So I sat and listened to Eat A Peach with the double album in my lap … and the psychedelic artwork on the cover played a huge role in it, as well. In the movie Almost Famous, there’s the famous scene where the lead character’s older sister turns him on to music like that. (laughter) I’ve talked about it with Warren Haynes, actually – he had an older brother who did the same thing for him. It’s a proud tradition with older brothers and sisters. I hear you: my older brother did that for me … only at the time, it was Johnny Cash. This would’ve been the days when you were only as good as your stereo and my brother had a nice one. He let me sit on his carpet, listening to it on his big stereo for hours on end. I heard them on the radio all the time during the era of Brothers And Sisters and I was attracted to them, but when I was about 12 years old, my brother – who was four years older than me – gave me a copy of Eat A Peach.

When did you first get hooked on the Allman Brothers? It’s so obvious that One Way Out is the work of somebody who knows the music. I feel like it was mine and now it’s everybody’s … and I love that. Now it’s done it’s here it’s in my hands – it’s a great thing. I’ve thought about this book for 20 years and worked on it very actively for three years. It’s wonderful to have it out there, of course – and it’s a bit surreal. We had the opportunity to talk with Alan Paul about his labor of love … which, as it turns out, began when he was 12 years old.īR: Alan, first of all, let me congratulate you – this is quite a piece of work, man.ĪP: Thank you very much.

The result is an engaging book about a legendary band that both the seasoned Peach Corps veteran and the casual fan will enjoy. There’s the good, the bad, and – sometimes – the ugly, but as guitarist Derek Trucks once told Paul, “If it happened, it happened.” Paul used an oral history format for much of One Way Out, letting those who lived the tale tell the tale. Paul – a welcome friend of the band and their inner circle for years – manages to present the Allman’s story fairly.

When author Alan Paul says that writing One Way Out – his brand-new oral history of the Allman Brothers – “took a pound of flesh” out of him, there’s no doubt but that it did – to do it right. For as public as The Allman Brothers Band’s saga has been for the last 45 years – a mix of magnificent triumphs and macabre tragedies dues-paying and wretched excesses clashing egos and brotherly love – their story has never been righteously told … until now.

One way out allman brothers book