Read Online One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Paul Alan - Free Book Online Page A

electricity, no furniture, no hot water, floors covered thick in dirt. One of the roadies had talked to the girl across the way and she slipped an extension cord through our window so we could put on some music and her husband came home and saw that cord and just raised hell. He ripped it out and he threw a cherry bomb through the window, which, given our state of mind, was not well received.
    We wandered the street for a while and were out messing around Boston and decided we should go to the Tea Party and rehearse. Duane gets on a pay phone, calls the radio station, and tells them to put out the word for Don Law to come to the club and let in the Allman Brothers Band, they want to rehearse. We just walk down there and stood waiting, oddly sure he would show up. He got out of his car, walked over, unlocked the door, turned around, got back in his car and left without saying a word or even looking at us. He was pissed, and I don’t blame him.
    And this is why we felt such an urgent need to rehearse: we went in and spent hours working up the sound of a Harley cranking up and going through its gears, which was going to kick off our shows as an introduction to “Don’t Want You No More/Cross to Bear.” We were deadly serious about it, too. Once we straightened up, everyone realized how absurd it was. After we finished, we were walking across the Tea Party and this damn four-by-four fell from the roof and smashed Jaimoe’s seat. If we had played for ten or fifteen minutes more, he would have been killed.
    LAW: I felt privileged to have them there in that room. It was exciting and exhilarating. There was something magical happening and I think anyone who saw them realized that it was going to be pretty big. It was amazing to play them for free on the Commons. That was tremendously fun and it was a great way to expose somebody.
    Duane’s guitar playing was extraordinary. In my exposure to him, he was a very gentle, bright guy, and everybody understood that he was an incredible, unique talent. That was just obvious. He had a passion to play. He went and sat in with Frank Zappa and several other people at the Tea Party while they were in Boston.

 
    CHAPTER
    4
    Dreams
    I N AUGUST 1969 , the band went to New York City to record their self-titled debut. Their trip north was not without drama with their equipment truck breaking down in South Carolina. Lyndon rented a van . In New York, the band was to work with Cream’s producer, Tom Dowd, but he was unavailable and Atlantic house engineer Adrian Barber was assigned to record the new band. Barber was an experienced engineer, having worked on sessions with Cream and a range of jazz greats, as well as with the Beatles in Hamburg, Germany, in 1963. This was his first producer’s credit. A year later he would engineer and play most of the drums on the Velvet Underground’s Loaded.
    The entire seven-song Allman Brothers Band album was cut and mixed in two weeks, and virtually no outtakes exist from the sessions. The Brothers also played three nights at Ungano’s, a Manhattan club; these were their first shows in the city that was to become their second home.
    JAIMOE: The best way to prepare to go into the studio is to play the songs you’re going to record on gigs and then you should know if they’re ready or not and judge from the crowd reaction what’s clicking and what needs more work. We played them songs hard from May to August and walked into the studio having them down cold. We were not intimidated, even though me, Dickey, and Berry were not that experienced in studio work. Butch had more experience and Gregg and Duane had cut a few albums, in addition to all of Duane’s session work.
    TRUCKS: The whole experience of making the first album was absolutely wonderful. I felt comfortable in the studio, having recorded a bunch before, as did we all, and the music was great. We had played these songs so much and we were all just busting to get them down on record.
    JAIMOE: