My Cross to Bear (46 page)

After it was over, like all my marriages, I really tried to be adult about it and keep some kind of relationship. Here’s two people who at one time professed not only to love each other, but to be in love with each other. I still talk to Cher now and then. Cher is really a sweetheart. She has a very broad mind, a very open mind, and we were really in love too. But it’s been hard for me to have a relationship like that with my other wives. Nowadays, I talk to maybe two out of six.

Still, one of Stacey’s strongest influences on me was to get me thinking about God. All Stacey’s people have a certain amount of faith, more than I ever had around me. She got me going to church, even though that got a little bit hinky, because people were asking me for autographs. The preacher was dynamite, and they had a full band, with horns, a killer bass player, and a choir—I loved that part of it. I hadn’t been to church in a while, because I didn’t believe in the dog-and-pony show—who can outdo who in the collection plate, that stuff bothered me. The church was so crowded, and it became such a thing, a happening, and although I met a lot of nice people, it was too much.

At one point I was going to convert to Catholicism, but they had so many rules. I have to say that the Catholic Church is very much about who has the nicest suit, the valet parking—too much about the money. I don’t think you have to dress up or show God a bunch of gold for him to forgive you your sins, love you, and guide you. Then I went to an Episcopal church in Daytona, and it just felt right. The Episcopal Church isn’t about gimme, gimme, gimme. The Episcopalians are like enlightened Catholics. They have the faith, but they’re a little more open-minded.

Now I sit here in my house in Savannah, look out over the water at the oaks, and know that I have a reason to live. After all I’ve been through, I can’t help but feel I’ve been redeemed, over and over. Sometimes I scratch my head about why, but the only answer I can come up with is that maybe I deserved it because I’ve brought a lot of happiness to people’s hearts. I get letters by the week from people thanking me for my music, and you can almost see the tears on the paper. Not that this justifies anything I’ve done, or says that it’s okay I got fucked up because I made a lot of people happy—no way. One right doesn’t snuff out a wrong. All I’m saying is that maybe God just needed me down here to make some folks happy. Maybe it’s that simple.

The only positive that I took from going to all those rehabs is that I kept trying, because I could have stayed out and stayed drunk, and I’d probably be dead now. Eventually, a certain amount of what they tell you in those places rubs off on you. It took me a bunch of times before I realized that I just had to get down to brass tacks. Most people with an addiction problem say, “Well, if you just leave me alone, I can take care of it,” and that’s wrong—but you don’t need somebody standing over you with a stick either. It’s like writing songs. There are as many ways to write a song as there are songs, and there are as many ways for people to get healed as there are diseases.

I’m just really thankful that I’m still here, and that I still have all my faculties about me. I’m not quite as quick as I used to be, but who is? Sometimes I’ll have an ache or pain, and instead of thinking, “Well, it’s just old age,” I’ll think, “It’s probably because I beat myself to death with those fucking drugs.”

Fortunately, I’ve stopped doing that, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty. I wasn’t given any penance, I wasn’t told, “You have to do this, this, and this before you’re clean and sober, and back right with God.” I don’t go for none of that shit. I believe that if you’re really trying, and you’re the little train that could, you’re okay.

For me, music and my Maker are related. I think the same of both of them, because they both serve as anchors. If I think that I’m coming apart, I realize that the piano is still here, and it still sounds the same. Sometimes I’ll sit down and try to write a song, and nothing will happen. I’ll sit and think, “Well, I guess it could be over.” Then I’ll tell myself, “Just be thankful for the ones that you did write, and if it is over, you damn sure have come out on top.”

Music is something to hold on to, and to judge everything else by. It’s like a sextant, because it keeps me on track. Music is a means to dig yourself out of the doldrums; it can earn you a living, and it’s a friend to have at all times. Whether you’re recording or trying to write something, or if you just want to sit and play and think about different things, music is always there. When I play music today, not only can I feel it, I can almost see it. I can close my eyes, and it just takes me away. Music is a very healing thing, it really is.

One time I had a man come up to me, and he was crying. He said, “Thank you for helping me not go crazy from fear in the bush of Vietnam. The worst thing for me was to run out of bullets or batteries for my radio.” Boy, it hit me right in the heart, because that’s a hell of a compliment. You’re getting shot at, but the music gives you something to hold on to.

When you walk up on a stage, ten thousand people are out there. You don’t know their names, but they know you and what you can do. What you can do is make them forget their problems for about three hours—and there’s a shitload of problems out there, man. Being real easy on them, we’ll give each person in that crowd one and a half problems—so there’s fifteen thousand problems.

But for three hours, those problems aren’t there. It’s not that the music puts them to sleep either. We flat-out make them happy. Stomping their feet, clapping their hands, dancing around and smiling, lighting up their cell phones and Bic lighters—that kind of happy. I just love to see that, because it makes me feel like I belong, and everybody needs to belong to something. It makes me feel like I have a purpose, and it’s a good purpose. I help make people happy, and I think in the eyes of God, that’s pretty damn good. I think he wants his children to be happy—that’s why he made music.

M
USICIANS ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE, MAN
. I
F YOU TOOK ALL THE
people out of Cincinnati and moved them to Louisville, I bet you the musicians would find each other faster than anyone else. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the only people, besides my mother, who have ever helped me when I was down and out, and did it from the bottom of their heart, were musicians.

You see it with the tsunami or the hurricanes. It never fails—they get a bunch of bands together and raise lots of dough. I just hope and pray that the money gets to where it’s rightfully supposed to land. Nothing will get you a first-class ticket to hell faster than stealing money that supposed to go to victims of a disaster. Here’s a guy floating around in raw sewage, and you’re out at some titty bar, spending his money? Boy, God is watching you, don’t you know it!

When you’re young and you have all that energy, it’s great to have something to channel it into. I was fortunate enough to find music as my one main interest at such an early age. I didn’t think I was Elvis, I didn’t think I was going to be another Mick Jagger, none of that. I just enjoyed playing music. I couldn’t wait to learn something else. Every time I’d learn something new, it would be like a rejuvenation of the whole process, and it built my love for music that much more.

When something wouldn’t go my way, I’d have a bad day, or I was plain lonely, I would just go home and play my guitar. Just play and play. It’s a shame that everybody doesn’t have a teddy bear, like the guitar was for me, something to alleviate their mind of any pain or suffering that they are going through. When you play, you can let it out—it’s almost like a good cry.

I’m not saying that it makes the pain go away, but like the old saying, “Music soothes the savage beast,” it can be an elixir for your problems. There have been very few times in my life that it’s come to that, but when I find myself alone—which is something that I don’t care for—I play, and it helps a lot.

My feelings about being alone probably come from when I was just a child, from my father being murdered, from the years of having to stay home while my mother was at work—sometimes it would really get to me, you know? And also when I was in military school in the third and fourth grade, man, you never felt so lonesome in a crowd as attending a military school at the ripe ol’ age of eight. You grow up real fast. But it was either that or an orphanage, which would have been intolerable.

I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. Though it might be really questionable in your mind, it had to be done that way. Military school probably instilled a certain strength in me that helped me later. But the solitude, that didn’t take. That certainly could have had a lot to do with me getting married all these times. But I’ve been that way all my life.

When I turned forty, and I didn’t have anything to show for the Allman Brothers Band, it was a rude awakening. I had never looked ahead to what was going to happen after it stopped raining gold records and the fans stopped showing up. I don’t care about business, I never have. I don’t like to go shopping, I don’t like to add things, I don’t like to worry about money, and I don’t think about money. Money doesn’t impress me worth a fuck, and it doesn’t make me feel good. I’ve had it both ways—I’ve been rich and I’ve been broke. I was blessed that we were able to get it back together, and now that I know I’m going to live comfortably for the rest of my life, it’s a very good feeling.

It’s easy to pin a lot of our early money troubles on Phil Walden, but that’s not entirely fair to him or to us. Phil died in April 2006 after a long, tough battle with cancer. When someone like Phil passes on, someone who had a big impact on your life in both really good and really shitty ways, you have to take a step back and get some perspective on the relationship, and I did just that.

I decided to sit myself down and write a letter to Phil—not about him, but
to
him, directly. I wrote from the heart, and just laid it all out there on the paper. I wasn’t able to attend Phil’s funeral in Atlanta, but I arranged for my loving niece, Galadrielle, to read the letter on my behalf at the ceremony.

In the letter, I told Phil how I was in awe of him when Duane and I first met him. There stood a man who had managed Otis Redding and Percy Sledge, and now he was managing us. I told Phil that the talent lay within those great artists, but the guidance lay solely in the man standing before me and my brother. I told Phil that at that moment in his office all those years ago, I’d decided to make him and Duane proud of me. I’d decided that I would do my best to never let either one of them down.

I went on to say that just when the rocket was lifting off the ground, God saw fit to throw some undeniable hurdles our way. I admitted to Phil that I truthfully couldn’t say that I did the best I could for the band after my brother was gone, because I crawled into a bottle and a syringe. I tried, I showed up, I did what I could for the shape I was in.

It felt good to write that those devils were now gone. I admitted that I wasn’t sure if I would have held up at all without the advice and the presence of someone like Phil—actually, not someone
like
Phil, but Phil and Phil only. I tried to pattern my thoughts after what Phil would have done, and most importantly, I would always cherish every moment, good or otherwise, that I spent with him. I made it clear that I chose to remember the enlightening ones.

I closed the letter by pointing out to Phil that we all had lost a lot through these last thirty-seven years, but that we gained a lot also, and that’s where my heart will forever lie. I ended it with these words: “I love you, Phil … I always have … You’re #1 and I know we’ll do these things again … in a better place. God bless you and your wonderful family. With deepest respect, Gregory LeNoir Allman.”

Writing that letter freed my soul, man. I told Phil what needed to be said. I made my peace with him, and it allowed me to close it all out.

I
T
’
S ODD TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE ARE STARTING TO
look at the legacy of the Allman Brothers. It’s a different kind of appreciation, but I couldn’t be happier watching it all unfold.

In the last couple of months, I went to Nashville to be honored at a couple of awards shows. At the Americana Awards, I got a Lifetime Achievement Award, which was really nice. It was in the Ryman Auditorium, and it’s always neat going in there. They’ve gone in and refurbished it, but they refurbished it with old stuff, so it’s still got the same soul that it always had.

They had an incredible band—a mandolin player, a banjo player, steel guitar. Don Was was playing the bass, and he’s an incredible bass player. They said just pick what you want, so I took most of the band, especially the steel player, and we played “Melissa.” It was one of the best performances of “Melissa” I’ve ever done—it was just letter-perfect.

A few weeks later were the Country Music Awards, which were in this huge place called the Bridgestone Arena. They had me come and sing “Georgia On My Mind” with Zac Brown. It was incredible. I’m sure it might’ve been a little bit about me coming back to Nashville, where I was born.

On the red carpet on the way in, this lady came up to me and said, “You probably don’t know who I am, but I’m Jennifer Nettles, and I’m with Sugarland.” I had heard of the band, of course. Then when she won an award that night, she got on the stage and said, “I can think of nothing better than being here except one: I got to meet Mr. Gregg Allman on the way in here.” I was backstage when it happened, but they told me what she had said, and then I watched it on YouTube. I was blown away by that.

That’s the thing about country music. The people are so gracious, more so than any other kind of music. They’re all southern gentlemen and ladies. I know a lot of those folks—Tim McGraw and his wife, Faith Hill, are both dear friends of mine. I feel like I could go to any one of those people and knock on their door and get a real good southern meal.