The story on Annie Liebowitz's Allman Brothers photo.
[Sorry for the length. This is part of the famous (and entertaining) Rolling Stone article that I'd typed up for some fellow Duane fans. Contributor James wanted to know the story of the pic. Be careful what you ask for.]
Early the next afternoon, enter the photographer, looking cheery. An easy-going zaftig lady, she's been promised a 2 o'clock shooting session with the band, but whatever else they're doing, the boys are *not* hitting the note today. Half of them, in fact, are still asleep at the appointed time, and to a man they resist being roused. "Aw, Duane and Greg'll do that, you know," Willie Perkins explains sheepishly. "They'll stay up for three, four days, and then crash like they'us dead."
Bunky Odum promises that he'll deliver both Allmans to the photographer's studio before the evening's concert at Winterland. "Gawddamn, honey," Odum booms, "you gonna have to come down to Macon and git laid back with us when this bid-ness is over. We'll take you ridin' on our motors and...uh...feed you some *down-home collard greens*."
But Odum fails to deliver on his promise that evening when both the Allman brothers balk at the notion of being photographed apart from the rest of the group. They seem, in fact, outraged by the notion. "Fuck, man, we ain't on no fuckin' *star trip*," Duane snarls. "Naw, man, we ain't on no fuckin' *star trip*," Greg echoes. Trying to smooth things over, Odum arranges for the photographer to join the group's swing back to Southern California the next day.
Exit the photographer, looking addled.
Exit the fellow traveler, looking for a movie far from the madding goons at Winterland.
Sleepy and hanging over, the group assembles in the hotel parking lot the next morning for the drive to airport and an early flight to Santa Barbara. Only Dicky Betts seems in high spriits; after last night's gig, he'd gotten a new tattoo at Lyle Tuttle's south-of-Market studio - a dove entwining the name "Sandy" on his right bicep. "Ever'body in the band got one a these, too," Dicky says proudly, pulling up his pantleg to show a tattoo of a mushroom on his calf. Willie Perkins nods shortly: "It's the band's emblem. We all got one, and we use the same design on all our litachoor, too."
Dicky catches sight of Duane and guffaws: "Hey, brother you got coke all over in your muss-tache." Peeved, Duane rakes the white grains out the hair on his lip and glares steadily at the photographer, who's snapping individual candids of the band members. When she moves in toward him, he turns his back with a growl.
On the drive to the airport, Berry Oakley is literally holding his head with both hands. "I run into this ol' girl last night who had a whole purseful of tequila," he groans. "Then when that run out, we got into some Red Ripple. *Jesus*."
On the flight south, Butch Trucks reads the opening chapter of D.T. Suzuki's "Zen Buddhism". "You read this un?" he asks Dicky Betts. Betts' eyes flick over the title. "Yeah, good, ain't it," he grunts. An hour later, one of the stewardesses remonstrates repeatedly with Duane to return his seat to the upright postion for landing. Irritably, he complies, but when the stewardess moves on, he reclines the chair again, muttering balefully under his breath. "The boys are gettin' pretty tahrd," Willie Perkins sighs.
The band puts up for the night at the Santa Barbara Inn, a plush beach resort for the middle-aged rich, where, once again, Duane refuses to show up for a picture session with the photographer. Looking positively shell-shocked by now, she pleads her case to Bunky Odum. "Goddamn, honey, he booms, "you're gonna have to come down to Macon and git laid back with us when this bid-ness is over. We'll take you ridin' on our motors and feed you some *down-home collard greens.*"
That night's concert is held in Robertson's Gym at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The band plays a tight subdued set that sets a gaggle of bra-less nymphets near the stage to jiggling like fertilized eggs frying in the ninth circle of hell, but the general ambience in the hall - high humidity, surly security guards, a surfeit of bum acid - gives the evening a jagged unpleasant edge, and streams of people begin leaving before the set is done.
Duane and Dicky lope backstage afterward to "do some sniff," as Dicky terms it. Duane grabs a towel and mops his streaming face while Dicky spoons out the coke. "Goddamn, I'm *sopped*, brother," Duane complains. Dicky snorts the powder and bobs his head in pleasure. "Sheeit, my man, I druther sniff this ol' stuff than a girl's bicycle seat." Jo Baker, a black singer with the Elvin Bishop Group, hovers nearby, eyeing the coke. Duane fixes her with a cold stare. "Look-a-here, sister," he says loudly, "I'm sorry, but I got just a little bit of this shit left, so I can't give you none." "Oh, that's all right," Jo says, looking embarrassed. "Sure, as a musician, I understand."
Early the next morning, "Frown" - Jai Johanny Johnson - is living up to his nickname in the hotel restaurant. Slurping a triple Gold Cadillac, which is a positively depraved concoction of liquor and liqueurs, he growls, "Bullshit, my man. I'm into playin' *music*, not this sittin-around-bullshit. Seems like when we was unknown, all we did was play. Now all we do is get publicity...Ten years from now, if I be livin' I expect to be playin' music...Naw, not with this same band...I got my nickname, the full thing of which is 'Jaymo King Norton Frown,' from drinkin' Robitussin H-C, that cough syrup. It makes you nod and frown. All the cats in the band used to drink that shit, so they finally got me to drink it too...Shit, I don't know what my attitude is towards dope....I don't guess they ever gonna stop it comin' in the country and all that shit. Sure has caused a lot of hang-ups, if you can dig what I mean...Hittin' the note is - well, that don't be nothing' but a phrase. What the cats in the band mean by it is...gettin' out of it whatever you're lookin' for..."
Bunky Odum has again promised the photographer that he'll line up the boys for some shots when the group checks out of the hotel, so she stations herself near the parking garage and nervously waits for them to show up. Soon, Butch Trucks and his wife join her, and Butch apologizes to her for the runaround she's been getting. "Aw ol' Greg and Duane don't mean no harm, I reckon, but they still ortn't to act that-a way," he mutters, looking pained. "We been on the road too long, I guess. It's been five weeks now, and you get awful tahrd and wore out bein' out that long, playin' the same tunes every night and all. It gets to where sometimes it ain't any fun. And this definitely ain't the kind of business to be in if you ain't havin' no fun."
One by one, the boys straggle out ot the cars, again looking sleepy and hungover. When they've assembled in a loose semi-circle, the photographer explains that she'd like to get a group shot showing the tattooed mushrooms on the calves on their legs. Then Duane shakes his head angrily and stomps out of camera range. "This is jive bullshit, man," he rasps, it's *silly*." "Yeah, *silly*," Greg echoes, and follows suit. "Jive bullshit," Dicky Betts agrees, stuffing his pant leg back into his boot. At the fellow traveler's teasing suggestion that it's no sillier to shoot a picture of everyone's tattoos than it is to have them put on in the first place, Duane coldly offers to punch him on the spot. Well, what the fuck, hare krishna; Duane is, after all, the walrus.
The entourage crowds into two rented cars for a tensely silent ride down the coastal highway to L.A. Along the way, Duane gruffly agrees to stop for a last try at the photos on a beach road. When the photographer tries to position the group around the cars so all their faces will be visible, Duane goes out to lunch entirely. "Fuck it," he bellows at her, "either take the fuckin' picture of don't take the fuckin' picture. I'm not gonna do any of that phony posin' shit for you or nobody else."
He's still grumbling and snuffling when the cars swing back onto the highway. "I don't lke any of that contrived shit, man. We're just plain ol' fuckin' Southern cats, man. Not ashamed of it or proud of it, neither one. Ain't no superstars here, man." When he finally shuts up and falls asleep, his fellow traveler gladly crouches down toward the floorboard so the photographer can shoot both the Allmans with their mouths agape in the rear seat. It's uncomfortable for a few miles, but it beats the hell out of getting punched.
Quartered once again atthe Continental Hyatt House on the Karmic Strip in L.A., the Allman group whiles away the afternoon snorting coke, reading comics, mounting a seek-out-and-buy raid on Tower Records, and watching "The Thief of Baghdad" on color TV. When it's time for the evening's gig, Willie Perkins rounds them up and herds them toward Artie's black Cadillac limo for the half-mile ride down Sunset Boulevard to the Whisky-a-Go-Go. "C'mon, brothers," Michael Callahan, the sound man, calls out as the band mills about the driveway, "they gonna eat you *alive* at the Whuskey-a-Dildo."
In the upstairs dressing room at the Whisky, amid the usual groupie babble and turmoil, the photographer determinedly tries to shoot some final pictures. Politely, she asks a busboy to replace some burnt-out light bulbs in the ceiling. When the busboy fetches a ladder and the bulbs, Greg Allman saunters up and mumbles, "Don't screw that bulb in, my man. I like it in here the way it is." "Please screw the bulb in," the photographer entreats. "Don't screw the bulb in, man," Greg says to the busboy stonily. This happens a few times. "Oh, screw it," the photographer says finally in exasperation, and leaves.
When the band's set gets underway downstairs, the usually-comatose Strip crowd yells its lusty approval from the first chorus of "Statesboro Blues." By the time Dicky Betts thunderballs into his solo jam on "Elizabeth Reed," people are standing on their chairs yodeling cheers. As the band jam-drives to a sexy and demonic close, sounding not unlike tight early Coltrane, a flaxen-haired waitress is passing out draughts of beer to the screaming patrons in the second-story gallery. The beer is streaming amber and glistening down her bare arms, and the Allman Brothers Band from Macon, Gawgia, is - what else- Hitting the Note.
Posted by floridacracker at March 26, 2004 12:49 PM