Whipping Post (song) - at Fillmore East Version

At Fillmore East Version

None of this fully anticipates the At Fillmore East performance. It was recorded at New York's famed Fillmore East venue during the band's second show there on March 13, 1971. Duane Allman begins to introduce the tune – "Berry starts her off" – then a fan yells out "Whipping Post!" Duane responds, "You guessed it," and Berry Oakley indeed starts it off with the powerful, rumbling 11/4 time bass guitar opening, which Rolling Stone would say gave the song its "haunting momentum" and which would become one of the most familiar bass patterns in all of rock.

Soon, Duane and then Dickey Betts' dual lead guitars peal in, before Gregg Allman's Hammond organ joins as well. Gregg delivers a gritty vocalization culminating in the anguished chorus:

Sometimes I feel ... sometimes I FEEL

Like I been tied to the whipping post!

TIED to the whipping post!

TIED to the whipping post!

Good Lord, I feel like I'm dyin'...

The vocal parts are spread throughout the 23 minutes, separated by lengthy instrumental segments. The verses, choruses, and solos are in 6/4, while the stinging interludes immediately after the vocal parts revert to 11/4 time.

Duane Allman takes the solo after the first verse and chorus, playing a furious slide-ish series of knife-like crescendoes against the Allmans' trademark percussive backing, augmented by Betts' rhythm guitar part. Gregg Allman comes back to sing the second verse and chorus five and a half minutes in, after which Betts takes the lead for the long middle part of the performance and Duane reverts to rhythm guitar. Betts plays his metallic-toned scales building to a wailing, shuddering climax at the 10-minute mark. But instead of staying in the expected form of the song and returning to the vocals, here the band takes an unexpected turn. The dynamics are reduced to almost complete quiet and the tempo slows down and then almost disappears into an abstract, rhythmless, free time segment.

Betts plays some simple, soulful light jazz styled melodies against Oakley's also-melodic bass line, with Duane Allman supplying moody chords in counterpoint and the occasional blissful organ wash from Gregg Allman. The guitarists work in blues quotes (Betts does "You Better Stop It Babe") à la Sonny Rollins, classical music motifs, and bell sounds. Poe writes that this section is a "leap into the unknown ... it feels as though everything could simply fall apart at any second, but Dickey continually pulls things back together at what ... seems to be the last possible moment" before building into a slow, tragic crescendo of psychedelic blues riffs. Finally after the 15-minute mark there is a recapitulation of the introduction and, pulled in by Oakley, a series of dual guitar whiplashing crescendoes; the band comes to a dead stop and Gregg Allman jumps in near the 17-minute mark for the third anguished iteration of the chorus — only to leave it unfinished.

Again, the tempo drops to near nothing, while Betts plays a fragment of "Frère Jacques". Duane again counterpoints with his slide sounds, while the rhythm section has the major role. Duane leads the guitarists to find a joint lullaby whose emotive changes play against Butch Trucks' percussive tympani washes. The psychedelic blues riffs crescendo in the lower register and then drop off; this whole segment of the performance has a Middle Eastern tinge. At 21 minutes in, Gregg Allman comes back for the fourth and last time, sighing " Oh sometimes, and Ohhh sometimes, and Oh sometimes, Lord don't you know, that I feel, Oh like, like I'm dying..." Duane then leads the band to a brief thrashing finish.

But even as the sound lingers and the audience bursts into applause, the music doesn't stop; the tympani keeps going and within seconds, the guitarists start up the mellow lead line to "Mountain Jam" as the record fades into the end grooves. Listeners would not hear that 33-minute continuation until 1972's Eat a Peach was released.