My Cross to Bear (26 page)

A
FTER MY BROTHER DIED,
I
KNEW
I
WAS GOING TO DO EXACTLY
what he would have done had it been the other way around, and that was to say, “Let’s go fucking play.” I told the other guys that, in those exact words—“Let’s go fucking play.” And sure enough, we dove in that much harder.

We went back down to Criteria Studios in Miami to work on
Eat a Peach
, which we had started a couple of weeks before Duane’s accident. I was so dinged out, and we were so fucked up. But we knew we had to get back in the studio, and we had to get back on the road, because keeping busy was the only way to avoid going crazy. I knew that, but that’s about all I knew. We had to keep going, because I didn’t want to think about my brother—or anything, for that matter.

I was looking pretty rough, man. I was weighing out at about 150 pounds, had a twenty-eight-inch waist, and I looked like a rail. I was eating but when something like that happens, food doesn’t stick with you. We were taking vitamins, we had doctors coming over and sticking us in the ass with B
₁₂
shots every day. Little by little by little, we crawled back up to the point where we were standing erect.

We knew we had to finish off
Eat a Peach
, and we did a little work on it. We had already made the decision before Duane died to include “Mountain Jam” on the album, so any notion that we just used it to fill out the record is wrong. If you notice, “Mountain Jam” fades out on
At Fillmore East
and fades back in on
Eat a Peach
, which was what we had planned before Duane died.

We played a few gigs to road-test some tunes, then came back to Miami to finish the album. I remember walking into Studio D at Criteria—the one with the 110-year-old Steinway piano. I saw Tom Dowd, and I knew my purpose, and I knew I belonged there.

We all saw that playing music brought us out of the doldrums, and we actually smiled a little bit. The music brought life back to us all, and it was simultaneously realized by every one of us. We found strength, vitality, newness, reason, and belonging as we worked on finishing
Eat a Peach
.

That’s when we cut “Melissa,” which we had fucked around with quite a bit before; it was always too syrupy, so we’d just forget it. But I finally decided to cut it while I was on the plane heading down to Miami, and the finest guitar work I ever heard from Dickey Betts was on that song. Dickey brought in “Les Brers in A Minor,” and while he had the lick, all us other guys filled in the rest of it for him.

I wrote most of “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” on that old Steinway in Criteria. I had had that lick for a while, and I remember Oakley saying, “Man, what is that little thing you keep playing?” Jaimoe said something about it too, because Jaimoe listens to everything I play—whether we’re onstage or if I’m playing a piano in the dressing room, he listens to all of it. I had most of the music down before Duane died, and then the words came after he died. Most of it is about Duane, but some of it deals with people coming back from the war in Vietnam.

Those last three songs—“Ain’t Wastin’ Time,” “Melissa,” and “Les Brers”—they just kinda floated right on out of us. They proved that the music hadn’t died with my brother. All of a sudden, the cat in the band who didn’t play slide started playing it. That baffled the shit out of us, but he made it work. It was really amazing, and it gave us all a shot in the ass. The music was still good, it was still rich, and it still had that energy—it was still the Allman Brothers Band.

Courtesy Wolfgang’s Vault

A
T THE TIME
D
UANE DIED, WE WERE ONE
. W
E WERE EQUAL IN
every aspect, we loved and respected one another, and we laughed all the time. The guys had just come back from rehab, and it was great that they had come back clean—or so we thought. We were over at my house, drinking some wine, and we had a lot to be happy for. We talked about the future, and we planned it out.

We had all been taken by surprise by what happened. It was like we were all swimming across the English Channel, and right when we could see the bank on the other side, we all had to turn around and swim back. For some of us, that was an impossible chore.

The truth is that Berry Oakley’s life ended when my brother’s life did. Never have I seen a man collapse like that, though I would never use the word “weak” when talking about Berry Oakley. He just couldn’t continue on without my brother. Maybe Duane was the brother he never had, but whatever it was, the loss of Duane was too much for him.

After Duane died, Berry would start each morning with a case of beer, and it went downhill from there. After the beer, he would start on the Jack Daniel’s, and about halfway through the Jack, he was on his knees, man. I don’t say this to be critical, but the man could not hold his liquor. Looking back on it now, it seems to me that Berry didn’t know how to grieve. He didn’t know how to get his pain out, so he just got loaded.

None of us knew what to do, because he wasn’t playing like he used to—instead he’d hit maybe every fifth note. It’s so odd how things happen. One of the main reasons that Joe Dan Petty was working in the band was so he could watch Oakley play, to help him get ready to go form his own band, Grinderswitch, which was a very good band that never really got off the ground, probably because they didn’t want to take Walden’s bullshit.

It got to the point where Berry would be so drunk that several times we had to have Joe Dan come in and play. One night at Winterland, we got booed pretty bad. B.B. King opened for us, and the people were yelling to bring B.B. back on, which was tough. That period of time was the closest me and Dickey have ever been, because we took turns caring for Oakley. We would take him out in the afternoon—go to the zoo or something to distract him—and Berry would say, “Let’s go get a drink,” and we’d tell him we’d get one in a bit, just trying to buy some time and space out his drinks.

We all really tried to pull Oakley out of his depression, but you only had so many tools to work with back then. Time and time again, I have sat and wondered, “God, what in the hell could I have done, what could have anybody have done, to help him?” There was just no getting through to him, because he would wake up on something—he’d be fucked up before we could get to him. You could get to Oakley’s house at seven o’clock in the morning, and he’d already be fucked up.

This went on for a whole year, and I was just a fucking nervous wreck. My stomach was in knots; I developed a duodenal ulcer, which I beat because I stopped drinking scotch and Coke and started drinking scotch and milk. I got real frustrated with Oakley, and toward the end Dickey got real mad with him too; you could tell that the situation wasn’t going to go anyplace but down. There wasn’t going to be no miracle, nobody was going to fly in and tap him with some magic wand and make him all better. There wasn’t any chance of taking him to rehab, of him going in there and getting serious about it.

Losing Duane really slammed Dickey too, but he didn’t show it. We didn’t see too much of Dickey after my brother died. He had this huge garden, and when something would piss him off, he would go out there and sling a hoe or a shovel or an ax for about four hours in the hot sun. He’d come back in for dinner, and he’d be okay. The cat really does have a heart, and I think he really cared about my brother—you don’t go naming your child after someone that you don’t care for.

When my brother died, Dickey really stepped up. He wood-shedded like crazy; I remember him learning how to play the slide part for “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” on the airplane, during the flight down to Miami to finish up
Eat a Peach
. After Duane’s death, Dickey was capable of handling things, but he would overdo it every time. He’d just want to get into a fistfight.

I can’t say if I ever looked at Oakley and could see in his eyes that he was trying to die. I don’t think he wanted to die; I just think he didn’t want to live. I can tell you this—I’ve heard that when Oakley had his crash he drove his bike straight, headfirst into that bus, on purpose. Who knows? Either way, he was drunk when it happened. He got up after the crash, but he wouldn’t get in the ambulance. He went home to the Big House and had a brain hemorrhage.

When Berry had his accident on November 11, 1972, I was in New York City, and my wife and I were planning to go to Jamaica. The phone rang, and it was Willie Perkins, our road manager. He said, “Gregory, are you all right? Well, listen. I don’t want you to change any plans, just stay where you are, but Mr. Oakley has died.” Willie told me, “Just take your tickets and keep on going—there ain’t no sense in coming down here.” Upset as I was, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief, because Berry’s pain was finally over.

When I got back from Jamaica, you could feel the sadness all over town, because now it was two in a year. People were wondering, “Man, who’s gonna be next?” I was also getting a vibe like “Where the fuck were you?” I would have been back down there in a heartbeat after getting that call from Willie, but he told me to keep on going to Jamaica. Also, after my brother’s funeral, I told myself that the only other funeral I was going to attend, aside from my mother’s, would be my own.

W
HEN
E
AT A
P
EACH
WAS RELEASED, IT WAS THE BIGGEST THING
for us yet. It shipped gold and it was our first album to hit the Top 10. We’d been through hell, but somehow we were rolling bigger than ever.

Apparently our success was also Macon’s. Not only were the Allman Brothers getting bigger, but Macon was getting bigger. By 1972, people from all over the world were coming to Macon. Phil Walden was driving a white 1965 Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce; clearly, he was making all kinds of dough. There were clubs opening all over town. We used to go out to Sam’s and watch whoever was playing. I saw Lonnie Mack there one night, playing the dogshit out of his Flying V. I played with Dr. John there for the first time. He had come to town for Duane’s funeral and then stayed for a few days.

When we wanted to get away from our old ladies, we’d head on down to Grant’s Lounge, which was a great place to hang out. We saw a lot of bands, including Marshall Tucker, or Mother Tucker, as we called them. Toy Caldwell was a good friend of mine, but I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the rest of them. Toy Caldwell
was
Marshall Tucker—he made that band what it was.

They were a country band, and Wet Willie was R&B, but somebody decided that any music coming out of Macon, Georgia, would be called “southern rock.” That term has pretty much died out, because people now realize that all those bands were actually so different from one another.

In 1972, we spent more time at home and less time on the road. The money was coming in, and that meant more time apart for the band. I’m not saying that was the only reason, but it was a big one. We didn’t get together and jam like we used to. We didn’t have the cookouts that we used to always have. There were too many women, and the roadies had roadies, and the money just kept pouring in.

That year we were finally headliners—our days of opening for somebody else were over. Opening for other people didn’t bother me that much, because just being on the same bill with Ike and Tina Turner or Buddy Guy meant a lot. In 1972, we had a lot of the Capricorn bands that Phil had brought to Macon opening for us—Eric Quincy Tate, Wet Willie, Dr. John, Alex Taylor, Captain Beyond, and Cowboy—and it was a very good thing for everybody. There ain’t but one Allman Brothers, and there ain’t but one Marshall Tucker. There ain’t but one of any of those bands, so we weren’t worried about them stealing our thunder or whatever. I would imagine that Lynyrd Skynyrd had more hits than anybody else, but they sure ended up appealing to a real redneck bunch of folks.