One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (21 page)

LINDA OAKLEY:
It was obvious to the girls at home that things were getting worse. Instead of coming home, relaxing, and having family down time, they’d come back and immediately start looking to score, waiting for the man. We used to get so excited for them to come home. We’d scrub up the kids and put them in their best clothes, and pretty up ourselves and then the kids would go to bed and we’d all disappear into our rooms for our little reunions. Then they just started coming back and only being focused on scoring and getting high again.

ODOM:
They were in such bad shape that they were struggling even to do a forty-five-minute set. Duane recognized that and that was the reason to go to Buffalo and clean up.

PERKINS:
They all needed help and everyone knew it.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Duane just put his foot down and said, “This is what we need to do.” When Berry was up in Buffalo testifying for Twiggs, Duane came upstairs at the Big House into the room where Dixie and Candy and I were playing beauty parlor, putting pin curls in our hair.

We were embarrassed for him to see us like that, but he just said, “I know we’ve been treating you all really bad. It’s not us, it’s the dope and we’re gonna quit. We haven’t been fair to you, but we’re gonna go up there and get clean. Condon found a place and I want you to know it’s going to be different.” And we took that seriously, because when Duane declared something, he meant it.

DOUCETTE:
I had left the band in the middle of a tour, because my drug problem was getting out of control and I had to kick. I had been down in Florida for a few months when Duane called and said he’s going up to New York to get squared up and I said, “Thank God for that. Take care of business, then get your ass down here and we’ll go fishing.” I was happy he was dealing with the problem.

PODELL:
I was sitting with Duane on a bed in a hotel room in Buffalo as he was about to check into rehab and he said, “Podell, you know why I’m stopping this shit?” I gave a sarcastic “Why?” expecting some song and dance and unsure of where this was headed—because my real relationships were with the other guys, not so much Duane. But he looks right at me and says, “Because I’m not doing
it
anymore. It’s doing me.”

RED DOG:
I cold turkeyed myself for six days before we went. I didn’t really need to go to Buffalo, but where Duane went, I went.

PAYNE:
That rehab was a joke. It was before real drug rehab existed, and it really was just a nuthouse, a psych ward.

RED DOG:
It was a real nuthouse, with guys in white jackets and shock treatments going on behind some doors.

PAYNE:
The ladies came up to visit us. Me and Berry busted out of there one night … and went and got some dope. Then we snuck back in. That gives you an idea of what it was like.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Dixie, Candy, and I went to visit and support them. We missed them and they missed us. It was a conjugal visit. We went to the facility to see them and they were staying four to the room. I had Brittany with me and we had a nice little reunion. Then we went back to the hotel, and prepared to get some supper. There was a knock on the door. It was Duane, Berry, Kim, and Red Dog. They busted themselves out; to hear them tell it, they climbed out of the window. Every one of the guys had a lady there, except Red Dog, who had evidently had a little romance with a patient at the facility. More hotel rooms were secured and we were so happy to be together. Pretty exciting little adventure!

During this time, Twiggs Lyndon, post-trial, was serving his time in another Buffalo mental hospital.

RED DOG:
They would take me out of there and drive me across town to the city sanitarium, where Twiggs was being held, so I could visit. I wasn’t crazy or convicted, I was there for a drug thing but still they transported me in a special vehicle, with no door handles inside the screen cage. We get there, they take me out, escort me in, as soon as Twiggs and me are in there, they leave and I visit alone with Twiggs. Duane was supposed to go, too, but he didn’t want to see Twiggs in there, like that, and I don’t think Twiggs wanted to be seen by Duane. He was a very prideful person.

Duane checked us out of there and I was his excuse. They had put us all on methadone, and I was nodding off. The doctor was talking to Duane, who looked across at me and said, “Look at him. He quit before we came up here and he’s nodding.” That upset him and he was packing up minutes later.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Hope springs eternal and I hoped they had turned the corner with this thing. Then Mr. and Mrs. Condon took us out to a very nice dinner. We were all kind of in a daze and the guys were on methadone. Candy was about to lose it because Kim was just showing his ass. We were sitting at a long table and Kim put these chairs together and just lay there with his arms folded across his chest, like he was laid out for his final viewing. Candy was trying to be sociable and show her gratitude to these people for all they had done for us. Perhaps because of the recent craziness, Kim wasn’t cooperating.

JAIMOE:
I guess they got a handle on whatever they went up there for, but it really didn’t make nobody no saint.

During the visit, someone stopped at a liquor store, saving the $3.79 receipt for a bottle of J&B scotch so as to be reimbursed by the band’s bank account. After checking out, everyone in the group returned to Macon, except for Duane and Dixie, who traveled to New York City.

ODOM:
I went up to Buffalo and checked them out and Duane was clean. I do believe that Duane went to New York just to say “I’m clean” to anybody and everybody, and he wanted to visit his friend John Hammond Jr.

HAMMOND:
He came over to my loft and we played acoustic guitars and had a blast for hours. I so wish I had taped it! He seemed to be in really good spirits, his head clear and excited to go on. Things were happening for them. The live album had come out and was a hit and they were playing bigger places. Their star was rising—which seemed exactly as it should be.

We talked about him perhaps producing an album for me. There were all these songs that I played in my show that I talked to him about recording and he said that he would like to be involved. There was nothing concrete, but he was talking business, what percent he would take and this and that. I was not a business guy like that, and he was very together about the band, his finances, dealing with the business end of things. He was a very bright guy who knew how talented he was and wasn’t going to take himself lightly.

PERKINS:
He was self-taught in business, as in everything else, and he learned quickly. I remember him coming back from the
Layla
sessions, walking into Phil’s office and spreading fifteen hundred-dollar bills across the desk and saying, “Look what I got.” I believe they had paid him union day rates and given him the fifteen hundred as a bonus. He was very proud of that, but Phil said, “That’s great, but you should have gotten a lot more than that,” and he worked it out for him to get royalties.

HAMMOND:
We were both excited to work together again soon, but he had to get home, and I had a gig in Newfoundland, so I left and he left and we said we’d talk about this project soon.

PODELL:
I was on a call when my secretary buzzed in and said, “Jonny, it’s Duane Allman on line one.” I ignored it, because Duane never called me like Gregg, Dickey, and Butch would. Five minutes later she called back, saying, “It’s Duane Allman again, Jonny,” and I ignored it again, thinking it’s one of my friends, who used to call and say he was Elvis. She buzzed me again five minutes later and said, “Please pick up. It’s Duane Allman again.”

So I pick up, annoyed, and go, “Who is this?”

And there’s that unmistakable voice: “
It’s Duane Allman, motherfucker! I pay your rent
.”

My voice went up about ten notches in nervousness: “Duane, when did you get out?”

And he goes, “You know that friend of yours—does she have any downs?” He meant barbiturates, and I said, “No, she doesn’t do that.”

He had literally gotten out of rehab that day! I heard desperation in his voice, a desperation I would come to know all too well in future years. I was so sad and disappointed by that call, and my heart beats fast even talking about it forty-some years later.

PERKINS:
I thought he was clear as a bell. He was clean from the heroin. He was doing lots of coke, like everyone else in the music business. But that really wasn’t considered a problem at the time. My last recollection of talking to Duane is he was upbeat, positive, and ready to go. Things were just getting rolling.

M
C
EUEN:
I thought Duane had really cleaned up. I ran into him at the Atlanta airport that fall, and he said, “John McEuen, it’s sure good to see you.” He was just Mr. Nice Guy and seemed very upbeat and positive; it was like running into someone you knew from high school. He said, “I see you have your banjo there. Take it out and play a tune.” I said, “Duane, we’re in the airport,” and he said, “Anyone in Georgia who doesn’t want to hear a banjo doesn’t belong in Georgia. Come on—take it out.” So I sat there and played it for him for about ten minutes and he gave me an Allman Brothers T-shirt and we said good-bye.

After one day in New York, Allman joined the rest of the band in Macon, returning on the evening of October 28.

RED DOG:
Duane visited me the night he got back to town, partly because he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to slide back into doing heroin, to make sure I was all right. He sat on my couch in my apartment, squeezing my arm and looking me right in the eye, and said, “You haven’t done any, have you?” and I said, “No, man.”

And I fired right back on him: “Hey, have you?”

And he said, “Me neither. I ain’t looking back. Ain’t no more beans for us. We’re on our way now.” He looked me right in the eye and said, “This is a religion.” He was aware of the spirit, though I don’t recall ever directly talking about religion with him.

LINDA OAKLEY:
Duane was so happy and full of positive energy. He was always like that unless he was just totally wasted. He was the leader, the great soul, and he kept saying, “We are on a mission and it’s time for this thing to happen.” He was moving forward, and that energized everyone else. Everyone fed off of that.

RED DOG:
Everyone in the band felt it. It was coming after all those years of grinding. The band might have had instant stardom, but I wouldn’t have traded nothing for the grinding it out, because we built something together.

On October 29, 1971, the day after returning to Macon, Duane called Doucette at his Florida home to check in on his old friend.

DOUCETTE:
He sounded great. He jumped through the phone, with an urgency in his voice that shouted, “It’s me. It’s Duane! I’m back!”

He goes, “You doing all right?” and I said, “Man, never better. I’m grooving and the fish are running. This is it, baby.” He said, “I’ll be down tonight. I already booked a reservation. I’m gonna ride down to the office, get my mail and get some money. We’ll go fishing and then we’re going back to work.” I wasn’t so sure about going back to work with the band, but I was so happy to hear from him.

LINDA OAKLEY:
It was my birthday. Berry and Brittany and I were outside carving jack-o’-lanterns when Duane and Dixie brought me this huge bouquet of flowers, and we were all so happy. All of our dreams seemed to be coming true.
Fillmore
was going to be their opus and they were about to become stars and all of our struggles would be done.

After visiting for a while, Duane got on his Harley-Davidson Sportster, which had been modified with extended forks that made it harder to handle. He had also cut the helmet strap so the protective headgear could not be secured. Dixie Meadows and Candace Oakley trailed him in a car.

Duane Allman, 1946–1971.

Coming up over a hill and dropping down, Allman saw a flatbed lumber truck blocking his way. Duane pushed his bike to the left to swerve around the truck, but realized he was not going to make it and dropped his bike to avoid a collision. He hit the ground hard, the bike landing atop him. Duane was alive and initially seemed OK, but he fell unconscious in the ambulance and had catastrophic head and chest injuries. He died in surgery three hours after the accident. The cause of death was listed as “severe injury of abdomen and head.” It was two days shy of a year since Oakley prayed for Duane to recover from his OD in a Nashville hospital, begging God for one more year.

He was twenty-four.

CHAPTER

12

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

A
S WORD OF
Duane’s accident began to circulate around Macon, many people began to drift toward the waiting room at the Medical Center.