My Only True Friend

Greg Allman Says Goodbye

Well, I’ve been snoozin on the job because I just now, years behind schedule, discovered this great song “My Only True Friend” by Gregg Allman. Greg sings that he has so much more to give, but he’s running out of time. Don’t forget me when I’m gone. Check it out, wonderful tune. I love that they filmed it in the studio.

I may be slow to keep up, but I certainly won’t be forgetting The Brothers just because they’re gone. I grew up in the same time and place as the Allmans, went to the same high school, walked the same beaches, breathed the same salt air. I didn’t know them personally, but nonetheless….

A few bars in to any Allman Brothers tune and I’m transported in time. I’m 17 again, standing on the beach at night, under the stars, the gentle roar of the waves in my ears, the salt air on my face, smokin a big joint with a friend, leaving normal where it belongs, behind.

It’s not just the music. It’s the way Gregg Allman walked, the way he held his body, the clothes, the hair, the attitude, a lot of cool, probably too much, a little aloof, trying to be a nice guy, not always making it. It’s the vibe of a time and place now gone, but still available in the chorus of a song, in the way someone looks over the top of their sunglasses.

Daytona Beach Florida, 1969. The boardwalk, Main Street, the motorcycles, the #!#%^@ tourists everywhere, 30 miles of hotels, driving on the beach, twenty lanes wide. The Intracoastal Waterway that you happily crossed any time you wanted to go almost anywhere in town.

The sunglasses. The drugs. The passionate pursuit of cool, which turned out to not really be all that cool. Oh well, who knew? Not teenagers. And who can blame them?

Riding down the beach in a 1940s era sedan so long you had to hail a cab to get from the front seat to the back seat. Steve Miller blasting Space Cowboy out over the car radio. Yea, when you’re 17 and have just smoked a handful of joints with your stoner pals while cruising down the endless beach, checking out 7 billion chicks in their little tourist bathing suits, all hoping for an out of town adventure that nobody back home would learn about, you may not be a Space Cowboy, but you sure feel like one.

As soon as I got the chance, I left it all behind, a decision I’ve never regretted.

But what I didn’t fully grasp until I became an old man running out of time is that you can’t ever really leave your youth behind, because you take it with you everywhere you go every day for the rest of your life. Sure, it usually hides behind the now, leaving you some elbow room to keep on living. But one’s youth never fully dies. For me, it waits patiently behind the scenes, until the first few bars of any Allman Brothers tune.