Dickey’s playing and Dickey admires Bobs playing. So, Dickey and I were sitting back- stage at a table talking and I’m sitting across from Dickey and we talking and Bob Dylan comes up and plops himself down, and I said, oh shit, what a picture this is! I didn’t even think, it was just that quick moment ya know, you got to capture the moment when it hap- pens, and I’m generally not intimidated and generally the people that I am shooting don’t react in any particular negative way. But on this particular occasion, I shot the picture and I had a flash on my camera. If I hadn’t had a flash I could have probably shot a lot and knocked a few pictures off without Dylan even knowing it, but as soon as the flash went off, you would have thought that I had thrown acid on this guy... I mean like battery acid. This guy, he just went nuts on me, and Dickey said “Oh no, it’s okay Bob, that’s our friend Sydney” and Bob was “No! No! No! No pic- tures!” I kinda got myself up and walked away to a different table, I got the message. MB But you got the picture too. (Laughs) I got the picture too, that’s right. And from what I understand, that picture is in Dickey’s home framed. Burt Holman told me later that Dickey was really pissed about it, but Dickey didn’t come across to me that he was pissed about it, in fact he was almost embarrassed that Bob made such a big stink out of it, but Burt told me that if Dickey approaches you, just be ready, cause he ain’t happy. But I never had any negative feed back from Dickey. In fact, when I saw him on his bus several years later, he said, yeah Sydney is the one that took that picture of me and Dylan to- gether.
What made you decide that now was the time to do this book? To me, I think it’s almost like perfect timing because as you know, there’s a whole new ren- aissance with the band, I hate to say it, but after Gregg died it seems like peo- ple are even more hungry for Allman
related stuff and when they announced that show the other day in New York, God Almighty, that thing is gonna be sold out! I mean it’s crazy, it’s also just crazy how much people love the Allman Betts band, who you also have some great pictures of. You know, I think it’s a generational thing. I have sold very few books to anybody under the age of 50. It’s shame, because as we know, the Allman Brothers were the band, I mean they were the band, they were the best Ameri- can band, period, hands down, in my opinion, ever.
Yeah Exactly And you’ve got a fan base who realizes that, and then you have a whole nother generation that has no idea and that’s a shame. I came out with the book at this time basically be- cause, I’m sitting on all these photos and for years and years, people have said, you need to come out with a book. I resisted because I fig- ured there were enough books on rock stars out there, including the Allman Brothers Band, but then when the band members started dying off, I thought to myself, well ya know what, maybe I owe this to the fans. I didn’t do it to really make a fortune or any- thing like that, in fact, I didn’t know if I was even going to make my money back, and as of right now, I haven’t made my money back, especially at that price, $39.95, but I felt that I had to do it. I went to the Peach Festival a couple of years ago and saw the photographer for The Grateful Dead, and he was doing a lit- tle photo presentation of the Grateful Dead and I said that’s going to be me next year. Be- tween now and next year, I’m gonna have a book out on the band and I will be doing a presentation at Peach Festival, and that is ex- actly what I did. I spent that next year, the whole year putting the book together and I had Alan do the foreword for the book, and at the last Peach Festival, last summer, I was
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