My Cross to Bear

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Your enjoyment of this book is likely to directly correlate with your interest in the Allman Brothers Band, either through being a Baby Boomer or a musician. Otherwise, it's a coin toss. Certainly you get a something of a sense of the forces that shaped Gregg Allman and the rocky road leading to the creation of the Allman Brothers Band and the drive that sustained it. You get some intriguing glimpses into the hard work of creating music and the rough business that is the music industry. The one thing this book best accomplishes is showing that playing music for a living ain't easy. While the book is amazingly prolific in recounting the chronological journey of Gregg Allman's life, it's frustratingly devoid of real depth. He continually refers to women as "beautiful" with little detail, states that music managers stole from the band but seldom explains how, and jumps through all his marriages with only odd bits of scene. As a lurid for-instance, he tells us plenty about the Bob-Mackie created shirt Cher wore on their first date (and what happened to that shirt) yet only a few genuine elements of their marriage (including little more than a passing reference to producing a son in that relationship). Not surprisingly, since celebrities tend to be just like us, Allman comes across as a moderately amiable man, more reactive than proactive, who remembers more than you might expect considering the amount of substances he abused. The book reads very much like a long, fairly well-organized conversation with Allman, for which the glory surely goes to the under-credited Alan Light. Light certainly must have had his hands full trying to pull this memoir together. Having read a number of rock star memoirs, I appreciate Light for ensuring Allman's story didn't leave too many gaps in the history of the band, which is one of my chief complaints with memoirs (what I call "Then 20 Years Later Syndrome"). On the other hand, I wish Light had insisted on a few less "slept with this crazy but beautiful woman in this town, then a beautiful crazy woman in the next town" stories (stories which are usually not even fleshed out, so to speak, if you're reading only for salacious love life details). Better to have asked Allman to describe some key events and conflicts in more than passing reference, or least provided a little more than empty descriptives of so many people and events. Of course, that may have been the best Light could get out of Allman. That said, most people who pick this book up for whatever reason will find themselves engaged, thanks to the varied topics quickly covered. On the other hand, the reader will be as likely to frequently wish for more detail, whether it be about music creation, Allman's sex life or a sense of the times. Could be better, could be worse. Probably a song in that.

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A journey through past, geography, music, and madness. If you remember The Allman Brothers with some fondness, this book takes you there, with the expected thrills, and some welcome kindness.