The 1971 Allman Brothers Band album At Fillmore East was a musical manifesto years in the making. Bob Beatty dives deep into the motivations of band founder Duane Allman to tell the story of what made this album one of the most important live rock albums in history.
Beatty chronicles how Allman rejected the traditional route of music business success and built a band that was at its best jamming live on stage, feeding off the crowd’s energy, and pushing each other to new heights of virtuosic improvisation. Every challenge, from recruiting a group of relatively unknown but established musicians, touring the American South as an interracial band, and the failure of their first two studio albums, sharpened Allman’s determination to pursue the band’s unique sound. He made a bold choice-to record their next album live at Bill Graham’s famous concert hall in New York’s Lower East Side, a gamble that launched a new strand of American music to the top of the charts.
Four days after the album went gold, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was twenty-four. This book explores how At Fillmore East cemented Allman’s legacy as a strong-willed, self-taught visionary, giving fans of Southern rock and all listeners interested in the role of rock music in American popular culture a new appreciation for this pathbreaking album.