Book review: Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ‘70’s.

Alan Paul is the undisputed expert on the Allman Brothers Band – just note the compendium of band members, prominent journalists, and others who weigh in on the back jacket of his newest book Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ‘70’s.

Paul’s first book on the Allman Brothers Band, the best-selling One Way Out, was a series of polyphonic compositions, each chapter beginning with brief commentary along a chronological theme then bolstered by multiple first-person accounts. Rather than the Rashomon-like dubiety that might be expected from such a narrative approach, the individual perspectives cumulatively created a mosaic that offered a more comprehensible picture of the band over time.

This newest venture is different. Paul takes deep detours into territory as divergent as the Carter presidential campaign, the band’s reciprocal relationships with the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, and Cameron Crowe’s account of how he got the interview with Gregg immortalized in the film Almost Famous. There are intricate details on deals made and lost and trivia on ticket prices, audience counts, and even numbers of concessions sold at particular shows. It’s a mashup of hundreds of hours of recovered interviews with band members and others along with a plethora of secondary sources that include commentary on and from a Tolstoy-worthy range of characters. In One Way Out, you can count the groove lines on the vinyl. For this one, you need to just sit loose and enjoy the jam.

That’s not to say that there isn’t an overall theme floating over and under and all around all the sound bites. In Paul’s hands, this meticulously researched foray into the Allman Brothers Band at a particular moment in time is a story of loss and survival that transcends the tale of a band from south Georgia.

The book begins with a brief history of the original band, who are riding high and fast having just completed their monumental Fillmore East debut - until it all comes to a screeching and unexpected halt. The rest of book covers the years from 1971-1976, right after guitarist Duane Allman’s passing and the death of bassist Berry Oakley a year later. The band could have, and should have, come to a fatal end as well, but it didn’t. Paul details how original members Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jaimoe, and Butch Trucks and new members Lamar Williams and Chuck Leavell reinvented the band resulting in a sound that, to many ears, was even better than what had come before.

After the deaths of Allman and Oakley, the remaining band members were “dealing with exhaustion, pent-up anger, pain, and sadness,” Paul explains, “chasing the glowing, flickering, mythical memory of a golden moment.” He details addictions and attempts at rehab, impulsive marriages and bitter breakups, betrayals and reconciliations, deals that worked and others that nearly broke them.

There is plenty on the contributions of new members Leavell and Williams, the creativity and exploration of new sounds, and the willingness of the entire band to pick themselves up over and over again, with push worthy of a Jaimoe/Trucks solo. The effort to survive and thrive was a collective one. “Even though we have had two great losses, we were still a family,” Gregory Allman explained in a 1974 interview.

The family may have been, at many times, dysfunctional, but they never forgot their bond. The album that emerged from the band’s struggles was aptly named Brothers and Sisters, and it is a fitting title for Paul’s book as well.

The musical equivalent of the story told in this book might be the band’s 1973 Winterland performance of Les Brers in A Minor. The instrumental begins with faltering melodies and anemic rhythms. Then Williams’ bass comes in to pick things up off the floor, and Betts’ melody line becomes stronger and more pronounced.  Allman finds his sound on the organ, and Leavell gets everyone high again with buoyant keywork. Stop-time has Trucks and Jaimoe carry things on by themselves awhile, before Betts brings everyone back in for a cocky, flamboyant, and ultimately triumphant ending. It’s non-linear and unpredictable, a monumental jam clocking in at a full 25 minutes.

Maybe the best music is that way - an extended jam going on in different directions with just enough epoxy to send you on the adventure without getting you too lost. You aren’t really quite sure what’s happening until it’s done, but, when it is, you come away with appreciation knowing that it’s changed you for the better.

That’s the story told in this book, and it might well be the story of all of us.  In the same way, Paul’s book is a satisfying jam that will please not only fans of the Allman Brothers Band but anyone else who enjoys a good story.

 

Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ‘70’s  by Alan Paul is available on Amazon for pre-order anticipating its July 28 release.