Mercury

When band founder, spiritual leader and guitar savant Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident during the recording of their fourth album Eat A Peach, the remaining members of the Allman Brothers Band mourned by pouring their wounded souls into finishing what became their artistic apogee. Thirteen months later, during the recording of Brothers And Sisters – after adding keyboardist Chuck Leavell to help fill in the huge void left by Allman – history unhappily repeated itself. After completing two cuts, bassist Berry Oakley died in an uncannily similar motorcycle mishap less than a mile from where Duane crashed.

By rights, the band could have perished on that chilly November day in 1972, but they decided to persevere once more, recruiting bassist Lamar Williams, and returning to the studio. A slightly different Allman Brothers emerged on Aug. 1, 1973, with some of the sharp, dangerous edges rubbed off by their grief, the addition of two new members and the ascendency of Dickey Betts as a songwriter. (Betts penned four of the seven songs the album.) As a result, the chemistry and focus of the band were altered, the tunes were more reined in and economical, and, dare we say, accessible? Nowhere on this seven-song opus did anything approach the majesty and experimentation of the 33-minute “Mountain Jam” from Peach.

Instead, there is the build and romantic release of “Jessica” and the breezy tumble of “Ramblin’ Man” that seemed to anticipate the zenith of country rock that would follow, and the anxious machismo of “Southbound.”

Yet, the true genus and genius of the band lies in the slurry, blurry, rough Rolling Stones-ian magic of Gregg Allman’s “Wasted Words,” continuing the slightly subversive blues-rock legacy of what Duane began. Fortunately, in this 40 year anniversary release, the three extra discs show more of that unruly spirit in never-before-heard rehearsal versions of live, off-speed outtakes and a chills-inducing show from Winterland in San Francisco on Sept. 26, 1973.