Read Online My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gregg Allman
Tags: Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, music, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Genres & Styles, Composers & Musicians, Rock
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here. I’m fixing to go off to war, you know?”
He said, “You’re going to need some papers drawn up,” so he wrote up what happened, but I thought, “Fuck that,” and just stashed that report—I never took it with me.
We went back to the house, and I put on a bandage so big that I actually sprained the toe next to my big toe. By the time we got to the induction center in Jacksonville, I didn’t know where the fuck I was. I’m on these crutches, trying to manipulate them up these steps, and I was struggling, man.
I finally made it into the room, and the officer asked, “What happened to you?”
I told him, “I was cleaning my favorite Magnum, and it went off and shot me through the foot.”
He didn’t even look up. All he said was, “You’re out of here.” And that was it for my military service.
B Y THE SUMMER OF 1965, WE HAD BECOME A PRETTY GOOD BAND, and we were calling ourselves the Allman Joys. Van Harrison, who’d been at my house that time Hank Moore had been in our living room, was on bass for us. Van also played linebacker on the high school team, and one night before we had a gig, we were listening to the game on the radio. Van was going to meet us at the gig after the game, and we heard on the radio that Van broke his leg. He broke it real bad too—all the way broke. I’ll be damned if he didn’t go down, have it set, and come straight to the gig and play. He was a little happy, but he made it. Van was a hell of a guy.
We had some changes with our drummer. First we had Maynard Portwood, then Tommy Anderson took over. Tommy, for some reason, couldn’t go on the road, so we took Maynard back.
We started out playing anywhere we could, because we just had the fever for it, and they can’t turn you down when you tell them, “Man, we’ll do it for nothing.” There was a place called the Safari Hotel, right on the corner of South Atlantic and the beach, run by a guy named Bud Asher, who later became the mayor of Daytona Beach. I think he still owes us some back pay!
There was this other group of dudes across town who were “the” band in town. That was the Nightcrawlers, who had a regional hit called “The Little Black Egg.” Sylvan Wells, the founder of that band, is now a very prominent attorney in Daytona Beach, and he turned out to be a hell of a guy. We had a battle of the bands with them, and all this stuff going on. Then “The Little Black Egg” came out, which was about as bubblegum as you could get—sort of along the lines of “Crimson and Clover,” only with half as many chords. There’s only two, instead of four. Get the fuck out of here, you little black egg!
They were the hotshots on the other side of town, and then we got called to do our first University of Florida fraternity gig. We killed ’em—I guess we had some butt-bumping rock and roll going down. Van Harrison was good, man. He played with a heavy hand; he didn’t play with a pick. We played stuff like “Blue Moon” and “There’s a Thrill Upon the Hill,” but we did no original songs—at this point, we never even thought about it.
The song list would kind of make itself. We had a hell of a rockin’ version of “Walk, Don’t Run,” and we played “Neighbor, Neighbor,” the Eddie Hinton song. We also did a lot of old ethnic stuff, blues and whatnot, that carried over to the Allman Brothers. An example would be “Trouble No More,” which was the first song we worked up with the Brothers. It was a pretty obscure record, but you would take some of those old album cuts, and there would be something on there—a hook that you could change or something—and who gives a damn who wrote it? It just had that old-time feel to it, and we loved it. We also played our own version of “Tobacco Road,” and it was psychedelic, man. We came close to losing a couple of jobs after playing that. It amounted to what “Mountain Jam” is now.
We listened a lot to WLAC, the radio station out of Nashville
He said, “You’re going to need some papers drawn up,” so he wrote up what happened, but I thought, “Fuck that,” and just stashed that report—I never took it with me.
We went back to the house, and I put on a bandage so big that I actually sprained the toe next to my big toe. By the time we got to the induction center in Jacksonville, I didn’t know where the fuck I was. I’m on these crutches, trying to manipulate them up these steps, and I was struggling, man.
I finally made it into the room, and the officer asked, “What happened to you?”
I told him, “I was cleaning my favorite Magnum, and it went off and shot me through the foot.”
He didn’t even look up. All he said was, “You’re out of here.” And that was it for my military service.
B Y THE SUMMER OF 1965, WE HAD BECOME A PRETTY GOOD BAND, and we were calling ourselves the Allman Joys. Van Harrison, who’d been at my house that time Hank Moore had been in our living room, was on bass for us. Van also played linebacker on the high school team, and one night before we had a gig, we were listening to the game on the radio. Van was going to meet us at the gig after the game, and we heard on the radio that Van broke his leg. He broke it real bad too—all the way broke. I’ll be damned if he didn’t go down, have it set, and come straight to the gig and play. He was a little happy, but he made it. Van was a hell of a guy.
We had some changes with our drummer. First we had Maynard Portwood, then Tommy Anderson took over. Tommy, for some reason, couldn’t go on the road, so we took Maynard back.
We started out playing anywhere we could, because we just had the fever for it, and they can’t turn you down when you tell them, “Man, we’ll do it for nothing.” There was a place called the Safari Hotel, right on the corner of South Atlantic and the beach, run by a guy named Bud Asher, who later became the mayor of Daytona Beach. I think he still owes us some back pay!
There was this other group of dudes across town who were “the” band in town. That was the Nightcrawlers, who had a regional hit called “The Little Black Egg.” Sylvan Wells, the founder of that band, is now a very prominent attorney in Daytona Beach, and he turned out to be a hell of a guy. We had a battle of the bands with them, and all this stuff going on. Then “The Little Black Egg” came out, which was about as bubblegum as you could get—sort of along the lines of “Crimson and Clover,” only with half as many chords. There’s only two, instead of four. Get the fuck out of here, you little black egg!
They were the hotshots on the other side of town, and then we got called to do our first University of Florida fraternity gig. We killed ’em—I guess we had some butt-bumping rock and roll going down. Van Harrison was good, man. He played with a heavy hand; he didn’t play with a pick. We played stuff like “Blue Moon” and “There’s a Thrill Upon the Hill,” but we did no original songs—at this point, we never even thought about it.
The song list would kind of make itself. We had a hell of a rockin’ version of “Walk, Don’t Run,” and we played “Neighbor, Neighbor,” the Eddie Hinton song. We also did a lot of old ethnic stuff, blues and whatnot, that carried over to the Allman Brothers. An example would be “Trouble No More,” which was the first song we worked up with the Brothers. It was a pretty obscure record, but you would take some of those old album cuts, and there would be something on there—a hook that you could change or something—and who gives a damn who wrote it? It just had that old-time feel to it, and we loved it. We also played our own version of “Tobacco Road,” and it was psychedelic, man. We came close to losing a couple of jobs after playing that. It amounted to what “Mountain Jam” is now.
We listened a lot to WLAC, the radio station out of Nashville
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