From the Back Cover:Īs one of the greatest rock icons of all time, Gregg Allman has lived it all and then some. I can’t say what people will learn, but my hope is they have some fun along the way. Everyone always takes something different away from what they read.

I’ve lived with these stories for a long time, but having them together, all in one place, is something else. Q: Do you think that your kids will learn about you from reading this story? How about your bandmates?Īllman: Sometimes when you’re on the road with someone, it’s easy to lose sight of just how far you’ve come. It’s an incredible band, filled with incredible musicians, and I’ve been very lucky to be a part of it. But somehow it worked then and it’s worked ever since. In the book, I talk about when my brother first called me about being in the band he said he had these two drummers and two lead guitarists, and I remember thinking that sounded like a train wreck.

Q: Has spending this time looking back at the band's history given you a different appreciation for what the Allman Brothers have accomplished?Īllman: I’m not so sure it’s a different appreciation so much as just amazed and proud that we’re still here today. I tried hard to include the good as well as the bad. But a lot of people don’t understand just how much fun we had-especially in the beginning. Make no mistake, those are in the book and they’re very real. Q: What do you hope an Allman Brothers fan would learn about you from this book?Īllman: As I said before, for years, when people have talked about the band, they’ve tended to focus on the tragedy or the insanity of our history. I threw down though, and didn’t hold back. I wanted to be as honest as I could, but at the same time, looking back like this was tough. Q: Was it hard to make yourself think about the darker times in your life?Īllman: It was. I’ve still got more songs in me, more stories to tell. Last fall I was pretty sick, and I had this thought that it just wasn’t my time yet. Q: What impact have your health struggles over the last few years had on the way you think about your life and history?Īllman: Well, as I said, I’ve been working on this book for a while, but my health being what it has been over the last couple of years gave me an extra push to get the whole story down on paper. None of them really got the feeling of the band right, and that was what I set out to do. There have been a few books about the Allman Brothers over the year, and they all seem to tell one of two stories-either we were all out there sowing our wild oats, or we were constantly surrounded by tragedy. Just a bit here a bit there, that sort of thing. Q: Why did you want to write this book and tell your story?Īllman: I’d actually been thinking about doing a book for a long time, and since the 80s, I’d been putting bits and pieces of the story together.

My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman