One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (28 page)

DUDEK:
Dickey and I had worked out harmonies and I thought I’d be recording them with him, but the first day we started recording “Jessica,” he said, “I know you wrote this song with me, but you already played all those harmonies on ‘Ramblin’ Man,’ so if you play the harmonies on ‘Jessica,’ the critics might think you’re gonna be in the band. So I want you to play the acoustic rhythm guitar part instead, and Chuck will play the harmonies on the piano.” I was very disappointed, but there was nothing I could say about it, so I played the acoustic guitar part.

SANDLIN:
Les played acoustic on “Jessica,” which you can hear very clearly on the opening.

LEAVELL:
I would not really agree that Les co-wrote it. I could say I co-wrote it, because I made a lot of suggestions, but I don’t think that’s fair. Dickey wrote the melody and he had the rhythm. Songwriting always has some gray areas, because if someone plays a particular riff does that mean it’s part of the song or part of the arrangement? We all contributed to the arrangement of the piece, but it was Dickey’s song.

DUDEK:
Well, that’s what Chuck saw, but he was not in the room when Dickey and I wrote the song. I agree that what we did in the studio was arrangements. It was all working out the solos and the links between them, and it took us about six days until we had it in a cohesive whole. That’s arrangement—like what I did on “Ramblin’ Man.” That’s not what I’m talking about; when I sat down with Dickey, he did not have a completed song, just the verse section, until I came up with the bridge. Dickey marched me right into Phil’s office and told him I had co-written the song and should get some points. I didn’t understand all that exactly at the time, but in retrospect, I should have got 50 percent. Because it wasn’t a completed song until I gave him the bridge section, the part that goes to the G chord.

TRUCKS:
I know Dickey came up with those melodies and I wasn’t there, so I can’t say what Les did or didn’t do, but I take that with a grain of salt. Look at the track records of what else each has written. I do know that Dickey brought the song into the studio in pieces; he had some beautiful lines, but it really wasn’t a song. He sat on the floor playing acoustic guitar and showing us these melodies, which we worked into a song. We spent a lot of time—several days—all putting together “Jessica.”

JAIMOE:
Dickey would often come in with an idea or a really nice melody and we’d all play our parts and make it into a song. I don’t know how much you have to put in a song to have a credit, but that’s not how we did things. Dickey always kept them.

TRUCKS:
I think it could be a group credit almost, and if any one person would have a writing claim it would be Chuck Leavell, who added a tremendous amount to “Jessica.”

BETTS:
“Jessica” wouldn’t be the same tune without Chuck, who is just a great, great player.

LEAVELL:
We started working through it and then the next question was “How do we get from the piano solo to the guitar solo?” I came up with the transition phase that leads into Dickey’s solo. We worked our way through the song and established the arrangement. One of the things I found really interesting was the three-part harmonies with the two keyboards and the guitar; it showed how the band could build on its legacy while changing.

TRUCKS:
I’ve always said that Dickey Betts is one of the most lyrical guitar players in rock and roll. He plays beautiful melodies and always did, and a lot of those melodies ended up being the basis for a lot of those songs, like “Liz Reed” and “Jessica,” but we worked those songs up together as well. The melodies are way superior and it’s fair to say that no one but Dickey could have come up with them, but there’s a hell of a lot more to a song than just a melody. I think Dickey was the first of us to really understand the value of songwriting credits.

LEAVELL:
While Dickey was doing more songwriting, it’s not at all true to say that Gregg was not musically involved in what was going on. He was very involved and “Jessica” was a great example, as we replaced the traditional Allman Brothers two-part guitar harmonies, with three-part harmonies, featuring two keyboards and one guitar. They were very difficult to work out—and he had to figure his parts out on a Hammond B3, which is not easy and points out a simple fact: Gregg is a great B3 player. He’s not known for hot solos, but his use of the instrument is magnificent. He finds the right colors, knowing when to make them dark, when to brighten them up, and he exhibits excellent use of the Leslie [rotating speaker], with an innate sense of when to keep it slow and when to crank it up and add intensity.

JAIMOE:
Gregory has been insecure about his musicianship over the years, but he is a very great organ player. What he plays, he plays very, very well, he’s always in the groove and he sticks to things he knows—which does not stop you from growing. You can take something deeper and deeper and that’s what he has always done with his organ playing.

BETTS:
Writing a good instrumental takes months, which makes them totally unlike a solo, though people often think a song with no vocals is just a bunch of solos put together. It’s a completely different process. Slow blues solos are just your heart coming out, but all the solos happen too fast to even think about. They’re the closest thing to Zen that I do. If I think about it, it’s gone. It’s ruined. If I’m stuck or I need a mental rest, I’ve got licks that I can hang there until I get my mind together to start something else, but it’s mostly instantaneous and instinctive. It’s like touching a hot stove; you don’t think you’re gonna jerk your hand back. You just do it.

The instrumentals, on the other hand, are very studied. It’s called architecture, and for a good reason. It’s much like somebody designing a building. It’s meticulously constructed, and every aspect has its place. Writing a good one is very fulfilling, because you’ve transcended language and spoken to someone with a melody. My instrumentals try to create some of the basic feelings of human interaction, like anger and joy and love. Even instrumentals that are just for fun, like Freddie King’s “Hideaway,” talk to you.

Brothers and Sisters
ends with another musical departure, the acoustic back-porch country blues “Pony Boy,” where Betts displays his fluid, easy mastery of acoustic slide playing.

Dickey Betts at home, late 1973.

BETTS:
“Pony Boy” has a real strong Robert Johnson influence where you strum the 2/4 in with the notes, building a rhythm even while you pick. And lyrically, Willie McTell inspires the humor. It’s based on a true story about my uncle. When I was a kid, the family lore was he would take his horse out when he went drinking to avoid DUI charges and the horse knew just how to take him home.

That musical style is based on what used to be called “Black Bottom Blues.” The term refers to the fertile black soil of the Mississippi Delta and “bottoms” is just a term country people have always used. Unfortunately, people misunderstood “Black Bottom” as having racial or minstrel show overtones, so it’s fallen out of favor. But I’ve always enjoyed playing in that style and back in the early days of the Brothers we used to hang out with John Hammond Jr. quite a bit, and he taught us a lot about traditional country blues playing.

LEAVELL:
Lamar played upright bass on “Pony Boy,” which we wanted to be all acoustic.

SANDLIN:
Butch played percussion by banging on a piece of plywood on the floor; there’s no drum kit on there.

LEAVELL:
I thought it was a neat touch to end with an acoustic song that helped balance things out, just as
Eat a Peach
had with “Little Martha.” I thought then—and still do—that
Brothers and Sisters
had a really great balance, with the instrumental “Jessica,” the deep blues of “Jelly Jelly,” the countryish rock of “Ramblin’ Man,” and everything else.

ODOM:
It was obvious there was a great album happening. Dickey did take the musical lead—not as a leader but as a musician, and there’s a difference. In the studio, Dickey’s influence on
Brothers and Sisters
was incredible. It was a very, very difficult situation, and Dickey just rose to the occasion.

The final track recorded for
Brothers and Sisters
was the blues “Jelly Jelly,” which was credited to Gregg though it features lyrics to Bobby Bland’s song of the same name with a very different vocal melody and arrangement.

SANDLIN:
They needed one more song to finish the album and Gregg said he had something. He said he’d written new words to a blues based around this great arrangement they had of Ray Charles’s “Outskirts of Town” [which the Brothers sometimes performed; a live version was captured on
Live at Ludlow Garage 1970
]. That was one of the earliest songs I ever heard the Brothers play and it was great. So we cut the track and Gregg kept not bringing in the rest of the words he supposedly had. He just didn’t have the lyrics finished. Everyone was calling up, pushing me. Capricorn and Warner Brothers wanted that album. So finally, out of desperation, Gregg just sang the words to “Jelly Jelly,” an old blues song, and some of the early presses actually listed “Early Morning Blues,” the title of his new song.

LEAVELL:
I didn’t know any of the drama. I thought it was a classic Allman Brothers deep-blues-with-a-twist song and I loved recording it and was honored just to play a solo.

SANDLIN:
As soon as he finished that vocal, people were waiting to take Gregg to rehab. He didn’t pass Go before heading off to get help.

DUDEK:
I went on the road with Boz Scaggs and then Steve Miller offered me a gig and I told him that I was tied up with Phil, but didn’t know what was happening, and he said, “Go back to Macon and ask Phil if he intends to do something with you, and if not, ask for your release and move out here and join my band.” He had his lawyer draw up a release and I got a cashier’s check for the money I owed Phil that he had been advancing me for living expenses.

I parked myself in front of Phil’s office for a week until he called me in and eventually I handed him the release and he signed it, very surprised and maybe offended that I came in there ready with a release and a check. And that also let me out of the publishing deal, which meant that there would be no cut going in for any credit I had on “Jessica” and since I had no written contract about that, I believe they just decided to leave me off. Years later, Dickey apologized about “the whole ‘Jessica’ thing” and said “they” told him he didn’t have to pay me. Of course, I didn’t accept that, but there was nothing I could do.

CHAPTER

16

Demons

W
ITH
B
ROTHERS AND
Sisters
in the can and being prepped for a late summer release, the Allman Brothers Band returned to the road. They were playing larger venues, making more money, and dealing with increasing drug problems, with less friendship and communication among the members.

PERKINS:
A combination of everything—drugs, money, the expanding size of it all—led to everyone feeling separate and distant.

PAYNE:
We were going through an airport one time and these three suits had fallen in behind us. They were walking behind us making fun of Gregg, just saying the kind of things we would hear all the time like, “Look at that long blond hair … looks like a girl to me.” We were ignoring them, but when we went to get in a cab, these three guys tried to take it. Gregg had already gotten in and one of them was trying to pull him out, and in the flash of an eye, Dickey was on them and all three of them were lying on the ground bleeding. He and Gregg were not even getting along at the time. I’d hate to see what he would do to someone who messed with someone he loved.

RED DOG:
Separation set in. I think management pushed Gregg a little bit away as the front man. Gregg and Dickey both had solo albums out or coming out … things just changed. And I watched money change everyone, including myself.

The feeling that the band was spiraling out of control came to a head on June 9 and 10, 1973, when the Allman Brothers played with the Grateful Dead at Washington’s RFK Stadium on a co-headlining bill, with the Allmans opening the first show and closing the second.