FAREWELL to a Ramblin’ Man
THE SOUTHERN-ROCK ICON TURNED PERSONAL TRAGEDIES INTO HAUNTING BLUES CLASSICS
There’s a reason why the Allman Brothers earned a reputation as one of the greatest live bands ever. “I play every show like it’s my last,” Gregg Allman said. “Fortunately, that’s never turned out to be the case.”
Sadly, that’s no longer true: Gregg died of complications from liver cancer on May 27 at 69. He lived a full life, but you couldn’t blame him for feeling like death was always over his shoulder. After his father was murdered when Gregg was 2, his brother “Duane, even though he was only a year and 18 days my elder, became a father figure,” he said. The Nashville-born sibs formed the Allman Brothers, but just as they found fame with 1971’s At Fillmore East album, Duane was killed in a Georgia motorcycle crash; he was 24. A year later, the band’s bassist, Berry Oakley, died at 24 in a similar accident a few blocks away. “Gregg was surrounded by loss,” Alan Light, co-author of his 2012 autobiography My Cross to Bear, tells Closer. “He carried that with him forever.”
ALLMAN AND WOMEN
Loss also became a recurring theme in Gregg’s personal life. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not supposed to be married,” he once said, but that didn’t stop him from wedding seven times, most famously to Cher in 1975. They had a son, Elijah Blue, but the pressures of fame and Gregg’s substance abuse drove them apart in ’79. “She tried to get him clean, but he wasn’t ready,” says Light.
More than a dozen trips to rehab and a lifesaving liver transplant in 2010 helped Gregg finally get sober. Shortly before his death, he married longtime love Shannon Williams, and “they seemed happy,” says Light.
Gregg transformed the sorrows he’d suffered into soulful blues-rock anthems. “He was able to call on the pain he’d been through and come up with songs that made a strong connection to people,” says Light, “and they’re going to stick around for a really long time.” — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Natalie Posner
“I would like to be remembered as somebody who could rock your soul with a song.”
— Gregg