The Defiant Final Days of Gregg Allman
"All the way up to the very end of his life, he was not afraid of death."
In 2012, Gregg Allman visited a doctor in New York. The doctor sent him straight to the hospital, where Allman learned that he had a recurrence of liver cancer. The news was bleak: The disease was terminal. He was told he had 12 to 18 months to live.
The Southern rock legend did not despair. “He didn’t complain,” says Chank Middleton, Allman’s best friend of more than 45 years. “He didn't worry. And to me that was strange. If they had told me that, I would’ve gone into straight shock.” Allman, who founded the Allman Brothers Band in 1969 with his late brother Duane, rededicated himself to the central joy of his life: his music.
“Music was his life,” Middleton says. “It never was about the money. It was always
