One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Paul Alan

a mixture of all of it and that’s what you hear when you put on an Allman Brothers song.
    JAIMOE: I’m absolutely certain that Duane had listened to Miles and Coltrane before he met me, but we did spin those a lot. His two favorite songs were Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” and Miles’s “All Blues.” Those two songs were the source of a lot of our modal jamming, without a lot of chord changes.
    ALLMAN: Duane was all about two lead guitars. He loved players like Curtis Mayfield and wanted the bass, keyboards, and second guitar to form patterns behind the solo rather than just comping.
    BETTS: Duane and I had an immense amount of respect for each other. We talked about being jealous of each other and how dangerous it was to think that way, that we had to fight that feeling when we were onstage. He’d say, “When I listen to you play, I have to try hard to keep the jealousy thing at bay and not try to outdo you when I play my solo. But I still want to play my best!” We’d laugh about what a thin line that was. We learned a lot from each other.
    DOUCETTE: Dickey and Duane didn’t hang out a lot, but the level of respect and musical love between them was profound. They were very tight and they had a lot of unspoken communication. They were both very smart, very intuitive guys, and what they wanted was to be the best they could be, not in relation to one another, but together.
    HAMPTON: Dickey and Duane had a very close musical relationship, and Dickey is one of the top three or four musicologists I’ve ever spoken to. I’ve always been blown away by his knowledge of a wide range of music. He is a very humble, nice cat with a thirst for musical knowledge. He’s always been able to talk about music he loves for hours.
    PAYNE: Dickey’s personality and ego were pretty powerful in themselves and I think he sometimes really objected to Duane being in the spotlight, but he bit his tongue. I never saw any conflict or fighting between Dickey and Duane, though there was healthy competition there. I remember hanging out with Duane and I’d say, “Let’s go riding,” and he’d look over in the corner at Dickey practicing and say, “I think I’ll just stay here and work on things with Dickey.”
    BETTS: Duane and I used to laugh at each other all the time and say, “You sure don’t give me a break.” It was the healthy kind of competition, where you push each other, but no one loses. Duane and I talked about how scared we got whenever the other played a great solo and then he said, “Well, this isn’t a contest. We can make each other better and do something deep.”
    RED DOG: Duane played guitar better than anybody out there—except maybe Dickey Betts. Many nights Duane walked off stage and said to me, “God damn, he ran me all over the stage tonight. He kicked my ass.” It’s not that they were trying to outdo each other, but Dickey would come up with off-the-wall shit and Duane would be like, “God damn!” and have to keep up.
    WARREN HAYNES: I discovered when I was just a kid that it was an equal partnership, but a lot of guys didn’t get that. Because of the name and the fact that Duane did most of the talking between songs, people assumed that he was the lead guitarist and Dickey was the support. Many people attributed some of Dickey’s great solos to Duane.
    BETTS: A lot of people assumed Duane was the lead player and I was the rhythm guy because of the name of the band and because he was so charismatic and I was more laidback. He would really get upset about that and he went out of his way to make sure people understood we were a twin-guitar band, saying, “This cat played that, not me. There’s two guitar players in this damn band!” We were both damn good, but I didn’t believe in myself the way Duane did.
    HAYNES: Dickey plays awesome straight, traditional blues, but he also has this Django Reinhardt–on-acid side of him that is very unique, and, of course, he has that major