A biography for Dickey Bettshasn’t been written yet.
“Our main thing we'd have to entertain us: All my uncles would come over, and we'd sit around the living room on a weekend night, and we'd play. That was a big event for me, getting to play. We never did have any percussion.”
“When I was a kid, my dad was in construction and used to move the family back and forth between central Florida's east and west coasts.”
“I like to play acoustic slide. I like that. I just... I can do it, you know. But it ain't my cup of tea.”
“I'm influenced by Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelly, Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, B.B. King, and then by bluegrass. But when I was 16, bluegrass wasn't cool. We was rock n' rollers then: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis.”
“I wouldn't call myself a jazz player or a blues player.”
“People say a lot of things in the heat of the moment. But in the entertainment business, ya never say never.”
“Ramblin' was in my blood.”
“Sometimes arguments get publicized so much that it gets blown all the hell out of proportion.”
“I have so many great memories of the Allman Brothers early days. It was an incredible time.”
“I grew up in South Florida, and my family was pretty poor. We weren't your upper-class whites by any means.”
“I'm sure you have arguments with your friends, but they don't get printed up and magnified in the papers.”
“I've learned to climb a tree pretty fast.”
“Everything comes to an end.”
“I kind of question whether to say this or not, but it's almost like the Allman Brothers turned into an Allman Brothers tribute band.”
“Human nature is you work shoulder to shoulder in a real emotional kind of setting, and there are jealousies that come up. There's resentment, and resentment turns to just outright bad things.”
“I really feel like I've written my most effective music in the instrumental realms.”
“If you've got a corporation, and you throw out one of the founding partners that is responsible in part for making the organization what it is today, you have to compensate that person. You have to come to a settlement.”
“In rock n' roll music, you almost have to apologize for being around more than four or five years. I don't know why.”
“I don't have to do Gregg Allman songs.”
“Now, I'm not the kind of guy who likes to look in the mirror and say, 'Oh, you're the best.'”