched from making along with Otis Redding's father and to identify
32:37
his body after the crash. Um. I'm just telling you that to give
32:39
you an idea of just how close he was and how trusted. He also
32:44
had been friends with Jamo because Jamo was on the road with a lot of
32:47
R and B bands, and they worked in some bands together where Twiggs was
32:51
the road manager and Jamo was the drummer, especially Percy Slade. You know,
32:54
when a man loves a woman faint, so they have pledged to work
32:59
together again. So Tweegs had this relationship. When Phil Waldon signed Dwyane Allman
33:05
and then brought together the Alman Brothers band to make in He's sort of assigned
33:08
Twiggs to keep an eye on them and helped them out, and he just
33:12
became incredibly loyal, so much so that when he was on the road with
33:15
them, he had a dispute with a club owner in Buffalo, New York
33:20
who owed them money. It was like, I should know this off the
33:23
top of my head. I think it was one hundred and fifty dollars dispute.
33:27
They got in a fight over the money. The club owner was actually
33:30
trying to get them to play a second night at the club. He said,
33:35
you know, I'll give you the money after you play one more night,
33:37
then I'll pay you that for two nights or whatever. And you know,
33:39
they had a gig somewhere else, so that wasn't going to be acceptable.
33:43
They got in a fight and Twiggs stabbed him to death. He murdered
33:45
him, and it's an incredible act of loyalty. It's also pretty crazy.
33:51
I have never been really comfortable with glorifying that because the fact is he did
33:57
stab a man to death. The guys name was Aliota, the club was
34:01
called Aliota's. He was Italian American and there were rumors and Alman Brothers people
34:07
said for years and he was a member of the mafia. I've looked into
34:10
that. I really don't believe it's true. I think that's just sort of
34:13
a form of you know whatever racism or whatever you might call it, anti
34:17
Italian bias rationalization. But Twigs then got the brilliant lawyer hired by Capricorn Records,
34:25
John Condon, who managed to get him off not guilty for reasons of
34:30
insanity, and the defense was essentially that life on the road with the Allman
34:35
Brothers made him in thing. It was too much for any person to live
34:38
a normal life so brilliant lawyering maybe an element of truth. He was in
34:45
the hospital for a relatively limited period a couple of years, and then he
34:49
came back to make it. He didn't become the tour manager again. The
34:52
guy Willie Perkins, who had been hired to replace him, stayed on,
34:55
but he became sort of the equipment gerurru that was his role. Now,
34:59
well, you're talking about the tragedy. He died in a skydiving accident.
35:04
He was out on the road as a tour manager for the Dixie Dregs.
35:07
He had taken them on as his next project. He was a very experienced
35:13
skydiver. But he did die. Is shoot didn't open. It's been a
35:16
subject of dispute forever whether it was a horrible accident or a form of suicide.
35:22
Alan Walden, as you mentioned in his book You Know, states it
35:24
as a fact that it was suicide. That is not really the case.
35:29
I mean, I'm not saying it is or it isn't it, but it's
35:30
not a fact. Steve Morris, who was with him, is adamant that
35:36
it was not suicide. But one of the things that makes people feel that
35:39
it was is that he was so loyal to Dwayne and he died in the
35:44
town of Duaynesbourg, New York. So there was a sense up that Alan
35:49
Walden expresses, and he's by no means the only person who believes that that
35:53
Twigs was a very meticulous guy. He wouldn't have made a mistake with his
35:59
parachute, and the fact that he died in Dwaynsburg just screams intentional. Let's
36:05
get to some of the standout songs from Brothers and Sisters. Interesting, this
36:07
is what seven tracks it's but it's a relatively short album, yeah, although
36:14
the super deluxe edition that came out a while back is filled with some outtakes
36:19
great live show from September nineteen seventy three at San Francisco's winter Land, and
36:24
so it becomes a much more substantive or lengthy album, and that stuff really
36:30
holds up. So it's all available on streaming services. So I would recommend
36:34
anyone who wants to dig in a little deeper to listen to that version and
36:37
check out some of that stuff. Yeah, I can even put it into
36:40
the show notes page. I put the Spotify playlist, and that's what I've
36:44
been listening to the last few weeks only two Greg Allman Penn songs. That's
36:47
the opener, wasted words and Come and Go Blues wasted words. Now you
36:52
note the lyrics being a brutal kiss off to someone specific. Who is he
36:57
singing about? And can you talk about a few of the lyrics that highlighting?
37:00
Yeah, that was to his first wife. Are you really satan?
37:04
Yes or no? Kind of sums it all up. I mean, that's
37:07
the only lyric you need to know in terms of how how brutal it was.
37:12
I listened some extent in my own conversations with Greg very much. In
37:15
the interviews with Kirk, he spoke about all his wives with well all of
37:21
his wives up until that points he ended up being married. I think seven
37:25
times he spoke about his first two wives, not not super kindly. Share
37:30
was his third wife, and he spoke about her with much much more love
37:35
and respect, even at that point ten or twelve years after their divorce.
37:39
Rambling Man, written by Dickie Betts. This goes all the way to number
37:44
two. It's the band's first top ten single. This song, interestingly enough,
37:49
dates back to the E to Peach sessions. Yeah, so there's a
37:52
there's a widely circulated bootleg that that's around and you can probably find it on
37:57
YouTube and stuff called the Gatlinburg Sessions, which it was kind of cool.
38:00
It was just like somebody had a tape recorder running. Gatlinburg, Tennessee is
38:04
a place where they had rented a house and they were in there recording demos
38:07
and showing each other songs for Eda Peach and Dicky plays a version of Rambling
38:13
Man. It's not a complete song. We don't know if he had completed
38:16
the song or not, but what's on the tape. It's not the whole
38:20
song, but it's pretty much the chorus, but it's pretty identical to what
38:24
it became, although he says rambling Countryman, So yeah, it wasn't a
38:29
new song. Was something he had been working on it picking around for a
38:31
while. And another great story is regarding the instrumental Jessica talk about the inspiration
38:37
behind the music. Who Jessica is, how she plays bouncing vibe right.
38:42
So Jeneral Reinhardt, the great romani jazz guitarist, was a huge inspiration to
38:46
Dicky and also to bb King and lots of other people. Jerry Garcia was
38:51
a big fan. He was missing the use of fingers on his left hand.
38:55
I think he only had two fingers that worked because he had been in
38:59
a fire as a kid in a caravan. And so Dicky was experimenting with
39:05
trying to write something that he could play with just those two fingers and django
39:08
style, and so he came up with the rift that Dad that that was
39:15
something he came up with as this exercise of trying to play, but it
39:19
was sort of like just notes and he wasn't quite figuring out what to do
39:22
with it. And then Jessica, who was his daughter, his baby with
39:28
his wife. Then Sandy Blue Sky, who wrote and saying Blue Sky for
39:31
came crawling into the room and I think everyone could sort of picture a happy
39:36
baby crawling across the floor, and Dicky started playing along to her, and
39:40
that's when that tempo picked up. In that balance. If you listen to
39:44
Jessica, which has always felt like one of the happiest songs in the world
39:47
to me, I think you could imagine how it was influenced by that.
39:51
It's kind of cool and that's what helped to come together. Now, let's
39:54
do to act the guitarist who is in town and playing with them and sort
39:58
of hoping to become the new guitarists in the Allman Brothers Band. Helped Dickie
40:01
a bit writing it and finishing the song. Exactly what he did will never
40:06
know, you know. I quote him all over the book. He said
40:09
that he came up with the whole second portion of the song and felt that
40:14
he should have had a songwriting credit, and he's pretty unhappy about it to
40:17
this day, as anyone would be if if if they felt that would the
40:22
book down. Rock Podcasts will be back after this. Alan Paul, the
40:28
author of the new book Brothers and Sisters, The Allman Brothers Band and the
40:30
Inside Story of the Album that Defined the seventies, due out July twenty fifth.
40:37
Most Grateful Dead Fans. I know they love the Alman Brothers Band and
40:40
vice versa because it's no surprise, you know, they're both legendary jam bands
40:45
and no spices reading the book about how tight the two bands were. Different
40:49
approaches musically, yet both grounded in improvisation much like a jazz band. And
40:53
there's a lot of material in the book to dive into regarding these two bands
40:58
in their history. Who covers quite a bit, can you share with us
41:00
some of the similarities both musically and personality wise too, because Jerry and Dwayne
41:05
were somewhat reluctant band leaders. Yeah, it's interesting. So musically, I
41:09
think you covered it pretty well. I mean, as Dicky said, though
41:13
they had similar concepts, they ended up sounding really different for variety of reasons.
41:16
But I think mostly because the Allman Brothers, especially Dwayne and Greg,
41:21
were really coming from an R and B background and a blues background. Garcia,
41:27
well especially Garcia, was really coming from a bluegrass and sort of a
41:30
jug band. I mean they'd been a jug band before they became a rock
41:34
band, so they were a little bouncier and lighter. They also got,
41:37
of course, heavier into the psychedelics. I mean, the Alman Brothers are
41:39
well known for their love of mushrooms, and the logo and everything that was
41:45
more of a marketing thing. I mean, not to say they didn't do
41:47
that, but the dad of course was formed in at the asidd test.
41:52
I mean that was really like a core part of their band from the very
41:57
beginning. So there were differences. But they both, uh, you know,
42:00
love folk and blues and jazz, and they both liked to improvise.
42:05
So they had that similarity. As Dicky says in the book, you know,
42:08
they would go for a walk and see what happened, and we like
42:12
to make things happen. But they did have this real kinship. And in
42:15
the early days it was a lot between Dwayne and Jerry, and yeah,
42:21
that that what you're talking about is they both liked to say they were just
42:24
members of the band, but they both were the leaders of the band.
42:28
And everyone knew that. And and I would say almost that they were the
42:31
leaders to such an extent that they never had to like say they were the
42:35
leaders. It was just so understood it didn't even, you know, need
42:38
to be said. They didn't not say it because it wasn't true. They
42:43
didn't say it because it didn't need to be said. Sam Cutler, who
42:46
interviewed at length for this book and are just recently passed away risk his soul,
42:52
had a good line. He said, you know, Jerry on stage
42:54
was a psychedelic fascist, and what he meant was it he was just firmly
43:00
in control. He said, he was in control of the Grateful Dead,
43:02
just like Miles Davis was in control of his band. But offstage he was
43:07
hopeless, like he didn't take control of anything. He just like sat back.
43:10
He didn't care about business much. He would just kind of get a
43:14
kick out of watching other people fight. Dwayne was also more in control on
43:19
and off stage. I think. So that's a way that they're similar in
43:22
a way that they're different. But they had a real bond, and they
43:24
had a musical bond. And while Dwayne was alive, I don't believe did
43:29
he ever jamp with them, although he had this real kinship to Garcia guitar
43:34
wise, because he too had like a bluegrass background. He calls its stream
43:37
music, but it's the same music. And eventually in the post Dwayne world
43:42
and stuff really covered in this book, when they did all these shows together,
43:46
the bond then was really between Bets and Garcia. Yeah, wouldn't have
43:50
been great to see those two guys collaborate too. Yeah. I have a
43:54
couple of great pictures of them in here, and one of which I had
43:58
really never seen before I found doing research for this book. It's actually Jerry
44:02
sitting in with the Alma Brothers band and Gaelic Park the Bronx, and you
44:07
can see Dickie and Barry in the picture. So that was really cool,
44:10
and they really really loved each other and they had they had great collaborations together
44:16
during this era. Some great stories coming from people that many don't know about
44:21
in this book. One you referred to as an important, somewhat overlook character
44:23
in Alma Brothers bind history, and that's Steve Massarsky. Massarsky, Okay,
44:30
Yeah, So Steve Massarsky originally came down to make End from New York because
44:37
he had worked organizing benefit concerts for various people, mostly Peter Yarrow from Peter,
44:44
Paul and Mary Fame. He would always call Phil Walden the Allman Brothers
44:47
and try to get the Alma Brothers to do it, and he always said
44:50
no. But Dickie was really involved in Native American right and he wanted to
44:54
put together a charity. And Phil wanted to do that, partly because he
45:00
was doing what Dicky wanted to do, and partly because he wanted to keep
45:04
Dickie involved, and you know, he wanted to keep him on the road.
45:07
End up doing some benefits kept him on the road. That was great
45:08
with Phil. So he called Missarsky, who someone he knew knew how to
45:14
run a charity and deal with benefit concerts and got him involved, and he
45:19
came down to make it initially to run this charity that they formed, which
45:22
was called the North American Indian Rights but should know the exact title, but
45:25
something like that, North American Indian Rights something something, And so Missarsky did
45:30
that. He became really involved, he became close with everyone, and then
45:34
long story short, that sort of ran out of steam and they, you
45:37
know, they folded that up and Phil Walden very foolishly fired him instead of
45:43
finding another spot for him in the organization. He had made this deal with
45:46
Missarsky that if he stayed down there, he paid for his law school at
45:50
Mercer University in Macon. He was planning on coming back up here to the
45:53
Northeast and going to Rutgers. So he really kind of screwed over Missarsky and
45:58
that would turn out to be really quite a mistake for him. Steve had
46:02
developed a good relationship with everyone in the band, especially Dicky, because he
46:07
was really involved. Everyone was involved in that organization, but Dickie was the
46:10
most involved in that organization, so they were close. They got together when
46:15
Dicky was up here touring with his solo band, and they met and talked,
46:21
and you know, it started to occur to Dicky that nobody had ever
46:24
looked over their contracts. I mean, there's a massive conflict of interest.
46:29
Bhill. Walden was their manager, and he was the president of the record
46:32
company. He was their manager, and he was the head of their publishing
46:36
company because their manager and he ran the booking agency. He owned the travel
46:40
agency that they got their tickets from. He owned the liquor store that they
46:44
bought their boost from. I mean they were basically like living on a plantation
46:47
and being paid company script. You know, it was that type of thing,
46:51
and so it was really an untenable situation, but nobody had ever looked
46:54
into it. Dicky by then had a relationship with the Nazarsky. He liked
46:59
on me to them. He knew he was smart, he knew he was
47:00
a lawyer, and he asked him to start looking over the contracts. And
47:06
that simple act changed everything, because that was, in a way the beginning
47:10
of the end of the relationship between Phil Walden and the Almond brothers. Because
47:15
it took them a long time that Capricorn and Phil, you know, really
47:20
put it off. They didn't send the contracts. They took forever to get
47:22
back to them, but when they finally did, everything in there was just
47:27
you know, unacceptable to them, and it led to Dicky filing studently to
47:32
Dicky, you know, hiring Steve as his personal manager, which was the
47:37
first time anyone in the band had had anything like that. So it had
47:40
a lot of negative consequences, and I mean negative only in the sense that
47:45
it really impacted the band and their ability to stay together. But it needed
47:50
to be done, and you know, it would have been done by someone
47:53
at some point anyhow, if that if that makes sense, so um,
47:57
Steven Zarskie is a fascinating character. He has passed away. He's another one
48:01
that the interviews that Kirk did with him were just priceless to me because there
48:07
are no really other extensive interviews with him, and obviously because he's see he's
48:12
I think I couldn't interview with him. So that was you know, it's
48:15
not as sexy as hearing about interviews with Greg and Dickey and stuff, But
48:19
those interviews with Zarski were just priceless to me. In putting together that part
48:24
of the book and understanding that side of things, you cover quite a bit
48:29
about the band's relationship with President Jimmy Carter. I want to ask you about
48:31
that. At the time Governor Carter when he met the band, Greg Alman
48:35
quote the book, Yeah, he Greg Alman's quote saying he was really far
48:38
out man. Yeah. Can you take us back to when, when,
48:42
and how the band creates their function. Yeah, So let's say why Greg
48:45
first said that that was in response to the first real meeting he had.
48:51
Now, now Carter had been around a little bitgever. He was pretty smart.
48:54
He paid a lot of attention to Phil Walden to what he was doing
48:57
with Capricorn and Down and makeing. He opped into the studio and Dicky Betchl's
49:00
recording his solo album Highway Call. I mean, he was savvy and he
49:05
knew that these guys could probably be helpful. He also was a real,
49:07
true, genuine fan of the music, not just the Allman Brothers music,
49:12
but music in general. And that's borne out by the people that he had
49:16
come and perform at the White House when he was president. In January seventy
49:21
four, Bob Dylan and the band were on tour. It was Dylan's first
49:24
tour in eight years, which is hard to believe. You know now when
49:28
you think how much he's tours in recent decades, but he had been off
49:32
the road for a long times. The tour was a huge deal. They
49:35
played two nights in Atlanta, and Carter bought sixteen tickets. One night he
49:39
insisted on paying for them, and he invited the band and Dylan and everyone
49:44
over for a party at the governor's mansion. Afterwards. He also invited all
49:47
the Allman brothers. None of the Allman brothers showed up. This was the
49:52
point where they were starting to be a little unpredictable and they were really,
49:54
you know, starting to have money and drift off. Greg however, did
49:59
show up, but he showed up at like two in the morning and the
50:01
party was over. He pulled up as the last cars were leaving. He
50:06
went to the guard his station there and said, you know, he said
50:09
that he wanted it to be known that he was there. So he told
50:13
him and he got back in the limousine to leave, and they called back
50:15
and said, actually, the governor would like to see you. So they
50:17
opened the gates and he drove up and you know, it was the middle
50:22
of the night. Depending on who tells the story, two three am and
50:25
there was Carter standing on the porch and jeans and a T shirt and greeted
50:30
Greg. And as they walked in, he said, I got some new
50:32
Elmore James records. We can go in and have a drink and listen to
50:35
them. And then he was quoting Midnight Rider and other lyrics to Greg and
50:39
it just blew Greg's mind. So that far out man was really in a
50:44
reference to like, oh my god, you know, I just drank scotch
50:46
and listened to Elmore James with the Governor. I think it seemed it seemed
50:53
far out. You know, that was as good of a description as any.
50:57
I mean, it was really incredible. And so that was the beginning
51:00
of this beautiful relationship. And that night Carter said it to him, you
51:05
know, I'm thinking about running for president and if I do, I'm going
51:08
to need your help. And Greg said, okay, you don't do whatever
51:12
I can and he meant it. He meant it. I think that's it's
51:15
really important to know that Greg really meant it. But he also really really
51:20
didn't think Carter had a chance. He said, he almost laughed. He
51:22
just thought, there's there's no way this guy's going to be President, but
51:25
he really liked him, and so he thought, you know, if I
51:28
can help this guy, I'll do it. He said, it was a
51:30
friendship thing for me. If he had asked me for help to raise money
51:35
for car washer used car lot, I would have probably you know, raised
51:37
money for him. So um yeah, and they really did, they get
51:40
really involved. It was Phil Phil Walden spearheaded that he was the one who
51:45
really had that concept. And so you know, it wasn't just the Almond
51:50
Brothers. It was also the Marshall Tucker Band. There were lots of other
51:52
bands that he pushed along and they raised a lot of money, and they
51:58
raised a lot of profile. I mean, you know, Jimmy Carter was
52:00
very direct and saying, you know, he would not have been president without
52:05
the Almond brother So it's not some crazy thing that I'm saying. That's a
52:09
very well established thing that that Jimmy Carter himself has said many times. Chapter
52:14
twenty two is titled Tales of Ordinary Madness, so that this chronicles that declined
52:19
the band. Following the success of Brothers and Sisters, the alcohol and drug
52:22
abuse becomes more and more of a problem, both on stage and off.
52:25
And you say, they were trying to chase the elusive magic of that original
52:30
lineup. How early do these problems start to surface and how bad does it
52:32
get? Yeah, so that's a hard question to answer. You say,
52:36
how early did it start to surface? Because you know, as I mentioned
52:40
before, I mean it was surfacing to some extent before any of this.
52:45
I mean they had these problems, you know, really almost since the beginning.
52:51
Remember just before Dwayne passed away. I mean he was up in rehab
52:55
and Buffalo. So but the problems just kept getting worse. Now, what
53:00
happened when they had more money, if they had more access to everything?
53:04
And in terms of chasing the elusive men magic. It's interesting because JMO and
53:10
Butch especially were the most eloquent and adamant in talking about this. And part
53:16
of what that means is I think, I think this is partly fact and
53:22
partly opinion, and partly these guys agreed with it. In the end.
53:25
I mean, the music in this era was much much better than they realized
53:31
in the real time that it was. But they had this hole in their
53:37
soul from Dwaine's death that they never got over and they hadn't fully processed.
53:42
And Butch talked until the end of his life about the Last Night at the
53:45
film Wore, which there's no recording of, June twenty seventh, nineteen seventy
53:50
one, several months after they've recorded the live album. By all accounts,
53:53
was like the greatest Allman Brothers show of all time. That was like they
53:57
all called church, and there was no recording of it. There was a
54:00
recording of the no I'm sorry, I'm gonna I said that wrong. The
54:05
last night was June twenty seven. It was the next to last night that
54:07
there was no recording of, and that was the one where they played all
54:10
night until the morning, and everybody always felt it was perfect, and butch
54:15
in particular had this feeling of perfection and perfection. Everything was just that was
54:22
like church. That was like being in heaven. You know, they had
54:24
transcended their bodies, they had transcended their minds and thoughts and they were just
54:30
playing on the next plane. And he never had that feeling again quite with
54:36
the band. I mean, it was always a struggle. And so I
54:39
think I mentioned earlier that before they added Chuck and they had a feeling that
54:45
they were focusing on what wasn't there instead of what was there, and as
54:49
good as the band got during this era, I feel like that was always
54:53
a little bit of an issue for them, and I think it was because
54:57
they never had fully processed Dway's death. I mean, they never paused.
55:00
They certainly weren't in therapy or you know a lot of things that a lot
55:05
of us would do now if we lost somebody so close to us, so
55:08
central to our lives. So it probably was inevitable. I think they were
55:14
emotionally worn out, and so they you know, and then success also,
55:19
Remember this is a band that thrived on togetherness. I mean for the first
55:22
two and a half three years of the band's existence, they were driving around
55:25
the country foot to foot, head to foot in a forty Cordo line van
55:31
and then in a little Winnebago that was really probably for three people. I
55:35
mean, they had extreme togetherness, and then they had extreme separation because they
55:42
had so much money. You know. Bill Graham says in the book that
55:45
one of the saddest things he ever saw was the Allman Brothers showing up in
55:49
five or six separate lymos to a show at Madison Square Garden. So it
55:52
wasn't just the drugs, but it was everything. It was the drugs and
55:57
the emotional distance and the breaking down from all those years, and the fact
56:01
that money allowed them to be separate and not talk to each other. And
56:05
so it got to the point where this group of people who literally lived together
56:08
and traveled around in one little vehicle, we're now living completely separate lives.
56:14
And so it became harder and harder to bridge that gap. And obviously the
56:16
substance abuse didn't help. But I think it would be a simple, too
56:22
simple to just say it was the substance abuse alone. There are some moments
56:28
during that period that stand out, and one is the live album Wipe the
56:34
Windows Check the Oil Dollar Gas from nineteen seventy six. You end the book
56:38
with a great story regarding an excited phone call you received from Jamo. Yeah,
56:44
we'll finish onund this one. Yeah. Well, Jamo told me he
56:49
was giving some drum lessons to a son of a friend to his and the
56:52
kid was coming over to his house and he was teaching some stuff. Jamo
56:57
kept calling him a kid. I don't know if the kid I was like
56:59
twelve or fifty, you know, but he wasn't fifty. He was a
57:02
young person. And he kept coming over and they did some lessons and then
57:07
it came over one day with the Wipe the Windows CD. Now what the
57:12
Windows was a bit of a discredited album. I remember when it came out.
57:15
I mean the band had already broke it up. Capricorn was on shaky
57:19
ground. It really had kind of a stupid name and silly art. There
57:22
was no picture of the band, and it went right into the cutout bin
57:28
I mean this was a thing in record in record source and things and cutout
57:30
things were a bit discredited, especially brand new albums. But that's because Capricorn
57:36
was so desperate for the Almond Brothers money and they made way too many of
57:38
them, and so the record source had more than they could sell, so
57:42
they cut the price then threw it into the into the cheap o bin um.
57:45
And for all those reasons, nobody ever really took it that seriously.
57:49
It wasn't well reviewed. I mean you could look it up in the Rolling
57:52
Stone Record guides from the you know, eighties, and it would say like
57:55
two stars. You know, who needs this album when you have that filmore
58:00
four years earlier? What a sad five years earlier, What a sad statement
58:04
of how a band has fallen. That was the general feeling about it,
58:07
and it really was by the band too. So this kid brings the CD
58:12
over and Jamo says, why would you listen to that? You know,
58:16
And the kid says, well, I've been listening to it. It's really
58:20
good, and so he goes listen to it. So he puts it on
58:23
and Jamo listens to it and he couldn't believe that. He called me up
58:28
and he said, God damn, we were a good band. And you
58:31
know, with the distance now and with all those emotions removed that they felt
58:37
bad. You know, that they felt he could listen to the music as
58:42
music and appreciate really how good they were. You know, things ended badly
58:46
in seventy six, and so he left them all with a bad feeling and
58:52
it was hard for them to appreciate, you know, really what was happening
58:54
in the band. And you know, that's part of why I felt like
58:58
this era was due for a little bit of a examination. I mean,
59:00
if Jamo himself needed to be forced to listen to that record to realize how
59:05
good they were, I think how many fans have missed out on that so
59:09
um, you know, it was a pleasure to shine a light back on
59:13
this and it's a pleasure to talk to Jamo. He called me today and
59:16
I spoke to him for about an hour. So yeah, I love I
59:20
love the guy. You know, I say in the in the acknowledgements for
59:23
the book, and I believe it. I'll say it again. Since I
59:28
started working on One Way Out almost ten years ago, probably over ten years
59:31
ago, my favorite part and the most rewarding part of the whole experience for
59:36
me is how well I've gotten to know Jamo and all the time I've gotten
59:39
to spend talking to him. He's a absolute treasure. He's a He's an
59:45
American hero and just one of the most wonderful wise people I've ever known,
59:50
and you know, treasure every every conversation I've ever had with him. The
59:53
book is out July twenty fifth. Brothers and Sisters, the Yellman Brothers Band
59:58
and the inside story of the album that the find the seventies out through Saint
1:00:01
Martin's Press. Where can people find you on line? Allan if people want
1:00:05
to reach out to you, Yeah, I'm on Facebook. Is just Alan
1:00:07
Paul, author of a website Alan Paul dot Net. You can reach me
1:00:10
there, and I'm on you know, Instagram, Twitter and pretty much all
1:00:15
the all the social media's except TikTok. Maybe one of these days, so
1:00:20
you know, go, I'm easy to find. Drop me a line.
1:00:22
I look to hear from readers and uh, you don't tell me that you
1:00:25
heard me here. Always good to know. And I got lots of shows
1:00:30
coming up. There's an appearance page on my website Alan Paul dot nets,
1:00:34
so please pop over there. I'm gonna be in Pittsburgh. I've been making
1:00:37
of a really special show in Atlanta. Really special show that's July twenty eighth,
1:00:43
July thirtieth at City Widery, New York with Dwayne Batts and Lamore Williams
1:00:46
Junior and Valor Trucks. You ought to come down for that. It's gonna
1:00:51
be a heck of a night. I'm gonna be a busy guy and playing
1:00:54
the fiftieth anniversary of Watkins Glen Festival in Cannon Dabo, New York. Im
1:01:00
hitting it hard. I mean, I only put out a book every four
1:01:01
years or so, and it's my pleasure. I love to do these events.
1:01:06
I love to talk to people, especially about the almond brothers and you
1:01:09
know, and this book. So come out and say hi, Allen Paul,
1:01:14
thanks so much, thank you very much, good to talk to you.
1:01:24
That's it. It's in the books.