Top 60 Butch Trucks Quotes

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

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.

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!

There’s nothing – nothing – like the magic of playing music.

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.

I take my laptop with me on the road. When I come home, I log onto AOL, go to the Web site, and answer questions.

The only way a musician can express feelings is playing.

We never thought that we would be more than an opening act.

I love Lucille Ball. But you don’t call that Shakespeare. It’s just entertainment, you know. And if you like that, then go have a ball, have fun.

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.

The music became secondary to being rock stars.

Once we started headlining at the Fillmore East, we were free to play all night, at least for the second set. ‘Whipping Post’ could get lengthy.

Back when Napster first came along, I started telling everybody Napster was like shooting yourself in the foot because you’re stealing music. The record companies don’t pay for us to make records – the bands do.

After we did the last Allman Brothers Band show, my wife and I just packed up and went to France for pretty much all of 2015, and I just got bored; I got the itch. I wanna play.

It wasn’t unusual for an Allman Brothers record to cost $300,000.

As long as all four of my limbs keep moving and I can still sit up straight and play hard rock and roll for 2 and a half to 3 hours, I’m gonna keep doing it, and I’m gonna do it the way I do it.

I have done nothing my entire life but play music.

There obviously are a hell of a lot of people that love Lady Gaga. But to me, she’s been the theatre of the absurd. And the more absurd it is, the bigger she got.

Our approach is more the jazz approach, where you learn to play your instrument as well as you can, develop your craft, and then communicate with each other. That’s the focus, not trying to give some message or entertain or have a good light show or whatever.

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!

The Allman Brothers 1969 to 1971… were all about… jumping off the cliff… Just taking music and being adventurous with it.

With The Allman Brothers, we made two studio records that were OK, but the first really great album was the live one, ‘At Fillmore East.’ We were a live band, and it’s one of the reasons we were able to stick around for 45 years.

My hearing after 50 years of playing music sometimes isn’t too great.

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

When we started, it was so intense: it was like a religion. And when you played with Duane Allman, you either gave it your all or you got out.

A jam means it’s not structured – let it go. Let it go here, let it go there.

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.

People feel entitled to take whatever’s online without paying for it.

See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n’ roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.

When we’re playing, when we’re really, really going… you’re just in the moment. You’re not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, or anything else. The brain gets out of the way. Your body just does what it knows how to do, and it’s just… it’s like a religion.

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.

With the jam bands I’ve seen, it’s about music, and it’s about theory, and it’s about making everyone feel better with music.

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.

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

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.

Blues Traveler is hot, and Big Head Todd, the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies – all of ’em.

Putting together two powerful sets is always difficult. After you really pour it out one night, it’s hard to pour it out the next night.

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

When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I’m already there.

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

‘Enlightened Rogues’ we made like the earlier ones: whatever tune came up, whatever direction it went in, that’s the way it went. That’s what we’ll always do. I think if we ever stop doin’ that, we ought to quit.

We went on to become the No. 1 band in the country for three or four years. And that was probably the worst thing that could have happened to us.

Of all the songs we played, ‘Statesboro Blues’ was the most ripped-off.

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

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.

We’ve been lucky because quite a few young people keep coming to see us play. We couldn’t tour as much as we do if we could only count on the baby boomers.

A lot of the cities where we have a strong following, we don’t even get to every year anymore. But Stony Brook was a place that, from the very first time we went, the chemistry was right. They loved us, and we loved them, and we just kept going back and going back.

I don’t think we listened to any rock n’ roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.

I feel like the Cal Ripkin of rock n’ roll.

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.

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

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.

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

Sometimes you’re gonna jump off a cliff and land flat on your face. Then you just get up and go again. But sometimes you dive off the cliff and start soaring with the eagles, and that’s when you find new music, places that you’ve never been before.

We’re a live band. It’s what we do best.

That was my first love growing up – classical orchestral music, especially Impressionism.

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.

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.