The livestream failed miserably. John & I recorded the conversation anyway.
Episode overview
John Lynskey returned to the Crossroads to talk through Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul. The movie documents well by Gregg’s duality as a singer of a jam band who hated long guitar solos, his late-career rebirth in sobriety, his long career fronting the Allman Brothers Band, and Jimmy Carter’s friendship.
The conversation
Gregg’s catalog. John walked through the duality at the center of Gregg Allman’s career—lead singer of the greatest jam band of all time who hated guitar solos, a shy man hated to be alone who got married seven times. We traced his writing from “Dreams” and “Whipping Post” through “Just Ain’t Easy” and “Demons,” lauding Southern Blood as a career closer John compares to the Beatles ending on Abbey Road.
The Hammond, underrated. John makes the case that Gregg’s organ playing gets overlooked the way David Crosby’s vocal gets overlooked in CSN—everything rests on it, and nobody notices until it’s gone.
Jaimoe and the brotherhood. Duane heard something in Jaimoe nobody else heard. John’s point: Jaimoe could have been any color and it wouldn’t have mattered, because the only thing that mattered was the music. We talked about how that ideal gets flattened by cynicism over time, and how the documentary resists that flattening.
Michael Lehman’s late-career rescue. We each credit manager Michael Lehman with giving Gregg the stability—professional, financial, personal—that he never had earlier in his career. Lehman helped Greggg release several solo records, produced the amazing All My Friends tribute at the Fox, the Dan Rather interview, and the memoir that had been stalled for years.
“Queen of Hearts” becomes “Desdemona.” When he presented “Queen of Hearts” to the band for the Brothers & Sisters sessions, Butch Trucks told Gregg the song “just doesn’t sound like us.” It pissed Gregg off who made it a centerpiece of Laid Back instead. Without that rejection, John argues, “Desdemona” never lands on Hittin’ the Note.
The eighties solo years. John’s favorite Gregg period: small crowds, no money, the Toler brothers in the band, Gregg singing the blues against an unforgiving musical of Flock of Seagulls and Depeche Mode because he had to play, not because anyone was paying him to.
Berry Oakley’s death and the leadership vacuum. Oakley was the logical successor after Duane died. He couldn’t do it. Gregg wasn’t suited to it either. Dickey became the band’s leader by default, in John’s telling..
Jimmy Carter. The friendship between Carter and the band survived the Scooter Herring trial because, as John puts it, Carter never stopped being Gregg’s friend even when it cost him politically. We discussed whether the federal sting was aimed at Carter’s candidacy—a theory both Butch Trucks and Dickey Betts independently floated to John.
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