A quarter century after their formation, the Allman Brothers Band still kick out the jams. Guitarists Dickey Betts and Warren Haynes take stock.

By Alan Paul


The Allman Brothers Band have been knocked down and counted out more times than George Foreman. And like the ageless boxing preacher, they just keep coming back and proving their naysayers wrong. As a recent 13-night stand at New York's Beacon Theatre demonstrated, the band has, remarkably, succeeded in recapturing the spark which made them America's best rock band over two decades ago.

The Allman Brothers Band was formed in 1969 by Duane Allman, a well-regarded session guitarist who enlisted a varied group of players, including his brother, organist/vocalist Gregg Allman, bassist Berry Oakley, guitarist Dickey Betts and drummers Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson and Butch Trucks. Together, this bunch created an utterly distinct, highly improvisational style. Driven by Trucks' and Jaimoe's relentlessly propulsive, inventive twin drumming, Gregg's bluesy organ comping and Oakley's melodic basslines, Betts and Allman crafted a twin lead guitar approach which rewrote the rule book on how guitarists can play together. The band's full majesty was captured on their third album, 1971's Live At The Fillmore, a double album containing just seven songs.

Just as the Brothers were starting to reap the seeds of success, the first of many tragedies struck when Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in October, 1971, while recording Eat A Peach. The band continued, returning to the studio to finish the album, before Oakley died in yet another motorcycle accident, almost exactly a year after Duane's death. The band still didn't fold. In fact, with Betts taking a more dominant role, they reached their commercial zenith with 1973's Brothers And Sisters, which went to number one and included the band's biggest hit, "Ramblin' Man," as well as two other immediate classics, "Southbound," and the instrumental "Jessica."

Still, by 1976, the Brothers had broken up. A 1979 reunion produced three mediocre albums, and their 1982 breakup seemed to mark the end of the Allman Brothers Band.

In 1989, however, the band reunited for a twentieth anniversary tour in support of the four-CD box set Dreams. They were fortified by bassist Allen Woody and guitarist Warren Haynes. The tour's success led to Seven Turns, a strong comeback album which made it clear that Haynes was a guitarist strong enough to stare down Duane Allman's formidable ghost. The band has since continued to gain strength, releasing two more studio albums, 1991's Shades Of Two Worlds and 1994's Where It All Begins, as well as two live albums, an Evening With The Allman Brothers Band, Set One and Set Two.

Two years ago, in the midst of their annual multi-night New York theater stand, Betts and Haynes sat down in a Manhattan hotel room to discuss the band's storied history and continued appeal.

GUITAR WORLD: Dickey, why do you think that this version of the band has so successfully recaptured the spirit and sound of the original unit ?

DICKEY BETTS: A big part of our success is due to the contributions of Warren and Allen. They understand where they fit into the band. I've played with guitarists who try to play just like me and that doesn't work, because our whole style is based on having two contrasting guitar sounds. Warren has his own style so he's not pulled into sounding like me. And, more to the point, he's never been pulled into trying to sound like Duane. Still, he has been plagued with that comparison from day one-which isn't worth the change in my pocket.

GW: Warren, has that "replacing-a-legend" thing been difficult for you to overcome?

WARREN HAYNES: I'm constantly drawing the line of how much I should sound like Duane. For the music to be true to itself, I have to insert a certain amount of Duane's sound and the more I play that way the more it sounds like the Allman Brothers Band. It definitely makes it harder to be myself on guitar, but the more comfortable I am within the band, the more I'm able to stretch out, and the more my own style comes to the fore.

BETTS: And you have to understand something: Warren is not replacing a legend. A legend was killed over 20 years ago. And that was the end of that. Nobody's gonna replace Duane. We're not replacing anybody. We're just going on to the next day.

GW: Your roots are in jazz and country and blues. While many younger players are influenced by you, or Jimmy Page, or someone else of your generation, they don't always go deeper-to the music that influenced you. Can they still attain the same emotional depth in their playing?

BETTS: No-but they will make that step eventually. They'll go past us.

HAYNES: When I was 14 or 15, I started reading interviews in guitar magazines with people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, saying, "Listen to Robert Johnson," I didn't get it at first, but four or five years later, it all started making sense to me. I had to go down a ladder: B.B. King and Freddy King and Albert King, then Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, then Robert Johnson....

BETTS: Robert Johnson sounds like corny hillbilly music to a kid: "Anybody can stay on one string and do that tink, tink, tink shit. I wanna play like Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen." But if they're a real player, someday they'll go back and say, "Wait a minute. Albert King is doing more than I thought. I can't really do what he's doing."

GW: Dickey, The Grateful Dead are probably the band whose approach to music is most similar to yours. Have you always felt a kinship with them?

BETTS: We've always been fans of theirs. We sound very different, because they have folk music, jug band, and country roots, and we're more from an urban blues/jazz bag. But from day one we've had a similar fan base and philosophy. We have always tried to keep our music honest and fun. To try to make it a transcendental experience for the audience, rather than create chaos or get people riled up.

And we've always tried to remain a band of the people in terms of the way we dress and conduct ourselves. And that's worked out well for us; now that we're middle-aged, we're actually very fortunate that we've never had to rely on sex appeal. I'm 50. I'm a good, strong man, but it would be ugly if I had to get out there in a pair of tights. [laughs] The Dead are the same way. People come to hear us play, and for the feeling that they get from the band.

GW: The crowds at your shows are an interesting mix of old and young, hippies and rockers, bikers and businessmen.

BETTS: I'm really excited about that. In 1989, when we did the reunion tour, it was mostly older fans. And every year since then there have been more and more, younger and younger fans. What's really nice is it's the first time I can remember a situation where there's no generation gap. The other night I was watching a guy in the crowd and he looked so uncomfortable at first. He was about 50, wearing a button-down shirt and a sports coat, and he looked like he had been in the establishment for a long, long time. He looked so stiff at first, and by the end of the night he had unbuttoned his shirt and was dancing around with the kids. Maybe it was the stuff he was breathing from around him, [laughs] but I like to think that he figured, "Dickey's no youngster and he's up there havin' fun."

As a human being, you can have fun and be innocent without making a fool out of yourself no matter what your age. So many people get to a certain age and suddenly think they have to be reserved all the time. Well, when you come to our show, it's your chance to just get loose and have fun for a while.

GW: Could you describe how you craft you instrumental songs and how they differ from extended solos?

BETTS: They're completely different. The instrumentals are very studied. It's called architecture, and for a good reason; it's much like somebody designing a building. It's meticulously constructed, and every aspect has its place. It takes months to write a good instrumental. The solos, on the other hand, happen too fast to even think about. They're the closest thing to Zen that I do. If I think about it, it's gone, it's ruined. If I'm stuck or I need a mental rest for a minute, I've got licks that I can hang there until I get my mind together, but it's mostly instantaneous and instinctive. The slow blues solos are a little different; that's just your heart coming out.

Writing a good instrumental is very fulfilling, because you've transcended language and spoken to someone with a melody. My instrumentals try to create some of the basic feelings of human interaction, like anger and joy and love, but it's something that's very difficult to explain.

GW: Your shows are based on lengthy improvisation. It must be difficult to do that night after night.

BETTS: If we don't play the same song differently every night we feel like we've failed and it's very difficult. There are going to be good nights and bad nights and that's all there is to it. And what we do on a good night is something that you just can not rehearse.

HAYNES: Even on a bad night you can derive energy from every person in the crowd. They'll give you that if you let them, and sometimes you need it. We rarely play a concert that's under three hours in length, and sometimes we go as long as four or four-and-a-half hours.

GW: Dickey, you left the band for a spell last year to go to a rehab center. Has it been hard for you to adjust to playing clean and sober?

BETTS: I've never adjusted to it. [laughs] No, seriously, substance abuse is an occupational hazard of being a musician. And it can be a crutch because a nose full of cocaine will give you plenty of energy for the show and you can feel like a king for three hours, but it doesn't work in the long run.

GW: Did you feel recharged when you returned to the band from rehab?

BETTS: I don't feel recharged, I feel normal again. I got on about a three-year drunk there. The first two years were a lot of fun, and the last year got to be a living hell. But then at least I was intoxicated. [laughs] These guys had to put up with it sober.

GW: Warren, you've been with Dickey for eight years now. How do you think he's influenced you?

HAYNES: Most of the way that I was influenced by Dickey-and Duane-was when I was much younger and learning to play. I wore out the first three Allmans albums. For a young guitar player growing up in the South Fillmore East was a dream come true-a double record of guitar licks. You could go for a year without leaving your room, just running the needle back and saying, "How did they do that?" [laughs]

BETTS: I don't think I'd be nearly as good a guitar player today if I hadn't been working with Warren. Everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to get him in the band. All the business people said, "Are you sure you want him? He...uhh..." They wouldn't quite say it, so I asked, "Are you afraid he's going to blow me away?" And they said, "He's awfully good. Are you sure you want to deal with that?" And I said, "I don't what to get some fucking lackey in the band. We might as well not have another guitarist." I have to work like hell to keep up with Warren, and he drives me to play things that I wouldn't otherwise. And hopefully I do the same thing for him.

GW: Did you and Duane have that type of relationship?

BETTS: Yes, we did. Duane used to tell me, "Man, you sure give me a hard fucking way to go. This was supposed to be my band." [laughs]

HAYNES: Dickey, I remember when I first heard you guys, I assumed that since it was called the Allman Brothers Band, Duane was the lead guitarist and you were the rhythm player. But then one of my friends saw you and said, "Bro, it ain't like that. They're both up there just wearing it out."

DICKEY: Yeah, we would laugh at each other and say, "Man, you don't give me a break." We really pushed each other, but we've always tried to avoid a competition thing in the band. If one guy is down, everyone else tries to carry him, not run him into the stage. Unfortunately, at certain times drinking and drugs and crooked managers and thievery and other things have caused us to lose sight of that. But that's our essential thing. And I think it's kept us playing the way we do.

HAYNES: The way we play is not a virtuoso thing. It's playing with the band. It's a group thing, like a jazz band, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, so that what the soloist plays only works if what the band plays works with it. We're more concerned with making each other sound better than with putting on a showcase of dexterity.

BETTS: That's it exactly.