Butch Trucks

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

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

“I loathe and detest heavy metal.”

“There's always going to be a percentage of the kids out there who want to hear people who can actually play and sing.”

“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!”

“That was my first love growing up - classical orchestral music, especially Impressionism.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If there's anybody who knew how to play in a studio, it was Duane Allman.”

“My hearing after 50 years of playing music sometimes isn't too great.”

“People feel entitled to take whatever's online without paying for it.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Something happens when the music starts, and all that tiredness just goes away. When it's going like that, I'll take on any 20-year-old hot-shot drummer who wants to try me.”

“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.”