The inside cover of the album Brothers and Sisters is one that, once you start to look at it, it’s hard to tear yourself away. It’s a group picture of what could best be described as the extended Allman Brothers family. It has the joy and innocence of the children, smiling, happy faces of most of the adults, and, of course, it’s impossible to avoid the sadness that you feel when you consider who is not there. Taken in 1973, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley no longer with us, it suggests the resilience of not just a band but a family, the power of people pulling together and supporting each other.
The original band were de facto leader Duane and his younger brother Gregg, Dickey Betts on guitar, Berry Oakley on bass, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson. Yet the band name really evokes more than just the relationship between Gregg and Duane. “Red Dog” Campbell, one of the band’s original crew members, when trying to name all the people on that inside cover, refers to all band and crew members as “brother“. It was clear that they felt like a “brotherhood”, looking out for each other, seeing togetherness as a key part of what they were. The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of struggle, tragedy and ultimately huge success. The loss of arguably the most talented rock and blues guitarist of his generation would have likely been the end of lesser groups; the loss of Oakley only a year later, a double blow. In all their various guises, they released eighteen albums between 1969 and 2004, yet the focus here is on the seven albums produced during the band’s first iteration, between 1969 and 1976. Their greatest moments are captured on these records, and they also show a band trying to carry on and figure out how to deal with such deep losses.
At this point, I’m going to take a bit of a liberty with the format of this feature. 1971’s At Fillmore East is widely accepted by people who care about such matters as one of the greatest live albums ever recorded by a rock n’ roll band. It would be too easy just to pick that one for my favourite, obviating the need to really consider the merits of the other albums. So, borrowing from a rather well-known UK radio show where guests are sent to a fictitious desert island, their chosen religious text and the complete works of Shakespeare already packed, they are asked what else would you take with you. At Fillmore East is already in the metaphorical suitcase, so the question is: what else?
For the Allman Brothers Band-converted, anything that the Allman Brothers Band produced in this period has merit. The self-titled Allman Brothers Band album released at the end of 1969 is an excellent first album, recorded in just two weeks after intensive gigging to get the songs studio-ready. Showcasing the band’s varied influences, the second album, Idlewild South (1970), further demonstrated their considerable abilities, even though neither of these albums was especially commercially successful. It was clear at this time that the band excelled on stage, and so the obvious next step was to release a live album. At Fillmore East, their breakthrough album shows the band at the height of their performing powers. And then, as has been well documented, at the end of October 1971, tragedy struck when Duane died in a motorcycle accident. The band soldiered on, releasing Eat a Peach, as they attempted to pick up the pieces. And then, almost unbelievably, a year later, Oakley died in another motorcycle accident. Another album, Brothers and Sisters (1973) followed, as the band continued to reel from their losses.Ultimately, the strain was all too much and over the next few years, excessive substance abuse and disagreements caused the band to implode. Win Lose Or Draw (1975) was the last studio record, and after they broke up in 1976, the underrated live record, Wipe The Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas (1976), which should be seen as a worthy companion to the At Fillmore East record, was released.
I am indebted to Lyndon Bolton, who wrote an excellent piece (which can be found here) in these pages on this fine band back in 2022. Furthermore, no apologies are made for drawing heavily on Alan Paul’s book, One Way Out, for the writing of this piece. Anyone wishing to delve further into not just the what, but the why, surrounding this band should seek out this excellent book. This fantastic band of brothers lost two of their finest over this period, yet, fortunately for us, we have the music and the stories of a band that influenced so many and carved out a unique niche in music history.
Can’t Live With It: Win Lose Or Draw (1975)
It was against the backdrop of all the trauma that the band’s fame and success really started to take off. Brothers and Sisters was their first number one album, and At Fillmore East showed the world what a great live act they were. As a result, and with new members Chuck Leavell on keys and Lamar Williams on bass, they began to play arenas and stadiums and started at last to make some real money. However, the rivalry between Gregg and Betts became more pronounced, the drug use spiralled out of control, and the tight brotherhood started to fray. The influence of organiser Twiggs Lyndon started to wane, and the absence of Duane left a leadership vacuum. According to Dick Wooley, Capricorn Records’ Vice President of Promotion, things started to fall apart as they were now being run by their road crew. As Wooley ungenerously describes them, “a cluster fuck of drugged-out hangers-on that seemingly kept their job by keeping the Allman Brothers Band supplied with drugs and high most of the time”.
The cover of this album, designed by Twiggs (who famously killed a venue owner for non-payment of the band’s fees only to escape a life sentence following a successful plea of temporary insanity), shows empty chairs instead of band members, two of which are propped up against a small table. The cover is suggestive of a band that, after Brothers and Sisters started to fall apart.As Allman reflected, “When we recorded Win, Lose or Draw, we were barely ever in the studio at the same time”. Jaimoe commented that “we had so many rehearsals where the only three there were me, Lamar and Chuck”. As compared to their previous recordings, the record sounds lacklustre and uninspired; the strains of trying to keep going without Duane and Oakley starting to show. It has been speculated that those additional empty chairs represented the absent brothers. Twiggs Lyndon died in a bizarre skydiving accident in 1979, so we’ll probably never know for sure.
This is not a bad album, and there are undoubtedly some strong tracks. Three in particular stand out. The title track, Win, Lose or Draw, albeit a rather morose Jackson Browne-influenced monologue; the opening track, a reworked version of Muddy Waters’ Can’t Lose What You Never Had; and lastly the fourteen-minute High Falls, where Betts again demonstrated his considerable talent for creating extended instrumentals. Yet apart from these, the album never reached the heights of their earlier works. As Trucks later said, “The main problem with Win, Lose, or Draw is simply that none of us were really into the music…we were into being rock stars and the music became secondary”. The band broke up the following year and so ended the first incarnation of this great band.
Can’t Live Without It: Eat a Peach (1972)
They started work on Eat a Peach just a few weeks before At Fillmore East went gold. The band had, in the words of Gregg, “in a 3 or 4 week period, we went from rags to riches, from living on a 3 dollar a day per diem to “Get anything you want boys””. They recorded three tracks for the new album and then went out on the road again, some of them also having a spell in rehab as a result of their increased drug taking. When Duane passed away, they decided after much soul searching that the only thing they could do was carry on. Betts considered that trying to replace Duane with another guitarist was out of the question, so they continued, at least for the time being, as a five-piece.
Eat a Peach, like the previous record, is a double album and is both their third studio album and a selection of live recordings made with Duane. The recordings for the At Fillmore East album were made on March 12th-13th, 1971, yet they also played the venue at other times in this period. They played at the venue’s final gig on 27th June 1971, and One Way Out from that concert was included. The other live tracks, the epic thirty-three-minute Mountain Jam, which took up two full sides of the record, and Trouble No More were from the March sessions. The other six tracks were recorded at Criteria Studios, Miami, three of which were the ones that Duane recorded before his death.
The first three tracks on the album were the ones recorded without Duane. It opens with the defiant response from Gregg that is Ain’t Wasting Time No More, written very soon after Duane’s death. Not only poignant, this track grooves and chugs its ass off, with the interplay between Gregg’s piano, Oakley’s bass, the sassy percussion, all overlaid with Betts’ slide work, previously Duane’s territory. Les Brers in A Minor is a Betts composition which again channels the improvised nature of their live work. It builds slowly, and we are almost four minutes in before the driving bass jazz structure kicks in. The song then builds and falls, the percussion always at the forefront and the guitar constantly suggests bringing the motif back in, which it does at the end.This is a great piece of jazz fusion which nods towards Weather Report, Focus, and many others. Closing side one is Melissa. This was written by Gregg years earlier, but he didn’t feel it was suitable to bring to the band. After initially being lukewarm about it, Duane came to like the song, and Gregg played it at Duane’s funeral. As it was lacking an instrumental component, Betts added a melodic guitar line, and they decided to include it on the album as an appropriate tribute to Duane.
Sides two and four of the album are the extended Mountain Jam. Whilst again showcasing the band’s improvisational prowess, both Betts and Trucks were dismissive of the quality of this version. For many, however, the Allmans at their most mediocre were still better than the rest. Side three, a combination of live and studio tracks, opens with the live track One Way Out. This takes you right back to what must have been so great about the Allmans live. The twin duelling guitars of Betts and Duane, the pumping groove, the bluesy, gritty voice of Gregg. Trouble No More is equally powerful and could have easily made it onto theAt Fillmore East record. The last three tracks on this side are the studio tracks that Duane recorded. Stand Back shows the band at their funky best. Trucks, who had always been the lead drummer in the studio, didn’t even play on this one, as its funky R&B style suited Jaimoe much better. Blue Sky really showed where the band were headed: a more laid-back country style, very much Betts’s thing, later seen on Rambling Man.
There are many poignant moments on this record, yet perhaps none more so than in the final track on side three, Little Martha. This was the only composition ever credited to Duane and is a beautiful blues-influenced acoustic instrumental played by Duane and Betts. “My brother loved playing that stuff, and I have to think that there would have been more music coming out of him”, said Gregg. We’ll never know, of course, but at least we have this. Eat a Peach includes everything that is great about the Allman Brothers Band. It not only shows them as a great live band but also highlights the strengths and very different qualities that each of the band members brought. It is not perfect; Mountain Jam in particular is a little overwrought for many tastes. But this record shows some real highs, and one thing is for sure: when they were good, they were very, very good. Probably the best.
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