Allman Brother’s Tour Manager Flees Drug Charges With Meth, Heroin and Syringes—Then Became Dickey Betts’ Sponsor | Kirk West

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Episode summary:

This week we continue Allman Brothers Month!Legendary photographer, archivist and Allman Brothers tour manager Kirk West tells the incredible story of his journey from small-town Iowa into the center of American rock-and-roll history. After discovering psychedelics and Chicago blues in the late 1960s, Kirk became an IV meth user and drug dealer. He fled pending charges, landed in the psychedelic communities of Boulder and Northern California, and was eventually identified and arrested while hitchhiking through Nevada with meth and syringes in his backpack.

Kirk recounts therapeutic-community rehab, heroin addiction, the murder of his drug-dealing partner, repeated arrests and the camera-store burglary that finally led him back into treatment. He found recovery through one of Florida’s earliest Narcotics Anonymous communities—but after five years sober, he attempted to prove that he could drink normally. That experiment ended shortly after John Lennon’s murder and ultimately gave Kirk the sobriety date he has maintained ever since.

His recovery opened the door to an extraordinary career photographing Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Clash, Jerry Garcia and countless others. Kirk eventually became the Allman Brothers Band’s archivist and tour manager, served as Dickey Betts’ sponsor and helped preserve the group’s history. He shares intimate stories about Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, the Big House in Macon—and the night Lowell George offered him cocaine shortly before his death.

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