My Grand Unified Theory of Celebrity Profiles™ is that they should only be written when the subject is smack dab in the creative valley between their early peak and their first real comeback. Because that’s when a writer worth his-or-her salt is able to capture the character traits I find most interesting in accomplished artists: resilience, regret, and raw fury.
Steven Oney’s 1984 Esquire profile of Gregg Allman is a classic case of the genre done right. This was years past Allman’s prime, and well after he’d torched nearly all of his meaningful relationships through a toxic stew of addiction, philandering, and plain-old betrayal. For reasons I can’t quite fathom, Allman let Oney tag along as he tried to tour his way back to fame, with decidedly disappointing results. There’s a ton about Allman’s world view that hasn’t aged well—he declares that a Purple Rain-era Prince “ain’t got no chops”—but Oney’s prose still shines. There’s a bunch of choice passages throughout, but this one about Allman’s detox regime is perhaps the most vivid:
Allman had used heroin before, but by the winter of 1977 his addiction had become so bad that he sequestered himself back east in the house of a Buffalo physician who, in exchange for $29,000, promised to step him down. For several weeks, Allman used methadone. Then he went cold turkey. For days he managed only a few hours’ sleep, brief interludes disturbed by dreams of gore and dismemberment. But mostly, Allman was wide awake. It was the winter of one of Buffalo’s worst blizzards, and he spent almost all of his time walking up and down four flights of stairs in the old house, watching the snow pile higher and higher and feeling his habit freeze over.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into Allman’s many woes, I recommend reading the appellate ruling in U.S. v. Herring, the drug-trafficking case in which he testified against his band’s manager.
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