Alan Paul's Blog, page 39

Allman Brothers Spotify Playlist

I made a heavily annotated Allman Bros Spotify playlist spanning 1968-2003, and featured on the St. Martin’s page for One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band.

Have a listen, give a read, and tell me what you think.

 

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Allman Brothers prepare for Beacon run/new archival releases

Betts and Haynes. Foto by Kirk West. All rights Reserved.

It’s going to be a very busy later winter/early spring for fans of the Allman Brothers Band.

On February 18, the same day that my book One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band is launched, Sony will also be releasing two archival Allman Brothers recordings. Play All Night: Live At The Beacon Theater 1992 will be two discs from the band’s first extended run at the Beacon Theatre, taken from two shows, March 10 and 11, 1992.

On March 7, the band will set up shop at New York’s Beacon Theatre for the rest of the month, celebrating their 45th anniversary with a series of shows.

I interviewed Warren Haynes, who produced the Beacon CDs for release, about this last night for a feature in an upcoming Guitar World. More on that as it gets closer. The release also features liner notes by my friend John Lynskey, editor of Hittin The Note.

In February, the band’s Allman Brothers Recording Company label dips back into the archives with Boston Common 8/17/71, recorded the same year as At Fillmore East, and less than three months before Duane Allman’s death.

The Beacon shows were recorded for An Evening With The Allman Brothers Band but only a handful of songs were used on that live album. The rest of the multi-track recordings have never been heard – until now. Only one track on the collection, “Revival” appeared on An Evening With. Warren Haynes was involved in the track selection and production. Full track listings below. Sony is also releasing, at long last, a DVD of The Allman Brothers Band Live at Great Woods featuring the entire performance, not interrupted by interviews.

A couple of week later, on March 11, while the band is in full swing at the Beacon for their 45h anniversary – and 25th anniversary at the Upper West Side theater –  Galadrielle Allman’s Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman will be released. This is also a must-read for hardcore fans. Galadrielle did a great job last year compiling and writing liner notes for Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, which has also been reissued and is available once again after its initial 10,000 copy run sold out.

Play All Night DISC 1

INTRO >STATESBORO BLUES

YOU DON’T LOVE ME

END OF THE LINE

BLUE SKY

NOBODY KNOWS

LOW DOWN, DIRTY, AND MEAN

SEVEN TURNS

MIDNIGHT RIDER

COME ON IN MY KITCHEN

GUITAR INTRO >HOOCHIE COOHIE MAN

DISC 2

JESSICA

GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE

IN MEMORY OF ELIZABETH REED

REVIVAL  appears on EVENING WITH

DREAMS

WHIPPING POST

Sony Press Release:

On February 18, Epic/Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertain­ment will release Play All Night: Live At The Beacon Theater 1992, a new two-disc set showcasing The Allman Brothers Band’s very first time playing such an extended run at the Beacon. In 1992, The Allman Brothers Band reunited for a tour which saw The Brothers first take the Beacon’s stage for a lengthy run – a residency that’s now a tradition for both band and venue. The band would tape two of their 10 shows at the theater in March 1992. Amazingly, material from these electrifying shows has seen virtually no release – until now.

Also due out on February 18 (Epic/Legacy Recordings), the DVD release of The Allman Brothers Band Live At Great Woods.   Recorded in September, 1991, before a crowd of nearly 20,000 adoring fans at the Great Woods Amphitheater in Massachusetts, this DVD release features, for the first time on the format, the original long form video version of this concert, with no interviews edited into the main feature. This DVD reissue has been long requested by Allman Brothers Band fans

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Lots of ABB activity this winter

Betts and Haynes. Foto by Kirk West. All rights Reserved.

February and March are looking like exciting times for fans of the Allman Brothers Band.

I originally posted all the details of some archival releases to come, but jumped the gun on that, publishing before details were finalized. I removed the information and apologize for any confusion caused.

This March will mark the band’s 45th anniversary and the 25th Anniversary of their Beacon runs, which have provided me with some of my greatest, most memorable musical moments. I was a dedicated fan long before I saw the band at the Beacon in 1992, but those shows, and the power of the Betts/Haynes/Woody frontline turned me into a full-on fanatical nut.

As most people checking in here know, my book One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band will be released on February 18.

Just a few weeks later, Galadrielle Allman’s Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman will be released. This is also a must-read for hardcore fans. Galadrielle did a great job last year compiling and writing liner notes for Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, which has also been reissued and is available once again after its initial 10,000 copy run sold out. All of these items and any other releases of interest to ABB fans will be available from my friends at Hittin’ The Note. I urge you to order from them and to keep checking in there for more exciting news to come.

 

 

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Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China

Shanghai Literary Festival Unsavory Elements Panel

Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China, the anthology to which I contributed, is finally fully available in the USA via Amazon. It’s a very strong collection, featuring work from some writers with whom you are probably familiar, including Simon Winchester, Susan Conley, Peter Hessler, Deb Fallows, Michael Meyer, Michael Levy, Mark Kitto and Matt Polly.  There are also really moving from writers who were new to me, including Kaitlin Solimine and Susie Gordon. And many others – 28 contributors in total – all pulled together by Tom Carter, who is a master cat herder. There are tales of business ventures gone awry, brothel visits gone bad, family vacations headed off the rail and tender memories about adopted mothers and the search for the perfect dumpling that will soothe a relocated family’s collective soul.

James Fallows of the Atlantic wrote a bit about the book here.

I’m proud to be included in this book and happy that several of the contributors have become my friends since we met in Beijing and Shanghai last March for the book’s launch.

Most of us participated in this massive Reddit AMA, which makes for some pretty interesting reading.

Duane Allman’s 1957 Les Paul and the Big House Museum.

Originally published in Guitar World, January 2011, this story is a bit outdated in terms of how the goldtop is being used… As many readers know, the guitar has been played by many since this was written, including Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks – the latter played it at the Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013, reuniting it with Eric Clapton and Derek and the Dominos when EC joined the ABB for “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad.”

E.J. Devokaitis and the Big House Museum and Archives were tremendously helpful in my research for One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band, helping give the book a tremendous amount of added depth. Thank you to E.J.  and everyone involved in that great institution.

Duane Allman’s long-lost 1957 Gibson Les Paul goldtop has been found and given a new lease on life courtesy of the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House.

Photo By E.J. Devokaitis

Duane Allman played a gorgeous 1957 Les Paul goldtop for the first 18 months of his two and half years in the Allman Brothers Band. He played the goldtop on the band’s first two albums, which featured the original versions of “Whipping Post,” “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “Midnight Rider,” “Revival” and other classics, and he played it on his numerous sessions with other artists, including Derek and the Dominos’ 1970 masterpiece, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Then Allman swapped the guitar for a sunburst Paul, and this piece of rock and roll history disappeared into the ether.

Now the goldtop is back where it belongs: in the spotlight. Today, Duane’s former guitar is on display at the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House in Macon, Georgia. What’s more, it can be heard on a new recording, Guitar Magic, by the Skydog Woody Project, which also features the 1976 Gibson Thunderbird bass once owned by late ABB/Gov’t Mule bassist Allen Woody.

The story of how Duane and the goldtop became separated is a classic tale of guitar lust. On September 16, 1970, the Allmans played a show in Duane and Gregg Allman’s hometown of Daytona, Florida. Duane, fresh off recording Layla with Eric Clapton and company, was, as usual, playing his ’57 goldtop. The opening band was a local group called the Stone Balloon, whose guitarist, Rick Stine, was playing a 1959 cherry sunburst Les Paul, which caught Duane’s eye. While making Layla he had fallen in love with Clapton’s cherry sunburst. Wanting one of his own, Duane offered to swap Les Pauls with Stine. When Stine balked, Allman upped the ante, throwing in $200 and one of his regular Marshall 50 heads.

Stine agreed, but Duane had one caveat: he wanted the goldtop’s pickups for his new ’burst. The electronics were swapped, and the deal was done. Exactly one week later, on September 23, Allman played his new guitar when the Allman Brothers Band performed at the Fillmore East in New York City, a fact born out by video footage from the show. He played his new cherry ’burst throughout the rest of his career, which ended far too soon when he was killed in a motorcycle crash on October 29, 1971.

Meanwhile, Allman’s original goldtop drifted around Daytona, passing through the hands of three different owners, the last of which eventually sold it to a local guitar store. In 1977, the shop sold it to Gainesville guitarist Scot LaMar. He’d heard from his friend Billy Bowers that Duane’s Les Paul was for sale in Daytona, and he rushed to the store to purchase it. He paid $475, a fair price for a vintage Les Paul in 1977.

The goldtop had some damage, including a bite mark on the headstock from a previous owner’s dog. LaMar had two respected luthiers refinish the guitar, but he was dissatisfied with the results and eventually had the instrument refinished by Tom Murphy, the man behind the Gibson Historic series and probably the most renowned “goldtop guy” in the world. The guitar was restored to its original glory and placed on display at the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House.

What an honor – photo by E.J. Devokaitis

Opened last year in the communal house where various members of the band lived, played and jammed together from 1970 to 1973, the Big House Museum includes thousands of artifacts from the ABB’s career. The goldtop is displayed along with artifacts directly related to it, including a shirt given to Duane by Clapton during the Layla sessions and two amps Duane used with the guitar: a Fender Showman and a 50-watt Marshall head, which were sometimes used together.

Other items on display at the museum include Berry Oakley’s Fender Jazz “Tractor” bass and Showman amp, a T-shirt from the first-ever run of ABB merchandise, a Fender Bassman that Dickey Betts used during the band’s earliest days and one of Duane’s Marshall cabs. It also includes a recreation of the famous Fillmore East stage, where the band recorded its landmark At Fillmore East live album in 1970. The display includes a set of vintage Ludwig drums used by Butch Trucks from 1968 to 1970, and a pair of road cases with stenciled lettering pictured on the cover of At Fillmore East.

The guitar will be on display at the Big House at least through this year, and probably longer. “The guitar is where it belongs right now,” LaMar says. “People need to appreciate it and see it.”

Remarkably, LaMar’s generosity with the instrument includes a firm belief that it should be played as well as viewed. “It’s a real living legend and it shouldn’t exist only behind glass,” he says. “It’s a shame to me how many of our greatest guitars have become dead artifacts.”

Putting his money where his mouth is, LaMar recently lent the goldtop to guitarist Joe Davis, who used it to record Guitar Magic, which also features bassist Garry Harper playing Allen Woody’s Gibson Thunderbird bass, on loan from Woody’s father. Davis and Harper released the album under the name the Skydog Woody Project, an amalgam of Woody’s name and Duane’s nickname, Skydog. “There was magic in these instruments,” Davis says, “and it impacted everything we did.”

Selfie with goldtop and EJ.

The project got rolling after Davis heard about the goldtop and got in touch with LaMar, who invited him to come visit. The two men spent a few days hanging out, but while LaMar showed Davis many to-die-for vintage axes, the goldtop was not among them. “I think he was testing me out,” Davis says. “He took me swimming in alligator-infested water and watched how I acted and how I treated the guitars. During those days, I got discouraged that I might never even see the goldtop because it wasn’t discussed. But we made a great friendship, which started with our mutual love of Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman.”

At long last, LaMar produced Duane’s 1957 goldtop and shocked Davis by asking if he wanted to play it. “I knew right away that this is the perfect guitar,” Davis says. “I went home satisfied that I got to see the Layla guitar and thrilled that I got to play it.”

Davis could barely dream that within months he would be in the studio recording an album with that piece of rock and roll history. “It’s the first time I‘ve recorded an album and not thought about how it will sell at all,” says Davis, who has released four other CDs. “I’m just thinking about how it happened and feeling very pleased that I had this opportunity.”

LaMar says he was just happy to see and hear the guitar being put to good use. Derek Trucks has also performed with the instrument, and LaMar hopes Warren Haynes will lay his hands on it soon as well. “I want people to see it and hear it,” LaMar says. “It’s not my guitar; it’s Duane Allman’s. I’m just babysitting.”

Anthony DeCurtis on One Way Out

Anthony DeCurtis, on One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band:

“Open this book to any page, start reading, and I dare you to stop. Alan Paul captures all the momentum and energy of the Allman Brothers’ long, wild ride, which continues at a breakneck pace. One Way Out? There’s no way out of this rollicking narrative until, with regret, you reach the end.”

—Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone

I have read and admired Anthony’s work in Rolling Stone and elsewhere for years  and was honored that he even agreed to read the advance and, of course, thrilled that he liked the book so much. He is the co-Author of  Clive Davis’ The Soundtrack of My Life and is currently writing a Lou Reed bio. He also reviewed these two Rolling Stones books in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review.

Kirkus Reviews One Way Out

ONE WAY OUT [STARRED REVIEW!]

The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band

Author: Alan Paul

“I have viewed everything with the eyes and ears of a journalist but the heart and soul of a fan,” writes Guitar World senior writer Paul (Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing, 2011), who spent decades and hundreds of interviews earning the trust of musicians who didn’t always trust each other.

“The Allman Brothers Band, I believe, has no equal.” One need not share the author’s belief in the band’s supremacy to find its story engrossing. The majority of the book takes the form of oral history, which might on other projects sometimes seems slapdash and lazy but here proves crucial, for there are so many different perspectives—on everything from the band’s name to leadership and songwriting credits—that having dozens of different voices serves readers well. Nobody disagrees on the overwhelming talent, inspiration and legacy of guitarist Duane Allman, who formed the band, saw it coalesce into something special, and died recklessly and young before the music reached its popular peak. Explains one fellow musician, “Duane died just on the downstroke of the diving board, as the band was about to launch.” The loss of Duane and founding bassist Berry Oakley a year later would have brought an end to a less determined band, but the ABB somehow flourished despite a leadership void and decades of tensions exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. Perhaps the most complex relationship was between Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts, as the former was never considered an equal partner with his brother, and the latter resented the implications of the band’s name as he attempted to fill the guitar void and rule more by dictatorship than the universal respect Duane commanded. In the wake of Betts’ departure and Gregg’s sobriety, the responsibility has largely shifted to a new generation of guitarists, as the band improbably boasts its strongest dynamic since its original leader’s death.

The author doesn’t pull punches, but all involved should find it fair as well as comprehensive.

Albert Collins with the Allman Brothers

Foto By Kirk West – www.kirkwestphotography.com

The great bluesman Albert “Iceman” Collins’ final US tour was opening for the Allman Brothers on a Midwestern swing. Every night he would come out and play with the Brothers.

On 7/1/93 at Deer Creek in Indiana, he joined them for their version of Willie Dixon’s “The Same Thing.” I think Betts sounds a little rough in spots here. By the end of the month, he would leave the band for the rest of the summer after being arrested for assaulting two police officers responding to a call that he had been drunk and abusive with his wife in a Saratoga, NY hotel room. Point being, he probably wasn’t in the greatest shape, but there are still some really nice moments with him and Albert toe to toe.

And Warren and Albert kill it, as does the band. I really loved Albert as a musician and as a man, and I miss both. He has an extra special place in my heart because I saw him at the Lone Star in NYC the night I got hired at Guitar World in 1991. I was there celebrating with some friends, ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill and most of the black Crowes were there,  and we had a hell of a time.

Enjoy Albert and the Allmans:

How to play like the great Freddie King,1934 -1976

Freddie King,  September 3, 1934 — December 28, 1976

It’s an appropriate quirk of fate that three of electric blues’ most revered guitarists share the same regal surname: King. But while Albert and B.B. became grand old men of the blues, Freddie King never received such an opportunity, dying of heart failure in 1976 at age 42.

Freddie (spelled Freddy early in his career) was a towering figure, both literally (he stood a barrel-chested 6-7) and figuratively, with a thick, meaty tone and fast, extremely aggressive picking style. His manly but melodic playing was a huge influence on countless blues and rock guitarists, notably Eric Clapton, who made his mark by nailing King’s hit instrumental “Hide Away.”

Uniquely, King straddled the very different worlds of Texas and Chicago blues. A Lone Star native, he moved to the Windy City at 16. He cut his teeth with the likes of Muddy Waters before joining Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and Magic Sam at the forefront of a new generation of more urban, hard-edged guitarists. “I picked up [my] style between Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and T-Bone Walker,” King explained in a 1971 interview. “So I play [both] country and city.”

After scoring several r&b hits, both instrumental and vocal, King moved back to Dallas and joined T-Bone Walker as a Texas standard bearer. “He was the greatest, most serious player,” recalls Jimmie Vaughan. “Everything he played sounded like he had worked it out beforehand, but it was just the way he played.”

King died on December 28, 1976, at the height of his popularity. He is buried in Dallas’ Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park.

And if you want to know how to learn some Freddie licks, my Guitar World pal Andy Aledort has you covered:

More of this here at GuitarWorld.com.

Willin’ – Little Feat Bio. Lowell George!

I bought Willin’: The Story of Little Feat yesterday and I am really looking forward to reading it. Long live Lowell George.

Here’s two Fotos by my friend Kirk West, who also served as an ace photo editor for One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. Check out more of his great work at his website.

Lowell George 5/79. Foto by Kirk West, www.kirkwestphotography.com.

Little Feat 4/78. Foto by Kirk West. www.kirkwestphotography.com