Writer recalls blues and beauty from ‘hard time’ in rock legend Gregg Allman’s life

Three decades ago, magazine writer and author Steve Oney spent several days with Allman Brothers Band co-founder Gregg Allman. Oney was working on a profile of Allman, “A Sinner’s Second Chance,” which became a classic for Esquire magazine. The story came at a time when Allman was, in many ways, re-inventing himself. Oney, an Atlanta native and University of Georgia graduate, describes himself as a “huge Allman Brothers fan.” His new book, “A Man’s World: Portraits,” includes his 1984 profile of Allman. This week, a few days after Allman’s death, Oney talked to Telegraph reporter Joe Kovac Jr. about traveling with Allman. Oney’s remarks below are lightly edited for clarity and flow.

I saw him at a time when things were bad. There was no way I could sugarcoat it. I had to write about what I saw.

It was early ’84 and Gregg was wary, he was beaten — wary of me, wary of everything. I met the band in Boston and then spent the better part of a week with them going up and down the coast and over to Columbus, Ohio. And then I hooked up with them again 10 days or so later in Los Angeles when they were going on the “Thicke of the Night” television show. Gregg was so shy and laconic that Alan Thicke, the host, was somewhat at a loss.

I recall the Esquire piece as being intimate and grainy, almost like a sad home movie. I was with Gregg in that hotel room at the Hollywood Holiday Inn, which was a pretty second-rate hotel, and just seeing him exhausted and he’s obviously on the wagon and chugging ice tea and it’s not even 11 o’clock at night, and he just says, “I’m beat.” And yet he wasn’t beat. What’s remarkable — miraculous really — is he picked himself back up and had a whole second life. He really did fight through a lot of demons, and I admire him very much for that.

Gregg was a truly authentic person. He was not playing at being a bluesman. He was a bluesman. My favorite was Gregg’s solo album “Laid Back.” I felt like I knew Gregg’s music intimately and it was a real privilege to spend time with him, and I was pulling for him. But I couldn’t avert my eyes from what I saw.

I met him in Boston and then we went to New York and Baltimore and Columbus. It was night after night, playing at these places and then 10 hours in a bus to the next place.

Gregg was beautiful then. He was really handsome — a big, blond, pretty strapping guy. He was the Paul McCartney of the Allman Brothers. He was the cute one.

I caught him over a couple of weeks where he was really on the ropes. He was struggling to get back up after being knocked for a loop by misfortune and his own bad decisions. I don’t think he had completely stopped drinking, but he was trying really hard. And I know he was off drugs. And his career was going nowhere, and he was forgotten largely except for blues fanatics and people who liked Southern rock. It was really a struggle.

Duane Allman was the young genius who died at 24, but I think Gregg was really the heart and soul of the band. Gregg not only sang most of their best-known songs, he wrote most of their greatest songs. He was extremely gifted. I think he had trouble being the little brother of a genius, and I think he had a great deal of guilt — almost survivor’s guilt — that he lived and his brother was taken. The family itself ... so much darkness in that family with the dad being killed by the hitchhiker in Tennessee. So the boys grew up with a real sense of how hard life could be and how fast it could be over. And I think that’s what made them so receptive and sensitive to the blues and to the black experience. They knew what it was like to suffer, and they knew how well the blues expressed loss — and how paradoxically joyful it could be to sing about that. I think Duane knew it as a virtuoso, but Gregg knew it in a deeper way because Gregg wrote the music.

“Queen of Hearts,” that’s a work of poetry. It’s on the album “Laid Back.” It’s just a beautiful, sad, blues ballad. I think Gregg thought about these things and mulled them over in his mind the way a writer does.

Gregg was kind of standoffish, but he was delightful once you got with him. And he was very good company once he opened up. But his first impulse was to close the door and shy away. But if you kept reaching out to him, he was very forthcoming. But it was like pulling teeth.

Gregg was a pro. When you’re a pro, that means, like an athlete, you show up and you give it your all. You’ve got to play on days when you’re not feeling that well. Gregg didn’t just count on inspiration. Gregg did the work. Whether he was playing a little club or a big venue, he gave it everything.

When he was down and out, during that period I wrote about him, this was Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers — one of the greatest bands of the early ’70s — and he was playing Holiday Inn lounges. He was really scrambling to get back in the game at a hard time in life.

After the piece appeared, I wrote Willie Perkins, who was the legendary manager of the Allman Brothers and was Gregg’s manager, and I said, “I know that was a tough piece, Willie, but I think it was fair.” Gregg never said anything to me about it, but Willie and I have remained friends, and Willie thought it was fair.

It was just tough to see Gregg in trouble. He was lucky that he lived through it all.

If you think about what he went through — his father’s death and his brother’s death and Berry Oakley’s death and then the death of Twiggs Lyndon, the road manager, and the Scooter Herring cocaine trial — it was just a panorama of difficulty and anxiety and pain. And Gregg was right there in the middle of it. Yet he pulled himself up and got right back in the game.

This story was originally published June 1, 2017 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Writer recalls blues and beauty from ‘hard time’ in rock legend Gregg Allman’s life."