The Master - A Synopsis

I saw your movie.  What happened? 

Bill Murray asked this question in Tootsie (1982).  After I saw The Master the first time, I asked the same question.  What was the point of the exercise?  Was this really about something, or was it [to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld] a movie about nothing?  I watched the movie again the other day, and I’m still scratching my head.  The word about this movie when it was released was that it somehow was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.  The only thing I know about L. Ron Hubbard is that he churned out a lot of books after he died, and Scientology is the “religion” of choice for Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley, among others.  So is this movie about…I don’t know.
 
The film starts out in the Pacific at the end of World War II.  Freddie Quell is in the Navy.  He’s a sex-obsessed alcoholic.  He makes his own brand of moonshine out of paint thinner and whatever else happens to be lying around.  He drinks fuel from a torpedo.  He simulates having sex with a woman-shaped sandcastle while he’s on R&R waiting for the war to end.  He ends up sleeping on the beach next to this ‘sandcastle.’  When he’s discharged from the Navy, he enters a hospital for psychiatric treatment, presumably for battle fatigue.  During his treatment he does the Rorschach test, where everything looks to him like genitalia [male or female, it doesn’t matter].  He gets a job as a department store photographer, but he loses that job after he gets violent with a customer.  Then he goes to Salinas, CA to harvest giant cabbages, but he loses that job after on elderly worker gets sick from drinking his moonshine.  So he’s an alcoholic sex-addict with a nasty temper who can’t hold a job – in short, a loser.

Somehow he ends up in San Francisco.  He stumbles upon a yacht, where a party is being held.  So what does Freddie do?  He stows away, of course.  It’s a place for him to sleep, nobody will find him [until the sun comes up].  This is when he meets Lancaster Dodd, aka The Master.  He’s the leader of the group called The Cause.  What is the purpose of The Cause?  Be freer, more productive and more in command with your life.  Free yourself from your ailments. To do so, you free yourself from past trauma.  And by “past trauma,” they mean trauma from previous lifetimes.  The "processing" begins with inducing memory – The first question is ‘can you recall?’  After the first question, the interrogation begins to help potential converts to relive traumatic events from their past and maybe past lives so they can clear their souls of toxicity.

When The Master and Freddie meet face-to-face for the first time on-film [that they talked the night before during the party was alluded to]. Freddie asks for a job on Master’s boat.  They’re sailing from San Francisco to New York via Panama, and Freddie tells Master he’s an able-bodied seaman as he was during the war.  Freddie asks The Master ‘what do you do?’  Master - 'I do many, many things.  I'm a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.  A hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.’   The Master is also very fond of Freddie’s moonshine.  So for the price of making moonshine for The Master, Freddie gets his first “processing.”  He tells Freddie “You’ll be my protégé and my guinea pig.” There turns out to be a lot more to it than that. They are father and son, guru and disciple, passionate friends and bitter competitors locked in a relationship. During the “processing” we find out that Freddie’s mom was crazy and institutionalized for being such, his dad was a drunk who is now dead, he had sex with his aunt several times, and he left a girl named Doris behind in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Freddie is one messed-up dude.

Peggy is The Master’s very-protective wife.  When she meets Freddie for breakfast she says Freddie has inspired The Master to write.  He can't write at home, there's too much pulling him in each direction- people who are scared, people who are greedy, ex-wives.  So here it’s established that Lancaster Dodd and his following are some kind of social outcasts for preaching whatever it is they preach.  And in what comes next it’s established that The Master doesn’t take criticism, is easily put on the defensive, and loathes having to explain himself to ‘non-believers.’

Once in New York, there is a dinner party at the house of one Mildred Drummond, who has some sort of philanthropic foundation.  She had invited Lancaster Dodd and his Cause devotees to dine with her and others.  Lots of well-to-do people attended.  One guest named Margaret O'Brien has just undergone a "session" with The Master.  A lot of people watched. 

Margaret: I think I was a man.  What I just experienced, was that me? That man in the armor, was that me? 

Dodd [The Master]:  Yes, that was your spirit.  Our spirits live on in the whole of time. Exist in many vessels through time.  This is the vessel you're existing in now, in 1950.  As you all  may recall,  during the trauma that you were going through while we were processing, it was of the upmost importance that you experience every detail every specific detail, every specific detail, through all of your senses, of that memory.  And that we go over it again, and over it again, until it loses its power.  This is very important.  Why is it important, is if you bring someone out of a traumatic event back to the present time, no matter how carefully you do that, if you have not gone over the memory… 

One guy in the back of the room kept trying to ask The Master a question.  The Master finally got to the point where he could no longer ignore this guy. 

John More:  Some of this sounds quite like hypnosis, does it not? 

Dodd [The Master]:  This is a process of de -hypnotization, if you will.  Man is asleep.  This process wakes him from his slumber. 

John More:  I still find it difficult to see the proof with regards to past lives that your movement claims. 

Dodd [The Master]:  Would you care to submit yourself to processing? 'Look through the telescope' as my friend said? 

John More:  Perhaps another time.  You've also said these methods, Cause Methods, can cure leukemia, according to your book, and...

Dodd [The Master]:  Some forms of leukemia.  In being able to access past lives we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands, even trillions of years.

John More:  With a T, sir?  Earth is not understood to be more than a few billion years old

Dodd [The Master]:  Even the smartest of our current scientists can be fooled, yes.

John More:  You can understand some of the skepticism, can you not? 

Dodd [The Master]:  Yes, yes.  For without it, we'd be positives and no negatives therefore zero charge.   We must have it.

John More:  Good science by definition, allows for more than one opinion, does it not? 

Dodd [The Master]:  Which is why our gathering of data is so far reaching...

John More:  Otherwise you will merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of cult, is it not? 

Dodd [The Master]:  ‘Tis ‘tis, and thankfully we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds and in unison towards capturing the mind's fatal flaws and correcting it back to the inherent state of perfect.  Whilst righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty, and therefore the atomic threat. 

John More:  Well, I find it quite difficult to comprehend, or more to the point believe that you believe sir that this time travel hypnosis therapy can bring world peace and cure cancer.

Dodd [The Master]:  I have never been to the Pyramids, have you?

John More:  No.

Dodd [The Master]:  And yet we know that they are there because learned men have told us.  May I ask, what is your name?

John More:  John More.

Dodd [The Master]:  Mr. More, if I may, is there something frightening to you about The Cause's travels into the past?

John More:  Frightening? No, no. 

Dodd [The Master]:  What scares you so much about traveling into the past?  Are you afraid that we might discover that our past has been reshapen?  Perverted?  And perhaps what we think we know of this world is false information?

John More:  Time travel does not frighten me sir, because it's not possible.  What does frighten me is the possibility of some poor soul with leukemia coming to you...

Dodd [The Master]:  There are dangers of time as we understand it, of traveling in and out as we understand it.  But it's not unlike traveling down a river, you see?  You travel down the river, 'round the bend, look back, and you cannot see around the bend, can you?  That does mean it is not there, does it?  But certain clubs would like us to think that a truth, I say truth, uncovered should stay hidden.

John More:  I belong to no club and if you're unwilling to allow any discussion...

Dodd [The Master]:  No, this isn't a discussion, it's a grilling.  There's nothing I can do for you if your mind has been made up.  You seem to know the answers to your questions.  Why do you ask? 

John More:  I'm sorry if you're unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational...

Dodd [The Master]:  If you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask, pig fuck? [Mrs Drummond looked most displeased when she heard that.  Additionally, John More didn’t get the memo that whatever The Master says should be taken as gospel]].  We are not helpless.  And we are on a journey that risks the dark.  If you don't mind, a good night to you. [Freddie throws a tomato at Mr. More]. 

Dodd [The Master]:  Freddie, stop!  This is not the time, stop!

The ride up the elevator to their hotel rooms was a quiet one.  They’ve been exposed as frauds, and they know it [they just don’t want to admit it].  Once Peggy and The Master are in their room, The Master starts to type feverishly, while Peggy sits on the end of the bed and starts to speak.  She’s revealed as a cold-as-ice, hard-as-nails [pick your favorite metaphor] true believer who may even be more devoted to The Cause that her husband who leads it.  The dutiful, attentive wife and mother is just a mask, but here the mask comes off.

Peggy:  And this is where we’re at, at the lowest level to have to explain ourselves, for what?  For what we do we have to grovel.  The only way to defend ourselves is to attack.  If we don't do that we will lose every battle that we're engaged in.  We will never dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack.  And this city, city is just noise.  I know this city.  I know its rotten secrets city its filthy lies and secrets.  They invited us here and welcomed us.  Only to throw us down and kick us out.    It's a grim joke.

And because John More disagreed with the Master, Freddie and the Master's new son-in-law go over to his apartment and beat the shit out of him.  After The Cause crashes and burns in New York, they decamp to Philadelphia, where they are welcomed as houseguests of another wealthy woman, Helen Sullivan [Laura Dern].  There’s a very strange moment at Helen Sullivan’s house.  There’s another party in which The Master performs the mildly bawdy traditional song “I’ll Go No More A-Rovin’” for an admiring group of acolytes, including his pregnant wife Peggy, while Freddie watches in a drunken stupor from a nearby chair. In the first shot everybody is clothed, but then without skipping a beat all the female partygoers appear naked.  What is up with this?  Is this a fantasy of Freddie’s?  He is a sex addict, after all.  Does he want to screw all the females in the room, young and old, small and tall, skinny and fat?  When The Master and Peggy get back to their room, she tells him he can do whatever he wants sexually as long as she and nobody she knows finds out about it, all the while giving him a handjob.  And while she is doing so, he refers to Peggy as “master.”  After the deed is done, she tells The Master to stop drinking Freddie’s moonshine.  Then she goes downstairs to tell Freddie that he has to quit drinking if he wants to stay with The Cause.

The day after, Freddie and The Master’s son Val have a conversation.  Val tells Freddie his father doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s making up everything as he goes along.  Freddie doesn’t take this well, but the seed of doubt is planted.  Then The Master is arrested by Philadelphia police.  Apparently he took $11,000 from the Mildred Drummond Foundation [remember her?], and now she wants it back [the charge – “wrongful withdrawal of funds”].  It doesn’t pay to swear in front of those whom you are trying to rip off.  As The Master is being arrested, Freddie attacks one of the cops.  It takes three to subdue him.  Once in jail, Freddie destroys the toilet in his cell.  The Master is in the cell next to Freddie’s.   The Master tells Freddie he has a fear of authority that dates back millions of years.  Freddie tells him to shut up, that his son hates him, and that The Master is making up everything.  Freddie is an erupting volcano of rage.  But after the two are released from jail, they reconcile at Helen Sullivan’s house.  Freddie is then subjected to a series of exercises, the object of which is for The Master to ‘cure’ Freddie.  Freddie tires of these exercises and gets frustrated.

The troupe then leaves Philadelphia for Phoenix for the First Universal Process Congress of The Cause.  It is at this meeting that The Master releases his new book.  But there is a slight change to The Cause’s methodology contained in the book, one that doesn’t escape the eye of Helen Sullivan.  Until the publication of the second book, the first processing question was always ‘can you recall?’  But Helen notices this has changed to ‘can you imagine?’  So she starts to question The Master about this, all the while implying that everything up until that time has been a lie.  The Master gets impatient with explaining the “new findings” to Helen and snaps at her – WHAT DO YOU WANT?  Something else happens in Phoenix – Freddie asks the publisher of The Master’s first book about his opinions of the second book.  The reply – I could have put it in a three-page pamphlet.  Again, Freddie unhinges and attacks the guy. 

The Master puts Freddie through one more exercise.  Called “pick-a-point,” you pick a spot on the horizon, ride a motorcycle as fast as you can across the Arizona desert, and return to where you started.  The Master demonstrates, and then hands the bike over to Freddie.  Freddie picks a point, hops on the bike and goes as fast as he can get the bike to go.  But he never returns – he leaves The Cause.  In the very next scene we see him back in Lynn, Massachusetts to find Doris – the love of his life.  But when he talks with her mother, he finds that Doris didn’t wait for him, got married, moved to Alabama and has two children.  Doris is “the one who got away.”

One of the weirdest scenes in the movie takes place in a movie theater.  Freddie is sleeping in a dark theater while the cartoons are playing, only to be interrupted by an usher with a telephone.  The Master is calling from England!  How did he find Freddie?  First, The Master shows his continuing paranoia when he asks whether anyone “got to him.”  When Freddie says no, The Master asks him to come to England where he’s established a school.  And while he’s at it, could he bring a supply of Kool cigarettes?  The Master can’t get them in England.  So Freddie hops on a ship, goes to England and finds The Master.  So when Freddie is brought into The Master’s gigantic office [Hitler would be proud], the first person to speak is not The Master, but Peggy.  She asks Freddie if he’s drunk – he says he isn’t.  She tells both The Master and Freddie that The Cause is something Freddie does for a billion years or not at all.  She rises from her chair and goes over to Freddie.  She asks him “you can’t take this life straight, can you?”  He doesn’t answer, so she says “he’s past help” and leaves.  Freddie sits and chats with The Master.  Is Freddie coming back into The Cause or isn’t he?  No, he isn’t.   So The Master tells Freddie that when he has found out what it is like to serve no master, he needs to tell The Master about it.  The Master has a “master” of his own – his master is his wife Peggy.  Then, out of nowhere The Master starts singing to Freddie that he’d like to get him on a slow boat to China.  That’s quite an interesting way to end a ‘relationship.’

So what’s it all about?  Is this a love story between Philip Seymour Hoffman’s charismatic fake and Joaquin Phoenix’s barely-functional alcoholic?  Could be… 

Peggy Dodd starts off being the quiet, dutiful wife of The Master.  Throughout most of the movie, she’s either pregnant or holding a kid.  But as the movie progresses, she reveals herself to be ruthless and single-minded about The Cause.  She is the one who goads her husband into doing the things he does.  Peggy is really Lady Macbeth.  Was The Master just a front-man for Peggy?  Given that the movie takes place during the 1950s, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.  Peggy definitely was not June Cleaver.
Another question – the movie pretty much starts and ends with Freddie Quell sleeping on a beach.  Was everything that happened in between just a dream?

How did The Master track him down to a movie theater?  Cue The Twilight Zone music... 

Sugar - Copper Blue/Beaster

Nirvana came along at a good time.  The 1980s were full of hair metal bands that were just lame.  Nevermind got rid of all that hairspray in a hurry [thank whatever god you pray to].  In Nevermind’s wake came a band called Sugar [Bob Mould – guitar, keyboards, David Barbe – bass, Malcolm Travis – drums, percussion].  This has a bit of symmetry to it, because both Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl expressed undying love for punk legends Hüsker Dü [of which Bob Mould was a songwriter, guitarist, and singer].  Hüsker Dü split up in 1987, but to me Sugar was the next best thing.  Hearing Copper Blue was like hearing an exiled king reclaiming the throne that was rightly his.  To wit, Copper Blue is the best-selling album of Bob Mould’s career.  It didn’t sell by the truckload like Nevermind, but not many albums have changed the landscape of pop music, either.  It did sell over 250,000 copies in Europe, and was named Album of the Year (1992) by the UK’s New Music Express.

How did Sugar come together?  In 1992, Bob Mould had no manager, no record label, and no band.  Drummer Malcolm Travis played for a band called The Zulus, the last record of which Bob Mould produced.  When The Zulus split up, Travis was available, and Mould gave him a call.  Bassist David Barbe [who now produces the Drive-By Truckers] played with an Athens-based punk band called Mercyland and was a mutual acquaintance of Bob Mould and his significant other.

How did Sugar get its name?  The explanation is the three guys in the band were sitting in a Waffle House, saw a packet of sugar on the table and decided “let’s call it this!”

What is Copper Blue?  It’s an essential collection of hooks, riffs, and beautiful melodies married to dark melancholic subject matter.  There are plenty of stunning, power punk masterpieces contained therein.  Clearly, Bob Mould learned from 1960s pop as well as 1980s punk [who ironically learned a lot from Hüsker Dü].  The production is top-notch.  Hüsker Dü’s records sounded like crap.  The drums were tinny at best; vocals were buried in the mix; you couldn’t hear the bass; it was an undefined, messy blur.  Not so with Sugar.  You can [for the most part] comprehend what Bob Mould is singing. The drum sound is huge.  The acoustic guitars cut through the mixes like a diamond.  Sugar’s rhythm section is much superior than any that Bob Mould played with before.  The guitar sound on Copper Blue is thick and abrasive and endless.  The guitars are even louder, but the separation of instruments is clearer, and Sugar the pop band is even more evident.  The songs are very melodic and there are hooks aplenty.  They sound happy, but beneath the happy exterior things aren’t quite so joyous.  There are songs about breakups, murder, car wrecks, death and maybe suicide [depending on how you look at that one].  There is not a bad song in the bunch.  There are a few songs which immediately grab my attention:

The Act We Act

The first eight bars with just Bob Mould’s chugging, distorted riffage sets the tone for Copper Blue.  After the first eight bars, Malcolm Davis’ beefy drums make their entrance.  Then Bob starts to sing, and to my surprise the vocals aren’t buried in the mix.  The topic here is a relationship coming to its end - the act we act is wearing thin

A Good Idea

This is an homage to The Pixies.  The subject – the drowning of a girl in a river because she said it was a good idea.  I saw them from the ocean / She didn’t seem to mind / Didn’t fight at all / She didn’t fight it at all…  That's a good idea/She said she said/That's a good idea/ She said…Dark humor, anyone?

Hoover Dam – Bob Mould’s love for ‘60s pop is evident here, from the Good Vibrations beginning, the backwards guitar solos a la George Harrison in the middle, and the psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows ending.  In the twenty-two years since its release, Hoover Dam has become one of Bob’s most beloved songs.  The opening lyrics set the table immediately –

Standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam

I'm on the center line, right between two states of mind
And if the wind from the traffic should blow me away…

What two states of mind does he mean – between sanity and insanity, life or death?  Is this a suicide song?  Bob said it could be taken that way, but he calls it a good travelogue song because it hops all over the place – Hoover Dam, the Mississippi River, New Orleans, carousels, getting covered in lava, getting sucked into the center of the Earth, etc.  Hoover Dam is poppy, it’s trippy, and it’s a damn good song.

The Slim – coming immediately after the pop psychedelia that is Hoover Dam is this grim meditation on AIDS.  This is told from the point of view of someone who has lost a partner to the disease. Remember, this was during a time when an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence.  Chances of survival from this disease were “slim.”  “The Slim” was the gay community’s name for AIDS.

If I Can’t Change Your Mind

This is a breakup song with a happy melody.  Such is Bob Mould’s music – a dichotomy between light and dark.  This is a twelve-string homage to The Byrds.  Some reviewers hear The Beatles – I hear The Byrds.

Slick

How does one feel after a car crash?  Listen here and find out.  I can’t put my finger on why I like this one so much, I just like it.  Maybe because the sound is disorienting, kind of like its subject matter.  Slick has the same vibe as The Slim.

Changes and Helpless

Both songs were singles from the album.  They’re pretty much the same theme as If I Can’t Change Your Mind.  These are good, short pop songs with buzz-saw guitars.

The songs for Beaster were recorded during the same sessions as Copper Blue.  But Bob Mould knew this set of songs was different than the pop songs, so he ‘quarantined’ them away from the Copper Blue songs.  He and his bandmates even joked that perhaps the pop songs should be labeled ‘Sugar’ and the Beaster songs as ‘Spice.’  Copper Blue [released in September 1992] sold very well, and only seven months later they unleashed Beaster [on Easter Sunday 1993] on an unsuspecting public while they were still hot.  The Beaster songs have more layers of buzz-saw guitars, they’re [for the most part] faster, and they definitely sound angry.  As Bob tells it, the words for these songs came pouring out of him after a telephone conversation with his partner that didn’t go very well.  There’s religious imagery sprinkled throughout, but the words are so vague I can’t tell what exactly he means.  But given the frenetic pace of the music, Bob Mould is one extremely pissed-off human being.   While Copper Blues has melodies galore, Beaster is just brutal.  Between the beginning and the end of Beaster is venomous, spleen-venting rage.  

Come Around

Beaster begins with an ‘instrumental’ that lulls the listener into a false sense of security.  Bob chants ‘come around’ over and over again like a mantra, buried in the mix [hence the quotation marks around ‘instrumental’].  Once you’re almost lulled to sleep by Come Around, the band sucker punches you with Tilted.

Tilted

It’s a good thing there’s a lyric sheet included because I can’t understand what Bob is singing.  Even with the lyric sheet the meaning escapes me.  But which is faster – the drums, the guitars, or the vocals?  The answer: yes – it’s a race.  It’s like hearing a better-recorded version of Hüsker Dü, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It’s ferocious, fast, and exhilarating.  I don’t know how Malcolm Travis keeps up this punishing pace.   This song begins 23 minutes of unrelenting pummeling of the listener into submission.

Judas Cradle

More angry guitars, more religious imagery.  A ‘Judas cradle’ refers to an Inquisition-era torture device [the ‘Judas chair’].  Was Bob going to introduce the object of his ire to the Judas cradle?  One gets the idea he’s pissed-off enough to do just that.  The whole idea of this device was to lower an individual slowly onto the chair, with the point inserted into either the anus or vagina, and let gravity do the rest.

The Copper Blue/Beater package includes four B-sides [all of which could be found on the post-breakup release “Besides”].  Needle Hits E is the best of the bunch.  How it never made it to the original Copper Blue release, I’ll never know.  This package also includes a recording of a complete Sugar concert from Chicago.  It’s not essential listening, but it’s nice to hear what these guys sounded like live.

JC Auto

Part of “JC Auto” [short for “Jesus Christ Autobiography”] has the melody from the chorus of Poison Years, the bit that says "Treason is the reason for my poison years…"  So we have a clue that JC Auto, like Poison Years, is about betrayal.  Bob said as much in his autobiography.  But somebody out there in cyberspace [who is much more clever than I] went a little further and looked at these words from JC Auto - "Somewhere in this song/ A little clue to something (clue to something)/Parts of it seem over now/You expect a real solution" = Poison Years.   So when Bob sings [over and over again] “I'm your Jesus Christ I know...”, what does he mean?  Is he a messiah or a martyr?  My guess is that Bob is playing the martyr card.  He also sings “You'll be sorry when I'm gone…”, is he singing about leaving a relationship, or just ending his life altogether?

Feeling Better

Bob is hoping someone is feeling better – wash, rinse, repeat.  It’s got a great guitar riff with some cheesy synthesizer thrown on top.  The mood has lightened but it still feels a bit crazed.

Walking Away

After the stürm and drang that was the previous four songs, Beater comes in for a soft landing with Walking Away.  As Bob sings I’m walking away back to you… the only instrumental accompaniment is a celestial church organ.  And so it ends, with one asking “what the hell just happened?”

Unfortunately, Sugar had only one more album in them [File Under:  Easy Listening (FU:EL)] before calling it quits in 1995.  David Barbe felt like an absentee dad and wanted to spend more time at home.  The whole package of Copper Blue/Beaster ranks with Bob Mould’s best work [Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, his solo Workbook].  They’re a sonic onslaught full of melodies with a lot of angst and a little primal scream therapy thrown in for good measure.

Caveat emptor – this sucker is LOUD!  The remastering job boosted the volume on Copper Blue/Beaster, but without the clipping and distortion on hears from albums recorded during the “loudness wars.”  During the original recording of these works, there was an equipment alignment problem, which made it sound like most of the sound was coming through the right channel.  The remasters fixed that problem – there is proper stereo balance to the sound where there wasn’t before.

Bottom line – essential!

Warren and Derek Split the Allman Brothers - End of the Line?

There is an end to everything, to good things as well…

-          Geoffrey Chaucer, 1374

Oh, when I think about the old days,
Lord, it sends chills up and down my spine,
Yeah life ain't what it seems, on the boulevard of broken dreams,
Guess I opened my eyes in the nick of time,
'Cause it sure felt like the end of the line…

-          Gregg Allman, 1991

The Allman Brothers Band has been through a lot in 45 years.  Founding guitarist and leading light Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash in 1971, but the band continued on.   Bassist Berry Oakley died a year and two weeks later, and still the band continued.  The band broke up [for two years] in 1976 after Gregg Allman testified against one of the band’s roadies in a federal drug trial.  The band broke up again in 1982 [this time for seven years] rather than make crappy music for Arista Records.  The group endured Gregg Allman’s myriad substance abuse problems and Dickey Betts’ legal woes, but the band played on.  Warren Haynes and Allen Woody left the band in 1997 to concentrate on Gov’t Mule full-time, and still the band soldiered on.  In 2000, the band fired Dickey Betts, and again the band endured.  The Allman Brothers Band survived many things that would probably kill other bands, but last night came news of what many of us have been dreading since 2000.  Guitarists Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks announced in a joint statement that they will be leaving the band at the end of 2014 to concentrate on their own musical endeavors [Gov’t Mule and the Tedeschi Trucks Band, respectively].  Both men have young families with whom they want to spend more time.

Warren Haynes is more than just a “guitar player” for the Allman Brothers.  He’s the musical director – for the last album Hittin’ the Note he was the main songwriter and the album’s producer.  He writes the band’s setlists, all of which are subject to Gregg’s approval.  He’s the guy who interacts with the audience the most – he’s the “front man.”  Derek Trucks is also more than just a “guitar player.”  For those of us who never saw Duane Allman, Derek is the one guitar player who channels Duane Allman’s musical soul.  It is no accident that Derek occupies the same area of the stage once held down by Duane.  The inclusion of Warren and Derek allowed the band to expand the band’s on-stage repertoire in ways that even the original band never did.  During the Duane/Berry years, the band played the same setlist every night.  That practice continued until Warren’s first stint in the band [1989-97].  After the Seven Turns tour [1990] the band began to play rotating setlists.  A given setlist would be played once every two or three days.  When Warren came back after Dickey Betts’ firing the band started the practice of never repeating a setlist.  For example, as I type this I have in front of me the three shows the band played at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre in 2004.  In all, fifty one different songs were played over those three nights.  The only song played on all three nights was Dreams.

In the back of my mind, I knew that someday this day would come.  Nothing lasts forever, as much as we would like some of them to.  The Allman Brothers Band was Duane Allman’s baby.  He started the band in 1969.  This year’s Beacon Theatre run will mark 45 years since Duane started the band.  I’m sure back in 1969 none of the band members gave a second thought to this band enduring into the 21^st Century.  But the remaining original members aren’t young men anymore.  Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks are both 66; Jaimoe will be 70 this year.  Once a band that played over 200 shows a year, the Allman Brothers limit themselves to the annual Beacon Theatre run [every March], the Wanee Festival, the Peach Festival, and a month of shows in late summer/early fall.  The band hasn’t released a studio album since Hittin’ the Note [2003].  This fact is a sore spot for many on the band’s fan page on the Web.

Do I regret not having seen this line-up?  No.  Since 2003 the band has documented almost 300 shows [278 to be precise], most of which are available for sale.  I haven’t seen them, but through the magic of these official bootlegs I sure did hear them, and I loved what I heard.  At this point in my life, that’s good enough.  I got my live ABB fix during the 1990s, when Warren and Dickey Betts was the guitar duo and Allen Woody played the bass.  That’s how I prefer to remember the band.  When Warren left the band the first time in 1997, it was a body blow for the band, but it was one from which they could recover.  He was followed [note I did not say “replaced”] by Jack Pearson, who in turn was followed by Derek Trucks.  Dickey Betts was still there – he was the band’s musical director and main songwriter despite the band’s surviving namesake still being present.  There was continuity – there was a foundation from which to build.  Warren filled those roles after Dickey was fired.  Above all else, the Allman Brothers Band is a guitar band.  With both Warren and Derek leaving at the same time, what happens next?  Do the old guys want to go through auditions for two guitar players?  Is bassist Otiel Burbridge going to stick around?  I don’t see anybody who can fill those big instrumental shoes.Charles De Gaulle once said the cemeteries of the world are filled with indispensable men.  IMHO, at this stage of the Allman Brothers life, this is what Warren and Derek have become.  If this happened 40 years ago I might be signing a different tune.

I do not see the band recovering from this development.  Even Gregg is concentrating more on a solo career.  The last time I saw him in concert two years ago, half of the songs were Allman Brothers songs.  With that said I think he’s embracing more of his entire recorded legacy rather than just his solo work.  Jaimoe has his Jaimoe's Jasssz Band [a pretty good little band, I might add].  I don’t know what percussionist Marc Quiñones does in his down time, and Butch Trucks doesn’t appear to have his own side gig.

I have been an Allman Brothers fan for my entire adult life.  With all the trials and tribulations this band has endured over the years, by all rights I think they should have been dead and buried long ago.  In his first tenure with the band, Warren Haynes proved he was a fearless improviser who could go toe-to-toe with a legend like Dickey Betts.  The band was a going concern in the 1990s.  When the band looked like it might be consigned to history after the 2000 firing of Dickey Betts, Warren receives and deserves much credit for saving the band.  As the band’s de facto leader, he led the Allman Brothers Band on musical journeys they had never taken.  Derek Trucks brought his empathy for World Music [especially Indian ragas] into the mix, which gave the band a character unthinkable in the days of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley. 

Given that their announcement to leave the band at the end of the year came in the first week of the year, the remaining band members have a year to think about their next move.  My wish is this – that this 45^th year of the band be its last.  They deserve to go out on top, in the proverbial “blaze of glory.”  As one of those lucky few bands who can make a legitimate claim to having invented a genre of music, it does them no good to see this band become a mere shell of its former self with the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band.  Warren and Derek have more than earned their place in Allman Brothers lore, and given they have been pumping life blood into the band for the past 13 years, they have earned the gratitude of Peacheads everywhere.  I think I speak for all Peacheads when I say “thank you Warren and Derek, and best of luck to you.”  So far, the fat lady hasn’t uttered a single note, but she is warming up in the bullpen.  I think the band has finally reached “the end of the line.”