those years, 1969-1976. Of course Duane and Berry were both gone by then but that was the original break up of the band, in ‘76, so that’s the period we covered and we basically looked at vintage equipment and instruments, we looked at autographs, photographs, glasses, posters, handbills, contracts, cancelled checks, just the whole gamut of things. Back then, you know, we were so busy working you know that we didn’t care about keeping up with that stuff. The posters, we never saw, you know, we came into a town and played a
He was a big wrestling fan.
At FillmoreEast rear cover roadie photo.( left to right: Red Dog Campbell, Kim Payne, Joe Dan Petty, Mike Callahan and Willie Perkins.
show and went to the next one. We barely even saw a lot of that stuff. But over the years as the band has become a legendary band, there is just a whole lot of interest in that sub- ject.
Yeah, well you know, I saw recently they had a huge Capricorn auction and they were selling some of the coolest things. They had cancelled checks that people in the band had signed or things that you had signed, and all kinds of
stuff.My friend Robin Fenter, Frank Fenter’s son, he got a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I remember him well. He was real young back then but I used to take him to the wrestling matches at the Macon Coliseum.
Oh, I didn’t know that about him. I was too when I was younger, that’s fun stuff. Well, talking about the memora- bilia and stuff, I’ve been a collector my- self for many years, but I could never afford these big high-end pieces or any- thing but I’ve got a lot of the smaller stuff. Everything you’re talking about in the book, like actual stage clothes and instruments - I’ve heard that there’s a pretty rabid group of fans out there that have money that buy all these things. Of course, when you go down to the Big House Museum now - I mean, I’d gone down when Kirk and Kirsten West lived there and I was thrilled then to see what they had in there! But then when I was back there for my book signing last April I toured the Big House, and I was like “Wow!” There’s some amazing stuff in there, it’s just so much I couldn’t even take it in. I mean… Really. You could spend days there and not get to see everything. It’s an amazing collec- tion and they do rotate it. They’ve got tons of stuff that’s not on display. That is the Shangri-la of the Allman Brothers collection, right there.
It really is. So I imagine the book has a good many illustrations, right, pic- tures? Yeah, we tried to track down some of the rarest stuff and of course the most valuable stuff is the actual guitars that Duane played. There’s one on display, this Les Paul Gold Top on display was loaned by a collector. And of course Galadrielle (Allman) owns one of the guitars and it’s on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - and one of Berry Oakley’s basses is there. Now, Jack Weston actually
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