Forty Years of the Allman Brothers

Back in the 1970s, photographer Kirk West was just a self-described “hippie with a camera” and a diehard Allman Brothers Band fan who traveled to see his favorite Southern rock group whenever he could. He became such a fixture that the band invited him backstage and to studio sessions, and in 1989, West joined the crew as an assistant tour manager. “I was only supposed to work for three weeks,” he says, “and it ended up being twenty-one years.” Decades of exclusive access later, West has amassed a private photography collection unlike any other. Finally, he’s letting the rest of us peek behind the curtain in a new coffee table book, Les Brers: Kirk West’s Photographic Journey with the Brothers.