corner of his eye he looks around we were way back there and here he is out on this run- way and I felt sorry for him. His knees were shaking, I swear to God, I’d never seen any- body so scared in my life, and one of the first notes out of his mouth, his voice cracked.
Oh my gosh. We used to say that showcase did not make a good impression. In fact, the producer didn’t even want to sign us, which would have been the best thing that ever happened if he hadn’t, but the manager convinced him to come and see us again and Gregg said, “No more of this damn runway shit!” He said, “Just leave us alone, let us play.” And so we played and of course they signed us, you know. No more of the Tom Jones stuff.
Well you said that Duane Allman was headstrong. We’ve heard that by other people. What else can you tell us, justa little about all the time that you knew Duane ‘cause you know everybody now, people like me that never got to meet him, we always want to find out some- thing about what the guy was like, you know? Duane was very reckless, very brilliant, very smart, in fact, had he not been a guitar player, he would have done something else great. You couldn’t have stopped him from doing it. He might be the only genius that I ever knew personally and I really believe he was a true genius. He was extremely brilliant. He was well read even though he didn’t get far in school, he didn’t finish high school. But if you ever went to his house, to his apartment, whatever, he would have a guitar in his lap and he would have a book in his hand. And he’d be there talking to you and then he’d lay the book down and then he’d start hitting some notes on the guitar for a few seconds. Then he’d quit that and pick up his book again. He was either reading or playing gui-
tar and he had both within reach.
Wow. I like that. His mind was just. . . soaring. . . every minute. You hear these interviews or quotes or differ- ent things of him, you know, things that he’s said and he’s always quoting from like these really deep books, you know, just quoting right out of ‘em. He was reading stuff I’d never heard of, or where he got the idea to read these. He was young, you know, he was- n’t like an old guy smoking a pipe, you know. He was in his young twenties you know and he’s already, he’s reading all this stuff and he didn’t learn this in college.
Well, man I tell ya, I wish I could have met the guy but you know, things… I’ve met a lot of other people and I’ve been very fortunate. Well then you hear his licks played and you think, “Oh yeah, that’s good licks” but you know, it’s not anything new. I’m talking about today, like these kids like… you’ve got your Derek Trucks and people, I mean, who are burning it up on slide and you’ve got your Joe Bonamassa and all these other people, they’re great, but back then there wasn’t anybody like that. Duane was the guy and he was the guy who invented this stuff that these other guys are playing now.
That’s right. And you know, he was only 24 years old when he died so he only had so much time to invent and master all this stuff that he was doing, you know. And these days you’ve got YouTube, you’ve got TV, you’ve got everybody playing, you’ve got lessons online… he never learned from anybody, he was just picking it up and inventing it himself.Just an origina- tor, you know.
Somebody said one time there are those people that ride the wave and
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