An Introduction to my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the 70s.
A little bit on why I decided to write a second book on the Allman Brothers Band, which came out on Tuesday.
I’ve been grappling with the best way to share the news of my new book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, which was published Tuesday, July 25. I decided to just share the beginning with you. Below is the Author’s Note and Preface, which I think lays it all out pretty well. if you have more questions after you read this, let me know. I am writing this from my parents’ dining room table in Pittsburgh, where I am speaking tonight at a sold-out Cinderlands Warehouse, where they will launch my Brothers and Sisters IPA. I’m hitting the road. hard - maybe I’ll be at a town near you. Come say hi if so. Tickets to all events are available here. I’m also sharing some updated reviews and interviews there. This piece in the Houston Press explains things well.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
IN SEPTEMBER 2021, I flew back from Macon, Georgia, carrying a dusty suitcase full of hundreds of cassette tapes that an old friend promised would shed new light on the Allman Brothers Band and American culture.
Kirk West, the longtime Allman Brothers insider, had recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with the band in the mid- 1980s for a book he never wrote. Some forty years had passed, and no one had ever listened to most of them—not even Kirk. I carried the precious cargo on the plane with tender loving care, as if I were transporting sacred texts. I had already started writing this book, convinced that there was a lot more to be said about the Allman Brothers Band and their impact on America beyond music, even after so much had been written about the group, including my own bestselling oral history One Way Out.
The era that was the most crucial yet most under-explored was the time just before and after Brothers and Sisters, an album recorded and released in 1973. It became the Allman Brothers Band’s first and only true hit, pushing them beyond their devoted circle of hard-core fans to superstardom as they rose above the status of great American rock band to become a national institution. The history of the album reveals a larger story, a story about the nation itself.
I dug into the making of Brothers and Sisters and the events of 1971–76 , stitching together a broader tale that explains how and why the band was so deeply influential during this period. They helped elect Jimmy Carter. They hosted the largest rock concert ever. They were at the center of events involving a list of who’s who of American celebrities ranging from Cher to the Grateful Dead. I did dozens of fresh interviews and extensive research, but my secret weapon was contained in that suitcase: Kirk’s cache of never- before- heard interviews.
The subjects were talking to someone they deeply trusted during a lull in their careers. In the mid-1980 s, the band had twice broken up and had no plans to reunite. Everyone was bracingly honest, deeply reflective, and consistently insightful. When the Allman Brothers Band reunited again in 1989, Kirk became a central figure during their final twenty-five years to gether, serving as “Tour Mystic,” photographer, archivist, and historian, as well as conceiving and founding Macon’s Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House.
Before any of that, he was a major fan researching a book and conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with founding members Dickey Betts, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and Jaimoe, as well as crew members, wives, siblings, and promoters like Bill Graham. When Kirk got hired by the band, he shelved the book and stored his tapes in the two-sided case, which was stashed under a desk in his office and left to gather dust until he entrusted it to me.
I digitized the cassettes and spent endless hours listening to the members and their extended band family tell their stories and share their thoughts. The interviews provided original insights beyond what I could have imagined, leading me to a deeper understanding—not only of this era but of the band’s entire history and the members’ personalities and motivations as well as their relationships with one another.
There is a symmetry in Kirk’s interviews playing such a central role in this book. He is the reason I became an Allman Brothers Band insider in the first place. Our relationship began grounded in mutual professional respect and blossomed over thirty- plus years into one of my most valued and important friendships. Kirk was with me every step of the way in writing Brothers and Sisters.
PREFACE
THE FIVE- YEAR PERIOD between Duane Allman’s 1971 death and the Allman Brothers Band’s 1976 breakup was a remarkable run for the group, one that helped not only shape rock history but the era’s American culture and politics. The band was at the center of several conflicting strands of society, sometimes straddling seemingly disparate divides.
They worked to elect President Carter, a progressive politician who was dedicated to civil rights, even as they used the Confederate flag in their imagery, despite including two Black members. They were intimately linked to both the Grateful Dead and Lynyrd Skynyrd. They were down-home boys basking in communal living even as Gregg Allman married the iconic Los Angeles star Cher and the couple became poster children for a newly emerging celebrity culture.
The Allman Brothers Band was at the center of mid-1970 s American culture, rubbing shoulders with the wide range of fascinating, crucial characters who pass through these pages: not only Jimmy Carter and Cher but also Native American activists, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Geraldo Rivera, promoter Bill Graham, and filmmaker Cameron Crowe. They teamed with the Grateful Dead for a series of massive shows that culminated in the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, drawing over six hundred thousand people to a small town in New York. The festival, the initial bond between the two bands, and what drove them apart are all explored in depth in the pages that follow.
Remarkably, the Allman Brothers played this central role during a period when most people didn’t even think they could still exist, following the death of their inspirational founder and leader, Duane Allman, which occurred just as they were on the verge of stardom.
After a few years of scuffling, the band had broken through with their third release, the live double album At Fillmore East, which captured the original six-piece band in full flight, effortlessly mixing rock and blues and an improvisational approach grounded in jazz. Duane described the band’s approach as six guys working “for one sound, one direction” and said that At Fillmore East was “as close as we’ve been able to come to a real portrayal of what we are.” The sky truly seemed to be the limit, but Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 29, 1971, four months after the album’s release and days after it became the band’s first gold record. Bassist Berry Oakley’s death just a year later again brought the band to its knees.
They were teetering on collapse before, during, and after the recording of 1973’s Brothers and Sisters, the album that made them superstars. This book explores and explains how all this happened and why it came abruptly crashing down. It is about how the Allman Brothers Band transformed itself and achieved its greatest success in the wake of these tragedies. The book covers the band’s evolution from a modern blues group based in Georgia but rooted in the studios and music halls of New York, San Francisco, and Miami to a group forging a new, distinctively Southern sound— a Macon sound. It’s about how these children of the ’60s became men of the ’70s, for better and worse.
But before you can understand Brothers and Sisters, and the events that occurred between Duane’s death and the band’s demise, you have to understand the roots. You have to understand Duane and the band he led, which is where our story begins….
Alan Paul’s fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was published July 25, 2023, by St. Martin’s Press. His last two books – Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band – debuted in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List. His first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about his experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. He is also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.
oh it's here!! I love it- in our work team meeting this afteroon we were asked if anything good was happening. "Why, YES! I got my Brothers and Sisters" book by Alan Paul". Nuff said! Well done Alan.
Alan,the ONLY way your book tour can be completed is a vist to New Orleans! I'm dangling as a incentive the best po'boy in America (gratis/langiappe).