“This will be my favourite music forever”: the band so good Billy Bob Thornton called them “supernatural”
Everybody has listened to a song, an album, or a band so good that describing it as ‘out of this world’ still doesn’t do it justice, but Billy Bob Thornton was being literal when he called one act so talented that they’ve transcended the mortal realm and become something else entirely.
He’s never been viewed as the most normal guy in Hollywood, so it’s in keeping with his eccentricities that the Academy Award winner would be so adamant that a group of talented musicians couldn’t possibly have been so talented at such a young age, convincing him that reincarnation had to be responsible.
For a guy with a deep-seated fear of Komodo dragons, antique furniture, and Benjamin Disraeli’s facial air, who also once equated an episode of My Little Pony with the Jonestown massacre, it’s not even in the top ten weirdest things that Thornton has said or done, but it does speak to his love of music that he refuses to believe one life is enough to explain the creation of the greatest music he’s ever heard.
A bit of a songsmith himself, having released dozens of albums as a solo artist and with his band, The Boxmasters, Thornton stumbled on his favourite band at an early age, and he hasn’t changed his mind since. He was 15 years old when the Allman Brothers Band released their third album and first live record, At Fillmore East, in 1971, and it’s stuck with him ever since.
“The first time I heard the Allman Brothers, I thought, ‘This will be my favourite music forever, there is no way around it,'” he told Mix Online, and it’s remained true for over 50 years. “Some spirit speaks through those guys. I never considered that the Allman Brothers were Southern rock. I considered them something just supernatural. They always will be to me.”
“The first song that Greg Allman wrote and brought to the Allman Brothers was ‘Dreams,'” Thornton continued. “Now, how do you write that when you are 21, or 19, or whatever it was, unless you’ve lived already? There is no way you can do that. I believe in the eternal life. I believe that we keep living life over and over, and I always have.”
From his perspective, there was simply no way a kid could write something so moving, authentic, and sorrowful at such a tender age without having the real-life experience to draw on. With that in mind, the only reasonable conclusion that Thornton could draw was the perpetual cycle of life, with Greg Allman having lived already and been through the things he wrote about in ‘Dreams’.
It’s entirely down to personal preference whether anybody wants to believe that or instead acknowledge that some people are born with the ability to write great songs, regardless of how old they are or what they’ve experienced. It’s clear which side of the fence the Landman star falls on, leaving it completely open to interpretation as to whether the Allmans were supernatural or merely preternatural.
