At Fillmore East was released 55 years ago, July 6, 1971. My book Play All Night! Duane Allman & the Journey to Fillmore East is the story of that album and the biography of the Allman Brothers Band’s sound.
In celebration of the anniversary, I excerpted Chapters 12 and 13 of Play All Night in four posts.
Part 1: “The Allman Brothers did it all. On stage they were giants.”
Part 2: “Some of the greatest live performances I’ve ever witnessed”
Part 3: “This is the People’s Band. Music is for the people.”
Part 4: “Best damn rock & roll band this country produced in the past 5 years.”
And here’s a livestream with my dude Jeff Kollath JK to talk about the record’s past, present, and its enduring influence.
The Conversation
The recording. We agreed one reason this record is so great is how alive it sounds. Tom Dowd mic’d the crowd, an unusual choice, and the room’s presence gives At Fillmore East warmth—the opposite of a flattened soundboard tape.
A band “in full possession of its considerable intelligence and stamina.” At Fillmore East was a full dose of two sides of the Allman Brothers Band, their exquisite taste and immense power. Jeff called them “solos of perfect logic” moving from restraint into full intensity and back, the record never losing its shape.
Where does it rank? Neither of us has any problem calling it rock’s greatest live album. We threw out a few others, the Stones’ Get Yer Yayas Out, MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, Kiss Alive!—all cleaned up in post, the latter two considerably. Humble Pie’s Rockin’ the Fillmore, recorded two months after the ABB, makes the contrast plain: a 23+ minute “Gilded Splinters” on side two of the double album is indulgent and overwrought. “Whipping Post” runs the same distance and never loses the thread—a complete idea, start to finish, from all six players, leaving the room, and generations of listeners, enraptured.
What the tapes reveal. Listen closely to the beginning of “Whipping Post.” Five fans call out for the song before it starts (it’s the third guy you hear clearly). Listen even more closely and you’ll hear at least two shout for “Dreams.”1 The crowd keeps screaming for more at the close of “Mountain Jam,” after a bomb-threat evacuation earlier that same night. Not released
Live/Dead as counterpoint. The Dead at their best in that era, especially the first four tracks—“Dark Star” “St. Stephen” “The Eleven” “Turn on Your Lovelight”—but Jeff believes the Dead’s legacy rests on the two studio records that follow, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. The Allman Brothers Band built its reputation from At Fillmore East. I argue Live/Dead is not even the definitive Dead live album (that’s Europe 72, which has lots of edits in post).
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Created this to honor the Allman Brothers Band’s March 1971 run at Fillmore East. You’ll see the original ad below, which had Johnny Winter at the top of the bill.
My vote. My favorite song in the canon (along with “Mountain Jam”). Here’s my guess on why they didn’t play it.
