One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Paul Alan

Author:Paul, Alan [Paul, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

Jerry Garcia and Dickey Betts, Cow Palace, San Francisco, December 31, 1973.

WEIR: 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.

ODOM: 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, the music related, they knew each other. It was just a great fit.

LEAVELL: 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.

One hundred and fifty thousand tickets were sold for ten dollars each, but the crowd exploded to many times that number. The rest got in for free, though many people certainly never got within sight of the stage. The small country roads leading to the concert site became parking lots—first figuratively, then literally, as many drivers abandoned their vehicles and walked up to ten miles to the concert.

WEIR: 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; 60,000 to 70,000 would be nice and handle-able.

LEAVELL: We were staying in Horsesheads, New York, in a small motel, and I remember being awoken by noise and commotion the day before, when we were supposed to have cars drive us up the road for soundchecking, then seeing 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.

PERKINS: When we first got there we were able to drive in and out of the site, but then the road became like Armageddon overnight. It was like there had been a nuclear attack and people had just abandoned their cars.

A.J. LYNDON: We were staying at a Holiday Inn thirteen miles away and cars were abandoned around there, that far away.

WEIR: As it turns out, the news reported there were 600,000 there and maybe two million people in the area and it was declared a disaster area. As disaster areas go, it was a pretty nice one, but people who were interested in going home, for instance, well, they couldn’t. If they wanted to leave, it just wasn’t possible. People had to be peeled away layer by layer.

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.

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