Today’s New York Times reviews Gregg Allmann’s new autobiography, My Cross to Bear. Reviewer David Kirby gives it a qualified thumbs-up, but is horrified by the drugs and drink ingested by Allmann and his band-mates:
At the height of their success, the band members walked onto the jet they’d just acquired to find “Welcome Allman Bros” spelled out in cocaine on the bar. Yet there’s none of the Dionysian cackling you hear below the surface of “Life,” Keith Richards’s monumental recounting of the Rolling Stones’ story. And while “My Cross to Bear” isn’t the most degrading account of a musician undone by narcotics (that honor belongs to “Three Dog Nightmare,” by the former Three Dog Night frontman Chuck Negron), Allman reckons he went into treatment 18 times before getting clean.
The band that gave us “Whipping Post” and “Ramblin’ Man” broke up in 1976, at least partly because of a bust in which he was spared after agreeing to testify against the road manager who’d bought drugs for him. Drinking up to two quarts of vodka a day didn’t help, and in 2010 Allman underwent a liver transplant. “I have had my fun when it comes to women,” he writes — O.K., but he married and divorced six of them, three by the time he was 30. . .
“My Cross to Bear” has all the earmarks of a text dictated by its subject and cleaned up by someone else, meaning it has too many ho-hum moments but also the charm of a real voice. In Allman’s case, that’s a lot of correct Good Old Boy usages (“you didn’t want to wear no pair of wool pants without no drawers on”) that may challenge readers not conversant with that tongue.
The sad part (for us) is that Allman finds God at the end. Well, if that myth helped him clean up, fine. I guess rock stars have reached the age when they write memoirs (Keith Richards’s memoir, Life, is supposed to be excellent), but it shows that we of the Sixties we’re marching toward the forward trenches.
At any rate, I often ponder what career I would have like to have had if I hadn’t been a scientist. The answer always comes up the same: rock star, preferably a multitalented one like Steve Stills or Eric Clapton. What a rush it must be to be up on stage before thousands of people entranced by your skills on an electric guitar, and to make loud, wonderful music, either in front of others or jamming with your pals!
From time to time I’ve noticed that one can be a great musician and still be a complete dim-wit.
I cringe when I think of all the mid 80s and early 90s jazz musicians who were seduced by the sci-fi puerility of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.
Speciation specialists don’t require emergency hepatologists. Besides, you *had* the look and that’s what counts.
What a rush it must be to be up on stage
Apparently not an adequate one.
Just to add a few words on Keith Richards’ autiobiography, Life – it is indeed excellent. I listened to it, one of my first audiobooks (it helps to have a long commute), and that was great. There’s three narrators – Richards himself at the end, and Johnny Depp and Joe Hurley, and they’re great. You can hear them chuckling while reading certain passages, and overall, it’s really like they’re telling the story to you. I’m still not that used to audiobooks (I like, and sometimes need, to reread parts), but this one was definitely an enhanced experience. I wonder if I’d have liked the book as much if I’d just read it.
In that other universe…
Their eponymous first album in early ’67 was simply called The Coyne Collective ~ the band blew apart on the eve of their first European tour when Coyne fired his rhythm guitarist Rob Zimmerman due to “artistic differences”. Later it was revealed to be due to a love rivalry between the famously warring musicians over Joan Baez.
Coyne went into seclusion & popped up a year later in Rishikesh, India in December ’67 at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Beatles followed Coyne out there in February ’68.
It was there that Coyne wrote his seminal work Drosophilia Dreams…
LOL
Although, Why Psychedelia Is True is a more thought-provoking read.
Drosophilia Dreams?
Pretty fly for a white guy.
/@ (Praha)
So you think you coulda been a rock star? Imagine how I feel.
LOL!
I’m no Puritan, and substance (ab)use really only bothers me insofar as it diminishes one’s capability to make good decisions and behave safely around others.
But I have to admit I’m discouraged by the public’s appetite for stories about people who abuse drugs and alcohol so heavily, as though they want to live vicariously through the rock/movie star’s antics. Why is sober, rational interaction with the world not the ultimate goal? Why is highness/drunkenness so glamorous?
I’m also bothered that the “substance-abuse-aids-horizon-expanding-creativity” meme has such an entrenched foothold among people. Great art should have an obvious intellectual component; it should represent a real achievement. Anyone can jot down stream-of-consciousness stuff experienced while under the influence. Art is what results when raw ideas are transformed into deliberate creations, via learned (and possibly hard-won) skill.
Now get off my lawn!
Exactly.
I’m sure many have seen visions that are utterly bizarre and mind-bending. Yet how many had the skill to record them the way that Dali or Escher did?
It is no different with other art forms. You may hear the music of the gods in your head when stoned, and that’s all well and good for you. But it’s meaningless to the rest of the world unless you can actually remember it well enough to write it down, or at least to faithfully perfom it. And who but a god can sing the songs of the gods?
b&
Two problems with this. 1.) it starts with the assumption that there is an objective definition of art (one that is conveniently the same as yours) and 2.) I don’t think “jotting down stream of consciousness” really is what great musicians and artists who find creative ideas in drugs are doing. Some do sure, but I think there’s a pretty good case to be made that while some are simply pumping out free-thought babble, some (Beatles, Hendrix, Floyd, Miles, Coltrane, etc.) do quite a bit more than that. It’s what you do with the output that matters. The masters can take the experience/inspiration and turn it into something amazing. Though i agree that many people think that drugs are some magical door to great artistic ideas, which I think is not at all the case. So I guess my point is that drugs are just a way to access a greater amount of “raw ideas”. The “learned skill” can be in working the raw elements into something great, but it can also be the pure technical prowess that allows the raw ideas to come out already in fairly well-developed forms that are not far from being finished works. And while deliberate creations are great, a healthy portion of the artistic process, involves ideas that come out-of-the-blue, and in many instances from processes that purposely avoid deliberation.
Basically agreed on point (2). It’s what legitimately talented musicians do after their trip that can make their product successful.
Regarding your point (1): You won’t catch me telling people what they should enjoy, i. e., trying to define what is objectively enjoyable. I think I’m on firmer ground trying to define, at least very broadly, what counts as art. “Artifice”, “artificial”, “artifact”, etc. These terms all connote something not just created, but created with considered intent (as opposed to random whim). This connotation is confirmed and taken even further by the idea that art is something more than quotidian creation. Something qualifies as art when it is obvious that uncommon skill and intellect went into its creation.
Things can get murky when trying to determine what represents intelligent or skillful realization, but I don’t think it’s impossible to make headway in this respect.
Compounding the problem of skillful expression of whatever one experienced while stoned is that whatever you experience may seem wonderful to you, but that’s no guarantee that it will seem wonderfully to those whose powers of perception have remained fully intact. Think of the classic: “Dude, look at my hand!”
Good points. We are mostly in agreement. There is definitely a different emotional response that is elicited by something that was created/crafted by someone else rather than just randomly beautiful (think the difference between birds whistling and a composed melody, or thundering waves vs. a patterned drumbeat.) Both pleasing to the senses but qualitatively different. A very interesting question would be how the brain is so good at recognizing agency (often to the point where we see it even where it’s not, but that’s another discussion) given the fact that the difference between the random and the patterned, from a stimulative perspective can be nearly identical. And yet I’d bet that across cultures, humans are amazingly adept at knowing which is which.
Ok, back to staring at my hand 😉
“A very interesting question would be how the brain is so good at recognizing agency (often to the point where we see it even where it’s not, but that’s another discussion) given the fact that the difference between the random and the patterned, from a stimulative perspective can be nearly identical. And yet I’d bet that across cultures, humans are amazingly adept at knowing which is which.”
That’s a great question. Based on my own ruminations about my own listening experiences, I wonder if what we react to in great music is not so much any of the raw stimuli themselves, but rather the (not necessarily completely conscious) perception of the quality of the musical thought – almost a sort of proto-respect for the logical and architectural prowess of the music’s creator. With the Olympics nearly upon us, I think an analogy with gymnastics is not inappropriate: none of those maneuvers are intrinsically moving; rather, we feel moved by the fact that another human being has overcome the difficulty of achieving the ability to execute them.
Certainly raw stimuli like the crash of a cymbal, the beating of a drum, the blare of a trombone, contribute to the overall effect a piece of music has on listeners. But the mere presence of these superficial characteristics isn’t enough to designate something as art. In the hands of the masters things like dynamics and timbre serve to highlight a more abstract architecture. I think it’s that architecture to which we’re reacting.
If Greg Allman’s finding “god” is a purely personal thing, fine. I’ve never had a problem with that. But if he shows up on FNC trying to tell others how to live, who they can love, fuck that.
I read and and loved Keith Richards’ Life–it’s full of drug and alcohol ingestion, all pretty horrifying, but what a great book, especially if you’re a Stones fan. Another great one is Bob Dylan, Chronicles. I also think it must be amazing to be someone who can make incredible music with their own voice, and in front of a huge appreciative audience. Oh to be…Keith, Mick, Bob … Joni Mitchell, Kanye West, Bjork … there are lots of great possibilities.
I’m with you, completely.
Goes triple for Ted Nugent.
Nugent. I like guns. I hunt. I cannot stand Ted Nugent.
It seems that one can have a severe addictive brain disorder and yet the birth-defected and parts of the brain destroyed by the addiction don’t seem to impair the music making parts.
It also appears that the age related cognitive declines don’t drag down the music making parts as well. Conductors are felt to be at their best in later life.
Sadly, these guys have a diagnosable mental illness but they never get an treatment.
Pop nonsense aside being a working musician is a dog’s job and physically damaging. Effectively all make no money.
Best not to glamorize any creative profession or mental illnesses.
Purely a guess but it may be that with the inherited and accumulated brain damage from addiction — using the relatively undamaged parts of the brain music needs may be an lucky accommodation.
That’s a rather self pitying title. What cross is it that he bears? Extravagant quantities of money and adulation? Or just not deserving these? Not my cup of tea.
“I’m also bothered that the “substance-abuse-aids-horizon-expanding-creativity” meme has such an entrenched foothold among people.”
Charlie Parker once said something like “Imagine how much better I could have been if I hadn’t been addicted to heroin.”
The research does suggest that creativity and mood disorders are correlated. Apparently, sibs of folks with manic depression are more creative/expressive — in the manic phases especially.
Goggle will turn up lots of good research.
The fact of the brain disorder is empirical and medical. Whether it helps creative production is a researchable question.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all those crazy creative types could just have taken their Prozac and become good little factory workers and accountants. They might have been much happier.
Some creative types aren’t (weren’t) “crazy”, and some “crazy” types aren’t creative.
I think the “crazy creative type” is a stereotype that has been artificially inflated by the public’s appetite for such dramatic things.
No, the research is that these folks suffer greatly from their inherited brain disorders. Treatment actually seems to help them have much more stable and productive lives, especially since early accidental death is so common.
That’s aside from the expanding damage to friends, families and business associates from these mental illnesses.
The opposite of an urban myth, it is societal denial and frankly exploitation of mentally ill folks by others — look at Amy Winehouse.
“No”
I’m not sure what you’re objection is. I think you’re trying to say that there is conclusive evidence not only that artists (in whatever medium) are very likely to be “crazy”, but that what the rest of us call “creative” is really just an artifact of their mental disorder.
I’d like to see that research. For every “disturbed” artist you name, I’ll name another who lived a normal life.
Some men with moustaches are bald. Some moustachioed gents are not bald. One has nothing to do with the other.
I actually think your point about exploitation is simply a rewording of my point about the public’s appetite/expectations. People want creativity to be accompanied by craziness. That’s how it’s “supposed to work.” But that’s just not true.
I’m not sure what *your* objection…