Features

Gregg Allman Still Dreams (Relix Revisited)

Can you give some sense to the readers of this magazine as to how big the Allman Brothers were?

I don’t know you know, I don’t see it that way, I don’t think about it, I don’t think about other bands, I don’t think about us as compared to other bands. Now at one time during your career, well hopefully more than one, when you have record out, you know you find yourself, you open up the Billboard to see where the hell if it’s going up or down, you know. And that’s just, that’s the thing that hopefully the kid in you, at least, will keep that going for the rest of your days, and hopefully you’ll still be makin records. I sure would like to make a couple more before I go, but other than that, I don’t think about…I awe at a real big crowd, I really do, I mean its like good God, I remember when we had a garage full of people show up. You know, we were totally delighted, and I remember when we had a whole nightclub, and 14 people would show up and rattle around in there and what a bummer that was. I look at it now, ain’t we blessed you know and that’s usually the thought I walk on stage with. And so I try to then show the Gods, and the people just happen to be there, how much I do appreciate it by seeing how well I can serenade them.

Especially in recent times, you do give so much.

Well, you know, you should. You should give, if you’re going to give a performance, it should be the best you got in ya. Now some nights, I’ll be the first one to tell ya, that the set might change toward the end because I sometimes, I just flat run out of gas. And, the doc told me not to take my band out this year, but I did anyway. I just came off the road, well I told you that, because I just got over that Hep. C right. And of course, you know everybody sits back and you know, “don’t get it again.” or you know “How you doin’, how you feel?” Tired of hearing that, I could puke man. Why don’t you just stick around and watch me and you’ll see how I feel.

I remember during one of your Fillmore runs, the Warfield, I came on the night of the B-Sides, and I still wanted to hear the hits so I didn’t luck out on that one. I’m sorry I like the hits better.

You came on the night of the B-sides!? [laughs] I didn’t realize we had a B-sides night. Well, we sure as hell didn’t plan it that way, we were just you know playing multiple nights was not something that we had ever, ever done. Oh, now we’re masters at it. We’re masters at re-arranging. We have this one master list that’s on this big huge piece of paper right, and we pick from that at rehearsal, and when we get you know, we bring up some new ones and redo them, and re-work them, and then we throw in a bunch of new stuff and, God we got so many more than I thought we were gonna get this time.

Do you think history has represented Duane accurately?

Yeah, yeah as a matter of fact, I was amazed at the footprint he made in the 24 years that he, well in a year-and-a-half he was really smokin’. I mean he did a few things with Aretha, and that turned a few hits but a lot of them were turned more because he was white and she was black. So that entered into it too, all of a sudden you know, woo, white guy with long hair from the south, kick-ass, you know? Beating these British bucks that are over here. I’ll tell ya, there ain’t a day that goes by that, well of course, that I don’t think about him, but that I don’t hear about him or read about him or… hear somebody talkin about him.

Is there a favorite story that you could talk about that people might not know very well about the recording of that album [ Live at Fillmore East ]?

Oh god there’s a bunch of ‘em but, a lot of them I can’t even tell you about. Let’s see, I can tell you something I saw one night that just blew me away. This was just the one night, not the closing, one night we were playing with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and I just happened to walk past his dressing room, and I turned my head and he was sitting side-saddle on his wife’s lap, his wife was a big ‘ol woman, man and he had two horns around his neck, he had a baritone hangin’ way down, and he was a little guy, you know, his feet were off the floor. And his hair was a little messed up in the back she started to, she like licked her hand and went to rub his hair you know, and straighten it up and he smacked her hand right? Ah stage fright, yeah nobody has it mmm, haha. I can’t hear soprano sax without thinkin’ about that.

You probably have one of the most famous heads of hair and lock. What’s the importance of good hair, give me a tip.

Well, thank you. I really thank you because we had a couple of friends, a couple of my mother’s friends, or people she worked with that like had real dark hair and real short, and real receding, and it looked real ridiculous. And her boss had a comb-over which was just totally out of the question. It’s like a red light with a beacon on it on your head saying, “Hey I’m going bald!” To tell you the truth, since I started caring about my hair, which was about the fifth grade, ever since then, I saw either, TV wasn’t very big, commercials weren’t very big but I saw somewhere, oh yeah, I went in the barbershop one day, and the guy had on this vibrator on the back of his hand, you know one of those old-timey things, have you seen it? That has the springs on ‘em, and he’s going all over the cat’s head, and I said, “What in the world is he doing to your head!?” And when he turned it off finally he said, you know after the gentleman left, he told me said, “You know, that uh he’s older and what you do is if you rub the skin back and forth, back and forth on your head when you’re washing it, or put one of those vibrators on it, you know, just give it a real good scalp massage, every single time, when you wash your hair…and I thought, my God, for the rest of my life? And that’s exactly what I have done. I have not missed one.