Gregg Allman
Singer and musician who lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle to the full
The autobiography of Gregg Allman, who has died aged 69, was memorably described as a licentious catalogue of “the perks of being a tall, blond, intricately bewhiskered white rock god in skinny jeans who can bellow the blues like a black man”.
On tour the Allman Brothers Band’s road manager would make a chart showing the legal age of consent in every state. Allman made maximum use of it. After a gig he’d have four or five women in different hotel rooms. When the band chartered a Boeing 720, he was touched to find that someone had spelt Welcome Allman Bros in cocaine on the bar.
Allman insisted he had no regrets, but in his autobiography he was moved to admit: “If somebody offered me a second round, I think I’d have to pass.”
— The Times
Manuel Noriega
Voodoo-practising Panamanian dictator known as ‘Pineapple Face’
Advertisement
As dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, who has died aged 83, stole elections, killed opponents and turned his country into a conduit for cocaine shipments from Colombia to America. When US troops invaded in 1989, he took refuge in the papal nuncio’s residence. Unable to enter, the Americans blasted out round-the-clock rock music — AC/DC, Black Sabbath — until he could take no more.
The acne-scarred general was known as “Pineapple Face”. He had a freezer full of voodoo candles, bearing the name of one of his enemies, and was reported to wear red underwear to ward off the “evil eye”.
— The Times