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HEADLINE: Rock career just peachy for Allman By Patrick S. Pemberton The San Luis Obispo Tribune It makes sense that Gregg Allman was one of the inspirations for the movie "Almost Famous" -- Cameron Crowe's homage to rock music and all its craziness. After all, Allman has seen enough superstardom, excess and premature death to stock a TV mini-series. As a member of The Allman Brothers Band, he performed songs such as "Midnight Rider," "Whipping Post" and "Ramblin' Man" before gazillions of screaming-for-more fans. His struggles with substance abuse were legendary. And as for death -- you have to wonder if Allman's not a little fatalistic: His father was murdered by a hitchhiker when Allman was a toddler. His brother Duane -- placed by many in the pantheon of rock guitarists -- was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971. And a year after Duane died, Allman Brothers band mate Berry Oakley was also killed in a motorcycle wreck, just three blocks from the site of Duane's accident. Through all the drama, Allman has continued to perform, cranking out soulful, bluesy-rock songs in his trademark gravelly voice for more than three decades. As Gregg Allman & Friends prepares to perform at the Alex Madonna Expo Friday night, Allman was excited to talk about his curent lineup, which plays revamped Allman Brothers Band songs along with solo hits like "I'm No Angel." "It's a kick-ass band, let me tell you," he said by phone from his home in Savannah, Ga. "It's nice -- real tight. These are like studio cats, and the good thing about having your own private band is that you can play anything you want to. There's not so many head chefs in the kitchen, you know what I mean?" The inspiration for "Almost Famous" stemmed from the early '70s, when Crowe was a 16-year-old journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. Despite the loss of two band members, the Allman Brothers were still riding high off the recent success of the "Eat a Peach" and "Brothers and Sisters" albums. After following the band for two weeks, Crowe wrote the story -- his first Rolling Stone cover. Years later, parts of his film would resemble moments spent with the band. Allman recently talked to us about the movie, the death of his father and brother (which he didn't want to dwell on) and one of his most popular songs. I was wondering if you ever saw the movie "Almost Famous." ``Yeah, I saw that.'' I just read recently that you were one of the inspirations for that. Did you see yourself in that movie? ``Well, basically. There might have been two or three different people all wrapped up into one character that you saw, right? In one part of it, you had Dickey Betts (from the Allman Brothers), Jimmy Page ... It was really ingenious the way that Cameron Crowe got all the different people in there and didn't touch anybody really, but it just kind of brushed beside them, you know? But it was a great movie, and he's an incredible cat, man. I love him to death.'' He wrote that you had suspected him of being an FBI agent and stole his tapes? ``Oh -- no, no, no, no, no, no. That was all a joke. Those were back in the days when we were young and we'd do all-nighters and everything. Me and Dickey sat in (a hotel) in San Francisco, and we spent about three hours with him, and he had all kinds of good stuff, man. He said, 'This is great.' So we stayed up a couple more hours, and I said later on, 'Just for shits and giggles, Dickey, let's go down here and tell the man that we just can't let this information out right now, and we've got to have it back. There wasn't anything about an FBI agent involved. I don't know who put that in there (Note: It's on Crowe's Web site). So we went knocking on his door, woke him back up and said, "We've got to have it back."' That must've been terrifying. ``The poor guy's face got so long, man. Of course, the next morning at breakfast, we woke him up again and asked him if he wanted to go have breakfast, and we handed him his stuff back (Crowe claims Allman mailed the tapes back to him)''. I didn't know your father was killed when you guys were such an early age. With all that death and dying, what did that do to your psyche? ``I was 2 years old when that happened, so I never knew him. My brother was kind of my father figure, I guess, when I was a kid.'' Speaking of Duane, do you think about him a lot today? I know it's been 30 years. ``Yes, brother, I think about him every day. But why don't we talk about music, OK? Instead of death? The thing is my wife's grandfather just died, and we just went through that, and we're trying to get back down to normal here. It's not you, man -- it's what's going on here.'' I know you've said over the years that you get pretty bad stage fright. What do you do today to get over that? Do you still have it? ``No, it's there. And it kind of leaves after about the first four to 16 bars of the song. And so you know it's gonna be there, you're going to get a little nauseous and also you know it's gonna go away. So you just wait until that time. I've learned to kind of deal with it over the years.'' When you're writing, how do you know if a song is either Allman Brothers or Gregg Allman? ``I don't decide. The song usually decides.'' So you have a certain song, and it's like, "Hmmm -- that sounds more like the Gregg Allman band?" ``Well, not really. It depends on the mindset you're in. If you're in an Allman Brothers mindset, it kind of becomes Allman Brothers stuff. I don't know. It's hard to answer that question because it happens different ways. Some of them have come out with both bands, like "Midnight Rider," like "Come and Go Blues," like "Whipping Post."' "Melissa" is one of my favorite Allman Brothers songs. How many women have you met who are named after that song? ``Oh God -- lots of them. I wrote that song in 1967 in a place called the Evergreen Hotel in Pensacola, Fla. By that time I got so sick of playing other people's material that I just sat down and said, "OK, here we go. One, two, three -- we're going to try to write songs." And about 200 songs later -- much garbage to take out -- I wrote this song called "Melissa." And I had everything but the title. ``I thought (referring to lyrics): " 'But back home, we always run ... to sweet Barbara' -- no. Diane ... 'We always run ... to sweet Bertha.' " No, so I just kind of put it away for a while. So one night I was in the grocery store -- it was my turn to go get the tea, the coffee, the sugar and all that other ***** ... And there was this Spanish lady there and she had this little toddler with her -- this little girl. And I'm sitting there, getting a few things and what have you. And this little girl takes off, running down the aisle. And the lady yells, "Oh, Melissa! Melissa, come back, Melissa!" And I went, "Oh -- that's it." ``I forgot about half the stuff I went for, I went back home and, man, it was finished, only I couldn't really tell if it was worth a damn or not because I'd written so many bad ones. So I didn't really show it to anybody for about a year. And then I was the last one to get to Jacksonville -- I was the last one to join the band that became the Allman Brothers. And my brother sometimes late at night after dinner, he'd say, 'Man, go get your guitar and play me that song -- that song about that girl." And I'd play it for him every now and then. ... ``After my brother's accident, we had three vinyl sides done of "Peach," so I thought well we'll do that, and then on the way down there I wrote, "Ain't Wasting Time No More." I wrote that for my brother. We were all in pretty bad shape. I had just gotten back from Jamaica and I was weighing at about 156, 6-foot-1-and-a-half -- I was pretty skinny. So we went back down there, got in the studio and finished the record. And the damn thing shipped gold.''