Episode overview
Jeff Kollath and I go back decades—two museum nerds, Allman Brothers obsessives, dudes who obsess over liner notes. Part music history seminar, part genuine friendship, all music/history geek joy.
Our Crossroads
Jeff and I met working in museums, and bonded the night we met (2009) when I said I always wanted to write a book on Duane Allman. We share the same technique—scour liner notes and follow where they lead you. Jeff is the guy you want on your trivia team and his music recommendations are consistently 10/10. We both believe that loving a band honestly—including saying out loud when they blew it—is the truest form of fandom.
The Conversation
Arista. I’d sent Jeff “How Did it Get this Bad? Allman Arista Artistic Apocalypse”—an assignment for Record Time magazine to write about the Arista-era Allman Brothers.1 Jeff was ready to defend Reach for the Sky and Brothers of the Road. He listened to each and came to the same conclusion as I. There’s nothing to defend. What followed was a conversation reckoning with the Allman Brothers Band’s nadir.
How did it happen? The peak of 1973, Dickey’s failed American Music Show tour in 1974, solo tours that favored Gregg over Dickey, Capricorn’s bankruptcy, and Arista Records and Clive Davis. The result was a band stripped of dynamics, a band whose power has always lived in intentionality stripped of creative control. Gregg disengaged. Mike Lawler’s keytar. Jaimoe’s firing. A disaster.
The Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead dynamic. Both bands exemplars of the counterculture, both on Arista, both navigating the same cultural moment. Why did the Dead survive Davis and the Allman Brothers break up? Artistic control, infrastructure, and the difference between a band organically contemporizing its sound and a band being pushed by a label to sound like something it isn’t.
Dickey Betts 1974 American Music Show tour. We gave the American Music Show its due—Vassar Clements on fiddle; an R&B horn section; an acoustic bluegrass set; and glorious, psychedelic Western Swing takes on “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”—remains one of the most ambitious and underappreciated chapters in the whole Allman Brothers story. It face-planted. We talk about why, and why the peak of 1973 made the eventual crash inevitable and devastating.
We closed where we began—that loving this band means being willing to say when they failed. The Arista records are proof it can happen. The reclamation—Seven Turns, Shades of Two Worlds, everything that followed over the next 25 years—was a payoff.
Lagniappe
FULL SHOW: Dickey’s American Music Show from Santa Monica on December 11, 1974
Record Time is the print-only music rag by Scott Soriano, one of my favorite follows in the online world. Issue #4 is in production. I’ll let y’all know when you can order a copy. I will also share a one-time digital edition to paid members of Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads. Stay tuned.
🍄🍑MERCH🍑🍄
Jimmy Carter reppin’ the ABB July 4 weekend 1976.
Ad for ABB’s March 1971 run at Fillmore East. Here’s the original ad—with Johnny Winter at top of the bill.
Brought to you by the paid members of the Long Live the ABB community.
🍄MUSHROOM🍄MAGICIANS🍄 Brent W. Hammond, Craig Stevens, Ken Lupson, Laura McCarty, Steve Marshall
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