My Cross to Bear (24 page)

Later on, when we started to make more serious money, Deering taught me about things and gave me advice, because he had been around money all of his life. He taught me about wine, and certain things you do and you don’t do in social situations. He taught me what it was like to have money, and how you should act about money—in other words, that you shouldn’t act any different. I’d already heard that people who really understood money wore it like an old pair of shoes, and I guess I’ve sort of done that. I have nice things, but I don’t flash them around. I have my Corvette, but it’s just a car, you know?

Having money really was something I had to learn. And it was tough. I blew a million before I saved a nickel. I came close to bankruptcy once, and over the years I think there might have been a couple of bankruptcies in the band. A year or two later, when the money really started coming in, the first thing I did was to get all my teeth crowned, with a little gold inlay in the back, because I was born with soft enamel on them. Then I bought a pair of snakeskin boots, and I paid off my mother’s house.

I also used to be a real clothes hound. Every time I’d go to New York, I’d drop a couple of grand on clothes, and back then, that was a lot of clothes. I had quite the wardrobe, man. I would wear Levi’s and silk shirts, and velvet jackets and suede boots.

The band and I got involved with the purchase of a 520-acre farm out in Juliette, Georgia. The original idea was to buy a big piece of land and just leave it until we got to be old fucks when we would sell it and make a fortune. Then somebody came up with this notion of AllBroVille or ABBville, or some bullshit. We were going to turn it into a town and we were all going to live there, or some crazy thing. At fifteen dollars an acre, it actually was a pretty good deal, because it was out in the middle of nowhere. That whole thing kind of stunk to me, so I sold my share back to the band and said, “Fuck this.” I think I broke even on that.

I loved to buy antiques—real old, old things. I bought a nice car, the Excalibur, and some motorcycles, of course. I bought a bunch of instruments too. I also got turned on to Jamaica, so I went down there a lot. Deering turned me on to deep-sea fishing, and so far to date, I have caught forty-three sailfish and one blue marlin. The last big fish I caught was a 208-pound hammerhead, and it was beautiful, man—gray, and just as white as snow underneath.

For a while there, if it moved, I bought it. That didn’t last too long, because as soon as the money moved up to a certain bracket, everybody around us started easing a little bit off the top. They made sure we had all the good highs we needed, but they were stealing from us. I didn’t suspect anything, because I always had a wad of money and a checkbook with a full bank account. But keeping a close eye on things was something I had to learn the hard way.

D
URING
J
ULY
1971,
WE DID A WEEK
’
S WORTH OF GIGS AT THE
S
TEEL
Pier in Atlantic City, and as far as gigs went, that was the lowest of the low. That’s where we realized that we were all hooked on that white powder that made us feel so good. We weren’t shooting it, but we were hooked.

Everybody knew that something wasn’t right, and I can remember waking up in the morning and every fiber of my existence screamed at me that something was missing, that I needed something. I didn’t want it, but I damn sure needed it. I had one hit left, and my brother had some kind of detector, because he said, “I know you’ve got some left,” probably because he knew that I’d always hold on to that last one—just it being there made me feel okay.

He knew I had it, but I told him I didn’t have any. He said, “You’re a fucking liar.” I told him again that I didn’t have anything, but he kept coming after me. He said, “You know you have a fucking bag,” and I finally gave in.

“Yeah, I got one.”

“You lied to me, you little motherfucker.”

“You’re pressuring me about something that belongs to me, motherfucker?”

“Are you telling me you won’t even give half to your own fucking brother?” Duane asked.

“Don’t you give me any of that horseshit,” I told him. “You had just as many bags as I did, you glutton motherfucker. You just did too many. I held one back, because I knew I’d need one today, instead of nodding my ass off last night.”

“You little cocksucker, you don’t belong in this fucking band if you won’t share. I should fire your ass.”

“Share it with you, you mean, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” and then he walked out, mumbling under his breath about me.

He came back in the room a little later, and I had two lines poured out. Duane says, “Oh, I knew you were my bro,” and he hugged me and kissed me, and wolfed a line right up his nose. He immediately felt better, and then we went out and played.

A couple of days later, he came to me and apologized.

“I really feel bad about what happened, and you know I love you. First of all, I couldn’t fire you anyway, because this is the Allman Brothers
Band
, and I’d have to call a meeting, and the other guys would tell me that I was full of shit, so I’m sorry.”

Just like when we were kids, no matter how hard it would be, he would come back and apologize to me. Same thing happened that time he hung me—a few days later, he apologized.

We headed out to California in October 1971, and that’s when
Rolling Stone
sent Grover Lewis out to do a story on us, with Annie Leibovitz taking photos. Annie is okay, but that damn Grover Lewis was an asshole. As little as my brother was, he threatened to punch Lewis out. Those shows went really well, though. We stomped them, but for some reason we never really developed a huge following out there, and we never have, to this day.

After the shit went down with me and my brother at the Steel Pier, we knew something had to be done, and so did a lot of other people. We were at a party in New York City, and Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, came up to me and my brother and said, “Could I see you both back here for just a second? I just want to talk to you.”

Jerry Wexler, his partner at Atlantic, joined him. I thought they were taking us back there to personally congratulate us, so we went into this room, and Ahmet shut the door and locked it. He turned around, and the face he had on—I knew something was about to come down, and it could only be one thing. I thought, “Here it comes.”

They must not have given a shit about me, because they kept looking straight at Duane. Every now and then, they’d gaze over at me as they tore into us about our addiction. Duane just sat there and listened to them, because what could he say? They were trying to help us, and they were doing it in such a way to try and really get through to us. It was delivered in a very stern, fatherly manner.

“Do you have any fucking idea what you are messing with?” they asked. “It killed Charlie Parker, it killed Billie Holiday, and it will kill you too.”

They hit us with horror story after horror story, and they said, “And now it’s you all—barely twenty years old. That doesn’t give you a very long time left, because no one survives the fucking shit.”

They went round and round, and they didn’t miss a fucking base. Duane tried to be cool about it, saying that he wasn’t worried about anything, but we were all worried. It was just like a kid getting his ass chewed out about something and trying to get a few words in edgewise. They kept saying, “Just listen to us,” so Duane didn’t get to say too much.

I felt like a fucking dog by the time they were done, because I was the one who turned the rest of the guys on to heroin. I had that guilt to deal with, and I had this image of Jaimoe—sweet, nice, pure, clean, wonderful, collard green–eating Jaimoe—lying in bed, a heroin addict, thanks to me. “Thanks to G.A., he’s fucked up”—we all were, and I had that responsibility resting on my shoulders.

None of them knew I felt that way, and they told me later, “Man, what do you mean you’re responsible? We love it, and we went and bought it ourselves. It would have got to us eventually, you just happened to be the first one in line.”

Later on, Tom Dowd got on our asses too. His eyes could bitch you out by themselves, because he wore them big thick glasses. We deserved it, and Tom wasn’t trying to do nothing but help. I thought to myself for a minute, “Shit, we really had a great producer, and we fucking blew it,” because I was sure that Tom was fixing to say, “I’ve had it with you.” He brought up the party, because he was there when we got bitched out, but he didn’t go back there, because he figured that two was enough. But now he had the floor, and there was no getting away from him.

Tom shamed us, man, he did. “You’re throwing your fucking life out the window, because you’re rolling the dice every time that you do it. Worst of all, you’re fucking up your music, and you’re wasting my goddamn time.”

When Tom used that kind of language, I almost started crying. All of a sudden, I felt like a little kid, and I was really embarrassed. He told us, “If you don’t fucking listen and stop now, you’re not going to be able to.” Little did he know, it was already too late.

Well, maybe it wasn’t too late, because we had a band meeting and discussed going to treatment. Everybody was there, crew included. No one had ever gone into treatment, so nobody knew what it was. I thought you went in there for two or three days and they gave you some pills or something, and then you walked out, completely cured. No one tried to deny that they had a problem; everybody copped to it. So it was decided that Duane, Oakley, Red Dog, and Payne would go into treatment up in Buffalo, while I headed home to quit cold turkey.

I got into bed, and rolled round and kicked, man. I went and saw my doctor and got some ’ludes, but they only helped when they knocked me completely out. By the time the guys got home from Buffalo, I was all right. They were there for a week, and they were given methadone, so I don’t know if you can say they were really clean or not. That shit is nasty, because it just totally shuts down your endorphins, and it takes more than just quitting to get them to open up again. You gotta wait until they want to come out and play again, and that can be a long wait.

When everybody got back into town, they came over to my house and let me know that they were feeling better. But even though we’d all stopped with heroin, it didn’t mean we were clean. Before they’d gone into treatment, I’d given Duane a hundred-dollar bill and asked him to pick me up a gram of blow when they were done because he was going to spend a day or two in New York after treatment. When they got back, I asked him about it, and he told me, “I’m sorry, bro. We saw Buddy Miles last night, and he did all of your blow.” That really pissed me off, and I stayed up drinking most of the night.

The next morning, I drove over to Duane’s house and I walked in, because he never locked his door. I was going to get some blow or my money back, one or the other. He was asleep in bed, and I mean gone, with his clothes still on. On the nightstand was a little vial, almost completely full with blow. I took me a dollar bill, poured out about half a gram, and snorted it up. He had plenty left, and I put it back on the nightstand.

I got home, and the phone rang. It was my brother, and he was fighting mad. He said, “You little cocksucker, did you come over here and steal some of my blow?”

The last thing I ever said to my brother was a fucking lie, man.

“No, I did not,” I told him.

“Okay, man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you up, accusing you of some shit like that. I sure do love ya, baybrah,” and he hung up.

That was the last time I ever spoke to my brother.

I have thought about that every single day of my life since then. I told him that lie, and he told me that he was sorry and that he loved me. I was so dumbfounded, I couldn’t say nothing back to him. You never know, man, and right then is when I learned about the power of words.

Let’s say that something worse than Hitler happens, and somebody comes over, takes over this country, and places us all in camps. They take all our possessions away—our houses, our cars, our clothing, everything. All you have is the skin on your body, and you only have one thing that’s worth something. You know what that is? It’s your word.

I had never lied to Duane like that, because there was no reason to. Even when we were kids, and I knew there was an ass-whipping coming, I couldn’t lie to him. I could try, but he would see right through me.

I have thought of that lie every day of my life, and I just keep recrucifying myself for it. I know that’s not what he would want—well, not for long, anyway. I know he lied to me about the blow in the first place, but the thing is, I never got the chance to tell him the truth.