One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (27 page)

When Duane agreed, a communal house was born. The original tenants were Donna, Duane, and Galadrielle and the extended Oakley family, along with Gregg Allman, who was dating Candace.

“I went to Florida for a few days and got a call from Duane and Donna saying they had already moved in,” Linda Oakley recalls. “Duane and the roadies were storming around; they broke into these loft rooms in the attic that we were not supposed to mess with and pulled out and set up a bunch of furniture stored up there, including a huge dining room table.”

Shortly after moving in, Gregg and Candace split up and Kim Payne moved in. Many other band members and associates moved in and out, including Perkins, who stayed there when he first arrived in Macon in May 1970.

“When I arrived, [
a guest
] showed me around,” says Perkins. “She opened the fridge and said, ‘Here’s the iced tea. The one with the silver tape around it has LSD in it. If you just want iced tea, have the other one. If you don’t have anything you need to do for the next couple of days, drink the duct tape.’ Right away, I knew this was not a normal household.”

The Big House was also the scene of some significant heartbreak. On October 29, 1971, Duane had just dropped flowers off for Linda’s birthday—a party was planned for that night—when he jumped on his motorcycle and never returned. Berry Oakley came back to the Big House following his own crash on November 11, 1972. He went from there to the hospital, where he died.

After Berry’s funeral, Linda took Brittany to her parents’ home in Florida to try and heal. When she returned in early January 1973, there was an eviction notice on the door. She moved out and the Big House became just another Macon house.

It turned into a boardinghouse with rooms for rent, then a new owner moved in and turned the ground floor into a hair salon, before eventually going into foreclosure. A family bought it from the bank in 1987 and lived there for six years until ABB “tour magician” Kirk West knocked on the door and said, “I want to buy your house.”

West and his wife, Kirsten, moved into 2321 Vineville in July 1993 and the house became the Big House once again. West created a stealth museum, displaying his considerable memorabilia collection for pilgrims who began to show up from around the world.

In June 1994, Warren Haynes, Allen Woody, and Matt Abts moved into the Big House, set up their instruments and equipment in what had been the original band’s music room, and rehearsed for eight days before heading out to do their first shows as Gov’t Mule.

In 2009, the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House was opened, filled with memorabilia from the band’s forty-five years and re-creating the feel it had when it was the Oakleys’ home.

I used to come across all these little words of wisdom and I found that message and showed him. He just loved it because of the brothers thing. That’s really how he lived his life. It was not an illusion. Sometimes I feel it was something I made up. Then I see some evidence in a photo or video or a letter and I realize, “This is for real. No one can take this away. I didn’t imagine it.” We all really loved each other.

CHAPTER

15

Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad

J
UST A YEAR
after rallying together and moving on from Duane’s death, the band found itself at another tragic crossroads. Berry died on November 11, 1972. On November 15, the group played at his memorial service at Hart’s Mortuary, then once again had to make decisions about a cloudy future.

LEAVELL:
There was a meeting with Phil, which basically amounted to “What are we going to do?” The answer was immediate and unanimous: “Carry on. Let’s arrange some auditions, get a new bass player, and keep moving.” We didn’t want to take a lot of time off and be dwelling on the negative. It was maybe a two-week period before we were back to work.

PODELL:
It was exactly like when Duane died—no one knew if the band could pull it off again. But this time there was no doubt that they would try.

PAYNE:
When Duane died, it was like, “We’ve got to go on. Duane wouldn’t have it any other way.” When Berry died, it felt like such a dirty deal, and the sense was “We’re not going to let anyone or anything stop us.” I had serious doubts about what would happen, as did everyone else, but there was never really a question about quitting.

Several bassists came to Macon to audition, including Lamar Williams, an old friend of Jaimoe’s from Gulfport, Mississippi, two years removed from an Army stint in Vietnam.

JAIMOE:
Lamar made his own picks, cutting them out of Clorox bottles, so what does he do? Cuts his freaking finger, man. He had to audition with a big cut on his finger and there were good players there; a guy came in from L.A. and another cat that used to be in a band with Gregg and some dude Dickey knew.

SANDLIN:
Lamar came in and auditioned without Jaimoe being in the room because he didn’t want any home cooking. And it was like Lamar had been waiting for the gig.

LEAVELL:
We had auditioned three or four other bass players. Once Lamar came in, we all looked at each other and said, “This is the guy.” He just got it. He had a good understanding of Berry’s style as well as bringing his own unique style to the table and he was an easy guy to be with.

JAIMOE:
After two songs, Butch asked Lamar, “Hey, man, have you ever played any of these songs?” and Lamar said, “No.” Butch turned to everyone and asked if we could have a meeting. Lamar left and Butch said, “He doesn’t even know these songs and he’s playing them like he knows them inside and out. Let’s get this audition stuff done and make this a rehearsal.” That was the greatest thing I ever saw Butch do!

TRUCKS:
His groove was just so rock solid that absolutely no one could miss it or deny it. It just felt too good to waste any more time.

Lamar Williams, 1973.

LEAVELL:
Lamar slid right into the sessions and the band.

The band not only returned to work on the album, but to touring as well, appearing on December 9 at Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena, Williams’s first gig with the Allman Brothers Band.

JAIMOE:
Lamar was a hell of a bass player. I had missed playing with him so much; no other bass player ever felt right to me until I met Berry. Everyone else in between … just nope! I learned how to play the bass drum by listening to Lamar play. I had studied jazz drumming, not rhythm and blues, and there was nothing definitive about where to put the beat. Lamar explained that to me and he could play so much like [Motown bassist] James Jamerson it was ridiculous, and playing along with him as he did that, it hit me and I just understood how to make the bass drum work. Playing with him again felt like the most natural thing in the world.

LEAVELL:
It was a feeling of brotherhood with two new brothers coming in. The band had been through these traumas and major changes and now they had a chance to be the Allman Brothers Band 2.0. There was a certain sense of freshness, with Lamar and me there.

PERKINS:
When Lamar and Chuck came in, it seemed like it gave the band a kick in the butt musically.

Lamar Williams (left) and Chuck Leavell at the Farm.

BETTS:
We did what we had to do—we were forced to bring new people into the band because two of our guys were killed. We added Chuck, and it changed the whole direction of the band—and you can hear it on “Jessica.”

SANDLIN:
“Jessica” was different but it worked. It was like, “The guy who was driving the bus is gone. Let’s go down this different road.” It’s the happiest song I’ve ever heard. It still makes me smile every time I hear it. It gave Chuck a chance to stretch out and shine immediately.

LEAVELL:
My attitude was to relax, play the best I could, and find the right places to contribute. No one could have replaced Duane and I think it was a good call not to have another guitarist come in, to take another direction. I wanted to make the most of it.

BETTS:
I really need to have an image in my head before I can start writing an instrumental because otherwise it’s too vague. I get an emotion or an idea I want to express and see what I can come up with. With “Jessica” I was experimenting, trying to write something that could be played with just two fingers on my fretting hand in honor of Django Reinhardt [
the Gypsy jazz guitar master who played with just two left fingers due to severe burns
].

I came up with the main melody, but it was still just a bunch of notes going nowhere until I was sitting there and my baby daughter Jessica came crawling in smiling and I started playing along, trying to capture musically the way she looked bouncing around the room. And then the song came together. That’s why I named it after her.

Dickey Betts and his daughter, Jessica.

DUDEK:
I co-wrote “Jessica” with Dickey. We had been jamming a lot and he called up and invited me and my girlfriend over to have some steaks with him and Blue Sky, and he told me to bring my acoustic guitar. I grabbed my Martin and while the ladies were in the kitchen, he said, “Let me show you this song I’ve been working on, but I’m stuck and haven’t been able to finish.” He had the opening rhythm for “Jessica” and the main verse riff. It sounded great but didn’t go anywhere.

We played it for a while, then Dickey became frustrated and went in the kitchen to check on the steaks. I stayed with it. The verse section Dickey had was in the key of A. I felt the song needed a bridge, so I took it to G and came up with the bridge section. I yelled for Dickey to come back, and said, “Try this; after the verse section, go to the G chord and play this melody.” So he did, and then he said, “Now what?” I said, “At the end of the phrase keep going up, up, up all the way to the top.” Dickey said, “Then what?” I said, “Just stop, and start over again on the verse section and repeat.”

And when we played it like that, Dickey lit up like a lightbulb he was so happy, because now we had the new section the song desperately needed. Dickey was so excited, we ran out and threw our guitars in the back of his pickup truck, because he wanted to go play it for everyone we could find in the band, to show them we finally had the instrumental song for the new record. We went by Jaimoe’s house and played it for Jaimoe and Lamar that night and they loved it, but we couldn’t find Gregg or Butch. I’ll never forget, right when we got in Dickey’s truck, it started to lightly, almost mystically, snow, as if it was Duane sending us a message: “Hey, you guys finally got that tune.”

JAIMOE:
It wouldn’t surprise me if Les wrote that with Dickey because they were definitely playing together a lot and Dickey’s songs often were kind of incomplete and worked up together. But I don’t remember Dickey ever coming by my house. He’s the only guy who never was there.

LEAVELL:
We had put down three or four tracks before Dickey came into the studio with Les Dudek to play “Jessica” for us, so he could present the rhythm guitar and melody at the same time. He explained that he was paying tribute to Django and we could hear that. Earlier instrumentals were more serious in nature. This was more lighthearted and presented a challenge: How do we make this a little more intense and make it work as an Allman Brothers song? That presented a unique opportunity to make it special.