Gregg Allman (1947-2017) Interview
Thrill of performing live still gives inspiration
(Cool piece from the archives: an interview with Gregg Allman from 2015)
By BRIAN D'AMBROSIO
It has never been difficult for Gregg Allman to hear the voice of his calling.
At 67, he’s still drawn to one thing in particular: the thrill of performing live. The in-concert prowess of the Allman Brothers Band has been the material of legend for decades, so when Allman handpicked his nine-piece solo band the standard was high.
“Hey, I played with the Allman Brothers for 45 years, and after leaving one has to ask oneself, why would I settle for anything else? Why, hell no?” he said. “Wait until you hear my band. All the songs for the Allman Brothers have been taken, totally rearranged – different horn parts, different this and that, and a kick-ass orchestra. I have singers now and a big band. There is a little more sophistication, and a lot more bump and rock ’n’ roll. Mind you, this is nothing derogatory against the Allman Brothers, but it’s not just loud guitars and drums.”
Allman, who performs at Big Sky Brewing Co.'s Summer Concert Series on Saturday, June 27, said it took him approximately 7 1/2 years to assemble the band, which includes a Southern percussionist, a Memphis drummer and New York City piano player.
“I made sure that they would be a wonderful teacher for me,” Allman said. “They are way ahead of me in playing music. It’s the most incredible music experience I have had anything to do with.”
Since the lyrics to classics such as “Melissa,” “Whipping Post” and other signatures encoded into rock ’n’ roll’s DNA often leave him feeling vulnerable or hurt, Allman consumes himself in the hum and clatter of the harmony.
“There are the songs that I have played and I’ve almost teared up in,” said Allman. “But, see, you can’t get too involved in the words, because the words bring back the memory of why it was you wrote the song.”
Music is Allman’s way of keeping his own hope alive. There is an ease and calm in the thud and crash that conjures good feelings.
“It’s inspiration,” said Allman. “Night after night. We have something inside makes you want to make something happen so much. I’m not going to play the same son-of-bitch song the same every night, and that’s not just sticking in a verse where it doesn’t belong. Sometimes you start out easy, or sometimes you jump right out, just little things. Maybe you ad lib at the end of a song. You make damn sure it’s different. Music is different. Music changes. Though it’s the same chord structure, it settles like a house. You’ve built it. It settles. Sometimes it’ll settle to where it breaks a window or cracks a wall. You’ve laid the foundation and wait and wait.”
Songs are instruments of continuous change and the best ones have the energy and strength to keep going for the long haul.
“They change, they mature, it’s very strange,” said Allman. “Songs are a life-living, breathing organism. Ask any artist like me, or Bruce Springsteen, ask him, ‘Would you like to re-record your first record?’ He’d jump at it. You’d find things. You’d put the damn solo over here instead of over there.”
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Allman’s excesses – heavy drugs, prodigious amounts of booze, oodles of women – are legendary. His feelings often ranged from unhappy to numb. He has had problems with drug addiction and mostly rocky relationships with women, including his seven divorces. Substances fortified his imperviousness to pain and Allman admits that talking about his past sometimes rekindles feelings of shame. Through it all, he has somehow kept his vocal health intact.
“In 1970, I worked 306 nights,” said Allman. “I couldn’t eat anything after 4 p.m. or so back then or I’d lose it before the show. It took me 20 years to learn that if you don’t sleep, if you don’t sleep, you don’t sing. Sleep and sing, or don’t sleep and don’t sing. Sing hard and forceful as I do. I cannot remember the last time I lost my throat, maybe in the early 2000s, maybe 2002. I stick to warm-up lessons and exercises. It’s a paper-thin muscle that needs to be stretched and broken in. These days, I take off slow, toward midway to about two-thirds through the show, I hit the high notes and growls and things like that. It blows a lot of parties not being able to growl as much. But I haven’t drank for 19 years, though I do smoke a little bit of God’s green earth.”
Endurance in today’s disposable, highly competitive, highly conditioned musical marathon is no small feat.
“I must be doing something right,” said Allman. “Well, the Allman Brothers broke up in 1982 and got back together in 1989, and we got back together again until recently. The great thing about it is, you can have longevity, but somewhere along the line, you just don’t want to lose that spark, that ‘want-to’ spark that is what has to be present. I got it at 9 1/2, I just fell in love and was enchanted with six silver strings.”
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When Allman was 2 years old, his father, a World War II veteran who had stormed the beaches of Normandy, was shot in the back and killed by a stranger to whom he’d offered a ride home from a Nashville bar. In 1958, the family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. In the summer of 1960, 12-year-old Gregg took a summer job as a paperboy. His first guitar was a Silvertone that he purchased for $21.95 at Sears.
“I had worked all summer and cleared 21 bucks. I was in Sears and Roebuck to get some gloves when I strolled by the guitar department and fell in love. I found one that was $21.95 and came back the next day, got it, and proceeded to wear that son of a bitch out. I wouldn't eat or sleep or drink or anything. Nothing else but playing that damn guitar."
From then on, whenever he had a problem – no matter if caused by his teachers, his parents, his friends, or the people on the highways and byways that cut him off – he used melody as a comfort. He needed music’s consoling when his brother – guitarist Duane Allman – died in a motorcycle accident in 1971.
“I noticed in a short time that if I had the real blues, say, if I missed something at school, had a problem in my childhood, if my girl ran off with the captain of the football team, I could just pick up those six silver strings, and my mind would float off into the cosmos. It’s too bad that everyone doesn’t have the kind of watchdog circuit to grab a guitar, instead of pouring booze down their throat, pick up the guitar and pick around a little bit. It has always worked for me and the enchantment is still growing.”
For decades, Allman’s calling was a 24-hour high – all good, all crazy and all excitable all the time. There are still times of excitement, but his current calling is less about an expression of over-indulgence than it is about an expression of who he is – a seasoned rambling man trying to find a little wisdom and make a living the best way he can. He isn’t rebelling against expectations, rather giving in to the natural desire of a man to shake things up artistically.
“After 45 years, I’m still playing my electric and acoustic guitars, I play the Hammond organ, play all the songs. But now I use the instruments for a well-needed break. I’ve got a big band, a nine- to 13-piece crew. And a good percussionist injects the whole band with lightning, as well as a backbone drummer and a solid bass player. Put them together and you’ve got yourself a whole mess of funk.”
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- Brian D’Ambrosio © 2015