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Allman Brothers Band guitarist Duane Allman.
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Civic Arena show in 1981 made Alan Paul an Allman Brothers superfan and biographer

John Gellman

Civic Arena show in 1981 made Alan Paul an Allman Brothers superfan and biographer

The first time Alan Paul saw the Allman Brothers Band, it wasn’t the legendary guitar duels of Dickey Betts with Duane Allman. Nor was Betts with Warren Haynes or Haynes with Derek Trucks.

It was the Betts era with Dan Toler and, at one point, the January 1981 show at the Civic Arena featured Mike Lawler stepping out to play a keytar solo. In the grand scheme, it’s probably better than them making a disco song, but, says Allmans’ biographer Alan Paul, “it really was like a low point for the band.”

Being an enthusiastic 14-year-old fan, that did little to quell the Allman joy of the Squirrel Hill native, who has now released “Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Album That Defined the ’70s” (St. Martin’s Press, $32), a follow-up to his 2014 book “One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band.”

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Paul, who now lives in Maplewood, N.J., will come back home on Thursday as part of his book tour, stopping at Cinderlands Warehouse (2601 Smallman St., Strip District) which was brewed a special Brothers and Sisters India Pale Ale.

It is the same weekend that the Thunderbird is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Watkins Glen with a show at Hartwood Acres Saturday featuring local ABB tribute band Butler Street Revival with Chuck Leavell, a keyboardist for the Allmans from 1972-1976 and then in 1986. He did no keytar solos.

Here’s what Paul had to say in an interview this week:

Having done the oral history, what made you want to follow with this book?

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It's just sort of a pandemic project, at least in terms of its origin. I had a lot of ideas I was kicking around. I had a really long conversation with my friend, Brad Tolinski, who was the longtime editor-in-chief of Guitar World and sort of my mentor. He was egging me on to do more Allman Brothers. I said, “I feel like I wanna move to something else,” and Brad was like, “Look, you have an expertise in and respect and credibility about a band that people really, really love and care about. And I don't think you should move away from that. And furthermore, I think ‘Brothers and Sisters” is really unexplored.”

So, he completely put the idea in my head and I began to explore it. We talked about it a little more and I ended up somewhere quite different than he imagined. But he really deserves the credit for the initial idea. And what was interesting about this book and this era is that it presented the opportunity to write about much more than the Allman Brothers, through the lens of the Allman Brothers. I was fascinated with this era and the way that they were still involved in the Jimmy Carter campaign. And there was a pretty good documentary, “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” which I covered [in the first book] but still left a lot on the table, so to speak. So, I really wanted to do that and then the other thing that I really wanted to explore was the band's relationship to The Grateful Dead.

How would you summarize the relationship with the Dead?

Well, it's complicated. That's why I wrote two chapters on it. I would summarize it by saying that despite some real differences they had a profound sense of brotherhood and commonality. The Dead was older than the Allman Brothers as a band, so in the initial stages, the influence was certainly from the Dead to the Allman Brothers. And the success of the Dead was an indicator to the Allman Brothers that they were on the right track. So they were an inspiration, I think, musically and also business-wise during the years when things were a little lean for them. They had a sense that they could work and, then, because they started to get more successful, that inspiration went the other way and the Dead saw their success.

And this is directly from Sam Cutler, who was [the Dead’s] manager and who I spoke to at length for the book and who just passed away. Sam said that, basically, the Allman Brothers were proof that the California band of freaks wasn't anomalous, that it existed all over the country. So, they had this sort of business sympatico-ness where they each saw the other as a way to get further and proof that there was more of an audience that they hadn't reached yet. And then they liked each other. They had a real brotherhood within the members and also then within the way they related to the crew, was very unique in which their crews were sort of elevated to be almost equal to the band members. And then the other thing is that the Dead, and this really comes to a head at the shows they did in ’73  — June 9 and 10 at RFK Stadium and then at Watkins Glen — the Dead were far, far ahead of anyone else in rock in exploring audio, and how to make it work, which was becoming more and more of an issue because of these giant venues. It’s very different to amplify a stadium, much less a giant field with a half-a-million people as opposed to a club or theater. The Dead were pioneering in that and they not only an inspiration for the Allman Brothers but teachers. They shared their info, which was really helpful.

Let's jump back and just talk about your intro to the Allman Brothers.

I was probably 7 years old when “Brothers and Sisters” came out and “Ramblin’ Man” was just the biggest hit. It made a huge impression on me. I was already really, really attracted to music, mostly what I would listen to on the radio, and my brother and sister, whenever we had a couple of bucks, would go up to National Record Mart in Squirrel Hill and buy things and sometimes we would pool our money and argue about what to buy, but we bought a lot of 45s and albums and just listened to the radio a lot, and “Ramblin’ Man” was on so much.

One of my earliest musical memories was a talent show at Colfax, my elementary school, and I was probably in like first or second grade and this kid was in eighth grade and he got up and did basically a karaoke “Ramblin’ Man,” and he had the big feathered hair and a fake silk shirt, unbuttoned, and some kind of boots on. He walked around the stage singing “Ramblin’ Man’,” which I think must have just been to a recording of the song because there was no actual karaoke.

I thought it was like the coolest thing in the world. I just made a huge impression, but in terms getting into them and actually understanding who they were and stuff, it was my brother. I think I probably was 12. He handed me a copy of “Eat a Peach” and said “Listen to this.” He had a great stereo and I got really hooked.

The Allmans weren’t common material for someone that young.

Yeah, I wish I could go back and interview 12- or 13-year-old me and say, “What do you like about these guys so much?” I guess I was sucked into the whole mystique. In eighth grade at middle school, I wrote an essay on Duane. I chose him as a “Great American.” And I think I was probably being a little cheeky, like I already knew that was a little perverse. I do remember that in that essay I really pushed what turned out to be a false narrative that Duane was killed by a peach truck and that's why they named the album “Eat a Peach.” I don't know where I came by that. Probably my brother told it to me but I guess I had this romantic side. I thought that was amazing. I guess I was at least partially fooled by an urban legend.

What were your impressions of first seeing them?

So, they broke up in ’76, which is the sort of where this book ends. Basically, there's a little epilogue to sum things up, but it basically ends with the ’76 breakup. They reformed in ’78 and then they put out their first comeback album in ’79, which was pretty decent, and then they did two more albums signed and they were pretty bad.

This tour that I saw would have been in between those two [1981 at the Civic Arena] and it really was like a low point for the band. I had no idea of that, of course. The lineup was Dickey and Gregg Allman, which is all I probably really cared about. The drummer was Frank Toler, whose brother Dan Toler was the co-lead guitarist with Dickey. And the embarrassing part for them was they had this keytar player, this guy Mike Lawler, who was basically a keyboard player and was a fine piano player.

He could sort of replicate the Chuck Leavell stuff. And they're trying to keep up with the times, so he also would come up front on some songs and play keytar, and I think almost anyone, including all the band members, would say this is the most embarrassing period, man, because Jamoe was out, which they ended up really regretting, and the keytar was in, but I had no idea. I just was so excited that I was seeing them. It was all fun to me and, and it is funny to look back now.

How did you keep in touch with the band and follow them after that?

Well, I never stopped listening to them. I graduated and went to the University of Michigan and I kind of stumbled into a job at a place called Rick's American Cafe that had music five nights a week and it really solidified my passion for music, especially for blues. So, I went through a period for a few years where I was really into blues and I guess almost like a blues purist for a while. The Allman Brothers were probably one of the only rock bands I still listened to that, to my ear, still had credibility. I didn't have much use for bands that were playing in theaters, much less arenas or stadiums.

By the time they reformed in ’89, I wrote for Tower Pulse magazine, the free magazine that came out in Tower Records, and I managed to get the assignment to do the Allman Brothers story when “Seven Turns” came out, which was actually 1990. So, I interviewed Gregg, Dickey, Warren Haynes. That story played a role in me getting hired at Guitar World Magazine in 1991.… So I got to interview them a lot. And that was when I started to get more and more involved with them through that.

I met Kirk West, who was basically the tour manager, but he did all this other stuff, like he was the archivist and the historian and photographer. And so his name was the Tour Mystic. He liked my work and he started pulling me in to do work with him on archival releases. And that was a big turning point for me where I became more of an insider instead of a regular journalist. And you needed a certain amount of that to get anywhere with those guys because like Gregg and Dickey could be pretty paranoid about press. They'd been burned so many times.

What were the experiences of interviewing the different members. I know Dickey can be a little bit prickly, right?

Well, yeah, sort of.... I’ve interviewed Dickey many, many times. He was usually gracious, polite, thoughtful. He has all of that inside — he is a complex character. He one time turned on me and I became the subject of his anger, and it was over something very, very minor and came out of nowhere and it was shocking. I'm glad it happened just because I knew all the stories about Dickey and how tempestuous he could be but when you're actually on the receiving end of it, pretty disconcerting. Remember, he’s the guy who wrote “Blue Sky” and “Jessica.”

This is what I wrote in the book: “Betts’ personality was as complex as his musical background. He was a tightly coiled athlete with a mighty temper as well as a student of Zen Buddhism and karate, which he used to channel and control his compulsiveness, anger and occasional violent urges. More than once an audience member made the mistake of making sexual advances at his wife, Dayle  ... only to find themselves in a crumpled heap at set break when Dickie would leap off the stage, pummel the cat caller and then calmly retreat backstage to relax with a beer.

Despite such behavior, he was also a true believer in the hippie ethos of the era and would go on to write some of the most peaceful, joyful songs in the rock canon....” He's a complex character. I mostly saw the good side or the neutral side, but I heard so many stories of the other side.

What about Gregg?

Gregg could be intimidating but the intimidation factor was more so because you brought into it knowing who he was, if that makes any sense. He didn't behave in an intimidating way. He was pretty quiet and appeared to be brooding, but that was largely a shell. His problems, when they manifested themselves, were more of a self-destructive nature. He really wasn't violent. Nobody was scared of Gregg in the way they would be scared of Dickey.

Gregg did so many interviews over the years, because he toured so much, and he was always game for doing those kind of interviews, but as a result of that I think he was sometimes like half checked out, you know, when he did the interviews. But I did have the opportunity to interview him a lot and a few of the times stand out. He could be really, really thoughtful.

When he was in the mood, he loved to talk about Duane. That was a kind of a touchy, difficult thing with him because you never quite knew if he was in the mood. If he was in the wrong mood, it was very emotional for him. But he loved to talk about like singer-songwriters, folk and the inspiration that he took from, like, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Tim Buckley. We would talk about that a lot. He was cool to talk to him about that because it was different for him. Most people didn't really seem to recognize that side of him, so once I did, I found that to be a good key to go to with him.

Alan Paul will discuss the book at 7 p.m. Thursday at Cinderlands Warehouse, 2601 Smallman St. Admission is $11.50; https://www.exploretock.com.

First Published: July 25, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: July 26, 2023, 9:56 p.m.

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Allman Brothers Band guitarist Duane Allman.  (John Gellman)
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