“This year, I will be more thoughtful of my fellow man, exert more effort in each of my endeavors, professionally as well as personally. Take love wherever I find it and offer it to everyone who will take it. In this coming year, I will seek knowledge from those wiser than me and try to teach those who wish to learn from me. I love being alive, and I will be the best man I possibly can.”
Duane Allman wrote these words in his diary January 1, 1969. He was 22 years old. He was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he had a contract with Rick Hall.
The previous November, he had broken through with his blistering solo on “Hey Jude” with Wilson Pickett. That gave Duane the opportunity to start the Allman Brothers Band.
In this photo from January 1969, Duane was in New York at Atlantic Studios to play with Aretha Franklin. (It is the session where he laid down solos on “The Weight” and the glorious “It Ain’t Fair.”1)
He’s on the precipice of ultimate stardom.
I thought it’d be interesting to look at Duane in January of three years, 1969, 1970, and 1971. Three images, each 12 months apart, to give a sense of how he fulfilled that promise in his life.
January 1969, Duane is in Muscle Shoals as a session guitarist and is working on a solo project. The latter is not going super well. He doesn’t jibe at all with Rick Hall, a pretty demanding producer who understands how to crank out hits quickly.
Duane was a free spirit; his and Hall’s personalities clashed.
In early February, Jaimoe arrives and moves in with Duane in Muscle Shoals. They begin their musical partnership. Berry Oakley shows up. It was a “Holy Shit!” moment for Duane and Berry and Jaimoe. Jaimoe describes their playing as like hearing Mahavishnu Orchestra for the first time.
By the end of the month, Duane and Jaimoe leave Muscle Shoals for Jacksonville. They form the Allman Brothers Band March 23, 1969. Gregg arrives 3 days later. By April, they relocate to Macon, Georgia, home to Duane’s manager Phil Walden. They tour relentlessly for the next two-and-a-half years before their third album, At Fillmore East, breaks through.
January 26, 1970 University of California, Riverside
Photographer Bruce Henderson took some great shots that day. Critic Joel Selvin, who’s written a ton of books, covered this show extensively in the student newspaper. It was a fantastic source for me for Play All Night.
This is the Allman Brothers in January of 1970. They’re on their first trip West, to play mid-January shows with B.B. King and Buddy Guy at Fillmore West, They play the Whisky in LA down, and they play this free show before heading back east.
So much about this photograph that I dearly love.
Berry’s marching toward Dickey, who’s leaning back “hittin’ the note.” Duane is leaning in, concentrating.
Anytime I see photos of this era, I look closely at what the band members are doing, how they’re interacting.
The music sounds like they’re paying a lot of attention to each other or to their craft.
And the photographs from the era certainly reflect that.
Note on this image
This looks like it’s just a casual jam or something. They’re just set up, hanging out. But as you see below, there’s several hundred people there in the audience.
It was a pretty epic event for the students. Several guys got up on stage and got to play with the Allman Brothers.2
January 1971 again found them at Fillmore West
This is a Jim Marshall photograph. A phenomenal shot of the Allman Brothers at Fillmore West in January 1971. The band played four nights in San Francisco—January 28-31. These were tune up shows for recording At Fillmore East, which they had booked to record in March 1971.
Several of the shows have been released. They’re really great. They sound fantastic. And the coolest thing to me is hearing how the songs change, how they develop.
The band was really pushing hard. By January 1971, they’d been on the road just shy of two years: 200, 250 gigs a year, 300 days on the road
They were a road-hardened, tight band. The Allman Brothers were ready when they got to Fillmore East to record those shows.
The thing I will point out to you, what I think about every time I listen to the record, is that every song was done on the first take.
The stakes were as high as they could possibly be for them—the most important audience and the most important stage in rock: Bill Graham’s Fillmore East.
And they nailed it. They nailed it.
And the tragedy of it all is that Duane dies in October 1971, 3 months after the album’s release. Duane is 24 years old.
An adaptation of Duane’s diary entry is engraved on his tombstone (left). It is a fitting epitaph.
In 1969, Duane Allman wrote himself a goal.
A series of goals actually.
And goals matter.
Goals don’t mean you’re going to achieve exactly what you want exactly how you think you’re going to.
Goals set a point in the horizon that says, “I’m going to work toward that.”
We’re fortunate to have record of Duane’s thoughts going into what became a legacy-defining, meteoric three years for him and his band.
His career is a reminder of the effort that goes into achievement of goals you set for yourself.
And that’s a helluva lotta wisdom for a 22-year-old, huh?
Shout out Tedeschi Trucks Band, who SLAYS that song.
They stopped at the Grand Canyon on their way back South.
