Gregg Allman, of the iconic southern rock band the Allman Brothers Band, died at 69 on May 27, from complications of liver cancer. For many musicians and pretty much anyone who ever listened to rock music, Allman’s passing seems to underscore the end of an era. The Allman Brothers were part of a time when bands dared everything, their music inextricably entwined with social and political changes that were sweeping the United States and the world. The music combined country and rock with blues tunes going back to the 1930s and pioneered the improvisational “jam band” movement.
There’s a lot all of us can learn from Gregg Allman’s life, even if we aren’t musicians. Here are just a few of the lessons:
1. Use the hard stuff to drive you on.
Allman’s life was affected by tragedy again and again. When he was two, his father was murdered by a stranger to whom he was giving a ride. Then in 1971, when Allman was 23, his brother Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, just as their band was starting to achieve commercial success.
The two brothers were extremely close. They’d begun playing in bands together in high school. Duane, who’d worked as a session guitarist with Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett, talked Gregg into joining him to form what became the Allman Brothers Band. Duane Allman is generally considered to have been among the best guitarists in the world, and was seen by many as the creative force behind the band. Then, a year after Duane died, the band’s bass player, Berry Oakley was killed, also in a motorcycle accident in Macon.
After these two losses, most people would have considered that the band was dead. But instead of starting over with a new identity (or going back to his earlier plan to attend dental school), Allman kept right on going with the band he had. He hung framed notes from Duane in his home, surrounding himself with “reminders of his family and that loss,” as one friend put it. He continued to call his band the Allman Brothers Band, despite the fact that he was the only Allman brother left. And (with some temporary partings and regroupings) they kept right on gigging and playing until their final gig in 2014, going on for more than 40 years after losing Duane.
2. Don’t be afraid to break the rules.
Such as the rule that a rock band consists of: One or two guitarists, a drummer, and a bass player. It was Duane Allman who first proposed turning that rule on its head with two lead guitarists and two drummers, giving the Allman Brothers Band a much fuller, more complex sound. In later years, the band even went up to three drummers.
Segregation was another rule in the South when the Allman boys were growing up. Some school districts were still segregated when they put their band together, but the Allmans not recruited African-American drummer Jai Johanson to be part of the group from the beginning. In those early days, having Johanson along cost the band some club gigs in Southern states. But the Allman Brothers Band demonstrated by their actions that you could be from the South and proud of it and integrated at the same time.
3. Try everything.
In his memoir My Cross to Bear, Allman wrote this about himself and Duane: “We were like Lewis and Clark, man–we were musical adventurers, explorers.” Two and even three drummers, two lead guitarists, combining rock music with blues and even jazz–you can see what he meant. Allman experimented in his personal life as well, known for sleeping with multiple partners while touring and married seven times (including to Cher for a few years). Unsurprisingly for a rock star, he also experimented quite a bit with drugs, and he was in and out of rehab several times before finally getting clean in the 1990s.
Not all this experimentation worked out well for him–he wound up with Hepatitis C, for one thing–and some of it was certainly not a good example to follow. But not being afraid to something new, or shake things up, or strike out in a new direction–that approach helped Allman live a full and fulfilled life. “If I fell over dead right now, I have led some kind of life,” he wrote in his book, which came out in 2012. Yes, he did.
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