Fresh from the success of “Brothers and Sisters,” the Allman Brothers Band did what any ’70s rock band might — they set about destroying themselves, as drummer Butch Trucks tells Alan Paul in “Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ‘70s” (St. Martin’s Press).
“We were caught up in the fantasy,” he recalls. “It was playing the gig to sustain the lifestyle: the limos, suites, groupies, and cocaine.”
While ‘Brothers and Sisters’ charts the band’s rise, it also explains their rapid crash. “It’s about how these children of the ’60s became men of the ’70s, for better and worse,” writes Paul.
It’s a tragic tale.
Prior to the album’s release in 1973, the band lost founding member Duane Allman and, bassist Berry Oakley, both killed in motorcycle accidents.
Inevitably, drugs helped them through.
At their Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, NY, in 1973, promoter Jim Koplik ensured the band wanted for nothing. “It was free drugs, with a trailer with free coke and pot for anyone in the band,” he tells Paul.
At a 1974 concert in Atlanta, Oakley’s replacement, Lamar Williams, nearly perished after taking animal tranquilizer with Gregg Allman. “If we hadn’t gotten him to a doctor, shit, Lamar could have died,” recalled Allman.
Drugs nearly scuppered Allman’s romance with singer Cher, too.
During their first date, Allman disappeared in search of drugs, leaving Cher to let herself out.
The following day Allman called Cher. “That was a world-class shitty date,” he told her. “It was so bad we have to do it one more time to make sure we’re really that incompatible.” The duo married in 1975, filed for divorce within days, reconciled, had a son and finally divorced for good in 1992.
The band split in May 1976 when Allman testified in the drug dealing trial of roadie Scooter Herring. For guitarist Dickey Betts, it was the final straw. “There is no way we can work with Gregg Allman again, ever,” he said of the betrayal
For Cher, by then pregnant with Allman’s child, it was the worst possible outcome.
“Our whole world,” she said, “was shot to rats–t.”