Cher’s first words frame Gregg Allman addiction fight

A new 90-minute documentary, “Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul,” opened theaters June 17 and is heading to digital release, using a previously unseen 2014 interview and voices from his band and family to revisit Gregg Allman’s marriage to Cher—and the addict

Cher is the first voice you hear when “Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul” begins, and it’s fitting, the film seems to insist. The story circles back to the man whose music helped define southern rock—then ends with Gregg Allman’s gasoline-soaked voice singing “Melissa” live with Jackson Browne.

He lived in contrasts. With the Allman Brothers Band and his solo work. Gregg Allman was a famed superhero behind his Hammond B-3 organ. his flaxen hair as recognizable as his howling vocals on “Midnight Rider” and “Whipping Post.” But offstage. he loathed the celebrity that followed him. especially during his short-lived marriage to Cher in the mid-‘70s. The documentary also returns to the losses that haunted him—his brother Duane’s untimely death—and the addictions that plagued him for much of his life.

Gregg Allman died of liver cancer in 2017 at age 69.

In the 90-minute documentary. now in theaters June 17 and headed to digital release soon. his life is recounted through a previously unseen 2014 interview with Allman. along with current commentary from band members Chuck Leavell and Jaimoe Johnson. Gregg Allman’s son Devon and daughter Delilah. and Duane Allman’s daughter. Galadrielle. among others.

The film’s early scenes underline that even the band’s rise came alongside hard realities. Raised in Nashville primarily by their supportive mother—while their father Willis. Gregg and Duane’s father. was shot and killed by a hitchhiker when Gregg was 2—Gregg and Duane moved to Macon. Georgia in 1969. Segregation was still rife in the South. and while Macon. 90 minutes south of Atlanta. helped produce major success for musicians. racism followed.

Allman recounts living in a 13-room house—now known as The Big House Museum—with the Allman Brothers Band as a 20-year-old budding musician. He says he’d regularly walk down the street to H&H Soul Food restaurant and hang out with owner “Mama” Louise Hudson. But once the band began touring relentlessly—Allman says. “We worked 306 nights and traveled the rest of them. ” with Black drummer Jaimoe part of the band family—racial discrimination became something they confronted again and again.

The band’s response was blunt and collective: if restaurants wouldn’t serve Jaimoe, Allman says, “We’d all leave.”

Yet the documentary’s emotional center is how the forces of fame collided with a grief-soaked, addiction-heavy life—so much so that even love arrives with damage already inside the story.

Duane Allman’s death didn’t just shape Gregg’s biography. In the film, it’s described as an accelerant. Early on, Gregg talks about hero worship of Duane, saying, “I admired him so much. I spent my life trying to impress him. ” before pausing with the weight of what came after: “Well. the first 23 years of it.”.

Duane Allman died after a motorcycle accident on Oct. 29, 1971, at age 24. Gregg’s later words are recalled in the documentary: “You never get over something like that.”

Devon Allman delivers one of the film’s most chilling accounts. He remembers what happened the night of Duane’s death, along with Gregg’s best friend, “Chank” Middleton. Devon says, “Chank and Gregg left the hospital while Duane was there and got some heroin. They got high and my dad OD’d. And Chank, for a second, thought he had lost both (Allman brothers) that night.”.

That same thread—addiction making choices feel impossible—runs through the documentary’s most widely discussed relationship: Gregg Allman and Cher.

Cher was the most high-profile marriage in Allman’s life, but she wasn’t his only one. The documentary says he had six other wives throughout his lifetime. Two of them—Stacey Fountain. his longest marriage at seven years. and Shannon Williams. who were together since 2012 and married shortly before his death—participate in the documentary.

Still, it’s the Cher recollections that stand out for fans of both artists. The film recounts how Cher and Gregg’s story began with intimidation and dispatch. Chank Middleton’s son. Taj. tells how for the first meeting between Allman and Cher. his father was sent to approach the superstar singer in a club because Cher’s future husband was too intimidated to introduce himself.

Chuck Leavell—an Allman Brothers member from 1972 to 1976 and described in the film as a lifelong ambassador of their music—remembers how the band reacted once they heard the news. He says. “Once we got word that Gregg’s dating Cher and then Gregg has married Cher. we’re all going. ‘What?. That’s weird, but OK.’ And we went on tour and she comes out and immediately, I like this woman. She was respectful to everyone. she was in love with Gregg and didn’t want to steal his limelight. ” Leavell says.

The documentary places their bond at the center of any revisit—calling their relationship everlasting, rooted in the fact that their love produced son Elijah Blue. It also ties their public closeness to private milestones, noting that Cher attended Allman’s funeral at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon.

But the film keeps returning to the same point: love wasn’t the problem. Fame and addiction were.

Allman talks about the way marriage changed his daily life almost immediately. He says, “All of a sudden, I couldn’t make a move. I couldn’t go on the front lawn and wash my car without people being over the gate and I thought, this is ridiculous.”

Cher’s attempt to help him is described as sincere, but ultimately outmatched by what he was battling. In old interview footage, she says, “It wasn’t something I didn’t know,” adding, “I just thought it wasn’t real, that I could change him.”

The documentary then moves into the phase when Gregg Allman confronted what his addictions had become.

He refers to alcohol as “some diabolical stuff” as he shares stories of drinking a quart of vodka a day. When the Allman Brothers were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. he thought he was managing his drinking by lining up shot glasses in his hotel room and drinking vodka from one per hour.

But once onstage, the documentary shows the other side of that control. Allman shuffles and looks puffy-faced as he tries to accept the honor with the band, stumbling through brief comments. He says. “I wanted to say all these things about (other people) and I just got up there and was afraid I’d fall down. I was appalled with myself and prayed to God to give me strength to get away from this and live the rest of my life in peace. ” he says. tearing up. He continues: “I guess he answered because the next day I got a male nurse and I kicked alcohol. coke. cigarettes. until it was out of my system.”.

The film also notes that Allman received a liver transplant in 2010. In the documentary, he ties the survival and the recovery to a mission he still carries in the telling: “If I can save one person from going through the hell that I went through,” Allman says, “my life will not have been in vain.”

By the time the closing scene returns to him singing “Melissa” live with Jackson Browne, the documentary leaves viewers with a clear, uneasy feeling: the same life that produced mythmaking hits also produced a long, punishing struggle that celebrity couldn’t cushion and love couldn’t fully undo.

“All” of Gregg Allman—superstar, shy leader, brother-haunted musician, and man fighting addiction—arrives in the same frame, and the documentary’s structure makes it hard to separate the music from the damage that helped shape it.

Gregg Allman Cher documentary addiction liver transplant Allman Brothers Band Jackson Browne Chuck Leavell Jaimoe Johnson Duane Allman Rose Hill Cemetery Rock & Roll Hall of Fame