Sometimes you're gonna jump off a cliff and land flat on your face. Then you just get up and go again. But sometimes you dive off the cliff and start soaring with the eagles, and that's when you find new music, places that you've never been before.
Butch Trucks
Phil Walden had complete faith in us, and I'll respect him forever for that. I think he sunk about $150,000 in us. He was close to bankruptcy a lot of the time, and Atlantic kept telling him we didn't have a chance.
To be honest, I don't listen to much music! I've been so engrossed in it my whole life that when I drive around in my car, I'll listen to college lectures on philosophy and literature and world history, things like that, to kind of catch up on the college experience I missed.
You're playing for yourself. And if you're not playing for yourself, you're an entertainer, doing it for the crowd.
Oh, he's magic. Faulkner has opened passages in my brain. You do things you'd never expect.
People feel entitled to take whatever's online without paying for it.
Something happens when the music starts, and all that tiredness just goes away. When it's going like that, I'll take on any 20-year-old hot-shot drummer who wants to try me.
Blues Traveler is hot, and Big Head Todd, the Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies - all of 'em.
I have done nothing my entire life but play music.
We all knew that asking another guitar player to step into Duane Allman's shoes would not really be fair to anybody who had a conscience.
One that really caught me was Joe Morello. He was the first drummer I ever saw that could do a roll with one hand. He would turn his hand over and use his fingertips to get the stick bouncing. He could sit there with his right hand doing stuff on the cymbals and tom-toms while he was doing a roll with his left on the snare drum.
A lot of these guys come up and say, 'Man, you were my influence, the way you thrashed the drums.' They don't seem to understand I was thrashing in order to hear what I was playing. It was anger, not enjoyment - and painful.
We've been lucky because quite a few young people keep coming to see us play. We couldn't tour as much as we do if we could only count on the baby boomers.
There's this new band that just started with us called the Dave Matthews Band. My God! I mean, I like those guys. Plus, Dave Matthews looks just like Forrest Gump.
Ginger Baker was never my favorite, but he was part of the group Cream that opened the door to what we did. They were the first band to really get into improvisation. They were an absolute necessity to what came later.
I've never thought too much of 'Rolling Stone.' The first thing I'd do is look at about 50 or 60 of the drummers they have ahead of me and go, 'Oh yeah, right!'
We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.
With the jam bands I've seen, it's about music, and it's about theory, and it's about making everyone feel better with music.
We did 300 shows in our first two years.
When I listened to Elvin Jones, man, for the first time I heard a drummer that had all the technique plus emotion, passion, feel, and just - good God!
We're a live band. It's what we do best.
When we started, it was so intense: it was like a religion. And when you played with Duane Allman, you either gave it your all or you got out.
When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I'm already there.
I love Lucille Ball. But you don't call that Shakespeare. It's just entertainment, you know. And if you like that, then go have a ball, have fun.
Johnny Winter doesn't know the word 'subtlety.' But it works, it works.
This is show business, and there's room for the shows and the personalities. But I think there's also room for music, for people to play music, and there seems to be an audience developing that's willing to go listen to music again, rather than just be blown away by drum machines and choreography.
'Enlightened Rogues' we made like the earlier ones: whatever tune came up, whatever direction it went in, that's the way it went. That's what we'll always do. I think if we ever stop doin' that, we ought to quit.
Listen to John Coltrane. When he plays 'A Love Supreme,' that guy is totally into himself.
The music became secondary to being rock stars.
After we did the last Allman Brothers Band show, my wife and I just packed up and went to France for pretty much all of 2015, and I just got bored; I got the itch. I wanna play.
Donald Trump has been horrendous, saying things are bad because of Muslims or Mexicans. This is exactly what happened in the 1930s in Germany, and it's gonna get worse.
These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extraordinary makeup - I find it incredibly repulsive, always have.
After being away from it for so long, it's really nice to go out and have 10- or 15,000 people show up and enjoy it. It leaves you with a very good feeling.
There's always going to be a percentage of the kids out there who want to hear people who can actually play and sing.
After 'Win, Lose or Draw' we were workin' on another album that nobody's ever heard, and it's a good thing nobody heard it.
A jam means it's not structured - let it go. Let it go here, let it go there.
I remember somebody came in with Chicago Transit Authority, and we listened to it one time.
Our approach is more the jazz approach, where you learn to play your instrument as well as you can, develop your craft, and then communicate with each other. That's the focus, not trying to give some message or entertain or have a good light show or whatever.
I have the distinction of being the only member of the Allman Brothers who has never missed a single show. I have played every single show the Allman Brothers have ever played.
I loathe and detest heavy metal.
That whole Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing - at least half the people in there don't have a place in any kind of hall of fame anywhere, in my opinion.
For a long time, our only mode of travel was an Econoline van. Eleven of us, with nine sleeping in the back on two mattresses.
My wife speaks very good French. She said she would miss lots of things in the U.S., but we can't live there if Trump's president.
I'm not going to keep my mouth shut.
We have a well and a garden. I crawl around in the mud and grow great vegetables.
Majored in staying out of Vietnam.
When you're good-looking, I think you usually don't have to work as hard.
I've gotta be the only father begging his son to leave a six-figure job to go play in a rock n' roll band!
I'm enjoying the hell out of playing straight. It seems to be the case with everybody. We're having a lot more fun. The energy is going into the music now, instead of all the side trips we got into in the '70s.
That was my first love growing up - classical orchestral music, especially Impressionism.
