My Cross to Bear (16 page)

Originally our plan was to rehearse at the place on College Street, but it’s in a residential section of town, so we couldn’t do that for very long. We moved down to Capricorn Studios and started rehearsing there, even though it wasn’t quite built yet. The room was all finished—all the bricks, all the floors, the booth, the board was in. All that was left was the machines, and they came in, one by one, and that became our rehearsal hall.

The great thing about our band was there wasn’t any bullshit, no preliminary chatter about this or that like there is in so many other bands. We didn’t have none of that crap. The music was so important to us that there wasn’t any time for chatter—we wanted to play, and we just played and played all day. The only thing we wanted to do was get our sound tighter and tighter, get it better and better. We played for each other, we played to each other, and we played off each other, which is what the Allman Brothers is all about.

We were like Lewis and Clark, man—we were musical adventurers, explorers. We were one for all and all for one. Back then, that novelty never wore off.

We hadn’t been in Macon very long when a guy came passing through town from the University of Florida who had a tabbing machine, which is used to make tabs of acid. If you got caught with one of those, it was your ass. You could get caught with all the dope you wanted, but to get caught with a tabbing machine meant you’d never see sunlight again.

This cat came by with a two-quart jar of these little pink pills, about as a big as an aspirin. They were pure psilocybin mushroom extract. We’d get up in the morning, have a little breakfast, and then we’d each pop half a pill. Our shit would be set up, somebody would name a key, and we’d start jamming, and that really spurred on our creative process.

The mushroom logo for our band came out of this early experience. Let me make this clear: that mushroom logo wasn’t screaming, “Hey, people, go take psilocybin.” It was screaming, “Listen to the fucking Allman Brothers.” It’s just like the tongue and lips logo screams, “Listen to the Rolling Stones.”

There’s no question that taking psilocybin helped create so many spontaneous pieces of music. That music would come oozing out of our band. We hit some jams that were out of this world, and they were so powerful that we wouldn’t talk for a long time afterwards—no one would say shit. We kept doing that, learning how each other played, learning where each guy was coming from. Our musical puzzle was coming together, and mushrooms certainly enhanced that whole creative atmosphere.

One time, somebody left four or five psilocybin tablets on the back of the toilet at 309 College, and Jaimoe thought they were speed, so he took them all. I think that was the only time I’ve ever seen fear in that man’s face. He had this little transistor radio that would pick up jazz stations, and he walked around with that radio to his ear for pretty near two days. That was the only thing holding him down to the ground—as long as he had that music, he was going to be all right. I was kinda worried about him, and everybody was stashing their shit in case we had to call the paramedics, but he came out of it okay.

A
T THAT TIME, THERE WASN
’
T A DAMN THING GOING ON IN
M
ACON
, so we just tried to ease on in and not upset anyone. We made it a point to meet the mayor, “Machine Gun” Ronnie Thompson, and he was all smiles. As for the nightlife, there were a few clubs, Grant’s Lounge being one of them. There weren’t too many other bands around, even though this one band, the Boogie Chillun, had a bit of a following around town.

Eventually, we became like the Dukes of Macon. People followed us home, and the women would chase us down. Looks-wise, I came through all right, fair or average, I guess—I looked a little better when I was younger. There was this one girl who wasn’t anything special, but she would call me constantly and just would not leave me alone. God bless her, and I hope she found what she was looking for.

When we weren’t rehearsing, we’d pass the time by playing corkball, which is the lazy musicians’ game. You get a pool cue, take the smaller end, and cut off about a foot of it. You wrap black electrical tape around the big end of the pool cue, and there’s your bat. Then you go to the hardware store and get one of those corks that go into a thermos. Take a penny, lay it on top of the cork—preferably heads up—and then take adhesive tape and wind it around and around, until it looks like a little mummy.

When you throw the ball, you rest the penny against your finger, and you throw it as hard as you can to the batter. A little past the pitcher, there’s a marker with “#1” on it, and a little farther there’s “#2,” and then “#3,” and way back was the home run marker. The odds of you hitting that damn corkball with that cue stick were pretty slim, but if you ever did connect with that fucking penny, you’d send that son of a bitch into the next county. We used to play over by Butchie’s place—the little triangle park there was the corkball field. It was a great game, man.

In the summertime, we’d get a bunch of inner tubes and go down to the Ocmulgee River. We’d take a little pot in some Tupperware containers because you knew you were going to tip over at some point, and we’d float down them rapids and smoke them phatties, and just laugh. We’d bring girls with us and snatch their tops off—just some good clean fun. We’d have a good old time, but then either we had to walk back or somebody would meet us down there and drive us back.

Good as the summer was, Macon was a general bummer in the winter. The sky was gray, no leaves on the trees, freezing rain and ice, so that first winter we split and went to this place near Tarpon Springs, on the west coast of Florida, called the Weeki Wachee River. There’s a place there called Silver Springs, and that’s where they filmed all those
Tarzan
movies with Johnny Weissmuller. They have springs there that are like 130 feet deep, and you can look down through these glass-bottomed boats and see catfish that are like eighty pounds. I mean, huge fucking catfish—you could fit a football in their mouths. There are several little tributaries, which all dump into a main spring. It still keeps belching that good old artesian water, and you can swim along and drink it, and it’s so delicious.

We would go down there—usually me, Kim Payne, the Hound (which is what we called Red Dog), and Mike Callahan. We would rent canoes and head down the Weeki Wachee. That water is cold—it will freeze your nuts up into your tummy. We’d go out there, and we wouldn’t see another canoe the whole trip. Just like back on the Ocmulgee River, we’d put our reefer in Tupperware to keep it safe from the rapids, and we had bottles of wine, which were half-empty so they would float.

In one spot was a huge oak tree with a rope on it. You could swing out and then drop into the water—boy, we had so much fun. Next time we went down there, we took everybody in the band, and that was really something. I’ve always wanted to go back there.

My brother loved to go bass fishing. Duane and Butch went fishing all the time, and Duane and Dickey would go fishing every now and then. Jaimoe wasn’t no fisherman, but I remember the one time he got a sunburn. I didn’t even know that black people could get a sunburn. We were down at my mother’s house, because we had had a gig in Miami, and the next one was in Jacksonville, but we had a few days off in between. We got out two lawn chairs, and that sun was directly overhead and beating down on us. Jaimoe fell asleep, and I went inside and got on the phone. After a while, I remembered him, and I went, “Oh shit—I gotta go over and flip him.” Oh man, he was as black as a piece of coal, and he couldn’t move his arms at all. I had to help him back into the house. He was cooked.

I’ll say it again: I love Jaimoe like I loved my brother. Of all the people who have ever been in the band, I love Jaimoe the most.

I met my dear, dear friend Chank Middleton one day at the barbershop that was next door to the studio. I had a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with the round backs, and I couldn’t stand them, so I gave them to Chank. They were worth like $40 back then, so they’d be like a $200 pair of shades today. Hell, he kept them things for the longest time—I mean, for like fifteen years.

“You mean you’re giving these to me?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “you can give me a shine.”

“Okay, fine.”

I jumped up into the chair wearing sneakers, and I told him, “You motherfucker—I got ya!” He hit me with that laugh of his, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Aside from Floyd and Jaimoe, Chank was the first black man I’d ever known real closely. We just hit it off, right from the very beginning, and we hung pretty tight. Every time Chank would see us going into the studio, he’d call us into the barbershop to play craps. We had some incredible craps games in the back of that damn barbershop. I learned all about craps in there, especially how fast your money can disappear, and sometimes Chank would have a little smoke for us. You always knew Chank would be in one of three places—at the barbershop; with Carol, his girlfriend; or hanging with us.

From time to time, we would all go down to Rose Hill Cemetery, and we wrote some songs down there. It was a very reverent place to us, very quiet, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my way with a lady or two down there. It’s cozy, with all those beautiful willow trees and the beautiful river. I don’t want people to think that I’m some kind of exhibitionist, but there’s nothing like going out and having sex on God’s green earth—as long as there are no friggin’ red ants.

We shot some pictures for our first album down at Rose Hill, and I thought that was kind of strange, especially that shot of Oakley with arms outspread above the rest of us. Right after we took that shot, a train went by, and the conductor had no idea what the hell was going on. He must have been thinking, “They don’t have no white hoods on, so they ain’t none of my buddies.”

We were absolutely inseparable. We did everything together. We shot pool together. We jumped off cliffs together. Chank turned us on to this rock quarry down on the outskirts of town, and we’d go down there with a watermelon, roll a few joints, and jump off its hundred-foot cliff. We’d make a day of it. It was our gang—it was that simple.

Our family thing only grew stronger, and that included dealing with the perennial redneck questions: “Who them hippie boys and who’s the nigger in the band?” We dealt with that second question quite a bit. Keep in mind, this was the 1960s, and we were in the Deep South, so having a black guy in the group came up a lot. But Jaimoe was one of us and we weren’t going to change that for nobody. Whenever some asshole came around, all of us, together, would do something about it. Any kind of problem that came from the outside, we met head-on. It was like we had a force field around us. It was us against the world, man.

For the most part, we were fine as long as nothing started within the confines of our gang. Duane and I would do that brother thing from time to time, but it was nothing serious. I’m sure that my brother had words with other people in the band, but he had a way of nipping problems in the bud. The first whiff of any shit at all and Duane took care of it. Why I didn’t learn that from him, I don’t know, but I wish I had. Letting stuff build up only makes it worse, so jumping on it early prevents hard feelings and grudges.

Back then there was no lingering tension between any of us, and that included Dickey, who has always been a real hothead—even then. Instead of working things out, he’d work them out with his fists, or screaming, or kicking some ass. The fact is, me and Dickey hardly ever said anything, not while Duane was around, anyway. I can’t remember Dickey having any big blowups while Duane was alive.

I wore my thirties out and was approaching forty before I realized that you have to watch how you get into it with people, because they might change over time, or you might change, and the two of you might become just what the other one needs, in business, in friendship, or whatever.

I loved the way my brother would deal with Phil Walden. He would walk into Walden’s office, and his heartbeat would not change at all. He would never be ungracious or anything, because we were fixing to cut a record and have a career together. He would just go in there and say, “We need this, this, and this.” He wore Walden down so much that Phil eventually stopped asking why and gave us what Duane asked him for.

My brother strived to make sure there was a comfort zone in our gang at all times, and there wasn’t going to be any bullshit about Duane Allman and his sidemen. We were all equal, all together. A band means a bunch of guys working together for the same goal—that’s what the word “band” means, and we defined that. We weren’t famous yet, but there was a time in there when we got to watch ourselves create this thing that really worked. Being in that group was the best thing you could ever imagine.