With the news that Gregg Allman will be taking some time off from the road due to health reasons, we revisit a conversation with Allman. This is an expanded version of a piece that appeared in the April-May 2009 issue of the magazine.

Almost single-handedly, The Allman Brothers Band revolutionized southern music, giving it a pride, luster and identity that it never had before – if you don’t count Stephen Foster (and he was born in Pennsylvania).

But not only was Southern pride restored, but rock history made on March 23, 1969 when Duane Allman called his younger brother Gregg and asked him to come home. Gregg had been living in Los Angeles waiting for a contract with Liberty Records to run out, and the way he explains it, “just about to put the pistol to his head” when the phone rang.

While he initially was a “Doubting Thomas” about his brother’s new endeavor (Duane promised him a new B-3 Hammond organ if he’d make the trip back to Georgia), a week later he became one of the architects of southern rock, penning songs for a band that was destined to become one of the most influential rock groups in America. Their unexpected synthesis of blues, jazz, folk, rock and country along with the dual percussive thunder and intricate, almost supernatural, guitar interplay between Duane and Dickey Betts assured them a sacred place in rock’s mighty canon. The guitar battles were so heated some nights that a listener couldn’t tell where one started and the other left off.

They released three albums in quick succession, but when they began recording their fourth, Eat a Peach, tragedy struck, turning their story into a Southern Gothic tale, with its requisite triumphs, tragedies, annihilation and eventual redemption.

First Duane perished in a motorcycle accident in downtown Macon, Georgia on October 29, 1971, and was buried in the city’s Rose Hill Cemetery, the very place that the band penned its first songs, including “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” Dazed, the band decided to carry on, despite their massive loss, vowing to finish the album without Duane, and to make the best of things. But only 13 months later, bassist Berry Oakley died in an uncannily similar motorcycle mishap, less than a mile from where Duane went down for the last time, and the Brothers – as they were always called – were dealt a second deadly blow.

By rights the band should have perished in 1972, when tragedy picked off their second member, but instead they carried on, persevering through two break-ups, drug addictions, feuds, and a myriad of lineup changes due to death, discontent, or just plain orneriness. Now 40 years later they’re celebrating that propitious anniversary with a lengthy stint at New York’s Beacon Theater – something they’ve done every year since 1989, save last year, when Gregg was undergoing treatment for Hepatitis C.

We spoke to Allman while he was in Savannah, Ga., about to leave for the Beacon rehearsals in Atlanta. He was eloquent and more forthcoming than usual as we spoke about the early beginnings of the band, how the tragedies changed him, and the lyrics that he just unearthed from the instrumental “Little Martha” that Duane wrote.

Barack Obama has been president for an hour, can you tell me about playing the campaign rally?

We’re all into change, and if he’s sincere about this MLK thing, he’s going to be fully gray in eight years, but I think he can keep out spirits up, I don’t think he can pull us out of this financial thing, but I think he can keep our spirits up while we pull ourselves out of it.

The first time [The Allman Brothers] backed a presidential candidate was Jimmy Carter. I’ve never seen anyone age so much in office as Jimmy Carter.

Oh they were showing that, the night before last, I was in Atlanta, I finally came home last night. I went straight from my tour with my band straight to the rehearsing for the Beacon, and man did we ever have some, “god what in the world are we gonna do.” Then stuff just started comin’ to us and I mean, the gods were so good to us. I can’t tell you about it but it’s going to be incredible, it really is.

The month of March always seems to be very good to you.

Yeah, you’re right.

The phone call from Duane where he said come home, was in March. Do you feel like that phone call saved your life?

Oh no, I didn’t mean that in a literal sense.

But that phone call must have changed the whole course your life?

Oh absolutely did because I had just tried out for the musical “Hair.” They needed somebody that sang tenor that was white. They had these four guys from Watts. I thought, “What the hell do they want me for?” Oh god I was just in Buffalo. N.Y. this time last week, then I was in Atlanta and it was cold, then I got here and it’s just damn cold. I’m finally home with my dogs.

Back to California, you stayed when everybody else left. Did you have second thoughts – why did you stay?

Well, I stayed one, because I kind of had to so they could go because they were let off contract. That was back in the age of cross-collaboration, when money came in off the record, I’m talking about writer royalties, publishing royalties, any royalties, the record company got paid back first. They put us up in these apartments. There were five of us in the Hour Glass, so that ran up a pretty damn good bill, you know. So in other words, we never saw any of that dough. Never I don’t think I’ve ever have gotten any, I’ve signed a bunch of the records, but I’ve never gotten any publishing or writer’s [royalties] at all.

So what happened with “Hair,” how was the audition?

Oh it was real hard. You stand out in the middle of the floor and there’s some guy in the dark taking your inventory, and you bring your own music, and all you have behind you is a guy playing an upright piano.

What did you sing?

If you didn’t ask me, I could have told you!

Have you ever had a regular job in your life?

Yeah, I bought my first guitar with money from a paper route. I had 284 papers twice a day; I did that for about a month. Of course then you know Saturday would come, time to collect, and you go to the door and a Doberman would answer the door, and say we’re OP, office payment right? I’d have ‘em marked down if they were OPs, people don’t trust the paper boy.

What paper was it?

The Daytona Beach Morning Journal.

Oh it’s probably not even around anymore.

Oh yes, it is very much so. As a matter of fact the guy who used to work there is one of them that put our one of them terrible books about the Allman Brothers.

Oh the Scott Friedman one right?

Oh God.

That really was a bad book.

Really.

Yeah, I mean really.

Oh no, I’m sorry that guy used to work for the Macon Telegraph.

Well it’s a bad book wherever he worked, you know? I mean you must have just wanted to ring his neck.

Well, I’m workin’ on mine, you know. I got about 30 more hours to go. One of the hardest things to do, and the reason I am doing it with this man, is because he has quite a knack at doing it because he’s been with us so long, Kirk West, one of the hardest things to do is remembering the chronological order of things. And seeing as how he kind of took all the shit down, he’s kinda like Moses right [laughs]. He kinda took all the stuff down.

It’s hard for me to determine the importance of things. Are you running into the same problem?

Oh the importance of things, yes. Well it’s good to start with the chapters, you know, how many chapters. And you want to devote at least 20-25 pages per chapter.

What did you start with?

The first ass-whippin’ I ever got was by a woman, that’s how it starts. I was in the fifth grade and I was just figurin’ out about women not really being soft boys, but maybe there might be a little interest here.

I remember back in the day you were like the rock sex symbol.

I was a virgin – well let’s just say two weeks later I was 18.

They were such different times too you know?

Oh yeah, yeah, they were totally different. There was no age, and hippie land and weeee looove.

So besides the paper route was there anything else that you did that was a normal job?

I worked very shortly, I think it was matter of days, but I worked on just two nights, Friday and Saturday night at this big resort I grew up on Daytona Beach, a big beach resort called Castaways. I worked in the combination restaurant/lounge as a busboy, and I had to pick up all the plates and everything. I also worked part-time as a dishwasher in there, so I could watch this guy named Barney Dorsey who played with Houston and Dorsey, Sonny Houston and Barney Dorsey, who I think they might both be dead now, I know Sonny’s dead, anyway. It was two dudes I guess about my age now, I mean they were like in their 50s and they were comedians and they both played Strats and they played them through these echo machines. They had a real, real funny show, and they played there for about 12 years, and then I guess they got too old.

And then so you just quit after their run?

No no, actually I was stealing licks as fast as I could, but I got real real sick. Let me tell ya, you know all this garbage and the smell… uhh. I lasted I think maybe three or four nights. In later years when I came back and told them this, they really got a bang out of it, they really did.

Is it important to who you are that you were born in Nashville?

Not much at all.

What you see is rarely what you get.

Well you find people like that everywhere, I don’t know if you could say that’s just conducive of the south.

I’ve always been intrigued with the south because you are different from the rest of us.

I’ve always been intrigued that there is a difference, and why is there a difference? I guess it’s because you know, one camp was full of a certain kind of people that came from the old country and another camp was full of Irish and another camp was Spaniards. Anyway, you know, we’re all for god’s sakes, I think I heard on the news back in 2005 I remember one morning I got up and I was drinking my coffee and they said, “Well today the last full-blooded, absolute pure Seminole Indian died in Florida today.”

You really have a great memory.

I do I have a far-off memory, but I can’t tell you what I had for dinner last night.

Back to the time when your brother called you and you immediately came back to Georgia. Did it all gel immediately? Did you feel like something extraordinary was happening that was different from the Hour Glass?

Not really. I did know that I was gonna start playing and singing again, and I would actually feel like there was a purpose for me being alive, because for more months than I would have liked, I mean well actually years, I mean they didn’t let the Hour Glass play. We all had sat just dormant like, we played just every now and then like at some place way out in Fullerton or Santa Ana, or aw Christ, in Bakersfield, they think all the rednecks are down south right?

So you couldn’t play because of the deal with Liberty Records because they were suing you, was that the deal?

Well, no I had to stay out there and record with their studio band, and that was just aw, I mean all the studio they could possibly charge to United Artists, they would do it. I mean we had [Hal] Blaine playing drums then we had what’s her name, that used to play, she’d come in with her hair all up in curlers, Carol Kaye, played the bass. All these expensive people, good god, who in the hell do they think is playing. And when they ran everybody off to try to do these vocals, and I mean it was just something I didn’t want to do, and they still got like two or three tracks laying somewhere with no vocals whatsoever to be found on ‘em. Cause I just kinda never got around to it. And then finally after my brother called me, I just left a note and split. I didn’t have time to call nobody up and banter back and forth about shit and have them maybe try to say, “Well we’ll legally have you locked up,” or something, you know, I wasn’t going to chance any of that because, I knew, and this is all I knew: that I was going to start singing and playing again.

It’s funny that you did it with a note, too – that was a great way to do it.

The note, it seems like somewhere around 1974 when we were riding two platinum records, it was a very good year, but we were still, you know it was only about 2 years after my brother passed away. The guy who managed the Hour Glass, oh god I can’t remember his name now. [Bill McEuen]

They all lived down in Florida. As a matter of fact I saw Jeff Hanna in the airport the other day. God he looks the same as he did man, I swear. I give [my hair] a little help. It doesn’t turn gray, it turns white. But I mean a dead white. I got this one review that said, “Yeah, he sat up on stage behind the B-3 lookin’ like he had everything all in hand and all arranged and had control of everything, looking like Ernest Hemingway.” [laughs] Ernest Hemingway with a Gabby Hayes beard, right?

You had abuse issues until finally getting sober in 1996.

It was very hard time. But it was quittin’ time. I mean, no angels floated down and said, “Hey your ass is gonna die if you drink anymore.’” I wish I could tell you that something spiritual went on. I don’t know, it’s really kind of foggy, but I just remember looking at Willie and saying, “Aw man, I am not fuckin’ all right. I am not.” I was just really, really ashamed; it’s really a feeling of like shame, but you know it’s a disease and it’s you don’t need to be there anyway, you know you got that disease.

I’ll tell you what really helped is I put together a band that was real, real good. They have evolved now into something really good. You gotta hear it now! Booker T’s drummer, Joe Jemmott playin bass. He was a dear friend of my brothers, and I got him for life. Of course I have Floyd, I got Bruce Katz – Woodstock, incredible keyboard player. [Chewing] I’m sorry I’m eating cherries, I love cherries. Raynor cherries, the yellow ones…

Back to the Allman Brothers. What was particularly southern about your band, I mean is that an important part of who you are.

Not a damn bit. I never, never liked the term southern rock except for the fact that it made a new slot in the record shops and a new place to put our records. I did like that part about it. But I mean the way I see it, there are four kings of rock and roll. Two white, and two black: Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Aaron Presley, Richard Penniman (Little Richard) and, so far everybody’s from the south, and then we got Chuck Berry who’s from St. Louis, you know some of ‘em went North, some of ‘em went South. And then you had most of the carpet baggers came from there, and you know the majority of ‘em… so saying southern rock is like saying rock rock.

Well what do you think that you guys did that made the Allman Brothers unique besides the jazz bit and the two amazing guitar players and the two drummers, but what in your mind, made them better than everybody else?

I don’t really know, you know, I can guess. I don’t know if we had more stamina, or got around more, or played more freebies, we played a shitload of freebies. After we’d play someplace Satuday night, let’s say we were in Philly, or Long Island, anywhere, Stonybrook some school, or what have you, you know we played a lot of colleges, anyway if it was like spring or fall, on Sunday, the day we were off, we’d try to find the nearest park and find enough people, I mean you know you start setting up the band, people just show up to help ya, to help you find some electricity, you know, we always just managed. Every time.

Because you loved to play so much right?

Yeah and the people – hey free music, shit yeah we’ll get you a long extension cord, and we’ll plug it into that guy’s house, he’s not there. We played longer than anybody. We didn’t play long because the Dead played long. We played long because the songs were long.

And then you’d just go out to the stratosphere.

Oh yeah, and we still do. That’s what makes it new and refreshing. We’re going to have to get you to write our bio.

Did you want to write songs before Duane said, “Just go write your own songs?”

It was just one of those things that you gotta do. I hadn’t [risen to the occasion] by that time.

How did you know that you had what it took to write songs for this band you’d just been made a part of?

I had no idea. No idea. The more comfortable I got with it, the better I got at it. And seeing how when I turned in the first one that worked, “Dreams,” and it was learned on the spot, it pretty much sounds the same as it did that day.

What were you playing at the time?

Electric piano. We were still in Jacksonville when they put the bandanna around my eyes and led me into Dickey’s house because it had a big round room; it was a big Victorian. And the room was totally empty, round, and right in the middle, they took the bandanna off and there was a 1969 brand spankin’ new B3 Hammond and a brand new 1969 Leslie. There were about eight joints rolled on the bottom keyboard and they said, “We’ll see ya in a few days.”

It wasn’t your birthday, you just needed to have this.

Yeah. It was a great day. Shit, I wrote the whole first album in the next week!

I used to smoke weed, and the most amazing stories would just float out of me, but something changed.

That’s why I smoked a couple of bowls before I called ya! Well hell, they made me quit everything else. The way back machine. We should have had some damn electronics back then though you know, we should have filmed. I mean we have no films of back then.

So your brother didn’t write songs?

He wrote like prose, okay? We found a bunch of stuff that he wrote the other day, and I don’t know I saw Little Martha, his girlfriend that he had when he passed, he just called her Little Martha and we found the lyrics to “Little Martha.” And they won’t be published at all, not if I have anything to do with it, because I think the reason he never showed anybody, is because it was something he wanted to keep to himself for himself.

Did you actually write the lyrics to “Little Martha” as we know “Little Martha?” Did [Duane] have anything to do with that version of the song?

Oh I’ve never seen the lyrics, no, he never showed them to anybody. We just recently found them.

Do you have dreams about your brother?

I have dreams that I run into him on the road, where he’ll just be like walking by as I’m walkin in the back of the place, you know, or somethin like…I’ll say, “We’re okay man.” And he’ll say, “Hey how you doin,” “Come back here, lemme talk to ya!”

And he doesn’t come back?

Yeah, he does and I’ll say, “Where the hell you been, I mean, shit we missed ya. Come on in, let’s play.” And he says, “No, I had to step away from it, you know.” And I don’t know, but hey I’m doin this and that and the other thing, or helping somebody or something like that or… anyway, he just kind of fades off into the distance. That’s about it, but sometimes on stage, I can hear his music you know, almost as if like he’s playing it, you know. I mean you start getting his tones, and his you know, I don’t know. Of course they play the same kind of guitars through the same kind of amps and the same God, the same level of musicians, I mean they’re good, I mean he was good, he was 24, but I mean so is Derek, Derek’s good, and Warren’s good.

Do you think in some way that that tragedy made you stronger, made you who you are today?

Absolutely, little by little it did. As a matter of fact, in some ways it felt like a test, and I you know, it further had me asking “Why, why, why.” And then we all got together and everybody wanted to know what everybody else thought about it, and when they came to me I said you know, if we don’t keep playing, we’re gonna wind up either all junked-out or just losers.

Over the years, do you think you made peace with it, were you able to answer that “why?”

Uh, you’re not supposed to ask the “Why?” question, you’re really not. You’re not in that pay-bracket.

I think you can change the road that you’re going on, I mean you definitely did.

Oh, yeah I’d be dead by now, I would have been forgotten about by now.

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.