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

by Galadrielle Allman

  The first thought was that they would record at the Warehouse in New Orleans, one of their favorite places to play, but the Fillmore East remained the crown jewel of the Brothers’ touring schedule, and New York City won out. The theater had fantastic acoustics, the audience was always passionate, and Bill Graham had assembled an incredible crew of people who worked with skill and devotion. Dickey called the Fillmore East the Carnegie Hall of rock and roll. The room was a little rough and dusty but still beautiful, with elaborate murals and gold-painted plaster flourishes. A velvet curtain was raised when performances began and the rows of seats encouraged the crowd to sit and listen rather than wandering the floor and socializing.

  In 1926, the theater at 105 Second Avenue was called the Commodore, part of a stretch of venues called the Jewish Rialto, where vaudeville, burlesque, and plays were performed in both Yiddish and English, drawing crowds from the Lower East Side. Then Loews purchased the theater in the forties and films were screened there until the popularity of Hollywood movies demanded larger venues. In the early sixties, it once again became a live music venue called the Village Theater. Jaimoe first played the Village Theater with Otis Redding in 1966. He said it felt like the spirits of players from the past hung out there, looking for bodies to play through. In 1968, Bill Graham decided to expand on the phenomenal success of his theater in San Francisco’s Fillmore district and bring all he had learned to Manhattan.

  Graham made sure the place was run with a great deal of love and care, even arranging for small touches like flowers in the dressing rooms provided by a local florist in exchange for an ad in the programs. Graham was passionate about supporting musicians and wanted to expose audiences to a variety of artists they might not find on their own. The shows were often eclectic: Laura Nyro paired with Miles Davis, or Albert King with the Flying Burrito Brothers.

  There were two shows a night on Fridays and Saturdays, plus shows midweek for auditions, special events, and benefits. Because there wasn’t a curfew, the late show often went until dawn. With Ratner’s, the legendary Jewish dairy restaurant, open twenty-four hours next door, Second Avenue and Sixth Street in New York City was a hot spot all night long.

  Graham went to great lengths to provide innovative solutions to some basic challenges. Rolling platforms and risers were built to speed equipment changes between bands. A system of closed-circuit TVs were set up to monitor the stage, and the crew communicated via headsets. The sound system was built for the space and customized to address the challenges loud rock bands created. The sound crew set up a dozen open mics onstage, and used a multichannel mixing board equipped with faders that rivaled some recording studios. The speakers were specially built to withstand high volume without losing detail in the upper registers. These kinds of considerations seem obvious, but Bill Graham was the first to implement them.

  The psychedelic light show was as important to the vibe as the music, even getting top billing on the marquee outside. Overseen by Joshua White, the pioneering lighting crew were performers, creating a visual accompaniment in tandem with the music. Four people worked together on a two-level scaffold and two others worked as soloists from the box seats above the exits in front of the house. The scaffold was built against the brick back wall of the theater behind the stage, and the projections were cast onto the back of a special scrim using the only lights powerful enough to show clearly: the giant bulbs used in landing lights on airport runways. Color oils they tinted themselves were swirled in convex glass dishes taken from the faces of large clocks, and the layers of wild undulating shapes approximated the psychedelic visions of a hallucinating mind. They took cameras out into the city and filmed trains and traffic, used vintage cartoon reels, color wheels made from bicycle spokes covered in transparent gels, and pieces of broken mirror to bounce light around. The crew of six was led by a master mixer at his own control board. The Fillmore East was a community, and the audience was so committed, they would sleep on the street outside to get tickets to see popular acts.

  On March 12, 1971, the Allman Brothers Band rolled through the East Village like kings, passing out packs of cigarettes and jugs of cheap wine to the tramps on Bowery from the open door of the Winnebago—Berry’s idea—to spread the love. Tom Dowd arranged for a fully equipped, multitrack studio built inside a truck to be parked beside the theater, and ran cables through the back door and onto the stage.

  The Fillmore East record is a jubilant and vital document of what made the Allman Brothers such special live performers. The album retains the spontaneity of the playing as it happened; it feels like it is unfolding as you listen. The songs are so complex, so varied, that you can hear new moments with every listen. One of my favorite games, started before I was aware I was doing it, is listening to one instrument at a time. Follow Berry from his solo in “Whipping Post” through the rest of the song. Just stay with him, pushing the guitars into the periphery. You can do it with each man, and it reveals the truth that they were all soloists in shifting moments, surprisingly creative and varied. Duane’s solo in the center of “You Don’t Love Me,” played without accompaniment, ends in a long, drawn-out note, stretched to its tense extreme, then another that resolves perfectly. When Twiggs heard the album, he said, “Those were the two finest notes Duane ever played.”

  As Duane starts to take off again, a man’s voice calls out, “Play all night!” and he winds his way through “Joy to the World” before landing with complete satisfaction and precision on the final note, a completed thought.

  The album has been one of the places I find my father when I need him. My favorite way to listen is through headphones late at night, ideally on vinyl, my mother’s copy from 1971. I have fallen asleep to the album hundreds of times; even the most rocking and intense moments soothe me; I imagine it is close to the feeling of hearing one’s parents talking together in another room while falling asleep as a child. My father sounds so close, it brings me deep comfort.

  The next best way to listen is while walking through New York City. The street life is a great counterpoint to the propulsive power of the songs, the faces and bodies ducking and weaving by like the tumbling notes in my ears. I feel Duane strutting beside me, and I broaden my stride to keep pace with him, speeding and slowing with the rhythms of the songs.

  The album gives as much as you are willing to take from it—a blasting party, light and fun, or an exploration of your own yearnings and desires. It is a perfect trigger, a way in to your dreams, and I swear as many times as I have listened, I still hear new things. It is never the same twice, unfolding like a feast before me every time.

  After the shows, the band grabbed some takeout and headed for Broadway and Sixtieth Street, to Atlantic Studios to listen to show tapes with Tom Dowd over a few beers. They decided which version of each song was best and made the set list for the next night to cover all the bases. The quality of the recordings and the experience of listening with Tom together after playing was really fantastic. While you were in it, you didn’t stop to reflect on what you were doing, and when it was over, there was no way to recall everywhere you’d been, so they were blowing their own minds a bit. It sounded damn good.

  The band played at the high level captured by the album five and six days a week, as Duane reminded an interviewer. The album was a document of two shows among hundreds. Tom pieced together a song or two, notably marrying two versions of “You Don’t Love Me” to keep the best solos from each night together, but it was basically untouched, captured as played.

  They soon realized it would take four album sides to do the shows justice, and editing the songs was never discussed by the band and Tom. But Atlantic wasn’t thrilled with the idea of releasing a double album. Jerry Wexler thought a few of the jams were excessive, and he suggested they be shaved down for radio play. Berry insisted it be sold at a special low price to keep it within their fans’ reach. Walden and the band fought for it and won; it would be a double album, priced as a single album.

  Johnny Sandl
in explained that the players were mixed in the positions they stood in onstage, something I can hear clearly but never consciously thought about, and it really gives a listener the feeling of standing in front of them. It also creates a spatial separation between the two guitars that allows you to appreciate their interplay.

  It was also a shining accomplishment for Gregg. Jaimoe said it best: “Gregg is every bit the genius that Duane was.” His phrasing, his raw honesty is the hook, the way in for everyone. Tom Dowd mixed in the sounds from the crowd between songs, and you can feel the intimacy of the space, and the excitement builds as the show goes on. Members of the audience call out songs they want to hear, and whistle and shout.

  Jaimoe once described the experience this way: The moment you think you know all there is to know is the moment things get interesting. What you thought was the solid ground beneath your feet was the still surface of a deep sea. Playing wasn’t just a matter of mastery. Duane had learned the lesson of the Delta blues, how a single naked melody could be completely captivating if a musician was willing to infuse each note with emotion. There was nowhere to hide, and if you weren’t feeling it, no one else would, either. When that kind of stripped down soulfulness is where each player begins, when their direct and emotionally honest playing is electrified and laid over driving rhythms, the music becomes vital, a torrent, a force of nature.

  On one night of the run, Duane invited Jaimoe’s friend from home, Juicy Carter, a saxophone player, to sit in with the band. When Tom heard the warbling horn bleeding into his mics, atonal jazz riffs sliding in between the guitars sounding like a damn traffic accident, he put a stop to it. Duane thought they were smoking hot. He didn’t want Juicy to go, but the playback didn’t lie. It was one too many cooks in the kitchen, and the whole third night was essentially unusable.

  When the album was released in July, the buzz about it soon turned into a roar. Friends shared the experience, passing joints while stretched out on floors in front of stereo speakers, sitting in parked cars, listening to all four sides play out on late-night radio.

  Albhy Galuten said, “During this period, young people really cared about music and really listened to it. If a new album came out, you would take it home and sit down in front of the speakers and you would do nothing else except listening to it. So, you could believe then that you could write a song to end world hunger. There was this sense that there was so much power in music because it was in the zeitgeist, and that’s part of what made the music great. You were making it for people thinking, They are going to get this. And it’s going to mean something to them, and it did mean something to them. So you were stimulated in the creative process by your audience. It was so incredible and so dynamic.”

  Young guitarists started approaching the licks like they were cracking codes, sharing their breakthroughs with one another as they learned. The record was a spark that lit fires in generations of young players, including each guitarist who would later grow up to become members of later incarnations of the Allman Brothers Band. At Fillmore East carved a path for itself out in the world and it was paved with gold. The Brothers were awarded their first gold record in September 1971.

  “Dickey said something interesting one time, a cool analogy,” Jaimoe told me. “We were in the Winnebago, maybe we’d been drinking, and he said, ‘If this was 1850 and we was running around the country like this, we’d be Jesse James and the Cole Younger boys.’ What a good analogy. They were the baddest cats at what they were doing whether it was right, wrong, or indifferent, and so were we.” The analogy would soon prove prophetic; they became outlaws.

  A little over a week after their triumphant run at the Fillmore, the Brothers took a wrong turn in the Winnie on a night drive from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Jackson, Mississippi, that landed them in a rural Alabama jail. To be honest about it, Red Dog took the bad turn, which made sense when you factored in the mescaline. One minute he was driving, trying to maintain while the white line was waving back at him, and the next he was rousing from a nap in the backseat of a rental car in the parking lot of a little diner in broad daylight. Well, shit. He was worn-out and he could see through the window that everyone was accounted for, no harm done. Except Dickey, where was he? He was doubled over puking behind the Winnie within sight of a table full of country cops. Red Dog lay back down and closed his eyes.

  Ironically, it wasn’t the half dozen bedraggled hippies ordering breakfast in the middle of the day or the sick young man ruining everyone else’s meal in the parking lot that caused the hassle. It was Jaimoe simply walking in the door that made them decide to shake these boys down. One of the waitresses said in a loud voice that she wasn’t going to serve the nigger, and the guys knew it was time to go.

  They had been through this shit before. In fact, many small clubs made them sign race riders before they unloaded their gear, a legal declaration that they were responsible for bringing a black man on the premises and would be responsible for any damage that ensued.

  Red Dog woke up choking on the fatty underside of a sweaty cop’s arm reaching over his neck to pull his stash out of his pocket. He was holding some pot and a bottle of penicillin for the drip, a hazard of the road and his deep and abiding love of the ladies.

  While Red Dog and Dickey were being frisked and put into the police car, the rest of the band quietly repaired to a rental car that was parked out of view of the diner and tried to get away. Gregg had a case filled with contraband and began tossing small bags of drugs out the window as they drove. As soon as the police realized the men had taken off, they sent another police cruiser after them, and everyone reunited in the Grove Hill, Alabama, jail. The band and crew were put in four cells, except Jaimoe, who was held in a separate cell, segregated out. The mood was jovial at first, as they took up singing every prison tune they could think of at the tops of their voices. They drew a crowd of local kids to the windows, and Red Dog decided to give them a real show. He stripped naked and did his most uncanny impression of a wild gorilla in a cage. He was still tripping his balls off.

  The little jail decided to move them over to the county jail in Jackson, Alabama; they would be better equipped to deal with such freakishness.

  It took three days and a few grand to liberate the band, with the help of John Condon, the same lawyer they had called on to defend Twiggs. All in all, it wasn’t such a bad scene. For some reason, the Winnie and their suitcases were never searched, and the small amounts of contraband they had squirreled away in their pockets didn’t amount to much. Luckily, they had money to spread around, since road manager Willie Perkins refused to turn over the briefcase with the band’s earnings inside. He wore it handcuffed to his wrist and wouldn’t give up the key to Christ himself. They were kept in the black side of the segregated jail and they made friends with the help of a couple of cartons of cigarettes and some candy. They played cards and told tall tales. They talked their way out of a few scuffles, and were back on the road and on to the next gig as soon as they were free.

  By the end of June, forty or so shows later, they were called back to the Fillmore East. Bill Graham had decided to close the theater and he wanted to give it a proper send-off. Music was being corporatized. In Graham’s mind, Woodstock had changed the game significantly, showing the kind of power rock and roll had to draw people by the hundreds of thousands. Many musicians and their labels set their sights on big paydays, and priced themselves out of reach of small places like the Fillmores East and West. Graham saw the writing on the wall, and decided to get out of the business of owning venues. He wrote a detailed goodbye letter, explaining his thinking, published in The Village Voice. In it, he decried greedy artists, managers, and promoters, apathetic audiences, and the press for portraying so negatively his high standards and toughness. It’s a remarkable and principled statement that says a lot about Graham’s values. He ended by saying he was tired and needed a rest. He then wrote:

  The rock scene in this country was created by a need felt by the people, express
ed by the musicians, and, I hope, aided to some degree by the efforts of the Fillmores. But whatever has become of that scene, wherever it turned into—the music industry of festivals, 20,000-seat halls, miserable production quality, and second-rate promoters—however it went wrong—please, each of you, stop and think whether or not you allowed it, whether or not you supported it regardless of how little you received in return.

  “That’s all Folks” was spelled out on the marquee and the final show was scheduled for June 27, 1971.

  Jonny Podell told me the twenty-nine people who worked the Fillmore East voted for the bands they wanted to play. They chose the Allman Brothers Band to be the final act, Bill’s absolute favorite band. “Bill loved three things: money, music and the Allman Brothers Band, and not in that order,” Jonny said. “He might have put the Brothers first.”

  The band played for two nights leading up to the final night, and by all accounts, the second night was stunning. Graham turned the house lights down, put a spotlight on the mirrored ball hanging from the high ceiling, and filled the room with spinning starlight. The band played for hours, lulling the audience into a waking dream. It was almost four hours before the band finally touched back down. When the theater’s heavy doors were at last pushed open by the silent, awestruck audience, a single shaft of pale light broke through. Bill Graham stood beside Duane and they marveled at the beam of morning sunlight swirling with dust motes, coming in through the out door.

  “It’s like church,” Duane said.

  The epic final night included sets by the Beach Boys, Country Joe, Mountain, Albert King, J. Geils Band, and Edgar Winter. It was broadcast live on WNEW radio. A red rose was pinned to each seat, and admission was by invitation only. Jo Jane witnessed Duane negotiating with the Beach Boys and Bill Graham over who would play last, and Duane wasn’t budging. She could see how strong and direct he still was, the way he held his shoulders square with his hands on his hips and met people’s eyes. He could be surrounded by men twice his weight and a foot taller than him, and he never backed down. He was the same tough kid he’d always been, and she saw his young self shining through him, his essential energy still so strong. He prevailed; the Beach Boys played first.