The Allman Brothers made me feel good

Part 11 of an annotated read of Tom Nolan's 1976 Allman Brothers Band biography

Welcome back to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern Music, History, & Culture.

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Random Notes

🍑 Everybody needs a calendar, right?

I created a 2025 CALENDAR featuring historical images of the band, photos from Macon, gear, and other shots from my personal collection. Here’s a preview:

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🍑 Southern Rock

In “Southern Rock Is Rising From the Ashes,”

Will Hermes

highlights something I’ve been thinking about as well, a resurgence in Southern rock as an influence.¹ The term isn't the pejorative it was in the early 90s when the Allman Brothers Band got back together and distanced themselves from it.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what is/isn’t Southern rock, why the Allman Brothers Band are, why Tom Petty and the B-52s aren’t.²

Buy Play All Night

Here’s what I wrote in Play All Night, quoting Scott B. Bomar:

The Southern rock genre is music “rooted in a specific time, belonged to a particular place, created by musicians with similar formative and cultural experiences, [that] served as a key expression of a uniquely countercultural movement of the South.”

I date its beginnings to 1973 and lasted through the early 1980s, when a new southern sound—more punk- than country-influenced—emerged in Athens, Georgia, with R.E.M., Pylon, and the B-52s.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be truly happy with the way I define Southern rock. Truth be told, it matters little except so y’all understand the parameters of what I’m talking about when I say Southern rock.

And despite the commandment—“Thou shalt not call the Allman Brothers Southern rock”—the ABB are indeed Southern rock.

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🍑 SOULSHINE benefit concert

Rev. Brother Warren Haynes co-hosted a star-studded benefit with Dave Matthews at Madison Square Garden. See

Alan Paul

’s terrific recap.

I tuned in from home. My personal highlight was Derek & Warren on “Whipping Post.” I also enjoyed Derek on Petty’s “Southern Accent” with Warren and Dave Matthews and Susan and Dave on “Angel from Montgomery.”

The show brought to mind a topic I’m going to explore at some point: the ABB’s generosity.

I first learned of this when the ABB played a 1982 benefit in my hometown of Stuart.

I’ve tracked multiple causes they supported over the years: a Jacksonville woman in need of a kidney transplant; a Florida teen center; multiple schools; and even televisions for Bibb County (GA) Jail inmates. By 1973 the band, at Dickey’s behest, found a nonprofit, the North American Indian Foundation.

And of course, Haynes has raised millions for as many years as I can remember through his annual Asheville Christmas Jams for Habitat for Humanity.

Not sure the band is any more particularly generous than others like them, but they definitely have a long track record of using their platform to do good.

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Alright, on to today’s post…

Back to my annotated read of the Allman Brothers Band: A Biography.

This is Part 11. Here’s Parts 1-10.

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Marginalia Reminder

As you read, remember two things:

1. The book’s text is in this font

2. My commentary (marginalia) is in this font.

Fillmore East marquee, June 25-27, 1971. 📷Amalie R. Rothschild

Previously on Long Live the ABB…

BILL GRAHAM:

“I played them because I thought they were really good, and I thought the public would think so as well. I wanted to build them into a headliner, and I thought they should have turned the corner sooner; but I was partial. The fact that they finally did achieve a high national status is okay with me; it’s justification in the long run, on their ability.

In those days, we still called our own shots, dealing with a headliner. We told the agencies whom we wanted to play with whom, and I used the Allman Brothers as much as I could, if it fit in musically.”

Graham booked the Allman Brothers Band at both Fillmore East and West multiple times throughout 1970 and 1971. The only time they headlined was the venue’s final weekend.

Here’s where Nolan’s book picks back up.

🍑 YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: Long Live the ABB riffing on Bill Graham 🍑

BILL GRAHAM

“There was much talk in the mid- and late-sixties, of what music was, what social effect it had on young people. A lot of people read into music significance of revolution, independence from political society.

Bullshit.

It made you feel good.

The Allman Brothers made me feel good, in that particularly physical way.

You may not move, but it affects your body, as well as your emotions; somewhere, something is churning.

Less than ten bands, in all of rock, have that potential, for me, to get out there and make me feel really good; to put out the good spirit within you. The Allman Brothers have that ability.”

I don’t think Graham is ignoring the social and political ramifications of music of that era. He was very much the at center of that movement, providing a stellar live music experience for the youth counterculture. He understood well the importance of the live experience and he capitalized on it, literally.³

Graham is talking specifically about why or how music mattered.

It wasn’t an overt political message.

It wasn’t even words.

Music makes you feel good.

Graham onstage at Fillmore East.

Bill Graham loved the Allman Brothers Band and they loved him.

Marginalia reserved for paid subscribers of Long Live the ABB

As the band secured better bookings, their comfort on the road increased somewhat.

Candy Oakley Johanson⁴ tells this story. “After one of these long long tours, they were putting ‘em right back on the road again, supposedly in the same damn van. Twiggs says, oh no, no no no, we just can’t do that again. Twiggs was wearing his gun back them; he collects antique guns, and he has a great appreciation of the Colt .45. So he says, ‘I’II tell you what we’re gonna do—we’ll stop by the office on the way out of town, and I’ll go in and kidnap Mr. Walden. He can come with us, and see what it’s like out there in that van!’

He had his guns on, and he was gonna kidnap Phil! He’d have done It, too! Leave it to Twiggs! I think Phil somehow caught the word; and suddenly, they had a Winnebago.”

This sounds like a funny story until you realize that several months later, in April 1970, Twiggs stabbed club owner Angel Aliotta to death over his refusal to pay the band for a gig.