How Gregg Allman and a roadie wrote The Allman Brothers’ ‘Midnight Rider’
Every now and then, an artist simply requires a little hand finding the perfect melody or suitable lyrics to finish a particular song, and that’s exactly what happened when Gregg Allman set about writing The Allman Brothers’ ‘Midnight Rider’, the second single taken from their 1970 album Idlewild South.
The song finds its roots in a time the band spent at Idlewild South, a cheap-rent farmhouse they once rented just outside of Macon, Georgia. Given the remote location of the farmhouse, Gregg Allman felt that he could smoke as much dope as he wanted without getting caught by the police.
Happily stoned, Allman’s creativity blossomed and ‘Midnight Rider’ came into being seemingly out of nowhere. A rough sketch of the song was completed in around an hour but became stuck on the lyrics for the third verse, which was essential to the song. “It’s kind of the epilogue to the whole thing,” he would later write.
The band’s roadie, Kim Payne, had been keeping watch over the band’s warehouse that housed their equipment, and Allman went over to him, frustrated with the song, in the middle of the night. It was Payne who helped Allman finish the song. He said: “We were getting high, and, honestly, he was starting to irritate me – because he was singing this song over and over, and I got sick of hearing the band play the same shit over and over again until they got it right. So I just threw out the line, ‘I’ve gone past the point of caring / some old bed I’ll soon be sharing.'”
Allman thanked Payne and promised that he would receive royalties should the song chart. However, Payne was not actually listed as a songwriter, so he had to seek out the band’s lawyers to change to a contract so he could receive his 5% royalty. Allman was so happy with the song that he wanted to record it straight away, but he had no keys to the recording facility in the adjacent warehouse.
Payne and Allman called their producers in the middle of the night, who duly told them to “go to hell”. With the message clearly understood, the pair broke into the recording studio by smashing a window. From there, Allman managed to get the recording console switched on, and a few microphones running and recorded a demo on his acoustic guitar. He later called the track “the song I’m most proud of in my career“.
