Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman

by Galadrielle Allman

  Leaning against the car door, Duane knew he had to get out or get sick, and when their car came to his street corner, he asked to be dropped off. His friend Tom got out with him, but Ronnie Rainnie and two other boys from Father Lopez Catholic High School sped off without looking back.

  The next day, it was on the news: three boys killed in a car crash in Tomoka Park. Ronnie’s car had veered off the road in a swinging second and flipped over, crushing everyone inside. While Duane was on his knees in his bathroom, drunk and sick, his friends lay dead in the road, just after leaving him behind.

  Reckless races and fascination with speed were a major part of local culture in Daytona. On the primal overgrown back roads, a night world of thrill rides and risk taking thrived in stark contrast to the happy beach scenes that played out by day, but this story carried a more ominous personal suggestion about Duane. Several people told me versions and while no one spelled it out explicitly, it was clear what they all believed: Death was stalking Duane, and it was only a matter of time before it claimed him. The car crash in Tomoka was a bitter taste of what was to come. It foreshadowed the accident that would take Duane’s life.

  The number of foreboding stories told about Duane mounted. Friends recalled him speeding away on his motorcycle, visibly drunk or drugged. They witnessed fights and daredevil maneuvers, all building to a sense that Duane was driven to risk himself in ways big and small. I was surprised at first by the turns our conversations took, then I realized I was hearing answers to a question I had never asked, but which was somehow implicit in the dramatic velocity of Duane’s short life. The people who loved my father were still looking for a coherent narrative to lead from the way Duane lived to the way he died. This dark path kept emerging, whether real or imagined, and I couldn’t ignore it. Loss and trauma dogged him, and he ran from it as if something chased him, pushing toward something better. By Duane’s freshman year of high school, layers of experience covered him like armor. He lived with energy and intensity, wily intelligence, and a defiant nature, and the seeds of his creativity were germinating in his restlessness and discomfort.

  Jerry had to step over her boys’ sleeping friends sprawled all over the living room floor many mornings on her way to work. She didn’t mind. She had an open-door policy when it came to the boys’ friends. She’d rather have them drinking at her house than running wild in the streets. As young as they still were, her boys were full-fledged teenagers and the evidence was everywhere. Food disappeared the moment she put it away, and Duane and Gregg were changing. Their hair had grown down over their ears and past their collars and Jerry started calling them her girls, until Duane asked her to stop. She told them she was sick of finding strands of their hair in her food, but she never tried to force them back to the barber. She had cut her hair off when she was their age. What was the difference? Her sons wanted to have a little control over themselves and the way they looked. Besides, they were the ones who were going to take all the heat for it. She thought hell would be a place where they passed her one more huge pile of laundry to press. Her boys would fly by her ironing board, then rush out the door in shirts still hot as fire. There was never enough time.

  Girls clearly liked the way they looked. They were coming around her house, and that was harder for Jerry to accept. Every girl they passed in the market or on the beach seemed to know one son or the other, and she could barely stand to see them smiling and staring at them. Those little girls would be nothing but trouble; that was clear.

  Duane noticed a pretty girl named Penny on the school bus. She had blond hair and was about as tall as him. He sat beside her and asked about the book in her hand. It’s just for English, she answered, but he seemed really interested. He walked her to class and stayed in school that day hoping to see her again. The whole time she knew him, she never realized how seldom he went to class; he seemed very smart to her. He was always reading adventures like Treasure Island, or science fiction novels she’d never heard of, when she hung out at his house after school. They would lie side by side and read with their feet tangled at the bottom of his little bed. His mother was never really home, so Penny stayed for hours without interruption, which was a rare experience for her. She and Duane were very innocent together. Maybe they kissed a little, but mostly they talked. They walked on the beach at night and sat together in tall red lifeguard chairs high above the sand. She suspected he had other girls even though she never saw them, but that didn’t matter so much. She could tell he liked her. When Duane wanted to call Penny, he pulled the long coiled cord from the phone on the kitchen wall out the back door and sat crouched against the back of the house, smiling into the receiver out of Jerry’s view. He and Penny stayed friends for a long time.

  Duane did have another girl, and he kept her to himself. Her name was Patti and they were getting in pretty deep. She was a cute little girl, with short brown hair, dark eyes, and a sweet smile. Her family was more well-off than his, but she liked to drink and kiss, and well, she was down for just about anything. Gregg tried to ask him for details but he’d just wink and walk away. He was private about her; she was his alone. Gregg could see Duane had experience; he could just tell. While Gregg wasn’t so interested in the risky thrills consuming Duane, girls were another thing altogether. That was an interest that more than any other would come to fascinate Gregg.

  “So, I hear you have a girlfriend now.”

  Jo Jane couldn’t believe Gregg was fourteen and in love. Walking on the beach during a visit, they had their first real talk in years.

  “Yeah. Her name is Vicki.”

  “What does she look like? What color is her hair?”

  “At night it’s black, and in the daytime when the sun shines on it there’s red in it. It’s beautiful.”

  “What color are her eyes?”

  “Oh, they’re different. They’re green, and as they get close to the pupil, they’re yellow. They’re beautiful.” He walked a while, looking over her head to the water and said, “Why don’t you write a story about me and let me be the first one to read it?”

  “What kind of story?” Jo Jane asked.

  “Write about how I’ve got this sickness and I’m dying.”

  “Of what?”

  “Love.”

  They walked closer to a shallow tidal pool and Gregg stopped to roll up the cuffs of his jeans.

  “Is this your first love?”

  “I hope it’s my only one. It hurts.”

  “Yep,” Jo Jane said. She watched her cousin walk ahead a little, pick up a shell, and toss it into the pool with a flick. He had grown so tall and his hair was almost white from the sun. He was the beautiful one.

  When they got home, Duane was reading a novel, Catch-22, with total concentration, curled in the brown vinyl reclining chair in the living room. Jo Jane asked Duane how he was doing. He said, “All right,” and kept reading. She let him be and sat facing him on the daybed with the corduroy cover, writing in her notebook. She wrote down her conversation with Gregg so she wouldn’t forget this first sign of romance in her young cousin. She and Duane settled into companionable silence and stayed that way for hours.

  Later, they leaned against the recently painted dark gray walls of the boys’ bedroom. Duane and Gregg had wanted to paint them black, but this was as close as Jerry let them get. Jo Jane sat on Duane’s twin bed and Duane sat on Gregg’s, both neatly made up with matching blue bedspreads.

  “Can I tell you something?” Duane asked.

  “Anything, you know,” Jo Jane answered.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Sometimes I do crazy shit. Like last night, me and a friend went down to a bar and sat inside people’s parked cars in the parking lot for a while.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Well, he had this linoleum cutter, see? And we tore up the seats. We kicked a couple windows out, too.”

  “Duane, why would you do something like that?”

 
“Sometimes we just have to.”

  Jo Jane wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Don’t you understand?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “I guess it’s because we’re mad at society,” Duane said, looking at her with fierce eyes. “I mean it, Jo Jane.”

  “You were born pissed-off,” Jo Jane said. “Society’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “You were, too,” Duane said, and smiled a sideways smile she could feel mirrored on her face.

  “You’re right about that,” she said, and they laughed.

  She was happy he trusted her, but she was worried about him. She identified with Duane. They shared a similar rebellious and creative nature, and a similar story. Jo Jane lost her father Joe to cancer when she was nine years old, then watched her mother Janie struggle to raise her alone. Jerry and Janie were very different, but they both fussed and pried into their kids’ business, then finally succumbed to yelling. Jo Jane and Duane learned to retreat into their books and their private thoughts. They both wanted to be artists, to travel and have adventures; they couldn’t wait to be free. Duane turned his moods and frustrations toward the outside world, while Jo Jane felt weighed down by her feelings.

  “Why don’t you play me something?” she said. She passed him the acoustic guitar that was resting beside her on his bed, and he took it with a little smile and played to her until night came and it was too dark to see.

  Duane’s long, truant afternoons were consumed by teaching himself simple songs guided by his ear. Gregg says Duane’s playing passed his own like he was standing still. Duane had a fluent confidence that Gregg couldn’t believe and it seemed to develop so fast. Duane’s guitar took the intensity inside him and focused it like a sun ray through a magnifying glass.

  I’d be that good, too, if all I did all day was cut school and play, Gregg thought. But if he stayed home, he’d get caught and punished. Duane could do whatever he wanted and it never seemed to matter.

  Duane started seeking out other guys who played. He was hungry to know what other players knew and was keen to share what he was figuring out on his own. Duane’s friendship with Jim Shepley, which had begun at Frank’s Pool Hall, was built on their shared love of playing. His parents were separated and his mother lived pretty close to Duane’s house. His father was an editor at Time magazine and lived in Connecticut. Jim would come back from visits up north loaded down with new records by Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed, whose fingerpicking style he was determined to master. He and Duane listened to records for hours with their guitars in their hands. Jim also turned Duane on to WLAC, a Nashville radio station.

  WLAC was broadcast out of Nashville on a weak signal Duane could pick up only at night, as if the music were carried by the darkness itself. DJ John R. (John Richbourg) played an intoxicating blend of songs that paid no mind to genre. Ballads and true blues followed rocking dance tunes and country crooners. Duane played while he listened until he could see the shapes his fingers took behind his closed eyes. Listening to Big John R.’s show was like throwing open a window and letting the wind blow through. Suddenly everything seemed possible and music was all that mattered.

  The stronger his hands became, the easier it was to pull complex sounds out of the guitar and the sounds began to mirror the way he was feeling. His touch was getting more sensitive and accurate. He could put his skills into the service of his emotions, and he didn’t have to struggle so hard to bring everything together. He tried to toughen up the tips of his fingers by soaking them in turpentine and he washed his hands less than he should. He thought water would soften his new calluses. Playing became a maze with high walls and turns in which Duane could get lost for hours at a stretch.

  This is the quiet time I picture most when I try to place my father in the world. I see him sitting on the edge of his narrow bed, the blazing heat of the afternoon buzzing with cicadas on the other side of his bedroom window. The curved body of his guitar rests comfortably against his thigh like a piece of a puzzle returned to its proper place. Duane’s golden head bends over the guitar’s neck, and he watches his fingers stretch and flex, pressing strings. He tenses his jaw with the effort to move faster, his cheeks rising up in a squint. His mouth forms the round sounds he’s reaching for: oh, oh, oh. His thumb strikes the uppermost string, sending a harsh buzz through his body, and he blunts it suddenly with an open palm and tries again.

  Playing helped him cope with the things happening around him, things he couldn’t control or understand—like what happened to his friend Larry Beck. When Larry was fifteen, and he and Duane had both moved up to Seabreeze High School, he brought his daring from the diving board to the trampoline. In gym class, Larry could do masterful flips by bounding off a mini-tramp onto a padded mat. He gained height with each bounce and executed perfect twists in the air, then landed upright on his feet like magic. Then one afternoon, Larry overshot the mat’s edge and fell onto the hard gym floor. It was just a moment, a slight variation on all the other jumps he had completed effortlessly. He was knocked unconscious, and lay twisted in an awkward position while his classmates stood around him with their hands cupped over their mouths, their eyes tearing. He had shattered several vertebrae in his back.

  Larry didn’t realize how badly he was hurt right away. When he was brought to the hospital, he could still move his arms but not his hands or his legs. He was transferred to the Harry-Anna Children’s Hospital in Umatilla, where he spent an entire year in rehab. Larry was paralyzed and he used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Duane was one of the few friends who made the effort to visit Larry, and when he and Gregg went to Nashville for the summer, Duane sent Larry letters.

  July 1961

  Dear Larry,

  Hi! How are you doing? Fine I hope. Me and Gregg are in Nashville now spending our vacation. It’s pretty dull but I know its not as dull as it is for you. Are they giving you them daily workouts still? Hope so. Sure will be good to see you again. We’ll be going back to Daytona about August 17th, and we will probably stop in there to see you. Here’s the latest:

  1. Ernie got a motor. It’s a 165.

  2. Bob, Gregg and I have started a band, we played a Y-Teens for money.

  3. I got a guitar a red Gibson electric.

  4. I had a job for a while. Three whole days.

  5. Things are really dead around Daytona, or so I hear.

  6. Teddy Petruccianna got in a big fight with some kid from the Mainland, and the guy cut him straight down his arm.

  7. There are really some good looking girls in Nashville. We had a party the other night, and there wasn’t a homely one there.

  Everyone asks me about how you’re getting along, so get a letter off and tell me so I can tell them. Milcie hasn’t changed a bit. Peggy is looking better all the time.

  No kidding! She changed her hair and everything. At that party we had some guy brought “juice” and really got loaded and started messing with another guys girl, and he busted a coke bottle over his head! No foolin! Well, I gotta run. You take it easy and do what they tell you and you’ll be outa that hole real soon.

  See ya in August,

  Duane

  He drove his motorcycle an hour to Umatilla to see Larry. He used to take Larry on motorcycle rides to the Neptune Drive-In, speeding over the bumps used to prop up the front end of cars facing the screen. He’d whip around in a wide circle, then gun it over the bump and just fly, Larry whooping and holding on to Duane’s waist. It was hard to accept that those days were gone. Larry’s accident traumatized Duane. Life was blowing by and anything could happen at any time; that was clear.

  When Larry returned home, Duane visited him with his guitar and blew his mind with all the songs he had learned. Larry knew that success was in Duane’s near future, and he told him so. Duane was more than just another kid picking for fun; he was going to make it. It meant a lot to Duane that Larry believed in him.

  Soon Larry got a van with special levers he could drive himself, and he
’d head over to the Allman house to watch Duane and Gregg rehearse. The brothers were beginning to put their first band together.

  Duane drove his Harley into the ground, then sold it for spare parts. He used the money to buy his first electric guitar: a Gibson Les Paul Junior. The little red solid body was a simple instrument with strength of purpose and a pleasing weight in his hands. Filling up his room with that electrified sound sent a thrill through him every bit as exciting as any other high. He communed with that guitar, bending notes to his will, learning to rely on his ear by mimicking and repeating licks in popular songs.

  Duane and Gregg’s first band, the Uniques, performed at the dances held at their local YMCA. The brothers both played guitar and took turns singing, but Duane did all of the talking between songs.

  If it was her day off, Jerry would drive them to the Y and stay to watch, even though they said she made them nervous. She thought that was just ridiculous.

  Jerry was genuinely surprised by what she saw. Her gangly, awkward boys were all polished up with their hair brushed and their shirts pressed, and the music sounded more impressive in the high-ceilinged room full of kids than it did blasting through her closed garage door, driving her neighbors crazy.