Butch Trucks

I'm enjoying the hell out of playing straight. It seems to be the case with everybody. We're having a lot more fun. The energy is going into the music now, instead of all the side trips we got into in the '70s.

I've gotta be the only father begging his son to leave a six-figure job to go play in a rock n' roll band!

When you're good-looking, I think you usually don't have to work as hard.

Majored in staying out of Vietnam.

We have a well and a garden. I crawl around in the mud and grow great vegetables.

I'm not going to keep my mouth shut.

There are so many good, young bands out there who aren't getting the attention they deserve.

My wife speaks very good French. She said she would miss lots of things in the U.S., but we can't live there if Trump's president.

Phil Walden had complete faith in us, and I'll respect him forever for that. I think he sunk about $150,000 in us. He was close to bankruptcy a lot of the time, and Atlantic kept telling him we didn't have a chance.

For a long time, our only mode of travel was an Econoline van. Eleven of us, with nine sleeping in the back on two mattresses.

Ginger Baker was never my favorite, but he was part of the group Cream that opened the door to what we did. They were the first band to really get into improvisation. They were an absolute necessity to what came later.

That whole Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing - at least half the people in there don't have a place in any kind of hall of fame anywhere, in my opinion.

A lot of these guys come up and say, 'Man, you were my influence, the way you thrashed the drums.' They don't seem to understand I was thrashing in order to hear what I was playing. It was anger, not enjoyment - and painful.

These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extraordinary makeup - I find it incredibly repulsive, always have.

One that really caught me was Joe Morello. He was the first drummer I ever saw that could do a roll with one hand. He would turn his hand over and use his fingertips to get the stick bouncing. He could sit there with his right hand doing stuff on the cymbals and tom-toms while he was doing a roll with his left on the snare drum.

Johnny Winter doesn't know the word 'subtlety.' But it works, it works.

To be honest, I don't listen to much music! I've been so engrossed in it my whole life that when I drive around in my car, I'll listen to college lectures on philosophy and literature and world history, things like that, to kind of catch up on the college experience I missed.

Duane lived life right on the edge. If you ever read Goethe's Faust, Duane Allman was very much that kind of figure. His deal with Mephistopheles was to experience everything life has to offer, good and bad.

After being away from it for so long, it's really nice to go out and have 10- or 15,000 people show up and enjoy it. It leaves you with a very good feeling.

This is show business, and there's room for the shows and the personalities. But I think there's also room for music, for people to play music, and there seems to be an audience developing that's willing to go listen to music again, rather than just be blown away by drum machines and choreography.

Listen to John Coltrane. When he plays 'A Love Supreme,' that guy is totally into himself.

You're playing for yourself. And if you're not playing for yourself, you're an entertainer, doing it for the crowd.

When we started Allman Brothers, Atlantic Records kept telling us there was no way it was going anywhere.

When we started the Allman Brothers, it was all about the music.

I like some things other people don't like, and they like stuff I don't like.

When I listened to Elvin Jones, man, for the first time I heard a drummer that had all the technique plus emotion, passion, feel, and just - good God!

We all knew that asking another guitar player to step into Duane Allman's shoes would not really be fair to anybody who had a conscience.

The only way a musician can express feelings is playing.

I loathe and detest heavy metal.

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

I remember somebody came in with Chicago Transit Authority, and we listened to it one time.

We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.

Nobody is playing music like this, like the Allman Brothers, and there's still a lot of fans out there, so that's what we're doing with Les Brers.

Playing live is really the art form. You're a lot freer, a lot looser. You've got people there that can give you feedback, and then you can play off of that. There's so much more energy.

I look at making a record and being in a recording studio as more of a craft; You have to be so much more careful and play simpler.

I was going to go back to college and become a math teacher.

Oh, he's magic. Faulkner has opened passages in my brain. You do things you'd never expect.

I have done nothing my entire life but play music.

When we started the Allman Brothers Band, there was this great new technology that allowed us to get exposure: FM radio.