"I love the Dead. As for Jerry Garcia, Jerry Garcia could walk on water. He could do anything any man could ever do. He's a prince."

--Duane Allman (1)





The Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead had a close relationship in the early ‘70s – both bands admired each other and played a number of famous shows together. They drifted apart after 1973, so their contact was brief; Allmans and Dead members wouldn’t interact again until well after Garcia’s death. But this is the story of their connection in the first few years after the Allman Brothers formed.













In a 1973 interview, Garcia said that some of the Allmans had seen the Dead play the Miami Pop Festival in December ’68: “Dickey and the guys had flashed on our music when we played at a festival in Florida about five or six years ago. We really inspired them and they’ve patterned a lot of their trip after us.” (2)

I've never seen any of the Allmans mention this, though; probably Garcia heard it directly from Duane or Dickey Betts. I think Garcia exaggerated how much of an influence the Dead were on the early Allmans. But we know at least Duane was at the Dec '68 Miami Pop Festival – it’s mentioned here: https://www.duaneallman.info/chronologypart1.htm (3)

I don't know whether Betts or Oakley went to the festival as well, but from Garcia’s comment it seems likely.





Could Duane have seen the Dead earlier? His early band with Gregg, the Allman Joys, had been renamed the Hour Glass when they moved to Los Angeles in spring ’67, where they stayed through spring ‘68. I’ve seen speculation that Allman may have seen the Dead during this period, but there’s no way to know. At various times the Hour Glass were booked with other San Francisco bands like Country Joe (Los Angeles 7/14/67), Jefferson Airplane (Sacramento 10/15/67), Quicksilver (Torrance 5/17/68), and Big Brother (St. Louis 8/9/68), but never with the Dead. And I suspect Duane was much more interested in seeing blues acts than San Francisco rock bands at the time.

In any case, band member Paul Hornsby recalled, “We played San Francisco occasionally – we played two or three times at the Fillmore and we played the Avalon Ballroom.” (Skydog p.47)

They actually played in San Francisco a number of times, as an opening band:

Oct 19-21, 1967: Fillmore Auditorium (opening for Eric Burdon & the Animals)

Dec. 21-23, 1967: Fillmore (opening for Buffalo Springfield)

Feb 9-11, 1968: Avalon Ballroom (opening for the Siegel-Schwall Band)

May 2-4, 1968: Fillmore (opening for Moby Grape)

May 24-26, 1968: Avalon (opening for the Youngbloods)





The Hour Glass were better on stage than on record, but despite a year’s efforts still flopped, failing to make much of an impression on the California music scene. Though the Allmans favored the blues, the Hour Glass were “all over the place,” playing a variety of pop material from ‘Norwegian Wood’ to ‘Buckaroo.’ After the Hour Glass split up, Duane & Greg briefly joined a band called the 31st of February (with Butch Trucks) and recorded some demos in September ’68, including ‘Morning Dew’:

(4) The Dead had come up with their own arrangement of the song, but the Allmans derived theirs from Jeff Beck’s (released on Truth just the previous month), which in turn was based on Tim Rose’s single. (Duane had long been a Jeff Beck fan, covering Yardbirds songs since 1965. Gregg recalled that the Allman Joys played “Yardbirds tunes by the hundreds. Duane loved the early days of Jeff Beck.”

In any case, they dropped the song afterwards when they turned to a more blues-based repertoire.









INFLUENCES





The Allman Brothers came from a very different background than the Dead. The leading Dead members had been in folk groups and were taking up rock & electric blues for the first time; while all the Allmans but Jaimoe had been in rock bands for some time, playing popular covers in clubs. The Allmans’ music was a determined attempt to get away from the standard stuff they’d been doing and come up with a new blend. As with the Dead, the new style they found was a combination of their various influences, as each member had a different genre he preferred.





They were all Cream fans. Duane's daughter wrote that "Duane and Gregg had driven for hours to see Cream play when they lived in Los Angeles." (4a)

Butch Trucks said, “Cream opened the door to what we did. They were the first band to really get into improvisation. They were an absolute necessity to what came later. Without them, you don’t get us. Now they did it strictly from a blues base. When you listen to their jams, it was mainly one chord, one volume and one time signature. We started where they left off. Then Jaimoe introduced us to John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. Once we started listening to them, we said, ‘My God, you can do THAT with music.’” (5)





Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley were the Dead fans in the Allmans – they’d been playing in a band called Second Coming, a rock & blues band that would play some Cream, Hendrix, and Airplane covers.

Keyboardist Reese Wynans said, “Berry was very dedicated to jamming and deeply into the Dead and the Airplane and these psychedelic approaches and always playing that music for us – and it was pretty exotic music to our ears, because there were no similar bands in the area.” (6)



Betts recalled, “Duane and Gregg had a real purist blues thing together, but Oakley and I in our band would take a standard blues and rearrange it…[a] psychedelic approach to the blues… We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing. Jefferson Airplane was also a big influence on us; Phil Lesh and Jack Casady were Oakley’s favorite bassists. We liked to take some of that experimental stuff and put a harder melodic edge on it.” (7)





Trucks wrote, “Jack [Casady] was probably the single biggest influence on Berry’s playing with Phil [Lesh] not too far behind. The Second Coming played many covers of Jefferson Airplane and with Dale, Dickey’s wife, singing like Grace Slick they did a damn good job. Berry could sound exactly like Jack when he wanted to. When he joined the ABB he, of course, brought along that influence and, I’m sure you can hear it, especially on the early stuff. As we developed our own voice Berry became more and more his own but Jack and Phil were always tucked in there somewhere.” (8)

Gregg said, “Dickey and Berry had come more from that psychedelic scene. Dickey was way into Jefferson Airplane – he was a big fan of Jorma Kaukonen, and he loved Clapton’s work in Cream too… Duane, Dickey, and Berry also picked up on the Butterfield Blues Band sound – that album East-West was a killer. Berry and Dickey were also way into the Dead’s American Beauty album.” (9)





Jaimoe recalled, “Everybody had their records that they listened to and we just shared them. I had no idea who the Grateful Dead or Rolling Stones were, though I had heard some of their songs on the jukebox. Butch turned me on to all that stuff. Dickey was into country and Chuck Berry. [The rest of us] were the rhythm & bluesers.” (10 )

Jaimoe also played his records for the others – Gregg said that “the main initial jazz influence came from Jaimoe, who really got all of us into Coltrane together, which became a big influence. My brother loved jazz guitarists…I brought the blues to the band, and what country you hear comes from Dickey.” (11) Butch Trucks “was into jazz too, even though he came from a band [31st of February] that did a lot of Byrds stuff and electric folk. Me, I was strictly rhythm and blues.” (12)





Gregg wrote, “Jaimoe turned all of us on to so much neat stuff. He gave us a proper education about jazz and got us into Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Kind of Blue was always on the turntable – my brother really got his head around that album – and he also seriously dug Coltrane’s ‘My Favorite Things.’” (13)

Jaimoe says, “Duane had listened to Miles and Coltrane before he met me, but we did spin those a lot. His two favorite songs were Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favorite Things’ and Miles’s ‘All Blues.’ Those two songs were the source of a lot of our modal jamming, without a lot of chord changes.” (14)

Betts agreed: “I always loved jazz – guitarist Howard Roberts, for instance – but once the Allman Brothers formed, Jaimoe really fired us up on it. He had us all listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and a lot of our guitar arrangements came from the way they played together.” (15)

Gregg recalled, “ Eventually, the jazz thing rubbed off on Dickey – you can hear it on ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’…what he and Duane did on that one came straight from Miles Davis.” (16)

Duane also said, “That kind of playing comes from Miles and Coltrane, and particularly Kind of Blue. I’ve listened to that album so many times that for the past couple of years, I haven’t hardly listened to anything else.” (17)

(There's even an Allmans home rehearsal of 'My Favorite Things.' It has a lot in common with the Dead's 'Clementine,' which was partly based on the same tune.)





Otherwise, Duane didn’t say much about the band’s influences when asked: “I don’t know how much other musicians have influenced the sound of the band, but probably not very much… I know I have been by other cats: Miles Davis, Roland Kirk, Muddy Waters, BB King. Those cats had a lot of influence on my music.” (18)

Duane would rhapsodize about his favorite jazz at every opportunity – for instance on one radio program he put on ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘My Favorite Things,’ saying, “Miles Davis does the best job, to me, of portraying the innermost, subtlest, softest feelings in the human psyche; he does it beautifully... John Coltrane [was] probably one of the finest, most accomplished tenor players. He took his music farther than anybody I believe I ever heard.” (19)

Gregg said that “[Duane would] listen to an album or hear a song on the radio, and the next thing you know we’d be working it into our music onstage.” (20) (One classic example of this was in the Hour Glass days in 1968, when Duane saw Taj Mahal with Jesse Ed Davis doing ‘Statesboro Blues’ live, flipped out, and immediately took up the slide. Another different kind of example was when Duane slipped King Curtis’ ‘Soul Serenade’ into ‘You Don’t Love Me’ on 8/26/71, as a tribute to Curtis.)





But Duane also decided they wouldn’t be influenced by current rock bands. Trucks recalled, “We made a conscious decision we would not listen to any of our peers. I remember somebody came in with Chicago Transit Authority and we listened to it one time. Duane broke the damn record and said, “No, we’re not going to listen to this” – not because it wasn’t good, but because they weren’t able to teach us like Trane, Miles, Herbie [Hancock], Charlie [Parker] and people like that. We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.” (21)









EARLY DAYS





Having two drummers in the band was Duane’s idea, but it was not inspired by the Dead. Duane’s manager Phil Walden originally thought Duane’s new band “was supposed to be a three-piece with Duane, Berry, and Jaimoe,” but as Duane kept adding more members, that idea was tossed.

Betts recalled that “Duane, Oakley, and Jaimoe decided to put a trio together, and Duane’s manager, a guy named Phil Walden, got them a record deal. So Berry started going up to Muscle Shoals to record with Duane… Their group was supposed to be a power trio, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, but Duane had to sing, and Jaimoe doesn’t play drums in that style at all. Berry brought back some demos of the stuff they were doing, and even though it was good, they weren’t going to be able to stand up next to Hendrix and guys like that.” (22)

Meanwhile, Betts would join in: “We’d get together and just jam… Butch would come over and jam with us, and some other drummers. We just were getting into some pretty good playing, so [Duane] decided to put six of us together instead of three.” (23)





According to Jaimoe, “It’s been said that Duane was at first going to put together a power trio like Jimi Hendrix or Cream, but…that’s not what Duane was thinking. Duane had the idea for a different band right away. He was talking about two guitars and two drummers from the start… I asked Duane why he wanted two drummers and he said, ‘Because Otis Redding and James Brown have two.’” Trucks agreed: “He wanted two drummers like James Brown had.” (24)





Nor did the drummers take much from the Dead. According to Jaimoe, “No one else was doing something similar to what Butch and I did. I had never heard the Grateful Dead until we did some gigs with them.” (25)

Trucks said, “Jaimoe and I studied a bit of what Kreutzmann and Mickey were doing in the Dead, but it was much more contrived than what we did. I’m not criticizing, because it worked for them really well, but not for us.” (26)

The Allmans drummers took a looser approach. Per Jaimoe, “We just played and played and worked stuff out that way… I would sit in there and start practicing, Butch would come in, and we’d just play. We never said, ‘You play this part and I’ll play that one.” Trucks also said: “Our styles mesh in a way where we don’t talk about it. We don’t work it out… [We] play what [we] want to play, and it just works.” (27)





The Dead drummers, in contrast, spent a lot of effort working out their parts. Kreutzmann also brought up the difference in an interview -

Q: “Did you and Mickey work stuff out or just sit and play?”

Bill: “Oh, no. No. (laughs) It looked that easy, huh? We worked stuff out.” […]

Q: “The closest comparison is the Allman Brothers, but - ”

Bill: “There’s really no comparison. I love the Allman Brothers – and I love you, Jaimoe! – but there’s no similarity other than having two drummers. And there hasn’t been anyone that really used two drummers like Mickey and I did, which is that four-limbed beast thing... By the way, Jaimoe is one of the greatest drummers ever.” (28)





As bandleaders, Garcia and Duane Allman were quite different – each was the charismatic center of the band, and they both favored collaborative approaches where all the bandmembers contributed, but Duane was much more ‘in charge’ of his band. Duane was the clear leader of the early Allmans in a way that Garcia always avoided.

Alan Paul brought up the comparison in his interview with Kreutzmann -

Q: “The similarities and differences between Jerry and Duane Allman are very interesting. Duane was not shy about telling people what to do.”

Bill: “Right on, and Jerry did not like that.”

Q: “Right, but they both had this thing where people wanted to please them unconditionally and followed them, without them ever having to be asked.”

Bill: “Yes! I don’t know how to describe it, but there’s a spark in some people that you can’t deny.” (29)





Betts also compared them in one interview -

Q: “Did Duane function as the bandleader?”

Betts: “He didn’t see himself as the bandleader; he led by example. And you gained a lot of respect from Duane if you earned it, if you proved you could keep up with him… He was very different from Jerry Garcia, who was very easy going. Duane didn’t have time to be easy going; there was much more urgency to his personality.” (30)

As Betts saw it, “Duane was a natural leader…but no one would be the leader [in the band]. Whenever we needed a leader, someone would step forward and lead… [Duane would] often say, ‘I’m not the leader of this band, but if and when we need one, I’m a damn good one!’ And he was.” (31)

Duane himself said, “When we need a leader, I’m it. Everyone understands that. It’s just that we don’t usually need a leader because we got that goal…one sound, one direction.” (32)





The Dead famously bonded on acid; the legend goes that the Allmans musically bonded on mushrooms.

Gregg wrote that in the band’s early 1969 rehearsals, they would take pills of “pure psilocybin mushroom extract... Our [gear] would be set up, somebody would name a key, and we’d start jamming, and that really spurred on our creative process. The mushroom logo for our band came out of this early experience… There’s no question that taking psilocybin helped create so many spontaneous pieces of music. That music would come oozing out of our band. We hit some jams that were out of this world, and they were so powerful that we couldn’t talk for a long time afterwards… We kept doing that, learning how each other played, learning where each guy was coming from. Our musical puzzle was coming together, and mushrooms certainly enhanced that whole creative atmosphere.” (33)

But other Allmans members disagreed about how important they were. Jaimoe said, “To me, the mushrooms didn’t really play that big a part in anything. It was just a cool thing that became a logo.” (34)

According to the drummers, rehearsing on psychedelics didn’t accomplish much. Jaimoe recalled, “Rehearsal was a waste… Butch couldn’t play the drums because he said they were flying away… So we just called off practice… We couldn’t even play.” Trucks concurred: “We could not play on that stuff… That led to us imposing a rule that we’d all stay straight until after rehearsal, because we knew we had work to do.” (35)

(That said, once they were on the road, the Allmans became notorious for consuming drugs in epic quantities, staying high all the time on a nonstop diet of pot, speed, coke, pills, heroin, and booze. If anything, they were probably even more out of their heads than the Dead most of the time. One label promo man recalled shows “where they were so fucking high that Berry would just fall over…during the first song, and they’d drag him offstage.”) (36)





After they formed, the Allmans lived in one house together and rehearsed all the time. As Gregg said, “We wanted to play, and we just played and played all day.” Part of this meant playing for the public, whether they had shows scheduled or not – “We were busting to get out of that warehouse where we were rehearsing all the time and play for people.” (37) One friend of the band said, “It was Berry’s idea to play for free in the parks for the hippies.” (38) (His last band, Second Coming, had regularly jammed in the park.)

Gregg wrote, “We just wanted to play all the time, and it didn’t matter where or for who. Everywhere we went, we played for free. If we had a gig on a Saturday night, then on Sunday we’d play for free at the nearest park. We would just plug in, start playing, and an hour later there would be 2000 people there. Sometimes it would take about an hour for the word to spread and for people to start showing up, so by the time we had played for two hours, the place was starting to fill up, and we’d start over. We’d just pick all afternoon, because we loved to play.” (39)

(After a while, though, Gregg felt that “playing for free in the parks was really starting to get to me. I hated busting our asses like that and just giving it away… Of course, it did help us become the ‘people’s band,’ so to speak…” (40) It did help word-of-mouth enormously, especially when Atlanta's underground paper, the Great Speckled Bird, took note of this new people's band in the park and wrote It did help word-of-mouth enormously, especially when Atlanta's underground paper, the Great Speckled Bird, took note of this new people's band in the park and wrote a number of enthusiastic articles about this "incredible music.")

Trucks was thrilled about the trips to Piedmont Park in Atlanta: “We didn’t ask permission, we just set up and started pouring out all of this music… We played and played and it was amazing. It was church, it was electrifying, it was inspiring, it was so much fun.” Over time, as the crowds grew from a few hundred to thousands, “this grew into a weekly event…[on] a big flatbed stage…and a lot of other bands started coming and playing as well.” (41)

Piedmont Park was Duane’s favorite place to play. He said, “Playing the park’s such a good thing because people don’t even expect you to be there. About the nicest way you can play is just for nothing, you know. And it’s not really for nothing. It’s for your own personal satisfaction, and other people’s, rather than for any kind of financial thing.” (42)









7/7/69 Piedmont Park, Atlanta





The first time the Dead and the Allmans played on the same stage was, appropriately enough, in Piedmont Park, where the Allmans had already made a name for themselves with their free shows. A couple days after the first Atlanta Pop Festival, the Dead came to Atlanta for a free concert in the park put on by the festival organizers. They were the last to play that night, and apparently missed the Allmans’ set earlier that day, so they wouldn’t hear the Allmans for a few more months. The Allmans had only formed a few months earlier and were becoming a popular local band in Atlanta, but the Dead hadn’t heard of them yet.

It’s rumored on some sites (including deadlists) that Duane and Gregg Allman played on Lovelight – they didn’t. But after the Dead’s set, many of the musicians who’d played that day joined the Dead onstage and jammed into the night. Patrick Edmondson recalled, “ Most of the musicians retook the stage to play with the Dead. Big horn section, background singers, eight drummers, a bass quintet, and Harold Kelling, Glenn Phillips, Duane Allman and Dickie Betts, Delaney Bramlett, Chicago’s guitarist, Randy California, and Jerry Garcia trading and interlacing lead lines. ”





https://archive.org/details/gd1969-07-07.123468.sbd.miller.flac16 (just the Dead’s show; there’s no tape of the closing jam)





For more stories of that day:









THE FILLMORE EAST





The Allman Brothers first played at the Fillmore East in December 1969, as an unknown band opening for Blood Sweat & Tears.

Allan Arkush, on the Fillmore East stage crew, recalled: “We didn’t know anything about the Allman Brothers [when they opened in] December 1969. No one had ever heard of them. The album wasn’t out yet. But the album cover was up in the lobby of Fillmore East. It had a picture of these guys standing naked in a stream, and we thought, ‘What a bunch of redneck yo-yos.’ Our cynical New York attitude.

“Not only that but they were late for the soundcheck – a cardinal sin. We were waiting and waiting. We didn’t realize they were driving up from Georgia. This van pulled up and they piled out of it with all their amps. It must have been their first time in New York. [It wasn’t.] These rednecks with their crummy, beat-up Marshall amps. We were going, ‘These guys are going to be something else. Hope they don’t get naked… You guys going to keep your clothes on while you play tonight?’

“They launched into…the soundcheck and people came out of their offices. Everyone stopped working and just sort of stood there and went, ‘Oh. These guys are for real.’ They played four 45-minute sets that weekend and we couldn’t get enough of them. We thought they were fabulous…” (43)

Dan Opatoshu, also on the stage crew, concurred: “We had said, ‘Who the hell are these sheep-fuckers from who knows where?’ Until they started playing. Then we were, ‘This is something amazing.’” (44)

Arkush said, “The crew all voted to have the Allmans back. We just requested it so they brought them back six weeks later to play with the Grateful Dead.” (45)





Apparently the Fillmore audience wasn't so enthralled with the Allmans at that point; it's said "the crowd even booed." As for the headlining band, Blood Sweat & Tears, Duane was asked what he thought of them in an interview a year later. After a long pause, he finally replied: “My mother told me when I was a child: ‘If you can’t – don’t.’” (46)

But their next time at the Fillmore East, they were booked with a more compatible band, the Dead. Graham also promptly booked them for some shows at the Fillmore West in January 1970 with BB King, whom the Allmans worshipped. According to Gregg, Graham "had fallen in love with us after he'd heard us."

The story goes that Kip Cohen, managing director of the Fillmore East, told the Allmans "he thought the band was great and everybody had enjoyed working with them... The bill had worked against them [so] he wanted to have them back as soon as possible." He asked what bands they liked, and Bill Graham immediately lined them up with their top choices.

When they were in San Francisco, Graham reportedly told their road manager Twiggs Lyndon, "I love your band... I asked Kip because I felt so bad that I put you on the bill with Blood, Sweat & Tears. I wanted to make it up to you. I asked Kip to find out who the Brothers like, and he said the first band you said was BB King, and the second was the Grateful Dead. Well, you've got two weeks to get back to the Fillmore East. I've got you booked with the Dead." (46a)









2/11/70 Fillmore East





Bear had this to say about encountering the Allmans:

"In the summer of 1969 we played at a pop festival in a park in Atlanta. We had been hearing about a local band from Macon called the Allman Brothers Band, and someone brought members of the band over to meet us. As I recall they didn't play at that time [or the Dead missed their set], so we didn't hear their music until their first record came out that fall.

So when we were booked into the Fillmore East on a triple bill with the Allman Brothers…I was very pleased and looked forward to the shows with anticipation, as I had heard their record and liked the band. On seeing their setup, I was surprised to note that they, like the Grateful Dead had two trap sets... There is a lot of percussion in the Allmans’ music, like the Dead, and so the two bands were really close in many ways…

There was a wonderful feeling at these concerts that made the shows a lot of fun for us all… [The Allmans] were fantastic at these shows, and were a real inspiration to the boys. Everyone was having a real good time. I hope that they decide to do something with the tapes I made of their sets at some future date." (47)





(48) The Allmans were delighted to find, around 1996, that Bear had kept his tapes , and the “Fillmore East Feb. ‘70” CD was soon compiled. Kirk West (Allmans manager) said: “We never knew [the tapes] existed. Owsley had taped our three sets, ranging from 45-60 minutes long. We played essentially the same set every night. We put together one CD from them and released it… It was a joint effort between GDP and us.”

Latvala said of the release, “We had this tape of the Brothers opening for the Dead, which Bear had recorded… And then I met Kirk West, who’s like my counterpart with the Allman Brothers, and bam. We were like instant soulmates, karmic buddies and all that. So we decided to do this together and it was great fun, man.” (49)





One of Latvala’s friends recalled, “When Bear finally brought his stuff in [the Vault], there were just big cardboard boxes filled with shit. I mean filled, I don’t mean placed in…but as if they were just dumped out of the sky. Stuff in boxes, stuff out of boxes, stuff labeled, stuff not. I’m not sure that Dick ever got through all of it. Bear had a ton of stuff not related to the Grateful Dead. That’s how that Allman Brothers release came… [Latvala] called Kirk at the time, when they found this stuff from the Fillmore. The Allman archives are almost non-existent from the early days… There is pitifully little stuff in their archives with Duane, much to everybody’s chagrin… Kirk never knew those tapes existed till Dick called him up. In fact, working on that project was how they became good friends.” (50)

Latvala was very excited about the Allmans release: “I don’t know if there’s anything that’s thrilled me this much, because I’m an Allmans freak.” (51)

The tapes have recently been re-released:

https://owsleystanleyfoundation.org/product/allman-brothers-band-fillmore-east-february-1970-cd/



The other band on the bill was Love, the Los Angeles band who had no connection with the Dead. Bear said, “Love did not impress me…so with the vain hope each night that they would improve, I used the same reel of tape over - thus I only have the last show - all their sets were less than 45 min and thus fit on a single reel.” (52)





Fleetwood Mac dropped in on the 11th. Phil remembered, “Our new friends from New Orleans, Fleetwood Mac, were in town – playing somewhere else the next night – and they fell by the Fillmore to say hello.” (53) Actually, they had been friends with the Dead since meeting in July 1968. They were touring the US, and had a few days off before playing Madison Square Garden on Feb. 13. They’d just played at the Boston Tea Party on Feb. 5-7, where they’d recorded their shows for a possible live album; before that, they’d played a few shows with the Dead at the Warehouse in New Orleans. Peter Green had memorably joined the Dead for Lovelight on Feb. 1, and he was eager to sit in with them again.

Phil had a fond memory of that night in New Orleans: “Peter’s powerful, cogent playing makes our band focus more on leaving room for one another… Mick Fleetwood dances onstage, shirtless, with drumsticks in hand, drumming (on every available surface) his way randomly through the band. A sign hangs around his neck reading: OUT OF ORDER.” (54)

For more Dead/Fleetwood Mac stories, see:





The Dead’s first shows with the Allmans would become famous. Allan Arkush, the Fillmore stage-crew member, recalled, “The Allman Brothers were still unheard and unknown. But these were legendary shows.” (55)

According to Phil Lesh, Garcia had told him before the first show, “Hey, Phil, make sure you check these guys out. They’re kinda like us: two drummers, two guitars, bass, and organ, and I hear they jam hard.” (56)

The obscure Allmans left an impression on the Fillmore crowd, as well as the Dead. Audience member Jeff Kaplan writes: "Feb 13, 1970 early show was my first Dead show. I had no idea who the Allmans were (nor did most people) but remember thinking that they were amazing. Garcia and Pigpen sat in seats right in front of us for the Allmans set."





As usual when Owsley was around, everyone backstage had to beware. Arkush said, “Backstage was crazy that whole weekend. The Dead’s roadies had all this Owsley acid and were dosing everyone…they put it in the water cooler.” (57)

“Owsley dosed everyone that weekend. That was the night that Fleetwood Mac came down and got dosed.” (58) The entire stage crew was dosed on Feb. 11 as well: “That was a legendary show. Someone had put acid in the water, so we were all under the influence.”

Fillmore crewmember Dan Opatoshu said, “They would dose everybody. And we would fall one by one… You’d just say, ‘Ah, ah. They got me. I’m outta here.’” (59)

Allmans crewmember Kim Payne had an Owsley experience: “I remember the first time we played with the Dead, I was filling [our equipment case] afterwards…it was a huge airlines case filled with cables of all sorts. I opened it up and they were all moving and looked like snakes, which freaked me out.” (60)

Butch Trucks was also dosed:

“I had had an adventure once before when we played with the Dead at the Fillmore East. The Dead had a "roadie' named Owsley Stanley that was the chemist that made the LSD for most of the civilized world. It was his goal to dose every living person. That night at the Fillmore Owsley poured enough pure acid into our garbage can of beer that if you drank a beer you'd get enough LSD from the ice water around the can to get totally loaded. I had more than one beer and by the time we were half way through our show that night I was unable to play.” (61)





Trucks didn’t have a fond memory of that night: “It was a total cluster-fuck. There was every member of the Grateful Dead, every member of the Allman Brothers, and Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac onstage jamming. I guarantee it was total cacophony.” (62)





Mick Fleetwood also said, “I remember playing at Fillmore East, not officially, with the Grateful Dead. On acid. They had the two drummers and I didn’t actually drum. I had a tom-tom and a snare drum and I was gooning around on the stage. Peter Green and Danny Kirwan were playing as well. That was one of the crazed nights there.” (63)





Arkush recalled, “Mick Fleetwood was so heavily dosed that he was sitting on the stage as the audience was filing out with the microphone in his hand. He kept going, ‘The fuckin’ Grateful Dead. The fuckin’ Grateful Dead.’ We didn’t have the heart to turn off the mike. He was saying it like a mantra, ‘The fuckin’ Grateful Dead!’” (64)





Arkush remembers the show ending in daylight as the doors opened and the awed audience streamed out: “Snow had fallen and there was snow all over the ground. We had been in that theater so long and now you could see big shafts of light coming through the open doors because the place was full of smoke.” (65)

Phil Lesh also remembered the end of the show: “The audience slowly files out as the musicians gather behind the amp line, congratulating one another… Someone opens the loading dock door behind the stage. I walk outside – it’s daylight, and snow is falling gently on the streets of New York.” (66)



*





There are two tapes of this evening:





(The Reynolds/Gadsden 99052 AUD source is a different copy of the same original recording, in worse sound quality and missing the NFA, but including the encore.)





The AUD tape is a good one for the Fillmore East – the instruments are clear in the quieter parts, but it distorts in the loud parts. During the big jam, it gets worse as it goes along: very murky by Lovelight, much of it sounding like a noisy wind-tunnel. But at least during the Dark Star, it’s one of the few Fillmore AUDs that hints at how good the sound in the theater was. The AUD is better for the overall effect and the instrument balance, how the music actually sounded in the room; but the SBD is better for picking out details.

(Note: My timings are only approximate. They’re from the SBD - the AUD times vary due to the different tape-speed.)

The jam commences with a spiky Dark Star, starting out light and bouncy with the three Dead guitars and light percussion. Initially it seems like it’ll take the same course as the recent Dark Stars from 2/2 and 2/8/70, but soon its path is altered. (Garcia will never sing a verse tonight.) Peter Green enters at 2:20 – he’s in the background on the SBD tape, perhaps only caught on the vocal mikes, but more audible and balanced with the Dead on the AUD. He fits in well, and Garcia leaves space for him as Green immediately takes the lead. They intertwine comfortably like two Garcias – Green’s quite at ease in Dark Star.

The Dead drop into a quiet, delicate passage, and it sounds like they’re leading up to the verse, but Green steps up front again for several minutes starting at 6:20 while Garcia lays back. (There’s an AUD patch at this point, where you can tell how much louder and easier to hear Green is than on the SBD.)

Duane Allman sneaks in sometime by the 10-minute mark, while Garcia & Weir play a heavy riff. I can’t hear exactly when he comes in: the SBD tapers had the Dead perfectly mixed, but didn’t account for other musicians joining in. With the SBD so imbalanced, the Dead are loudest in the mix, but they’re just backing the other guitarists who can barely be heard, whereas the AUD at this point is a bristling wall of guitars all blending together.

After 10:30 they enter a quiet part. Despite all the guitars, the music is still open and spacious, conveying the icy grace and splendor of Dark Star. But Garcia & Lesh pump up the groove, around 12:15 Weir starts slashing Smokestack Lightning-like chords, and the music gets heavier with louder drums, more like a rock & roll jam. Garcia mostly just plays rhythm backing through this along with Weir, until he steps up around 14:30 and trades lines with the other guitars. The organ joins in at 15:30 – I believe it’s Gregg Allman playing throughout.

(The lopsided SBD makes it hard to appreciate Green & Allman’s contributions. They’re both crammed off to the left; you can tell there’s some hot soloing far in the distance, as if they were playing along backstage, but you can hear them better on the AUD. Neither source is ideal, though. In the AUD, the guitars are all one big blur and you can’t tell who’s who; so despite the imbalance, it’s a little easier to make out the interaction between instruments on the SBD.)





16 minutes into the jam, Weir abruptly introduces the Spanish Jam chords, and the band rapidly groups around the new theme. Not played since 1968, it’s an inspired choice, as everyone easily joins in. Garcia waits a minute before entering; the jam quiets down after a couple minutes and the crowd cheers, but it keeps going and heats up, the band cooking along.

Garcia drops out around 4 minutes in, then Duane turns up his volume and solos for a minute, shading into feedback at times. (Uniquely, Weir plays a strong counterpoint alongside Duane, meshing well with him.) Green takes a solo at 5:30, culminating with an organ flourish at 7:00. (These solos are searing on the AUD, but more faint & muted on the SBD.) Garcia’s been absent for some time, but comes back in around 7:30; Lesh steps on the beat and they get into a heavy groove. (This must be the most danceable Spanish Jam.)

There’s a mix change at this point: someone finally noticed that Duane wasn’t coming through on the SBD tape. He’s turned up and moves over to the right channel at 8:20, loud and clear at last, just in time to play another blistering solo.

Weir suddenly starts up Lovelight as Duane soars off, and the Dead instantly join in. Everyone was familiar with this hit: Green had played on Lovelight with the Dead a couple weeks earlier, and Duane & Gregg had played it in the Escorts back in 1965; it may even still have been in the Allman Brothers' earliest setlists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA09AyQK9NY





Lovelight is faster-paced than usual. Pigpen takes the first vocal, with a guitar echoing him in the second verse. During the first instrumental break, Garcia’s back in his usual lead role, but Green takes over 4 minutes in, and then there’s a little guitar duel between Green and Allman. Danny Kirwan joins the band after 5 minutes (he shows up on the right, alongside Duane & Weir). There are some mix fluctuations in the SBD tape – Green wobbles in volume and then practically vanishes on the left, rarely to rise above the din again, though he remains loud on the AUD tape.

With yet another player tossed into the stew, there’s a virtual guitar explosion leading to the second vocal at 6:50. Gregg sings the verse this time (sounding more lugubrious than Pig), then Duane solos again over a drumbeat. The music drifts for a bit, Gregg & Weir singing some more at 8:45 as the jam goes on. Lesh blasts out a big chord around 9:50 as he exits, putting down his bass. (“‘I just want to listen to this for a while,’ I tell [Berry], as he plugs into my amp.”) (67) There’s a short drum break, and another verse from Gregg; then at 10:50 Berry Oakley takes over on bass. His style is more thumpy, less fleet than Lesh’s.

More jamming follows, a tangled mess of guitars – there’s a little duet between the two Fleetwood Mac guitarists (easier to hear on the AUD, since Green’s too quiet on the SBD), which the audience cheers around 15:00. Pigpen sings another verse over audience clapping, percussion, and backing vocals (“let it shine,” “shine on me”), leading to a short Pigpen chant with the audience stomping the beat. (Another singer is ‘answering’ Pigpen in the back, but I can’t tell who.)

Another lengthy guitar fest begins after 17:00 in a quirky rhythm – a clashing army of wailing guitars that I can’t distinguish (the AUD’s just a murky mess here). Garcia & Oakley establish a new heavy riff after 18:30. The jamming winds down at 21:20; once again, Pigpen chants over a beat and light guitar riffs, and sings the “boxback nitties” verse around 22:20. The music speeds up in another flurry of soloing (Duane starting around 23:30, then a longer echoey solo from Kirwan at 24:15). Gregg sings a verse around 26:00 (with Pigpen backing him), then Garcia re-introduces the main riff at 26:30 and takes the lead again while Gregg & Pigpen trade growls. Again the music pauses for a drumbeat, and Pigpen does his pockets rap for the clapping crowd (someone’s still ‘answering’ Pigpen’s vocal gospel-style behind him).

“Sometimes I get a little lonely – and I know sometimes some of you fellas get lonely too – I wanna tell you, the first thing that you got to do if you need a little company in the evening – you look around yourself, that’s the first thing you do, and you find yourself a pretty little maiden that you may want to keep company with this evening – and I tell you what you do – instead of standing around like some kind of fool, like so, you take your hands out of your pockets, and get something together, that’s the first thing you do – but I tell you, I never get lonesome – ‘cause I got myself an old lady that won’t quit – she’s about nine foot tall, six foot wide, and she wiggles like pigs fighting in a sack (audience cheer) – that keep me pretty happy – so I tell you what – when I get lonesome, all I got to do is reach over my left shoulder, ask my rider to turn on over and to do everything, do it better every time too – I ain’t lying, would I lie to you? Ha – I might, but you never know about it.”

Finally after 29:00, the ending chords emerge (there’s a short AUD patch here). Everyone pitches in on the ending vocals, storming into the final raveup. Oakley’s bass amp starts buzzing in the finale, adding more noise as they all crash down to a grand finish.

Weir says, “From all of us to all of you, thanks and good night.” Unsated, the crowd cheers for more. On the AUD, you can hear a dazed Mick Fleetwood repeating: “The Grateful Dead are fucking great!”

The audience won’t give up, so finally Garcia, Lesh & Weir come out to quiet them down with just one acoustic. Lesh announces, “If you folks would all be kind enough to be quiet for a while, we’re gonna sing a purty little old song with only an acoustic guitar.” And they bid farewell with Uncle John’s Band.





Overall, it’s not quite the cacophony that Trucks recalled! The music is structured, varied, and audience-friendly throughout. Even Lovelight isn’t much more rambling than usual (the version on 2/1/70 was much longer and looser, dragging in spots). All the players get equal space on stage – no one dominates for long, before someone else gets a turn, and there’s rarely a moment when you feel they’re lost for ideas or struggling to cohere. Considering it’s three different bands merged together, they follow each other very well, guitarists teaming up and quickly synchronizing on new riffs. It’s also noticeable how much Garcia steps back and lets the other guitarists take over, to the point where he barely plays for long stretches; his role is mainly to set a theme and then let the others roll with it. (Weir, in contrast, steps up to the challenge and plays more aggressively than usual.)

Though it’s not apparent on tape, the Dead also had other guests this night. Arthur Lee (from Love) is said to have added percussion during Dark Star, though I’m not sure about that. Later on at some point, Butch Trucks got on Mickey Hart’s drum kit and played with Kreutzmann through Lovelight, while Mickey handled extra percussion (off-mike?). And Mick Fleetwood was also wandering around stage banging on things, as he had in New Orleans.









The photo captures a moment in Lovelight.

In front: Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, Pigpen, Bob Weir, Danny Kirwan (facing the back), Gregg Allman on organ.

In back: Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Berry Oakley, unknown tambourine player, Butch Trucks, Duane Allman, and Mickey Hart with a drumstick on the far end of the stage.

The photo makes it even more surprising that the jam was as coherent as it was, with everyone able to hear each other across the stage. Garcia’s positioned himself in the far back, suiting his role in the background, and seems to be keeping an eyeline with Berry and Duane. (Also note: the bored guy beneath Gregg, wondering when this awful din will ever end.)





Phil Lesh has a good, lengthy account of the jam in his book Searching for the Sound (p.175-177), based on a close listen to the tape. (He mixes up Duane and Peter Green, though.) He says he wasn’t expecting anyone to sit in, which is a little hard to believe, but suggests that Garcia invited them. He concludes that it was “a surprisingly coherent free-for-all.”

The Dead & the Allmans decided not to jam together on the following nights at the Fillmore, perhaps feeling that once was enough.









THE FILLMORE EAST, CONTINUED





The Allmans would return to the Fillmore East a few more times over the next year. Just like the Dead, they loved the place – Butch Trucks said, “The Fillmore East was the best gig there was.” (68) Trucks felt, “You can’t put into words what those early Fillmore shows meant to us… The Fillmore East was it for us: the launching pad for everything that happened.” (69)

Gregg wrote, “That venue was something special, and we always had a special connection to it. The acoustics in there were incredible – the kind of perfect sound you almost never get.” (70)

Betts agreed that the place was special: “The Fillmore was the temple of rock and roll. It was the lowest-paying gig out there. But everybody wanted to play the Fillmore, because it was the artistic presentation of rock & roll music. And it was because Bill Graham made it a point to present rock & roll in an artistic form… He had created this whole atmosphere.” Because the venue was so good, “the bands felt it and the crowd felt it and it lit all of us up. The Fillmore was the high-octane gig to play.” (71)

Berry Oakley described the feeling: “There’s some special places we play where we’ve done it before [hitting our peak], and every time we go back, the vibes are there and it ends up happenin’ again. We’ll end up playin’ three or four hours, and when we finish, I’ll be so high I can’t hardly talk. When you start hittin’ like that, the communication between the members of the band gets wide open. Stuff just starts comin’ out everywhere.” (72)





The Allmans, like the Dead, would play until dawn if you let them. There were Fillmore East shows where they didn’t stop until “somebody opened the doors and the sun came pouring in.” They decided to record their live album at the Fillmore East in March ’71. (Betts: “There was no question about where to record a concert.” Gregg: “That was the place to record and we knew it.”) (73) Their last set went until 6 a.m., and still the audience demanded more: as one reviewer wrote, “They didn’t want to quit and the audience wouldn’t let them.”

Then Bill Graham chose them to be the last band to play when he closed the venue on 6/27/71. (In a bit of poetic justice, the Beach Boys reluctantly opened for the Allmans – back in 1965, Duane & Gregg’s first band, the Escorts, had opened for the Beach Boys in Daytona Beach.)

Unfortunately their show the night before, when they played for hours with encore after encore of jamming, wasn’t taped. One Allmans manager rhapsodized to Rolling Stone, “Oh my God, the boys was hittin’ the note for sure, brother. They smoked up the place til seven in the mornin’. That was a great place to play.” (74)

Butch Trucks recalled it as “the greatest show we have ever played. And it was just magic… It was one of those nights where you couldn’t make a mistake. No matter what I did, two or three other guys in the band were already there. No matter how far out…we all went to the same place, and the crowd was right there with us all night long. It was just unbelievable.” (75)

When Graham introduced the Allmans for the last Fillmore East show on the 27th, the night before was still ringing in his ears: “Over the past year or so we’ve had them on both coasts a number of times. In all that time, I’ve never heard the kind of music that this group plays. And last night we had the good fortune of having them get onstage about 2:30, 3:00, and they walked out of here at 7:00 in the morning, and…in all my life, I’ve never heard the kind of music that this group plays. The finest contemporary music. We’re going to round it off with the best of them all, the Allman Brothers.” (76)

(Ironically, their show on the 27th was rather short and didn’t reach such heights. Gregg explained, “Everybody was already whipped from the night before… Everyone was burnt out.”) (77)





And as with the Dead, Graham had a warm friendship with the Allmans.

“[We] had a special relationship with Bill Graham,” Gregg said, “Bill loved us.” (78) Gregg appreciated that Graham was professional, fair with everyone, and treated all bands the same: “I loved this guy Bill Graham because he was such a straight shooter with us. There were never any confrontations, and he always came back and shook our hands, telling us that we had put on a hell of a great show. He would ask us if we thought the light show was okay, and if there was anything he could do to make the show better… We owe so much to Bill Graham.” (79)

Betts concurred: “ The Fillmore was our Carnegie Hall, and we loved Bill Graham so much. He never gave us one grain of bullshit, and he’d raise hell with other bands over all kinds of things.” (80)

Betts recalled, “We were scared to death of Bill Graham when we first started playin’ the Fillmore East ‘cause if you’re not in tune, if you’re not ready when the curtains opened, Bill would jump all over you after the show. And we were never in tune, we were never ready, as hard as we’d try, and he just loved us. He never jumped at us or snapped at us. You know Bill, he could be very explosive. Over the years, he was really one of my heroes and one of my best friends in music, as far as musical relationships. We knew he was a square shooter.” (81)

Duane Allman said in 1971, “Bill loved us. But we loved him just as much. I think Bill Graham is the best; he’s number one with me. I have more respect for that guy than just about anyone. Folks are always bitching about the way he treats them. I’ll tell you somethin’. He treats a band exactly the way a band treats him. You show up on time; you do a professional sound check; you don’t hassle him for bread – man, he’ll treat you like a prince. That’s the way he treats us and that’s the way we treat him. Anybody don’t respect Bill Graham got their head messed around.” (82)









5/10/70 Sports Arena, Atlanta





The Dead met the Allmans again in Atlanta three months after their Fillmore East jam. The Dead flew down after their May 9 show in Worcester, but the airline left the Dead’s equipment behind in Boston, so the Allmans pitched in and loaned the Dead their own gear. (The Allmans had played the Georgia Tech Coliseum in Atlanta on May 9, so they were near at hand.) The Hampton Grease Band opened; it was announced that the Allmans were present and would jam with the Dead; and at the end of the Dead’s set, Duane, Gregg, Oakley, and Trucks came out and jammed on Mountain Jam>Will the Circle Be Unbroken.





Murray Silver, the promoter, wrote: “The Dead arrived in Atlanta without their equipment, and I called Duane Allman at home in Macon early on Sunday morning to ask him if I could rent his sound system. He asked me who it was for, and when I told him it was for the Dead, he told me that I could have it for free... The Brothers brought their equipment to Atlanta and the two bands met... At the end of the Dead's set, the Allman Brothers joined them onstage and played a version of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" unlike anything that has been heard before or since.” (83)

Sadly, there is no tape.





Those who were there recall the show fondly.

David: “The Dead played a very long set with members of the Allman Brothers Band sitting in for a monumental Mountain Jam and more at the end. It was a magical night.”

Tom Lindley: “An announcement from the stage about lost equipment and the Dead would be using the ABB equipment. The Allmans did not play a separate set but they came out and jammed with the Dead at the end... On the final song Duane and Jerry were plugged into the same Marshall head and at a high point in the song the amp head exploded. Everybody rushed out to replace the head and they finished the song.”

David Powell: “ My favorite version of "Dark Star" was one I saw the Dead perform live in Atlanta on Sunday, May 10, 1970 at the small Sports Arena. It was memorable because Duane Allman sat in & played second lead with Jerry. The Allman Brothers had driven up from Macon to lend the Dead some equipment that day and later sat in to play an encore set with the Dead. The opening act was Atlanta's Hampton Grease Band. The Allman Brothers did not play a set by themselves, but sat in & played with the Dead as an encore.” (84)





Duane was happy to meet Jerry again, this time with his infant daughter. She writes, "Duane took me out of my mother's arms and carried me off. 'Duane! Where are you taking her?' my mother asked. 'I want her to get blessed by Jerry!' He took me into the Dead's dressing room, and Jerry Garcia rested his big palm on my tiny head." (84a)



http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/06/may-10-1970-atlanta-sports-arena.html













MOUNTAIN JAM





The Allmans actually quoted Dark Star in a Mountain Jam later that year – in the 7/26/70 Stony Brook show, Duane plays the melody clearly at 1:05. For about 25 seconds, we get a glimpse of what an Allmans Dark Star would have sounded like:





The Mountain Jam theme was based on Donovan's 1967 single "There is a Mountain":

Dick Latvala thought, “Mountain Jam almost might be said to be something they both collaborated together [on].” (85)

There has been some confusion over how both bands came to play this theme - it's even been printed that Duane first jammed it with the Dead at the Fillmore East! This is not so. It was one of the Allmans' earliest tunes, and shows up in a May '69 concert





Gregg recalled, “Mountain Jam was my brother’s thing. He just started playing it one day. It’s not that he had a thing for Donovan – it’s just a happy little melody, and it makes for a really nice jam.” (86)

Jaimoe said, "Twiggs came up with this thing, a Donovan song, 'There Is A Mountain.' Twiggs and Duane played it, then Dickey and Duane played it." (86a) Twiggs Lyndon was the Allmans' road manager, who brought a suitcase full of 45rpm records and a portable record player along on tours; it seems Donovan's song caught Duane's ear.



Duane may well have recognized it on Anthem of the Sun, where the melody shows up at 9:00 into Alligator, for about 20 seconds. But while the Allmans promptly built up the tune into a giant jam piece, in Dead shows it was always a fleeting quote from Garcia, never a lengthy jam.

A couple Dead examples:

https://archive.org/details/gd1969-04-23.sbd.miller.98968.sbeok.flac16 (4/23/69, 12:30 in the Eleven)





Phil Lesh was surprised to hear the Allmans playing it at the Fillmore East. “The Grateful Dead had played around with [the theme] for a while in live performance, so it was a very pleasant surprise to hear that the Brothers had also discovered the tune and developed its potential.” (87)





Butch Trucks once said, “You take a silly little melody, like that Donovan thing, ‘First there is no mountain, then there is.’ You turn it into an hour long epic, and it’s never the same night after night. It’s always different. You go with it wherever you feel like going that night. Some nights, it may be mellow. Some nights it may be like a damn thunderstorm. You just never really know what is going to happen.” (88)





But Mountain Jam also illustrates one difference between the Dead and the Allmans: the Allmans’ jam material was much more rehearsed and arranged than the Dead’s. As Gregg said, “All the arrangements are pre-rehearsed down to the letter. But with the solos, you can take it as long as you want.” (89) Allmans jams tended to be a succession of solos and planned-out changes, rather than the loose group improvisation that the Dead specialized in, and their shows didn’t vary so much from night to night.





That said, in spite of their smaller repertoire, audiences experienced the Allmans’ music as being very fresh and unpredictable. One label promo man said, “Unlike anyone else I’d ever seen, every night was different. It was the same setlist, but I’d never seen a band that was so spontaneous and reacted so well to each other. They would let a song stretch because ‘it just felt good tonight.’ Some nights ‘Whipping Post’ would be 6 minutes…and sometimes it’d be 20 minutes. It was all about ‘how we’re feeling tonight.’ I’d never experienced that in show business before… It was absolutely real and spontaneous.” (90)

A Rolling Stone reporter following the band in October ’71 noticed that they were playing the same standard repertoire each night, but the shows could still vary a lot depending on how band and audience were feeling: in one show, “the sound is soggy” and the band out of sorts; other nights are “tight, subdued,” or “jagged, unpleasant,” especially when the audiences are indifferent or the halls have a bad ambience. (Surprisingly, in one show after another, “Streams of people begin leaving before the set is done.”) But one night in Santa Monica is different – “This time around, the acoustics of the hall are crisper, the audience is more responsive, and the band’s music flows more smoothly, although there’s little if any variation from the previous evening’s program.” (91)





In one interview, Duane praised the “natural fire” of playing live, “the spontaneity of the music. There’s rough arrangements, rough layouts of the songs, and then the solos are entirely up to each member of the band… So some nights are really good, and some nights ain’t too hot. It’s the natural, spur-of-the-moment type of thing that I consider a valuable asset of our band.” (92)

Not being too satisfied with their first two studio albums, he planned to record their next album live, to show the band in their natural element. And like the Dead’s, it would turn out to be a double album.





I haven’t found many comparisons between the Allmans’ and the Dead’s live albums in the press at the time. It took a couple more years for the Allmans’ reputation as an improvisational band to grow; but a few early reviewers did notice a similarity.

One reviewer of the 1971 Fillmore East album noted that “in several places, especially near the end…the Allmans sounded just like the Grateful Dead in their live electric state. Two drummers, just like the Dead, and swirling, free-form music.” (93)

Robert Christgau, a longtime “admitted fanatic” of the Dead, was less charitable. Live/Dead was “gently transcendent as usual…the finest rock improvisation ever recorded.” But he was bored by the Allmans: “Even if Duane Allman plus Dickey Betts does equal Jerry Garcia, the Dead know roads are for getting somewhere. That is, Garcia…always takes you someplace unexpected on a long solo. I guess the appeal here is the inevitability of it all.” (94)





One Fillmore East review in the Rag (the underground paper in Austin, Texas) is worth quoting at length since, without drawing an overt connection between the bands, it could almost be a review of a Dead live show:

“This is a damn good record. The Allman Brothers are…a band that comes out of the freak community and elicits enthusiastic response from it, not just because it’s the ‘home town boys’ but because the music is so fine. I remember reading stories in the Great Speckled Bird, Atlanta’s underground paper, a couple of years ago about this fantastic band that turned everybody on at a free gig at a local park. My expectations from that were pretty high; I’m glad to report that this lp fulfills them completely. […]

It starts off with several blues cuts…and moves into longer pieces, with more and more free-form improvisation in each one. The instrumentation is like the Dead, two lead guitars, two drums, a bass and an organ. The sound is moderately heavy; when all the players are going at once it gets quite dense. But much of the time is taken by solos by…the guitars or the organ. The playing is always in impeccable taste…[the players] can improvise almost endlessly on a single chord, elaborating a basic riff again and again without repeating, in an electric style somewhere in between a raga and white mountain country picking. Side Two, for instance, is 19 minutes of ‘You Don’t Love Me,’ a jumpy Chicago-style blues, but after playing the song for a while the band flows into a raga-like jam on a single chord, with some fine slowed-down solo guitar breaks, going back to the blues at the end to wrap it up. The improvisation is acid-rock, not jazz…the tempos and harmonies go through flowing changes and much of the soloing is long, hypnotic variations on a single theme, also going through slow, flowing changes. The high point of the lp is 22 minutes of ‘Whipping Post,’ a heavy but very soulful number in 6/8 time with fine crying vocals and endlessly inventive guitar and organ jams over a four-chord repeating sequence, the different lines weaving in and out creating a massive, richly-textured background of sound from which first one then another of the instruments stands out. I can just see crowds of freaks in a park or dance-hall writhing and gesturing in ecstasy.

This is a four-sided set and there’s not one minute that’s boring; most of it is completely entrancing high-energy good-time rock.” (95)





The Allmans left Mountain Jam off their Fillmore East live album (which would have turned into a triple album!), but included it on Eat a Peach the next year, as a tribute to Duane. Per Gregg, “We had already made the decision before Duane died to include Mountain Jam on the [next] album.” (96)

Ironically, they were very disappointed in that version:

Trucks: “That Mountain Jam is only on there because it’s the only version we had on multitrack tape, and it was such a signature song of the band with Duane that we simply had to have it on a record. We played it many times so much better, but better a relatively mediocre version than nothing at all.”

Betts: “That was probably the worst version of Mountain Jam we ever played.” (97)

Trucks: “There was only one decent recording of it that was good enough to put out, but it was also one of the worst we ever played. We said we had to put that one out because it was Duane playing on it, and we had to use as much of his music as we possibly could at that point.” (98)









11/21/70 WBCN Studio, Boston





After the Atlanta jam, Duane met the Dead again in Boston that November. The Allmans were playing the Boston Tea Party on Nov. 19-21, and the Dead played Boston University on Nov. 21. After the Dead’s show, some members of the Dead and Allmans (and friends) headed over to the WBCN radio station for an impromptu wee-hours acoustic set. About half an hour survives on tape, but unfortunately both tape and recording are pretty poor.





El Paso starts the proceedings, Garcia & Weir on acoustics, followed by some inaudible chatter. (Throughout the tape, there’s a crowd of people talking but most of them are nowhere near a microphone.)

DJ: “Sitting in with the Allman Brothers and Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Dead. How was the concert tonight?”

Weir: “Pretty good.”

DJ: “Kinda weird, cause there were a lot of police out front at the beginning.”

Garcia & Weir talk a bit about it (but I can’t make them out because of the poor sound). The DJ complains that the mike is picking up the guitars really loud but not their voices, can they move closer?

Pigpen?: “Maybe we should just talk a little louder.”

Weir: “You wanna sing Deep Elem or something?”

DJ: “Do anything you want.”

They do Big River, Garcia singing it by himself.

DJ: “Duane, you have a long-distance call from Atlanta.”

Garcia: “The sheriff knows you’re here!”

Weir asks someone: “Was that the Big Railroad Blues or Big River Blues you were asking for?”

I Know You Rider follows, Garcia on vocal again (Weir doesn’t sing harmony until the last verse).

Duane returns – the DJ asks, “What was that phone call about, Duane?” There’s some mostly inaudible chatter about his phone call. (Weir tells the radio audience: “A lotta news about a non-event.” Garcia: “Comin’ atcha live.”)

The DJ mentions that both bands have new albums out.

Garcia: “I haven’t heard yours yet – how’s about laying a copy on us?”

DJ: “I can’t get ‘em for you tonight, I can get it for you Monday.”

Garcia: “We’ll be out of town, truckin’.”

DJ: “Are you gonna be able to, or want to play that song about people going all over the country – Truckin’?”

Garcia: “No, man, my voice is shot.”

Weir: “As you can hear, we’re sounding pretty scratchy.”

DJ: “Can you do any kind of thing using Duane?… Do you have any high school football songs you all know?”

Garcia: “It’s not our fault that he didn’t bring a guitar. We can only look after the cat so much.”

Weir: “The guy’s gotta take on some responsibility.”

DJ: “Duane didn’t bring his guitar.”

So Garcia & Weir play a bluegrass-style dual-guitar instrumental. (This may be Beaumont Rag, but I’m not sure.)

Weir: “You got any requests?”

Garcia gets a request and starts strumming Candyman, but says, “I can’t sing it, man.”

Weir: “I’ll do ‘Blow Your Whistle, Freight Train’ – run out and get my capo.”

Some banter ensues, and Garcia coughs into the mike.

DJ: “Oh, my earphones!”

Garcia: “I’m sorry, man.”

DJ: “Even Jerry Garcia’s cough is melodic.”

Garcia: “Yeah, sure.”

Weir: “Even his cough is heavy.” (laughter)

Another request, but Garcia says: “I haven’t got a slide with me… I see you came completely prepared…”

Weir sings Dark Hollow.

The DJ announces that Bob, Jerry, Pigpen, and Duane are here: “They’re all here, but the Allman Brothers didn’t bring their instruments.” There’s more inaudible chatter and laughter.

DJ: “Say what?”

Garcia: “You lost it, man.”

DJ: “I was talking!”

Garcia: “Yeah, well, that’s when all the good stuff goes by.”

After more banter, Duane’s invited up.

Garcia: “Here, take this seat over here.”

Weir: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last gasp of a dying man.”

Pigpen?: “You ain’t gettin’ out of this one.”

DJ: “Duane Allman’s got a guitar in his hand, relinquished by Jerry. You need a pick?”

Duane: “I’ve got everything I need.”

As the others laugh and tease him (“I’m a guitar player, I swear I am.” “I’m good, I’m good, give me a chance!”), Duane’s at a loss what to do. He plays the instrumental Anji for a minute.

DJ: “That was Duane Allman, playing – you have a name for that song?”

Duane: “That was Anji, by Bert Jansch, as much of it as I know.”

Weir: “Oh, I know one.”

Weir sings Let Me In (I’m not sure if he’s accompanied by Garcia or Duane), and the tape ends.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkdhWdDGYI4 (an excerpt)





It’s disappointing Duane doesn’t play more than one brief instrumental, but it’s still a glimpse at Duane’s acoustic side that otherwise didn’t appear in public, except for ‘Little Martha’ on Eat a Peach.









4/26/71 Fillmore East





The following spring during the Dead’s Fillmore East run, Duane showed up to play with the Dead again. (The Allmans were on tour in New York, and had the night off.) Unfortunately he missed the first set on 4/26 with its Dark Star, but he sat in for the first three songs in the second set – Sugar Magnolia, It Hurts Me Too, and Beat It On Down The Line.









Garcia tells the cheering crowd, “We got Duane Allman over here, helping out on this set.”

The Dead play Sugar Magnolia like Duane isn’t there, but he catches on pretty quickly, familiar with the song and adding some fills, and coming right in with a solo during the extended raveup. It’s great to hear him and Garcia twining guitar lines and building the intensity until the fine Duane-driven climax. (He can barely be heard on the circulating tape, though, and isn’t really present in the mix until the next song.)

After some lengthy tuning, they head to Duane’s home territory with a slow blues, It Hurts Me Too. There’s some “who’s on first?” confusion when they start the solos, but he and Garcia take turns soloing, Duane’s slide contrasting with Garcia’s rather cautious, minimalist playing. (It sounds like everyone’s being careful not to step on each other.)

Then the Dead throw Duane a curveball with a raucous BIODTL, to which he can’t add much but a short rock & roll slide solo. In a hurry, he doesn’t stick around for any more songs, and splits. This would be the last time he met the Dead.





David Lemieux has said that the BIODTL with Duane was almost included in the Ladies & Gentlemen set, but had to be dropped due to a lawsuit.

Kirk West (Allmans manager) said in 2001: “We were able to…make ‘Sugar Magnolia’ for the Duane Box. That’s also tied up in a lawsuit right now… It’ll be out and it’s wonderful. On the tapes that are floating around, you can’t even hear Duane until they get to ‘Beat It On Down The Line.’ You can’t hear him hardly at all on ‘Sugar Mag,’ but he’s all over it… Duane was hot in the signal the whole time [on the 8-track]; he just wasn’t mixed right [on the 2-track].” (99)





Sugar Magnolia has now been released on the Skydog box set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oaodK8zdtI (a better mix than the circulating two-track tape)









7/16/72 Dillon Stadium, Hartford CT





In the summer of 1972, the Allmans’ and Dead’s tour plans crossed paths in the northeast. Though they weren’t yet playing joint concerts, they decided to informally sit in at each other’s shows on a couple dates. Both bands had changed: Duane was gone, and Pigpen was ill at home. (Dickey Betts actually hadn’t played onstage with the Dead before, leaving it to Duane.)









In the Dead’s show on 7/16, Dave Tamarkin writes, “During the 2nd set Gregg's gear starting getting set up, but we didn't know it was his… I seem to recall Betts coming out during Sugar Magnolia [and] I clearly remember Betts, Berry and Jaimoe on the rest. Gregg ended up just watching from behind his organ that they went to the trouble of setting up.” According to one witness, “Jerry and Bobby pretended to mock Dickey by ‘showing him how to play,’” but a very hot rock & roll suite ensued.

Sugar Magnolia has severe SBD mix problems, including a loud distorted piano. Betts is present and playing in Sugar Mag, but you can barely hear him. (He could be heard in the audience, though. If the audience tape for this portion circulated, we’d be able to hear what he’s doing.)

Fortunately, the mix is sorted out in Not Fade Away. The band has become a Dead/Allmans hybrid with Betts, Oakley, and Jaimoe playing, and Lesh sitting out. So we get a rare thing: a 1972 Dead with two drummers, two lead guitars, and a different bass player. Oakley immediately stands out with his thick, powerful bass tone pushing the music. It’s a very energetic performance - the guitars take turns soloing (even Weir gets a solo! which sounds awfully like his usual China Cat turn). Betts sounds restrained and even delicate next to Garcia, who dominates.

The end of NFA calms down into a nice tranquil Allmans-type passage, Garcia & Betts blending guitar lines, but Garcia soon shifts into Goin’ Down the Road. Betts’ solos still sound very tentative and laid-back compared to Garcia’s; Garcia decides to pick up the pace and storm into Hey Bo Diddley. (The Allmans are right on top of it.) Garcia & Weir yell the lyrics, and after a few minutes of jamming, they wind it down in a relatively smooth rock & roll finish.

For the last number, they dive into Johnny B. Goode. Though setlist sites don’t mention it, Oakley and Jaimoe are still playing on this. They don’t jam it out, and Betts seems to have left the stage since Garcia takes all his usual solos.













7/17/72 Gaelic Park, NYC





The next day, Garcia, Weir, and Kreutzmann went to the Allmans’ Gaelic Park show to sit in. (The show had originally been scheduled for the 13th, but was pushed to the 17th, perhaps because of rain.) The show only survives in a harsh, tinny audience tape – just about listenable, but still clearly a strong show. They joined in during the last song, Mountain Jam. Weir isn’t really audible on the tape, but Garcia & Betts are loud and clear.

After some tuning, they slip right into Mountain Jam without the usual intro. This is an edgy, charged-up version, more frenetic than graceful. Oakley’s thundering bass, the spiky guitars, and shrill organ all compete in a jangling maelstrom. There’s no drum/bass break in this Mountain Jam (and only a short organ solo), so it’s almost a half-hour of non-stop twin-guitar nirvana. Garcia & Betts’ styles are similar enough, it’s hard to tell them apart at times, though Garcia seems to dominate, particularly in the second half. Garcia takes a piercing solo for a couple minutes after 18:30. The closing few minutes after the melancholy interlude are particularly stomping and triumphant, and very stretched-out, with Garcia taking the lead for a final run through the theme.

Perhaps the best of Garcia’s Mountain Jams.













November 1972





After those shows, the Dead & Allmans decided to organize more concerts together, and made plans for the fall.

As Weir said, “A joint show with the Allman Brothers was an opportunity to play to at least a partially new audience, which would always make it more of an adventure for us. We also looked forward to the cross-pollination; we would play with them, they would play with us, and that was always fun.” (100)





Reports of the upcoming shows appeared in the press:





9/25/72: “Rumors of an Allman Brothers split-up after their cancelled tour have fizzled out with the word that they are trying to set up another concert.

Bunky Odom, representing the Allmans, and Sam Cutler, representing the Grateful Dead, have been negotiating for joint concerts for the two groups. The proposed concerts would be six hours. Each band on for two hours and a jam for the other two hours.” (101)





10/14/72: “The Allman Brothers Band…will go back on tour in November. Current negotiations between Phil Walden and Associates and Out of Town Tours indicate that a late year tour may feature the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead in several six hour concerts, two hours for each band and two hours for jamming.” (102)





11/4/72: “The Allman Brothers and The Grateful Dead will be playing together in Houston November 18 and 19. Phil Walden will be recording the Allmans’ set, and the portion of the show that the two groups jam together, and both will be released.” (103)





11/72: “Houston – A series of six-hour concerts with the Grateful Dead and the Allman Bros. will begin at Hofheinz Pavillion here, Nov. 18-19.

Schedule calls for each rock combo to play for about two hours with a two-hour jam at the end. Acts will alternate as openers. Shows will start at 6 p.m. with tix at $4.50 and $5.50. Dates in other cities are being lined up.” (104)





Had any other dates actually been lined up after Houston? It doesn’t look like a full tour was planned. Record World said “the concert will kick off a possible series of dates,” but the SF Examiner said that “further concerts are not definitely set.”

It was an ambitious program for the Houston shows, though – two hours left open for jamming (!), and a possible live album (from the Allmans, at least – the Dead had just released Europe ’72 that month).





But after Berry Oakley died in a crash on November 11, the Allmans had to call off the shows.





Steve Parish remembered, “After the death of Duane we really tried to support them, to get them through that tough time. We scheduled some shows together and on the way to one in Houston, I crashed our truck and I was almost killed and our PA was all over the road, and the whole thing was just a mess. I was lucky to be alive, and we didn’t know how we were going to make the show, but we were thinking, ‘At least we have the Allman Brothers there to pick up any slack.’ We got there and found out that Berry Oakley had died and they, of course, weren’t coming. What a weird and horrible day.” (105)

(Parish’s memory is off here: Oakley had died a week earlier, and even though the Dead had been on the road all week, it’s impossible they hadn’t heard before arriving in Houston. Most likely they’d known since starting their tour in Kansas City on Nov. 12.)





An annoyed Houston reporter complained: “The Allman Brothers weren’t able to make it. Their bass player was killed in a motorcycle accident recently and the show doesn’t always have to go on… The concert was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., with just San Francisco’s The Grateful Dead performing. It began promptly at 9 p.m. The three-hour delay, it was explained, had something to do about an equipment truck having a wreck on the way from Dallas. So for three hours it was the big wait.” (106)





The Allmans were also scheduled to play December 10-12 with the Dead at Winterland, but cancelled those appearances as well. They did manage to do a show at Ann Arbor on Dec. 9 (new bass player Lamar Williams’ first show) – less than a month after Oakley’s death – but didn’t play any more shows until the end of the month. The Dead found new opening bands for the Winterland run:













The Allmans resumed touring in 1973, and the plans for joint shows with the Dead continued. Bill Graham was going to have them play his first Day on the Green, announced in the papers:

“The Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and Waylon Jennings will take part in the first rock concert at the Ontario Motor Speedway from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. May 27.

Tickets to the event, to be sold in advance, are $7.50. Promoters expect a crowd of 150,000. Law enforcement officers will set up road checks within a five-mile radius of the stadium to be sure that only cars with special stickers and people with tickets are allowed in the area.

The Grateful Dead has become one of the major rock groups in the past few years, and their concerts are almost always sold out. Currently they are enjoying big success with their “Europe ‘72” album… The Dead usually performs alone in concert, spending at least 2-1/2 hours on stage for a show. At the Ontario Speedway, it will stage a marathon concert for the fans.

The Allman Brothers have been consistent crowd pleasers.

Waylon Jennings and the Waylors are big country attractions.” (107)





But the Happening didn’t happen. Billboard reported: “Refunds for the May 27 rock concert at the Ontario, Calif., Motor Speedway are being made available… Promoter Bill Graham cancelled the show when Ontario police and civic officials allegedly permitted insufficient time for all three acts to perform during the daytime event.” (108)





A local article stated that the show was “canceled because the time allotted for the program was too short, promoter Bill Graham said today…

Ontario police said the concert at the speedway would have to end exactly three hours before dark, to avert any problems. The Weather Bureau pinpointed that time as 5:54.

Graham said he doubted he could honestly end the show by that time, since both the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead were scheduled to perform for several hours each, to give fans their money’s worth.

At a recent Des Moines concert, also promoted by Graham, the Dead were on stage from 1 p.m. to 7:05 p.m.” (109)





The Dead still played with Jennings and NRPS at Graham’s “Dancing on the Outdoor Green” event at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco that weekend, May 26. (I’m not sure why the Allmans weren’t scheduled for that event as well, since they were available.) Graham was able to start his series of “Days on the Green” at the Oakland Coliseum later that year. The Allmans and the Dead, meanwhile, already had more shows scheduled on the east coast.









6/9-10/73 RFK Stadium, Washington DC





Sam Cutler introduced the Allmans on the 9th: “A lot of energy’s been put out over the years to bring these bands together, and prior to this day it hasn’t happened for a while. Everybody from our end of the music is real happy that at long last we’ve been able to welcome on the same bill as the Grateful Dead – the Allman Brothers Band.”





For a good historical account of these shows, see:

Some entertaining newspaper clippings on the 9th are here:





And an overview of the tapes is here:





On the 9th, Doug Sahm opened shortly after noon, then the Dead played in the afternoon at about 3, then the Allmans closed with an evening set, starting around 7 and finishing at 11:15 pm. Per the Washington Post, the music “continued for almost 12 hours Saturday, with hour-long breaks between bands.”

On the 10th, Wet Willie opened, then the Allmans, then the Dead closed with a marathon show of over five hours (including set-breaks).

The reporters in attendance generally preferred the Allmans. For instance, the Rolling Stone reviewer: “The Allmans closed the Saturday show with an inspired performance most obvious during ‘Les Brers in A Minor,’ which was driven to incredible levels of intensity by Dicky Betts' searing guitar lines. Sunday evening, the Dead did not fare as well.” He complained that the Dead played for too long (“more than six hours,” with 3 or 4 hours of “extended variations on the Dark Star theme”!), but admitted that the “hard-core” fans “seemed to enjoy every minute…stomping and clapping” to the end. (110)

The Washington Post: “The Grateful Dead carried the crowd through Saturday’s afternoon heat with the relatively relaxed style of San Francisco soaring rock. In the evening the Allman Brothers clearly stole the show with high-power boogie music that had the audience undulating throughout the night.” (111)





Chuck Leavell, the Allmans’ new keyboard player, had started playing shows with them in November 1972, and this would be his first chance to meet the Dead. He recalled, “I was a fan of the Grateful Dead and was really excited about the opportunity to watch them and meet them.” (112)

The Allmans told him to watch out, though: “I had already been warned about the notorious dosing of folks that would sometimes happen backstage with the Dead…which I believe mostly came from a guy named Owsley, one of their “insiders.” I was told not to drink anything from a bottle, can or glass that had been opened, and to wipe the top of any can before I drank out of it (sometimes drops of acid would be put on the tops of the cans in the coolers). So I was very careful, and luckily avoided any surprises.” (113)





One backstage incident illustrates the Allmans’ condition during the shows. Dick Wooley was vice president of Capricorn, the Allmans’ record label. Visiting the band, he found mayhem on the stage. Wooley recalled, “Backstage, the Grateful Dead roadies dosed the food and drinks of as many people as they could with LSD. Bunky Odom [Allmans manager] warned us in advance so we didn’t partake of anything. However the ABB road crew already had.” (114)

Wooley was dismayed by the Allmans roadies, who were all high: “In our organization everyone was out of control.” (115) They weren’t happy to see him either. Odom explained, “It’s always intense on stage and the road crew has to watch this and that, and…Dick Wooley came on stage with some people and they didn’t want him there.” (116)

Jaimoe remembered, “The stage was really crowded and everyone there was specifically told not to come up without clearance from the road manager.” (117) (Sam Cutler asked the audience on both days to not climb up on the stage.) Roadie Kim Payne was “full of drugs” that day and worried, “The stage was constructed on the field and it was not all that stable. The Dead had an entourage that must have been 300 people. We were playing and there were probably 150 people on the stage, which was not designed to hold so many, and I could see the whole thing shaking and swaying. I was really worried about the thing falling.” He told the others, “Nobody else gets on this stage.”

Next thing he knew, “there was this guy I had never seen before with short hair wearing a suit and holding a briefcase. He said he was with the label and he was coming up, and I just said, ‘No you’re not,’ and punched him in the nose.” (118) Wooley started fighting with several Allmans roadies who threw him offstage, beat him up and left him bleeding. Given that he worked for their record company, they were fired after the shows. The road manager sighed, “the road crew had gotten pretty demanding…controlling access to everything… That was a culmination of everything falling apart. There was just a general malaise going on.” (119)





Nonetheless, the Allmans played two good shows in the heat. The playing and setlists in both shows are much the same, so they’re not that different (Allmans shows being a lot more similar to each other than Dead shows), but the first evening show on the 9th is longer and stretches out a bit more, with a continuous flow in the second half. A few examples of the show:





6/9/73 Mountain Jam





Sam Cutler announced the Allmans’ encore on the 9th: “This is where the scene gets a little loose and various people from various well-known and unknown outfits will be joining the folks onstage to play a little.”

No guests appeared in Whipping Post, but for the Allmans’ last song, Mountain Jam, they were joined by Bob Weir and guitarist Ronnie Montrose. (I don’t know what connection Montrose had with the Allmans.) You can hear Weir very faintly in the background after the first minute – the mix isn’t well-balanced; he remains too quiet for a while after that. Montrose comes in briefly after 3:30, loud but sounding off-key. Weir gets a solo after 4:30 (in his usual jagged, edgy style), and he finally gets bumped up in the mix by 6 minutes in.

Montrose joins Weir for a bit around 7:10; Weir finishes his solo, but Montrose has nothing to add, so they all just comp for a bit as a piano solo emerges. The music grooves along without much distinction, until Betts starts stepping out around 10:15. Afterwards, the performance quiets down and becomes more mellow and unified. Montrose, perhaps sensing he’s out of place and not contributing much besides some rhythm chops, gradually fades out and (by 14 minutes in) vanishes until the finale, leaving Weir & Betts together. With Betts in the lead, they interact well, Weir following him closely like a regular Allman (Weir was used to backing another guitarist!). Although it was a missed opportunity not to have Garcia participate, it’s interesting to hear Betts with a supporting Dead-style guitar rather than a twin lead.

Not a standout Mountain Jam, but the second half is nice.









6/10/73





Dickey Betts and Butch Trucks join the Dead for their third set. (Though Merl Saunders is said to be on organ as well, he can’t be heard at all, and I wonder what he was even doing in Washington DC since he didn’t have any shows on the east coast.) Garcia assures the crowd as they tune up, “We’re having a few minor technical difficulties, but everything’s gonna be all right.” (Then Weir announces a lost purse backstage.)

On some special occasions, Garcia would break out his solo repertoire at Dead shows (for instance on 3/25/72), and here he introduces a couple numbers he’d been doing with Saunders. Partly this was because the Allmans guests would know the songs and they’d be easy to play! (Trucks, joining Kreutzmann on drums, may well have played It Takes A Lot To Laugh in his pre-Allmans band, the Bitter Ind.) Unfortunately, the band sounds pretty tired during this set – it was now well after midnight on the 11th – and Betts in particular seems so fried he can barely play. (One witness wrote in Deadbase, “Dicky Betts had to be egged on by Garcia. He seemed rather intimidated.”) (120)

Betts stays in the background during the Dylan tune, not coming forward until after the second verse, when Garcia nudges him into trading a few lines; but Betts seems not to want to play a solo, and soon fades into the background again. So the song stays much like a Garcia club performance, very laid-back with extended Garcia solos.

Garcia then brings up That’s All Right Mama, which is more up-tempo – in the instrumental break, first Garcia solos, then Keith, then Weir, but Betts still refuses to step up, so the band comps for a while til Garcia starts another solo. Finally, after everyone leaves another empty space for him, Betts takes a solo at last, in a restrained country style. (Garcia joins in for a few harmonized lines, Allmans-style.) The performance has warmed up, and they groove along happily for a few more minutes, no longer really soloing but weaving parts, placing new melodic lines in the groove. (Towards the end, Betts seems about to break into Jessica.)

After some tuning, they settle on Promised Land, picking things up with more ‘50s rock & roll. The first break has a very mellow Garcia solo, the second has a rather sleepy, uninspired Betts solo where he drops out midway, and the third has Garcia again to finish the song. Not a very energetic performance!

Kreutzmann starts the Not Fade Away beat, Trucks somewhat awkwardly joining him. It’s a standard but subdued performance, the drummers keeping up a solid rhythm pattern throughout. Betts is barely noticeable for the first few minutes, and Garcia takes a quiet, understated lead. When Betts does step up, he sounds very tired and unable to play anything extended; so Weir shares the lead, supporting Betts with much better playing. The music starts to sound a bit like Mountain Jam; Garcia joins in and there’s some nice, gentle three-guitar interaction before they settle into Goin’ Down the Road with a smooth transition. Betts has perked up a bit, and in the first break he intertwines lines with Garcia, playing a melodic solo before handing the baton back to Garcia. The second break is more uneventful: Garcia urges Betts forward, but Betts once again seems to drop out mid-solo, so Garcia takes over again.

The passage out of the song is a bit rough, as Garcia forgoes the usual Bid You Goodnight melody and the band reverts to a 1971-style two-chord jam. It works nicely with the guitarists sharing an arpeggio, but within a couple minutes they cut it short for an impromptu drum break between the two drummers. After a lively six-minute drum duet, Lesh decides to burst in with a brief little solo, teeing up the band for a return into Not Fade Away. Betts trades some fills with Garcia in between Weir’s screams during the reprise, but by now it’s a race to the finish. They muster up a grand rock finale, and Garcia throws in a quick Johnny B. Goode. In the first break, Garcia’s solo is uncharacteristically weak; in the second, Betts takes the lead with a more authentic Chuck Berry-style solo; and they quickly wrap up the song.

Garcia tells the crowd, “Thanks a lot, everybody, we’ll see you all later.”





Though it ends one of the Dead’s most famous shows, this guest set isn’t very remarkable. It stands out mainly for Garcia’s tunes, which are quite nice (and the Dead wouldn’t play again for decades), but the timing wasn’t great. Betts must have been dead on his feet by that point, and Garcia sounds worn out as well, leaving Weir as the most energetic guitarist onstage. The energy is rather low throughout, and it’s noticeable that when Garcia and Betts play together, they’re frequently just copying or harmonizing with the other’s lines, with only a few brief spots of interesting jamming. The set also stands out for its unique 1973 two-drummer setup, almost bringing Mickey Hart to mind (particularly in the drum duet), though much of the time Trucks seems to just be doubling Kreutzmann’s beats. That’s All Right Mama is probably the highlight.













7/27-28/73 Watkins Glen, NY





The Allmans’ next show with the Dead would be a historic giant festival in New York, with 600,000 kids attending. Naturally there are tons of newspaper reports and audience memories – but here are a couple good historical accounts, one by Robert Santelli:

And one by Alan Paul, which I’ve used heavily for this narrative:





And some fun newspaper clippings are here:





The idea for the Watkins Glen festival had begun back in 1972. Promoter Jim Koplik recalled, “I partnered with Shelly Finkel and we got the Dead to play at Dillon Stadium in Hartford [7/16/72]. I remember getting my first Grateful Dead contract, how excited I was. And then Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley came to the Dead show and jammed with them… I got a call from the road manager of the Allmans, Bunky Odom, asking, ‘Do you mind if we come up and jam with the Dead?’ I loved both acts, so I said, ‘Oh my God, that would be great!’” (121)

“The music they produced was unbelievable, and we decided we had to get the two bands together for a planned concert.” (122) “After I saw them onstage together…I started talking to the managers about putting them together for a big show, and they were all for it. Shelly actually came up with the Watkins Glen site, and we showed it to them and they loved it.” (123)





Allmans manager Bunky Odom was already thinking of putting the bands together for some shows when the promoters approached him. “Sam Cutler of the Grateful Dead and I put Watkins Glen together. I made twelve trips to San Francisco to meet him, and he came to Macon twice. It started with two dates we had booked together in Athens, Georgia, and Houston [in November ‘72], which got canceled because of Berry’s death. We wanted to work together more, kept talking and talking, and eventually decided to do three dates: the two at RFK and one at Watkins Glen.” (124)





Cameron Crowe wrote more about the background to the festival in one 1973 article on the Dead:

“The original idea for these supershows started over a year ago when a full length, cross-country tour with the Allman Brothers was booked into some of America’s largest stadiums. The two bands have been long time friends, going back to the days the members of the groups first met each other backstage at the Fillmore East. Both bands were set to hop on planes to begin the tour last fall when Allman bassist Berry Oakley was killed in a motorcycle accident just a few days before their opening show in Houston, Texas. The joint tour was cancelled until this past summer, when the Allmans and the Dead made an appearance at the RFK Stadium in Washington. The RFK Stadium appearance made concert history. Ticketron, the computer network covering the eastern coast, reported that tickets to the Dead-Allmans concert were snapped up as far away as Montreal, Canada. More than 80,000 seats were sold for the two consecutive concerts.” (125)





Bill Kreutzmann recalled the “competition between us and the Allman Brothers… Originally, the bill was supposed to just be the Dead and the Allmans, but our respective camps fought with the promoter over which bands would get headline status. The solution was that both bands would co-headline and they’d add a third ‘support’ act.” (126)

Odom recalled, “We invited the Band to open Watkins Glen, which Sam and I decided on together, because we thought those three bands represented America. They were the three best American bands and they related to each other…they knew each other. It was just a great fit.” (127)

Koplik said, “It was so great having the Band there. That was the Dead’s choice. We had actually agreed to put on Leon Russell as the third act on the show. But then the Dead or Jerry…really wanted the Band, because that was their home territory. I remember having to pay Leon Russell to not be at Watkins Glen.” (128) Koplik told a reporter, “We had Leon Russell signed on, but the Dead said no. They wanted someone else – the Band. I thought the Band had broken up, but Jerry Garcia called the Band and got them interested, and we offered them a ton of money, and they came.” (129)

From Phil Lesh’s point of view, “We put a tremendous amount of planning into that gig. We practically had to do it ourselves, despite the promoters. The biggest hassle was convincing the Band to come out and play – ‘Hey, man, it’s just down the road a piece. Come on out and play. What can you lose?’ They played great!” (130)

Robbie Robertson recalled, “We didn’t really want to play Watkins Glen… We felt the only reason to do things like that was the money. But we were talked into it. You know: ‘Oh come on, it’s only just up the road.’” (131)

These were actually the Band’s first shows since 1971, so it’s little wonder they needed convincing. They followed this up with two more shows with the Dead at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City the following week, then didn’t play live again until 1974.





Chuck Leavell said, “It was very exciting to think about those three bands playing together. We knew it was going to be a big draw and the figure of 100,000 people was being thrown around in the weeks prior, which seemed incredible.” But that turned out to be not even close to the number of people who showed up. “The day before…[I saw] this mass of people, like an exodus, out on the little highway. People were abandoning their vehicles in huge traffic jams and there was total confusion and mayhem.” (132)

With hundreds of thousands of people swarming in, abandoning their cars on the roads miles away and walking to the site, everyone was unprepared. The bands couldn’t drive to the site, so they were flown in on helicopters. Bob Weir recalled, “It was hard to get in and out of that place. It got way, way bigger than we intended for it to get. We thought maybe if we’re lucky we’d get 100,000 people; 60 to 70,000 would be nice and handle-able… As it turns out, the news reported there were 600,000 people there… People who were interested in going home…well, they couldn’t. If they wanted to leave, it just wasn’t possible. People had to be peeled away layer by layer.” (133)

The bands were astonished by the “sea of humanity” and “ocean of bodies,” which newspapers immediately compared to (the less-crowded) Woodstock. Reporters marveled at the rock groups’ “fanatical, somewhat cultish followers willing to travel any distance to hear the groups.” (133a)

All this meant more work for Dead roadie Steve Parish: “All the stuff like transportation just broke down. Amenities were impossible to maintain, fences were broken down. It became a serious security situation for the crowd, but the stage was secure. The Allman Brothers were a little more disorganized than us. We were hard at work building a tremendous PA system. Because of the crowds pouring in, the soundcheck day became a day of free music; it ended up being two days of music instead of one.” (134)

In an incident reminiscent of the Allmans’ road-crew altercation at RFK, promoter Koplik went onstage before the soundcheck to greet the band, only to be blocked by a surly Parish, who picked him up and dropped him off the edge of the stage. (McNally tells the story in Long Strange Trip, p.456-458.)





To help out, Bunky Odom said, “We had the promoters fly Bill Graham in to be the stage manager, because both bands had total faith in Bill, and that paid off.” (135) Koplik was relieved: “We ended up agreeing to hire Bill Graham to build a stage and bring the sound, so we had the goodwill and education of Bill Graham helping us… We were not really fully capable of pulling this thing off without his expertise.” (136)

Graham asked the 