One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (14 page)

TRUCKS:
Idlewild was just a really good place at the right time. There was enough room there to have a little privacy if you wanted it, or to just go out for a walk, or go fishing. It was a very old lake house that had been settling for years and I was sitting at my drums at about a 20-degree angle. Everything was crooked and it gave us a different perspective.

Idlewild South.

That’s where we worked up most of the material on the second album, as well as other songs. “Hot ’Lanta” was written there one night. We had taken something strong and Gregg was sitting at his organ playing the opening lick and Dickey walked by behind him, sang the guitar riff, and picked up his Gibson and started playing it. Then we were all on our instruments and in a half an hour we had the whole damn thing worked out. Things like that happened out there all the time.

On the back of the album, among the credits, Mama Louise Hudson was thanked for her food with two simple words: “Vittles: Louise.” Several members of the band proudly brought a copy in to H&H to show Hudson as soon as it was released.

MAMA LOUISE:
I was real happy. I guess I did something good. I gave lots of people free plates when they was hungry. It was nice to get a thank-you like that.

I think it was around this time when Gregg and Red Dog came in and Red Dog said to Gregg, “Go ahead and ask her.” And Gregg said, “How do you feel if we call you Mama Louise?”

I said, “I’d feel good.” I knew that Gregg called his own mother “Mama A” and I always did feel like they was my sons.

Idlewild South
sold only marginally better than its predecessor, though the band had a growing national reputation and the album included songs that would become staples of the band’s repertoire—and eventually of rock radio.

ALLMAN:
When the first record came out at number 200 with an anchor and dropped off the face of the earth, my brother and I did not get discouraged. But I thought
Idlewild South
was a much better record; I wrote some of my best stuff on that one and when that died on the vine, I thought, “Damn, maybe we were wrong about this group.”

WALDEN:
I doubted myself. It seemed like I had just been wrong and that they were never going to catch on. People just didn’t grasp what the Allmans were all about—musically or any other way. But they kept touring, going across the country, establishing themselves city by city as the best live band around and building a base.

RED DOG:
Every time we played someplace, when we came back, there was a bigger crowd, just from word of mouth; the band sold itself. The band sold the band. It just kept mushrooming like that.

ALLMAN:
I felt pretty bad and it started dawning on me that the more we got around and got seen, it was worth ten times anything else we could do. The key was not to worry about the record sales, and trust that shit will take of itself. What we had to do was keep getting out there and letting people know that we’re there.

Dickey Betts behind the lines, Tulane University, 1970.

DON LAW,
Boston promoter
: At the time, the most valuable piece of promotion available was word of mouth. That was true of everyone, but especially for a band as strong as the Allman Brothers. It was obvious to anyone who saw them that they were fantastic.

BETTS:
Duane was bursting with energy; he was a force to be reckoned with. His drive and focus were incredible, as was his intense belief in himself and our band. He knew we were going to make it. We all knew we were a good band, but no one else had that supreme confidence. We were a progressive rock band and we used to sit and say, “This band is never going to make it because we’re too fucking good.”

TRUCKS:
Our first few tours, it seemed like there’d be a few people really getting into it at every show and a bunch of others standing around going, “Huh?” We really didn’t think we were going to take off. We just knew how good it was.

BETTS:
Duane’s confidence and enthusiasm were infectious. He helped us all believe in ourselves and that was an essential key to the [eventual] success of the Allman Brothers Band.

Duane was a natural leader, and if he got knocked down, you’d feel compelled to do everything you could to get him back up and going again. He and I talked a lot about that, and decided that would be the difference in our band as compared to every other band we’d ever been in: when someone falls, instead of talking about him or taking advantage of him, we’d pull him back up, but no one would be the leader. None of us would ever take that position in the Allman Brothers Band. Whenever we needed a leader, someone would step forward and lead. That’s a Duane Allman quote. Of course, he’d also often say, “I’m not the leader of this band but if and when we need one, I’m a damn good one!” And he was.

PAYNE:
Duane had this monstrous personality that was overbearing in any crowd. If you put him in the room with the President of the United States, he would have taken over the conversation in five minutes.

JAIMOE:
If Duane had an idea in his head to do something, he would try doing it until he fell on his face. It’s like the old saying, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re the problem.” No one would stand in Duane’s way.

HAMPTON:
Duane was the Douglas MacArthur of that band. He ran it like a general or an old-school football coach. It was his band and he let you know that you were in
his
band. Duane was never a dick. He was a wonderful, beautiful man, but it was Vince Lombardi stuff: his way or the highway. And he would flip anybody’s ear if they were out of line.

Jaimoe and Duane Allman at the Thunderbird Motel, Miami, 1970.

ODOM:
Nothing was democratic with Phil Walden and Associates and nothing was democratic with the Allman Brothers Band. Duane was a natural-born leader. His philosophy was, “Get on my back. Follow me.” And nobody ever questioned that. Any band that’s going to be successful has got to have a leader: that was Duane.

RED DOG:
There was no question that it was his band, even with Dickey, who was a pretty strong character in his own right. Everyone in that band would have followed Duane anywhere.

PAYNE:
He was such a charismatic leader. If we ran into any kind of a roadblock, he would take it on head-on. He liked confrontation, not for confrontation’s sake, but to solve a problem. He would take on any challenge, and get by it every time. He would negotiate anything with anyone.

RICK HALL:
He would stand up to me, not in a mean way, but he was very tenacious. If I started opposing him—and I thought a lot of his ideas were crazy at first—he would put his arm around my neck and pull me close and get his way on anything we did. He wouldn’t give in. My ankles bled all the time he was around, because he was always nibbling on them.

RED DOG:
I would have followed Duane to the end of the earth. He instilled in you this confidence of his ability to lead. A situation would come up and Duane would make a decision and it would usually work out. And even when it didn’t, we never really questioned the intent.

ALLMAN:
He was always up to something; my brother never got bored. He either had his head in a book, his arm around a woman, or his arm around that guitar and it was singing to him.

TRUCKS:
Duane read all kinds of things. He loved Tolkien and
Lord of the Rings
, of course; he named his daughter Galadrielle [after a
Rings
character]. He also loved T. S. Eliot, and I remember him reading some Frank Herbert and some philosophy. I turned him on to Rousseau and he absolutely loved it. He immediately understood and was drawn to the philosophy that we’re all much happier in a natural state.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Butch was the college boy and most of the other guys hadn’t graduated high school, having dropped out to go on the road with bands, and he was always bringing books around. Everyone shared and passed them around and I also recall a lot of R. Crumb and Marvel comic books being read, with everyone having their favorite characters.

While
Idlewild South
did not launch the band to glory, they continued their relentless touring schedule, winning new fans everywhere they performed.

ALLMAN:
We played [continuously] in 1970, traveling most of the off days. We were in a Ford Econoline van and then a Winnebago [nicknamed the Wind Bag].

PAYNE:
That Ford van was famous for having walls so thin that ice would form on the inside during the winter, with all of us huddled in the back with the gear.

ABB life on the road, early 1970.

DOUCETTE:
The band came to pick me up at my place in New York one day, in that beat-up Ford with no windows except the backdoor and the windshield. It had little, thin, striped mattresses up the wall and one guy would sit with his legs out, another guy on the other side with his legs out, and on down the line, with amps and guitars in there. Duane said, “Hop in man.” … Later, I was like, “No offense, but if that’s the transport for the band, I’ll opt out.” Duane started thinking and he was on the phone with Phil that night trying to get some non-embarrassing transport.

MAMA LOUISE:
I remember the first time they brought that camper home. They were so happy. Red Dog came over and said, “Mama, you gotta come see this.”

JONNY PODELL,
ABB booking agent
: I started booking the band in June 1969. Phil Walden said, “Get them dates. I don’t care if it’s Portland, Oregon, on Monday and Portland, Maine, on Tuesday.” I tried to do a little better but that’s what we did and they never complained.