as if I were hitting him upside the head! We literally got into a musical fight. It was back and forth. Finally after a guitar versus drums wrestling match, Duane looked at me, smiled and pointed at me saying, ”There ya go!” I had forgotten about being reserved or nerv- ous. The anger in me turned that shuffle on its ear. It was like Duane reached inside of me and flipped a switch. A light went on. And from that day on, I have kept the confidence that Duane instilled in me that day.
The Allman Brothers Band, 1969. (ABB Archives)
After about six months of the studio he got re- ally bored and about that time Phil Walden signed him to a management and recording contracts and sent Jaimoe to Muscle Shoals, where they met and hit it off. Duane and Jaimoe eventually headed to Jacksonville to find more players for the new band that Duane was going to form. At first he thought it might just be a
trio, so he took Jaimoe and Berry Oakley back to Muscle Shoals and recorded a few songs. At that point he wasn’t satisfied with his vo- cals on the recordings. They headed back to Jacksonville to grab some more players. Al- though Jaimoe was already playing with him, he wanted a second drummer like James Brown had. So we did a series of jams, which were really auditions. I wasn’t all that secure in my abilities back then, and Duane would never add an insecure musician to his band. So one day we were jamming in the woods, and had several hundred hippies from Jack- sonville there. I think Duane decided he was going to test me. We were playing this shuffle, and I started backing off. He turned around, gave me the stink eye and I knew right then that he was pissed off. Then he did it again and again. It began to piss me off. I was mad! I started pounding the shit out of the drums,
How did Gregg come into the picture? We spent about a month or so getting to- gether as often as possible and jamming. Fi- nally after going through many combinations, we were at The Second Coming’s band house. That was Dickey and Berry’s band. The six of us got into a jam that lasted about 2-3 hours. It was incredible. So the group became Duane, Dickey, Berry, Jaimoe, me and Reese Wynans, who later played with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Duane knew that we had to have a singer and he knew who that needed to be so he called his brother, Gregg, who was struggling in L.A. and told him to get his butt to Jacksonville. Two days later we had our first rehearsal and learned "Trouble No More," "Don’t Want You Know More" and "Dreams." We knew at that point that we had a band.
I know Rolling Stone listed you among the best drummers ever in rock and roll. Who were your favorites? Were you into, say, Zeppelin’s John Bonham or Cream’s Ginger Baker, Buddy Miles? In the Allmans, we had consciously decided that we would not listen to any of our peers. We listened to mostly Coltrane, Herbie Han- cock, Miles Davis and people like that. We were either listening to jazz or Robert John- son, the old blues men, but not to our peers. So I was never truly exposed to a lot of ‘60s
10
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62
