You're playing for yourself. And if you're not playing for yourself, you're an entertainer, doing it for the crowd.
— Butch Trucks
I like some things other people don't like, and they like stuff I don't like.
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.
We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.
Nobody is playing music like this, like the Allman Brothers, and there's still a lot of fans out there, so that's what we're doing with Les Brers.
I was going to go back to college and become a math teacher.
When we started the Allman Brothers Band, there was this great new technology that allowed us to get exposure: FM radio.
We're a live band. It's what we do best.
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.
Majored in staying out of Vietnam.
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.
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.
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.
When we started Allman Brothers, Atlantic Records kept telling us there was no way it was going anywhere.
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!
The only way a musician can express feelings is playing.
I remember somebody came in with Chicago Transit Authority, and we listened to it one time.
Playing live is really the art form. You're a lot freer, a lot looser. You've got people there that can give you feedback, and then you can play off of that. There's so much more energy.
Oh, he's magic. Faulkner has opened passages in my brain. You do things you'd never expect.
There are so many good, young bands out there who aren't getting the attention they deserve.
I don't think we listened to any rock n' roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.
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!
We have a well and a garden. I crawl around in the mud and grow great vegetables.
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.
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 loathe and detest heavy metal.
When we started the Allman Brothers, it was all about the music.
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.
Duane lived life right on the edge. If you ever read Goethe's Faust, Duane Allman was very much that kind of figure. His deal with Mephistopheles was to experience everything life has to offer, good and bad.
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.
I look at making a record and being in a recording studio as more of a craft; You have to be so much more careful and play simpler.
I have done nothing my entire life but play music.
People feel entitled to take whatever's online without paying for it.
That was my first love growing up - classical orchestral music, especially Impressionism.
When you're good-looking, I think you usually don't have to work as hard.
I'm not going to keep my mouth shut.
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.
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.
These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extraordinary makeup - I find it incredibly repulsive, always have.
