Silence Ain’t Golden Anymore

  • Saturday, May 27, 2017
Gregg Allman
Gregg Allman

There are times – moments – in life that you never forget. That night in 1972, sleeping over at my buddy Bart’s house, was one of them. We had been to a middle school concert and his big brother was in the band (very cool stuff for a 14-year-old!) and as we lay on the floor in our sleeping bags in Bart’s room he said he wanted to play a record that his brother listened to. And, as the needle of the cheap plastic record player traced the groove in that record, my life was changed.

No, seriously – I discovered, with the Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East, that songs didn’t have to be three minutes long or be silly love songs. I was changed when I heard the brothers’ music – Duane on slide guitar and Gregg singing and playing the Hammond B3. And his voice was one I heard throughout the next 45 years…

Gregg was just a regular kid from a regular family until his dad was murdered. That left his mom in the unusual (for the time) position of single mother. He and his brother were tight – and that relationship got them through an unpleasant stay at military school in Nashville. He says his life changed when he saw a concert in Nashville featuring Otis Redding and after that he and Duane spent their money and time on music, both in buying records and learning to play guitar.

But I’m not here to write a bio of the man – you can Wiki the details for yourself. Instead, I am writing to reflect on how artists impact our lives.

By the time I heard the Allman Brothers Band Duane was dead, killed in a tragic accident on a daylit street in Macon, Georgia. Just an accident – no drugs, no alcohol, no suicide. He loved life – and then it was over. Gregg loved his brother and struggled to continue the band – how could there be an Allman Brothers Band with only one Allman? Their single most famous hit came out of this period – Ramblin’ Man, written and sung by Dickey Betts. And that’s where I parted company (for a time) with my Brothers. I had left top 40 for these guys and now – what the heck?

So I focused instead on the famous jams – Whipping Post, You Don’t Love Me (with the legendary and anonymous shout from the crowd to “Play All Night!”), In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. And the insanely long Mountain Jam which, in the days of the LP, took up two whole sides of the album Eat A Peach. This was heady stuff for a teen, and one of the ways I judged other kids’ taste in music. If you didn’t dig the Brothers, well….

And that is all of our teen years. We form a construct of what is good and right and cool and IMPORTANT in the world. And, to me, 12-minute songs with long drawn out guitar solos were, well, IMPORTANT. Music was important. The Blues were important (even though at that tender age I didn’t even know what the blues were, I heard it in Gregg Allman’s world-weary voice). I didn’t want to ever again hear a silly love song. I wanted to hear what a man felt, deep in his soul, in the places no one dared to look. I wanted to feel what life was about, have it reach me in places I didn’t know existed, leave me a little uncomfortable for my effort. And Gregg and his Brothers did that for me.

“Tied To A Whipping Post?” – well of course I understood, with all that my 14-15-16 year-old existence could conjure up. “You Don’t Love Me?” – been there, done that. Well, sort of, in a teen-ager kind of way. Will I live on, will I be strong? – of course, but “It’s Not My Cross to Bear.”

You see, The Allman Brothers Band, with Gregg’s voice leading the way, took teen angst to a new depth. We weren’t just teenagers – we had the blues. We felt the weight of the world, we had paid our dues and could feel the world-weariness seep into our bones. And if Gregg’s words weren’t enough we had his brother Duane on standby to deliver the blues courtesy of a Gibson Les Paul and Coricidin bottle slide. It made the later grunge and alt movements hard to take seriously…

But my life moved on. I got married, had a bunch (I mean a Bunch!) of kids. And every now and again I would hear a tune that took me back – but not often, because, remember, the ABB weren’t exactly pop stars. You didn’t hear Mountain Jam on the radio after all. But I remember in the mid-1990s a friend loaned me his CD of the Fillmore East concerts and I played it over and over again. And it wasn’t just nostalgia – now, years later, over a decade of marriage, four kids, jobs, health and life later I actually could understand. I finally HAD a life – not the blues, honestly, at least not often, but a life of experience and trouble and success and failure and heartbreak and pain and joy and love. I could understand the music because I had lived my own music.

In June, 2006 I had the extreme pleasure to see the Allman Brothers Band, with Gregg in fine form, at the Chattanooga Riverbend Festival. With my wife of over 20 years by my side, we sat through an amazing show, everything I hoped it would be. They sang, they played, we sang, we swayed. The crowd – the whole crowd – was part of the show. Because they got it – they had heard the blues, they had heard their hopes and fears and their lives, in the songs from this band, from this voice. And no one was sad – the Blues isn’t about sadness, the Blues is about life – they were glad to a part of the life they were in and the songs that carried them forward.

Is it crazy to put that much stock in music, in the words and notes from a band, from a voice? I dunno, maybe. But I’ve got nearly 40 CDs featuring Gregg’s voice (including that Chattanooga show) and a couple dozen LPs available if you want to explore. You see, pop songs come and go, a run up the charts is nearly as fast as the run back down. But music with soul, with depth, with intensity and feeling and purpose? Well, it never gets old. And you can never get enough. Fillmore East sounds as fresh today as when I first heard it as a boy, 45 years ago.

My wife and I had the pleasure of seeing Gregg lead his Brothers again in Huntsville with our son John in 2010. And we saw him as a solo act in Nashville at the Ryman, among the most treasured live shows I can recall. I think Diana was a bit obsessed with him – I joked if he came down Harmony Lane I could be in trouble. We saw Gregg one last time in 2016 at the Tennessee Theater in Knoxville.

The years had been hard on Gregg Allman. In his book “My Cross To Bear” he doesn’t pull any punches. He did it all – lived a life of debauchery, of drugs and alcohol, of women and bad relationships and crime and mayhem. And I came away from that read with little respect for the man. He had had done it all and lived to tell about it – did all the wrong things and made it work while the rest of us did all the right things and hoped for the best. But he had a heart in there somewhere – he just wanted to make music, to live his life, to make a mark. And the years softened him – so much so that in his later years his voice took on a reality, a deep blues that was imagined as a young man but now carried the weight and reality of a life of choices. When we saw him last his voice was real and wearied – he finally could sing the blues with all the soul and the depth and the agony of a T Bone Walker or a Muddy Waters. Gregg no longer was an act – he was the real deal, pouring his life out for the crowds who had lived it with him.

In 1972 I heard that voice for the first time. In 2016 I heard it for the last time live. Gregg Lenoir Allman, born December 8, 1949, died May 27, 2017. We will not hear his voice again.

And silence ain’t golden, anymore.

Kenny Fleshman



Kenny Fleshman
Kenny Fleshman
Latest Headlines
Opinion
Democratic View On Top State Senate Issues - March 18, 2024
  • 3/18/2024

Campbell bill seeks to save lives by studying suicide trends in Tennessee 3 p.m. Senate Regular Calendar — SB 1787 , by Sen. Heidi Campbell, would require state health officials to produce ... more

The Odor Of Mendacity - And Response (2)
  • 3/16/2024

The Fulton County judge, Scott McAfee, overseeing the Fani Willis prosecution of Donald Trump and eighteen other defendants has spoken. In response to a motion by defendants to remove Willis ... more

Capitol Report From State Rep. Greg Vital For March 15
  • 3/15/2024

General Assembly confirms new Tennessee State Supreme Justice Members of the General Assembly confirmed the appointment of Mary L. Wagner to the Tennessee Supreme Court in a joint session ... more