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"  Interviewed by Tom Junod, August 28, 2013 If you can play, you can stay. I&amp;#039;ve been by myself now for ten years. This really is the first time I&amp;#039;ve ever worked on my career. Man, you gotta go back to square one and work your way all the way up. And, you know, it&amp;#039;s been tough, really. You know, playing the little clubs for no money. It&amp;#039;s not like drudgery, but it was surprising that I couldn&amp;#039;t just start with theaters. It was refreshing to get with a fresh group of musicians that weren&amp;#039;t so embroiled in age-old jealousies and things. And I&amp;#039;m not bad-mouthing anybody in particular. I&amp;#039;m just talking about any band that works together for that long, as hard as we were. The hardest job in this business is to have to let a guy go that is workin&amp;#039; his ass off but just not fittin&amp;#039;. Well, the difference between a band like the Allman Brothers Band and my band now is we all started out as young kids, you know, in our twenties. And we were all learning together, and by the stroke of some kind of fate they were just the perfect guys. Gregg couldn&amp;#039;t go wrong. He&amp;#039;s got such a beautiful fuckin&amp;#039; voice. All musicians and artists\u2014we all got quirks that have to be put up with at certain times. How old was I when I started playing? About four years old. You know, Dad got me started. The first song I learned was [sings] &amp;quot;Goin&amp;#039; down the road feelin&amp;#039; bad.&amp;quot; You know, I&amp;#039;d play the hell out of that. But when I was a kid in school and you asked me what I was gonna be, I mean even as a little first grader, I was gonna be a guitar picker on the Grand Ole Opry. I just had it in my head that that&amp;#039;s what I wanted to do, having no idea how it was done. It isn&amp;#039;t like today, where young people are more subjected to the artist. You can kind of see them up close. For a show to come through our town\u2014that was like the Second Coming! Well, we had some bad fucking luck, man, with Duane gettin&amp;#039; killed and then the next year, Berry. But the band hung in there. I was in a club when I heard that Duane died. My brother was playing drums at the time, and his little band was playing in this nightclub. And I was there and I was actually sittin&amp;#039; in with him. And my stepfather at the time motioned to me, &amp;quot;You better wind it up. I got some important thing to tell you.&amp;quot; I have to be really careful when I talk about this, because I don&amp;#039;t want to sound like I&amp;#039;m trying to say &amp;quot;Oh, he wasn&amp;#039;t that much.&amp;quot; But we didn&amp;#039;t really have a leader. You know, it wasn&amp;#039;t like some guy tellin&amp;#039; us how\u2026 &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s all wear red shirts!&amp;quot; But Duane used to say himself, &amp;quot;When we need a leader, I&amp;#039;ll be here if there&amp;#039;s nobody else.&amp;quot; But it wasn&amp;#039;t really a bandleader kind of thing. What broke up the Allman Brothers was so distant from that period. And it was so deep-rooted. It was a real deep-seated resentment over money, what writers get paid for writing. Just really deep human defects. We all have &amp;#039;em, but if you let &amp;#039;em go and put &amp;#039;em into a pressure cooker, they can really get obviously dysfunctional, and that&amp;#039;s kind of what happened. I was pretty quiet. I am by nature, unless I get my chemicals mixed up. First time I drank beer, I drank two of them and got drunk as a coon. It revolves back to drugs, I guess. The audience was accepting what the musicians wanted to do, more free-form than a regimented hit single, jingle kind of thing. The record companies had no choice but to go along with what the people wanted. It was the musicians&amp;#039; heyday. We could for once do what we wanted to do and get away with it. I only play slide when I have to. I like to play acoustic slide. I like that. I just\u2026I can do it, you know. But it ain&amp;#039;t my cup of tea. I think it was probably standing next to Duane all these years. I mean, he was so damn good at it. Duane used to say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not playin&amp;#039; guitar when I play slide. I&amp;#039;m playin&amp;#039; harmonica. I&amp;#039;m thinkin&amp;#039; like a harmonica player.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d go in and tell my son, Duane, &amp;quot;You know, it sounded better when you were doin&amp;#039; it like this.&amp;quot; And he&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Yeah, but that sounds too much like you.&amp;quot; Then finally he was about twelve and I had to say, &amp;quot;You know, you&amp;#039;re my son and your body language is like mine, you laugh like I do.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not doing yourself justice by trying to avoid who you are. So just go ahead and\u2026&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not gonna play like me. You&amp;#039;re gonna be twice as good.&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Sure you are, you&amp;#039;re not a degenerate!&amp;quot; Hell, I still learn a lot each day. I learn shit from my son. When I&amp;#039;m home, I try to just keep my hands in shape. My guitar has, like, become part of me, you know. 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