One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (16 page)

PERKINS:
The girls would show up when the equipment truck did and blow their way through the crew. Then they had backstage passes when the band arrived. Later, back at the hotel, things would continue and the road crew would get the leftovers.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Despite it all, we were real families and we had our own little lives: Donna, Duane and Galadrielle and me, Berry and Brittany and Kim and Candy at the Big House together. This was our Golden Age.

Even as the band settled into some form of domesticity in Macon, life on the road continued to be full-tilt, full-time. They danced on the edge of tragedy again in Nashville, where Duane and Gregg were born, following an October 30, 1970, concert at Vanderbilt University.

TRUCKS:
Someone picked up a big piece of tar [opium] and we were pulling little balls off of it and eating it. We also found a club and jammed after our show. We finally made it back to our hotel and everyone scattered for the night. Red Dog, who was the official driver, hadn’t participated in the evening’s mind-altering delicacy and since the next show was only a few hours’ drive away in Atlanta, he wanted to get everyone in the Windbag and drive while it was night with no traffic.

We started rounding up everyone and getting them ready to move. There was no answer in Duane’s room on the phone, so we knocked on his door—no answer. We knew he had gone to his room so the first tingling of anxiety started. Someone got the hotel dude with the master key to open the door and Duane was fast asleep. We tried waking him up, then turned on the lights and the tinglings jumped through the roof. His lips and fingernails had a slight bluish tint.

PAYNE:
Duane had turned blue and one of those Kools he smoked had burned down and blistered his fingers.

TRUCKS:
An ambulance was called and we all jumped into the Windbag and followed it to the nearest hospital. The triage guy gave Duane a once-over, looked at us, and said something to the effect of “We’ll do what we can but don’t hold out too much hope. He’s pretty far gone.” Then they ran him in.

It was all a bit surreal. I had eaten some of the tar so my mind wasn’t exactly clear. I will never forget, however, Berry looking up and on the verge of tears saying over and over, “Please just give him one more year.” Someone finally came out and informed us that Duane had pulled out of it and that he would be just fine. We even made it to Emory University for the gig that night.

Within the year, Duane and Donna separated. She and Galadrielle returned to St. Louis, after Duane signed an agreement acknowledging he was the baby’s father. Duane had already been spending more time in Atlanta with his new girlfriend, Dixie Meadows; the couple was sharing an apartment on 10
th
Street with Doucette.

DOUCETTE:
He was falling in love with Dixie and had to get out of the thing with Donna. We’re sitting in Atlanta and he goes, “I got to tell Donna. This isn’t fair.” And I said, “Good.” And he goes, “Come on. We’re going.” I said, “Going where?” And he goes, “Macon.” That was the last place I wanted to go at 10 or 11:00 on a rare night off, but he said, “I got to tell Donna. I’ve got to clear this up.”

I was sad, but I knew it had to be. He loved Donna and he loved his child, but things were moving fast, and not completely in the right direction.

LINDA OAKLEY:
I was furious with Duane for the heartbreak he’d caused. Oddly enough, I found myself in a similar situation a year or so later.

As the band earned more money, they moved to incorporate. This forced Doucette, who played often with the band but valued his ability to come and go as he pleased, to directly address whether or not he would become an official member of the group.

DOUCETTE:
Duane kept saying, “You’re the seventh.” He was trying to shoehorn me in there. Duane and I were great friends and we really liked playing together and hanging out together. The next thing I knew we were in a room and we’re incorporating. I said, “What’s this?” “You need to sign. We’re incorporating.” I said, “You don’t need me here.” And Duane said, “Man, I want you in the band.” And I said, “No.” And the look on Betts’s face … he couldn’t believe it.

BETTS:
We offered Thom Doucette a job when we first started playing at the Fillmores, which I thought was a little nuts, honestly. Duane said, “Join the band” and Thom said, “Nah, I love to jam but if I was a member of the band I’d have to show up all the time and that would be a drag.” I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Here’s a band that has made it—we’re playing at the Fillmore East!—and Thom Doucette says it would cramp his style to have a regular gig. How cool is that shit? He’s the real deal.

DOUCETTE:
I wouldn’t trade playing in the Allman Brothers for anything, but they were complete. They didn’t really need me, and I wasn’t a joiner. Duane mentioned in a radio interview [with WPLJ New York’s Dave Herman on December 9, 1970] that he wanted to add a seventh member and a lot of people thought he was referring to me, but I was already in the band—or I was and I had bowed out. I wanted my relationship with the band exactly how it was and I asked Duane if I could do that. I said, “Look, man. I’ll show up, I’ll play, you pay me, we’ll laugh and have fun. I’ll split.” He laughed and said “Okay.”

Thom Doucette (left) and the Allman Brothers Band, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, May 15, 1971.

The guy he was talking about was Bobby Caldwell [drummer with the Johnny Winter Band]. But the only guy who liked him musically was Duane. No one else thought he had any place in the band.

TRUCKS:
Bobby just played and played. Jaimoe and I sat there all night listening to one another, and Bobby just came in and barreled right through.

DOUCETTE:
Bobby was a power drummer and Duane had a side that liked that. He gave everyone nicknames—he just started calling me The Ace—and he called Bobby “Fire.” I said, “Duane, take Caldwell and a power bass—Oak can do it—and go make a record. Have a good time, then come back home.”

In late January 1971, in San Francisco, the band and four crew members—Red Dog, Perkins, Callahan, and Payne—got matching mushroom tattoos on their legs. Pioneering tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle came to the band’s hotel room following their show at the Fillmore West, where they played four nights with Hot Tuna and the Trinidad-Tripoli Steel Band, January 28–31.

JAIMOE:
This guy came to our hotel and Duane said he was going to give us all mushroom tattoos. Duane went first. I’m watching this shit and thinking, “How can I get out of this?” But it seemed hopeless so I figured I’d try to deal with the pain. We had some hash, so I ate some, and then I drank some scotch and milk. I learned that from Phil Walden—the milk takes care of your health and the scotch takes care of your head. Duane jumped up, all three pounds of him, and said, “That don’t hurt at all!” I was supposed to go next, but Berry jumped ahead of me and as I watched him, I thought, “Ain’t no way you’re getting out of this without getting a tattoo,” so I drank the rest of the scotch.

Berry got done and then he put that thing on my leg and damn! He finished the outline and I jumped up and he said, “I ain’t done. I got to color it in,” and I said, “I’m done!” As much shit as I had in my system, that still hurt like crazy.

As the band became more popular and their nightly take finally began to top $5,000, they did not slow down their touring pace, or alter the insanity of their routing. The first two weeks of September 1971 provide a snapshot of the grueling schedule: the band played Montreal on September 3 and Miami the following night. They had five days off, during which they went into Criteria with Dowd and laid down the first tracks for “Blue Sky.” They then played September 10 at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, the following night in Clemson, South Carolina, and the night after that in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. The band then had three days off and played September 16 at the Warehouse in New Orleans, one of their favorite gigs.

PERKINS:
Don’t ask me how we did it, because I don’t know. My own naiveté probably helped me, because we just did what was asked, and made the gigs that were booked, but God! We used to call them dartboard tours because it seemed like someone had made the bookings by throwing darts at a map. We were zigzagging everywhere. We’d play L.A. one night and Indiana the next. That Montreal–Miami back-to-back stands out in the memory bank.

Tour manager Willie Perkins.

ODOM:
When you’re on the road like that, your road crew is working eighteen to twenty hours a day. They’re in the building at eight a.m. setting up and out at three a.m. It’s a hell of a job to get things done and a lot of tension goes on. This road crew would make a jump from New York City to Clemson, South Carolina. They’d make dates under the most extreme conditions.

Red Dog letter to Twiggs in jail, 2-23-71:
“We are flying to all gigs except for the truck, although we do fly the equipment when we have to. The Bag is broke down … I hope they fix her up.”

PERKINS:
When we started flying commercial, it actually made it a lot harder. It was a nightmare logistically. Dickey was living in Love Valley, North Carolina, without a phone; Gregg might be in Florida; Jaimoe might be in Mississippi; Duane would be God knows where doing a session or whatever. I had to round everyone up, get them to the airport, get them on the plane, have rental cars waiting at the other end, and then do it all over again. They’d stay up all night and when they’d finally crash, it was time to go the airport. It would be quite a while before rock and roll bands figured out what country acts already knew—nice touring buses were the way to go.

DOUCETTE:
We played a gig in Ohio, then were waiting for a puddle jumper airplane at a little sandwich shop in a podunk airport. These guys were messing with us, making fun of our long hair and flipping Dickey’s hair. I’m watching him wondering what’s going to happen because I had known Dickey for years, but he just sat there eating. Then the guy starts messing with Jaimoe and Dickey just puts his fork down and goes, “Come on.” It was like a movie.

The other guy is standing next to Berry, who goes, “You’re about to watch your buddy get his ass kicked.” The guy looks at Berry like he’s nuts but then bing, bing, bing, done. The guy’s on the floor bleeding and Dickey’s sitting back down. A cop shows up and starts in on us and the owner of the joint goes, “Nope. This is his party—the guy laying on the ground bleeding. You know him. He tried to push these boys around and they pushed back. Boys, your bill’s on me.” By then, our plane had arrived and we just left.

PERKINS:
The gear could also be a nightmare. The band demanded to use their own equipment—they would not rent as most other bands did—so we had to get it there by hook or by crook.

JAIMOE:
Use rental gear? Only if we really had to.

PERKINS:
We drove the gear when we could, but sometimes we had to fly it, and then you had to worry about things like “Would Gregg’s Hammond organ fit through the cargo hold door?” And when the roadies drove, that presented its own problems. I can remember many a night standing outside a venue waiting nervously to see that truck come around the bend—but it always appeared! Those guys never dropped the ball, despite everything. They did things that were physically impossible. These guys would be high as shit on LSD and breaking down a stage with perfect efficiency.

During the course of the year, the band’s average guaranteed take doubled, from the $4,000 range to about $8,000, and they regularly made more than that, for instance, earning $13,000 for a September 26 gig in Houston. The band was still in significant debt to Walden Enterprises, which had been fronting them money since the beginning for living, touring, and recording expenses. Band members, their wives, and girlfriends, and the road crew all received advance checks from the band account, which also paid alimony and/or child support for Betts ($20 a month to Dale Betts, who had also been a member of Second Coming) and Duane ($100 per month to Donna).