Whipping Post

"Whipping Post" is a song by The Allman Brothers Band. Written by Gregg Allman, the five-minute studio version first appeared on their 1969 debut album The Allman Brothers Band. The song was regularly played live and was the basis for much longer and more intense performances. This was captured in the Allman Brothers' 1971 double live album At Fillmore East, where a 22-minute, 40-second rendition of the song takes up the entire final side. It was this recording that garnered "Whipping Post" spots on both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", which wrote, "the song is best appreciated in the twenty-three-minute incarnation on At Fillmore East." Gregg Allman was 21 years old when the song was first recorded. Its writing dates back to late March 1969, when The Allman Brothers Band was first formed. Gregg had failed to make a name for himself as a musician during a late-1960s stint in Los Angeles, and was on the verge of quitting music altogether when his brother Duane Allman called and said his new band needed a vocalist. Gregg showed the band 22 songs he had written, but only "Dreams" and "It's Not My Cross to Bear" were deemed usable. Gregg, the group's only songwriter at the time, was commissioned to create additional songs that would fit into the context of the new band, and in the next five days he wrote several, including "Whipping Post". Gregg's travails in the music business would provide some of the thematic inspiration for the new song, but Allman has also said he is not sure where the lyrics came from. The song's metrical pattern and lyrics were written quickly on an ironing board cover, by Allman's telling in the middle of the night using the charcoal from extinguished kitchen matches. He later said: "It came so fast. I didn't even have a chance to get the paper out. That's the way the good songs come—they just hit you like a ton of bricks." The blues rock song's lyrics center on a metaphorical whipping post, an evil woman and futile existential sorrow.