The Allman Brothers Band - Enlightened Rogues and "Death by Arista"

In the aftermath of the Allman Brothers’ breakup in 1976, the other band members read the transcripts of the trial where Gregg testified against Scooter Herring, a former roadie. They came to realize the Feds had Gregg between the proverbial rock and a hard place – cooperate or do hard time. Butch Trucks, Dickey Betts and Jaimoe realized they didn’t know the entire story of Gregg Allman’s predicament [albeit a self-inflicted one], so all was forgiven. The band regrouped in 1978 to record a new album with Tom Dowd. Gone were Chuck Leavell and Lamar Williams. The band included new members Dave Goldflies [bass] and Dan Toler [guitar]. Both had played with Dickey Betts in his band Great Southern. Once again they were a two-guitar band, and all was right with the world [for now]. Enough time had passed since Duane Allman’s death that the band could afford to bring in another guitar player to complement Dickey Betts. Save for the resurrection of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, all was restored to the way it should have been.

The new album was entitled Enlightened Rogues. It was Duane’s name for the band. The trend of Dickey writing the lion’s share of the songs that started on Brothers and Sisters continued. Not exactly a prolific writer, Gregg contributed one original song. There is one blues cover. The album begins with a very uptempo Dickey Betts-penned rocker Crazy Love that has Dickey playing slide guitar in spades. It’s a fine performance. Dickey sings and is backed by Bonnie Bramlett [of Delaney & Bonnie fame]. When I first bought the album and heard Crazy Love for the first time, I thought “ok, not a bad beginning – what else you got?” Well, the next three songs gave me the answer I was looking for. The second song is Can’t Take It With You. This is another song from Dickey [and Don Johnson!], but sung by Gregg. What really caught my attention was Gregg’s singing. It was very strong – it didn’t sound like the drug-addled guy from Win Lose or Draw. It was a sign of things to come. Gregg hadn’t sounded this good since Idlewild South. The band was tight and energetic. Next comes the eye-opener – the Dickey Betts instrumental Pegasus. It’s an instrumental not as well known as Elizabeth Reed or Jessica, but it is solid nonetheless. The two guitarists start things off, then the bass, then the band starts to play the main theme. The guitarists have the twin-harmony thing going, Dan Toler takes the first solo. Toler’s playing sounds a lot like Dickey’s, but that’s not a criticism. It was very melodic and very fast. That’s not easy to do – it isn’t for me anyway. After Toler’s scorching solo Gregg goes for it on the Hammond. With musicians the caliber of Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Chuck Leavell and Berry Oakley being in the band at one time or another, it’s easy to overlook Gregg’s ability on the Hammond. Not so with Pegasus. One listen and you hear the finest playing of his career up to that point. Once Gregg finishes his bit, Dickey takes off until the drum break. At the end of the drum break that band comes back in, plays the main theme all together, then they’re done. Following Pegasus is Little Willie John’s Need Your Love So Bad. A strong mid-tempo blues, it closes Side 1.

Side 2 opens with Dickey’s Blind Love. Again Gregg takes the vocal, which matches Can’t Take It With You in its intensity. John Swenson from Rolling Stone referred to this as a latter-day Statesboro Blues. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it sounds more like What’s Done Is Done from 1994’s Where It All Begins. But there I’m getting a little ahead of the game. The bottom line is it’s a good song, and a strong performance. Following Blind Love is Try It One More Time. Is this a commentary on the Allman Brothers reunion? I don’t know – it could be. This one has a first in the Allman Brothers catalog – a call-and-response vocal from Gregg and Dickey. It works ok, but it’s fairly pedestrian. Next is the one and only song Gregg wrote for Enlightened Rogues, Just Ain’t Easy. This one is a slow, bluesy ballad that is Gregg’s take on living in Los Angeles. He once remarked that he could exist out there but he couldn’t really live, him being the born-and-bred Southern kid out of place in Tinseltown. What Gregg lacks in quantity in the songwriting department on Enlightened Rogues he makes up for with quality. This is one of his better songs. It’s a shame they rarely play it anymore. Ending Enlightened Rogues is Dickey’s Sail Away, a duet with Mimi Hart. After many fine performances on the album, this last song is a bit of a snoozer. But since Dickey carried the songwriting load on this album, he can be forgiven for a forgettable song like this one. As a whole, Enlightened Rogues is an underrated gem in the Allman Brothers catalog. In a time when disco was king, this album had no business doing well, but it sold fairly well anyway. I would put it on par with Brothers and Sisters. It was a pretty good comeback, but trouble loomed just ahead.

After the release of Enlightened Rogues, the Allman Brothers’ record label, Capricorn Records, declared bankruptcy. The band lost millions in unpaid royalties. Their manager Phil Walden also ran Capricorn Records and the Allman Brothers music publishing company. Can you say “conflict of interest”? Dickey Betts took Capricorn to court over unpaid royalties and won, but in the ensuing bankruptcy he and the rest of the band got nothing while Phil Walden got to keep his own personal fortune. Dickey once remarked that this sequence of events was a “very expensive education.” With their record label bankrupt, the Allman Brothers were free agents who could sign with any label. They signed with Arista Records. While Arista was the home of the Grateful Dead after they abandoned their own record label, Arista was [and still is if I’m not mistaken] the label that made it safe for the likes of Barry Manilow. The label wanted the Allman Brothers to record songs more like mainstream pop. The label was not interested in the blues-based music that made the Allman Brothers’ reputation. Arista wanted hit singles – the band wasn’t that kind of band. They tried to pleased their label. They recorded the albums Reach for the Sky and Brothers of the Road. These albums would be okay if anybody else had recorded them, but as Allman Brothers albums they are bad – they are very bad. I have heard both albums, but to this day they remain the only Allman Brothers albums that I do not own. The Brothers do not think much of this music they produced for Arista, so why should I, or you for that matter? Since the band was not allowed by their own record label to make the music they wanted to make, they had the intestinal fortitude to stop. In January 1982, the band that once sang “the road goes on forever” reached the end of that road and broke up, seemingly for good. Duane and Berry would have been pissed, and rightfully so.