New book abt Duane Allman

[d halfnote]

Galadrielle Allman is Duane Allman's only recognized heir (there are 2 other children, by other women),

She's just (2014) published a book, PLEASE BE WITH ME, about her father & her mother.

 

Unlike most books about Duane Allman or the band (including Gregg Allman's autobio), this one has the benefit of access to everyone involved in the Allman Bros saga: the remaining band members, the roadies, all their wives & girls friends & their larger families.

 

It also has the advantage of her unflinching honesty & lack of any agenda of defensiveness about the facts.

Duane Allman, like everyone, was a human being with all the strengths & weaknesses that entails.

 

This is her first book but if her style---swinging from highly evocative romantic novel language to insightful social commentary---is any indication, she's to be a really sharp writer.

 

For those just interested in some of the stories in the book, scroll down further but here's aparaphrased sample of her writing...

FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF HER BOOK

My father's killed in the 1st paragraph of everything written about him. Just a few years into his remarkable career, after creating some of the best loved records in rock music He was 24. I was 2.

 

His life story's told backward, beginning at the end. Cycle down; body broken. People linger over the wreckage as though it says something meaningful about his life.

 

My mother didn't talk of him easily. I wasn't raised on stories of his adventures or of their love. His story wasn't child-safe.

At 1st I was forced to look out into the wider world for information but I found him playing on my radio, saw his picture on album covers in the "A" bin of every record store. In an age when every current Allman Bros Band event is filmed & launched on You Tube ephemera from the early days still shows up, creating an unsettling counterpoint between my curiousoty & the passion of his fans.

 

Going through stacks of old magazines in a junk store when I was 18, I came across a yellowed copy of Rolling Stone from 1971 with a tribute to him on the cover. The owner swooped down & grabbed it from me, barking, "That's not for sale ! You have no idea of it's value---do you even know who Duane Allman is ?!"

 

I doubt any answer would've worked. Would it be worse if he believed me or not ? Would he embrace me & tell me stories of how Duane's music had changed his life ? Would he ask me for stories about him ? What would I say to someone who'd probably read more about my father than I knew ?

 

When I was 21 I inherited 2 objects my father probably loved more than anything else: 2 Gibson Les Pauls.

Twiggs Lyndon, his road manager, had traded his antique Ford Opera Coupe for one & the other had been held for decades by Joey Marshall, the man who introduced my parents. After keeping them under my bed for a few years, I placed them in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Before packing them up, I lightly touched the strings but I didn't pick either of them up. I didn't want to disturb the sense that my father had held them but really they're just beautiful sculptures in a museum.

 

There are people who hungrily research my father's gear: the string gauges & action of his instruments; serial numbers of guitars for the year they were made; the colors & stains rubbed into them. They know when he used one instrument or another. They hope to learn the mystery of how he made his sounds but while I treasured them as artifacts connecting us, to me they seemed abandoned tools, silenced by his absence & I knew his secrets aren't in them.

 

The music went with him, not with the guitars.

 

In my early 30s I was sent a package. It held the cuff of a shirt Eric Clapton gave my father during the Layla sessions, mailed to me by a stranger who said she'd once dated Gregg Allman. The fragile purple silk shirt, decorated with batik peacocks had been machine washed & was all but destroyed. The cuff was threadbare, one button hanging loosely. She wrote that the rest of the shirt had been auctioned on eBay & the back panel alone had gotten her $15,000. She would use the money to go back to school.

 

Last year I saw, for the 1st time, a photo of my parents together, taken soon after I was born. My mother, Donna, is still wearing the hospital ID bracelet & Duane's holding a baby rattle. They both look very young & fairly terrified.

I stumbled across this online at a blog headlined "Wail on, Skydog !" set up by a woman who'd set herself the task of posting a picture of my father every week, one of the thousands of fans connected by the lore of the band's beginnings & history & by the intensity of its music.

 

Grown men have challenged me that they've seen more Allman Bros Band concerts than I. Store clerks, spotting my name on a credit card sometimes hold up lines to tell me how the music changed their lives.

I envy the simple comfort & pleasure that fans take from the music & they happy extended family they feel they share.

 

My father did something many wish they could. He found his perfect mode of expression & used it to move people

This book is my song to him.

I've taken the title, Please Be With Me, from Scott Boyer's song that my father played on.

I've always felt that song as a connection with my father's heart.

-----------------------------------------------------------

SOME ITEMS FROM THE BOOK

(Don't worry, I'll leave much untold...

- the details abt how much the band really earned

- what happened during the Layla sessions

- the truth abt whether Duane would've toured with Derek & the Dominos

- the little-known session when Allman couldn't figure out how to play a song

 

Meanwhile...

Duane Allman (maybe like Jimi Hnendrix) apparently really did live fully through his gtr.

Here's a few stories & comments...

 

[1]

Thom Doucette (Duane's friend who played harmonica on the Fillmore Live album) once heard a phone conversation that had Duane shouting, cursing & sputtering with rage at someone.

Allman slammed down the phone, went immediately to his gtr, grabbing it up by the neck (perhaps as if it was whoever he'd been taliking to) & began to play with barely contained fury, so intense that Doucette was almost embarrassed to witness it.

As Duane played for the next hour the music began shifting & gradually wound down to earth, calm, gentle & sweetly rolling along.

 

[2]

Twiggs Lyndon, the Allman's road manager, heard them play every night for 3 years.

Listening to You Don't Love Me, from the Fillmore Live tapes, where Duane solos unacompanied, building to a sustained note of tremendous tension that stops suddenly, followed by another note of perfect resolution, Lyndon deemed them "the single 2 best notes Suane Allman ever played".

 

[3]

Despite the usual analysis, according to John Hammond Jr, with whom Allman tracked an album, Southern Fried, in late 1969, & which was after the 1st Allman Bros album, Duane played slide in stadard tuning...at least up til sometime later.

Hammond handed Allman his National, tuned in open A, & Duane asked him what was up with the gtr.

 

[4]

Allman seems to've had a knack for hearing music in his sleep.[ Consider "Dreams".]

 

Soon after Jimi H died, Allman dreamed he walked into a restroom in a hotel lobby & found himself face-to-face w/ Jimi..

Wondering if he was in heaven, Duane asked, "I though you died---are you alright ?"

Hendrix, just grinned & motioned him over.

"Watch this, man, so groovy !"

As Duane stared, Jimi began to manipulate the faucet & musical notes were coming out, floating & bouncing around the room.

The melody was enchanting, lovely & spare.

When he woke, he grabbed his gtr & began to find the tune.

The result ?

"Little Martha", the 1st song Duane actually composed for the band...&, sadly, the last studio recording he made.

 

[5]

It didn't always go so well, though.

Another time, he woke up in the middle of the nightwith with music running through his mind, a totally different thing, sorta like a Renaissance madrigal.

He called Capricorn Recs engineer Jay Hawkins & demanded he open the studio so Duane could record this tune before it got away. Hawkins complied but called Twiggs Lyndon to come taker control of the situation.

When Lyndon got there, he listended for a moment, turned to Hawkins & with a huge grin asked, "Which one of us is gonna tell him that's 'Classical Gas' ?"

[Caevan O’Shite]

[whitefang]

I'd like to read anything about Duane without a lot of romanticism hanging on it. His death rattled the music world far more than his music did. By that I'm not claiming he wasn't that good, but I don't recall hordes of young guitar players scrambling to learn slide because of Duane Allman. There were other slide players around at the time, some better, many not so good. But the BAND was very well recieved and raved about, and as the core member of it, his death was thought to mean the end of it. Luckily, it wasn't. But the music of the band without him never reached the same level of quality, at least IMHO.

 

But I'm going to try and find a copy of the book, because I still find the subject interesting.

Whitefang

[SEHpicker]

His death rattled the music world far more than his music did. By that I'm not claiming he wasn't that good, but I don't recall hordes of young guitar players scrambling to learn slide because of Duane Allman. There were other slide players around at the time, some better, many not so good.

I respectfully disagree. His death was only significant BECAUSE of the music he created. His music didn't rattle me, it inspired me to pick up the guitar 43 years ago.

Better slide players? I guess that's a matter of taste. No one was as magical with a slide as Duane IMHO.

If you know of someone that was Fang, please list them for me, I'd love to hear someone from that era that was better than Duane.

PS - thanks for the heads up d - I look forward to reading it.

[Larryz]

Duane definitely was a great slide player. I have never really followed the band or it's history and have probably missed out on a lot of great music, which I can always review. I know many of their hit songs will come back to me. Duane probably inspired a few slide players. I think he was as good as any to include Winters, Raitt and Landreth. They all probably inspired Trucks who I think a lot of. It was a great loss to lose such a talented artist at such an early age.

 

 

[d halfnote]

One of the interesting sidelines abt the book is it reminds us that the Allman's wren't really that popular when DA died.

Their 1st 2 records for Atlantic tanked & even the Fillmore record didn't do well.

Atlantic had great plans for Duane, after all the session work he'd done for them + the fact that his band din't play "psychedelic hogwash" (as Ahmet Ertegun once referred to Cream, their other "great white hope") but the marketing or something wasn't working & they even got dropped before their 3rd studio album was finished !

 

Allman had to keep playing sessions throughout his career just to make money. Average income from an early ABB gig seems to've stayed $500 ~ 1000 & that's 1 6 piece band, with a road crew of 4 or 5 & the all their families.

Just for his stage shows with Clapton he made $1000 per night.

 

As for DA as a musician, he wasn't just a slide player. His playing overall was powerful & inventive.

Still, like WFang, I don't hold him as a hero too much above other players. Some of the band's playing was overly cliched----we used to joke abt them having to lasso the song & reign it in like a wild horse, when they'd hit that final chord & hold it for 20 or 30 seconds !

WF's also correct that his death became part of the "bluesman hoodoo mythos", more important for many than his actual muc=sic ( a point that his daughter makes clearly, too).

 

The real distinction he had, along with the band, was their creation of a type of truly improvised jazzy rock which was much better formed than Cream. Santana was the only other person really doing that sort of thing & he didn't have the harmonic possibilities that Allman & Betts together had.

[whitefang]

@SEH...When DA died, there were a LOT of guys, players and just music fans alike, that raised their eyebrows and said, "Who?". That there were some influencial musicians and radio guys that made a big deal about it piqued interest in the band. It was true their fisrt album didn't do well. Many today are STILL surprised to learn it was released back in '69. Truly, there are still plenty you'll find didn't really hear of them until "Ramblin' Man" hit the airwaves a couple or so years after DA died. I agree with d that Allman and Betts together were wonderful, but Betts alone was more or less "meh".( d didn't say that about Betts. That's MY observation)

Whitefang

[SEHpicker]

Fang - I do get where you are coming from and I probably come off a little biased when it comes to Duane.

Back in the day, Duane was to me what Bruce Springsteen was to someone from New Jersey. I just couldn't get enough of what he was doing musically.

BTW - I think Dickey was/is one of the MOST under-rated guitarists of all time. He always seemed to be stuck in Duane's shadow, but make no mistake, he was a monster player. And don't even get me started on Berry Oakley - some of the most beautiful bass lines ever!

If you listen closely, Duane and Dickey (and Berry) fed off each other musically in ways I have rarely witnessed. Truly amazing stuff. And then consider that they were just barely of legal drinking age. I am very humbled when I think of what they accomplished at such tender ages.

There may have been a lot of guys from your neck o' the woods that said "Who?"... But where I grew up (Fla.) everyone I knew was in mourning for months. Especially me. At the time he was killed, I had been soaking up everything they recorded for several years. A day never passed when I didn't listen to them.

And to their credit, some 40+ years later, I am more impressed than ever. I guess it just gets in your blood.

I listen to a wide range of music, from rock to jazz to country to pop, even classical. There are many astounding talents out there, but if I was stuck on an island for a year and could only have one album to listen to, it would probably be Live at the Fillmore with Dark Side of the Moon a close second.

But that's just me. LOL!

Peace

[whitefang]

That's a consideration SEH. Like for instance, when people started getting off on "Iggy Pop" in the '80's, we here in Detroit already had our fill of him years earlier when he was known as "Iggy Stooge", frontman for The Psycadelic Stooges. I imagine there was more "local" furor over the Allmans when they first hit the scene. They took a bit of time to "grow" on people elsewhere. Like I said, there were plenty who NEVER heard of them before "Ramblin' Man". Why, I knew lots who NEVER knew of Steve Miller before "Fly Like An Eagle". I remember the surprise a buddy's first wife displayed when shortly after that album came out and I pulled out my old "Children of The Future" LP. She asked, "He has ANOTHER new album out?" And I told her it was from '68!

 

Duane's getting killed was just more bad news to many, coming shortly after Jimi and Janis. It almost seemed like some kind of conspiracy.

Whitefang

[picker]

There are slide players that did or do more complex stuff than Duane did. Sonny Landreth and Ry Cooder come to mind, and more recently, Derek Trucks. Joe Walsh, who says Duane taught him slide, took it a much different direction than Duane did, but I don't think I'd say he's "better" (or worse) than Duane.

 

In my view, comparing even players using a similar gadget to play their music is very much comparing apples and oranges. Yeah, Landreth and Cooder and Trucks and Walsh and Duane all played slide. But that's pretty much where the similarity ends. One of the cool things about what amounts to a fretless approach to playing a fretted instrument is the amount of individuality it not only makes possible, but actually demands. It's all about the players ear, their determination, and what I heard a theater teacher call the amount of "what-if" they have.

 

I suspect that with his love of playing and fertile imagination, Duane would have gone on developing his technique, and come up with something we haven't seen from anyone else. In my mind, that multiplies the tragedy of losing him as 24. God, what a waste!

[SEHpicker]

There are slide players that did or do more complex stuff than Duane did. Sonny Landreth and Ry Cooder come to mind, and more recently, Derek Trucks. Joe Walsh, who says Duane taught him slide, took it a much different direction than Duane did, but I don't think I'd say he's "better" (or worse) than Duane.

 

In my view, comparing even players using a similar gadget to play their music is very much comparing apples and oranges. Yeah, Landreth and Cooder and Trucks and Walsh and Duane all played slide. But that's pretty much where the similarity ends. One of the cool things about what amounts to a fretless approach to playing a fretted instrument is the amount of individuality it not only makes possible, but actually demands. It's all about the players ear, their determination, and what I heard a theater teacher call the amount of "what-if" they have.

 

I suspect that with his love of playing and fertile imagination, Duane would have gone on developing his technique, and come up with something we haven't seen from anyone else. In my mind, that multiplies the tragedy of losing him as 24. God, what a waste!

+1 much agreed

[d halfnote]

Don't forget........the ideas not just to recant what we already feel/think/know/imagine..........get thee to the library & read the book.

 

Need further impetus ?

ReRead OP.

[whitefang]

I think d's right. The idea behind the OP was not to start a multi-page discussion of how good, or not so good anyone thinks Duane Allman was. OR any "what ifs". Just relaying info about a new book about Duane Allman. Until we read it, we can't know fully what it's all about. I THINK it may be more about the MAN than the musician, but as advised, I'd have to "get thee to the library" to find out.

Whitefang

[SEHpicker]

All true d & Fang - HOWEVER, one of the wonderful serendipities of this forum are the discussions that evolve from the OP.

It's good to stay on the general topic, but some of the most interesting commentary I've read here were not necessarily strictly on topic.

[whitefang]

That's true in this, and other forums I participate in.

Whitefang