The Allman Brothers singer survived nearly 50 years of epic shows and unimaginable disaster – but there was one death he could never get over.
When I met Gregg Allman, he seemed like a ghost on guard. It was 1990, in Miami. The Allman Brothers Band
had recently reunited for a second time. In the early Seventies, they
single-handedly invented Southern rock, but their hallmark was live
shows that mixed bedrock aggression and high-flown invention in ways no
other group did. Their first breakup, in 1976, had been ugly; a reunion a
few years later hadn’t taken. But here they were, nearly a decade
later, improbably kicking off a new phase of a career that time and
tragedy had not been able to kill off.
That day in Miami, the band was easygoing and talkative when
we met at producer Tom Dowd’s studio – but not Gregg. He wasn’t
unfriendly; he just seemed dazed, wary. He had rarely been an eager
interview subject since the band first became popular in 1971, and the
death that same year of his older brother, Duane – one of the most
brilliant guitarists in history – had left him stunned and heartsick.
For years Gregg narcotized himself, then entered daily into drunken
stupors.
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