When Gregg Allman died at his home near Savannah, Georgia, on May 27 due to complications from liver cancer, the music world lost one of its greatest and...
When Gregg Allman died at his home near Savannah, Georgia, on May 27 due to complications from liver cancer, the music world lost one of its greatest and most consistent performers.
Allman was a fixture on theater, arena and festival stages for almost 50 years as a member of the Allman Brothers Band and a solo artist. “He lived to perform,” says Warren Haynes, who played in the Allman Brothers Band for almost 25 years. “There was no separation between Gregg and his music.”
Allman hadn’t performed in over six months. A string of canceled shows going back to November 2016 were a sure sign to fans that Allman was gravely ill. His final show was in Atlanta on October 29, 2016. The date is significant because Duane Allman died on October 29, 1971, and the Allman Brothers Band intentionally finished their final show on that date in 2014, after which Allman continued to perform with his solo band.
“That guy fought to the last to go onstage,” says Scott Sharrard, guitarist and musical director of the Gregg Allman Band. “He did not ever want to stop performing until he literally could not sing a note. His second-to-last show was at Red Rocks [Colorado] and he was struggling with the elevation to the point that he could not move and we had to carry him to the stage, but he came out and performed slowly but magically.”
That Red Rocks acoustic show was on September 25, 2016, and just over a month later he returned for his first band performance in over two months, at his Laid Back Festival in Atlanta. It would be his final show.
“The first four songs were so strong that the band was practically high-fiving,” says Sharrard. “Then his pitch and power diminished as the night