Former Allman Brothers Band member Johnny Neel has died at age 70. No cause of death was immediately reported. He’d suffered a stroke five years ago but recovered and returned to performing.
Former bandmate Warren Haynes confirmed Neel’s death. “Aside from being an amazing musician and singer, Johnny was one of the funniest people on the planet — a true character,” Haynes said in a social media post. “‘Johnny Neel stories,’ as we refer to them in our little chunk of the music world, are legendary.”
Neel joined the Allman Brothers on keyboards and harmonica before their 20th-anniversary reunion tour in the summer of 1989 then appeared on 1990’s Seven Turns, co-writing four songs including the Billboard mainstream rock chart-topping single “Good Clean Fun.” He also co-wrote “Maydell” from 2003’s Hittin’ the Note, which became the final studio album by the Allman Brothers Band.
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Born blind on June 11, 1954, in Wilmington, Delaware, Neel had already recorded his first single with a group called the Shapes of Soul before reaching his teens. He was listening to “Motown, soul music, pretty much back then. There were a lot of black influences down at the blind school,” Neel later remembered. “I went to the Maryland School of the Blind in Baltimore. Everyone there either played piano or tuned one. Around the Shapes of Soul era, the Stevie Wonder Fingertips album hit me because we were exactly the same age – 12.”
Neel eventually drifted into rock music, recording two regionally well-received independent albums. He then moved to Nashville in the early ’80s and entered the Allman Brothers Band’s orbit after striking up a friendship with fellow resident Dickey Betts.
Neel and Haynes were part of Betts’ solo group before he brought them into the reformed Allman Brothers Band lineup. Neel co-wrote seven songs on Betts’ 1988 album Pattern Disruptive, adding lead vocals on “Far Cry.” He later toured with Gregg Allman, co-writing “Island” for Allman’s solo LP Just Before the Bullets Fly from the same year.
“The first time I met Johnny was at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville when I had just moved there,” Haynes said. “He was sitting in with a band at a blues jam and he sang a song and played harmonica. The first thing I noticed, other than that he was blind, was that he sang better than their singer and he played better harp than their harp player. After he was done, I approached him and introduced myself and told him how much I enjoyed hearing him to which he replied, ‘I’m really a keyboard player but this band doesn’t have keyboards.’ ‘Wow,’ I thought. He must be a helluva keyboard player — and he was.”
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“Maydell,” co-written with Haynes, originally appeared on 1994’s Johnny Neel and the Last Word. By then, John Mayall had already covered the track on 1993’s Wake Up Call. Among the many other albums Neel appeared were Haynes’ Tales of Ordinary Madness in 1993; Life Before Insanity from Haynes’ band Gov’t Mule in 2000; and Michael McDonald’s Blue Obsession, also from 2000.
“I was blessed by Johnny’s immense talent on the first record I recorded I Nashville,” McDonald said in a separate social media post. “I remember knowing right off that he was a good soul too. His musical gift was legendary by then and I consider it an honor to have crossed musical paths with him if only briefly.
Neel also worked with drummer Matt Abts and guitarist Allen Woody of Gov’t Mule in X2. Neel, Haynes and Abts appeared earlier this year on Live from the Lone Star Roadhouse, a Dickey Betts Band concert originally recorded in November 1988 in New York City.
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