Word-for-word with Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers: the complete interview, July 18, 1991

By Steve Newton

I’ve interviewed Dickey Betts four times, and every time was great. He’s one of the most thoughtful and interesting guitar heroes I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with.

This is my second interview with him, two weeks after the release of the Allman Brothers’ Shades of Two Worlds album.

At around the 6:40 point the phone starts screwing up and I can’t hear Dickey for 10 seconds. “I’ve got one of these touch phones and my cheekbone hit it,” he explains.

Must be rough having cheekbones like Dickey Betts.

Phone ringing

Hello?

Hello is Dickey Betts there?

Who’s calling, please?

It’s Steve Newton from Vancouver.

Steve, it’s Dickey, how’s it going?

How’s it going, Dickey?

Fine.

Alright. Whereabouts are you?

I’m in Parrish, Florida.

Oh, do you live there?

Yeah, I’m here in Parrish, that’s between Sarasota and Tampa.

Ah, yeah, is that where you were raised?

More or less, right around this area, you know, between West Palm Beach and Manatee County.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Where you at?

Vancouver.

Oh, so you’re way up there.

Yeah. Up in Canada, you’re coming up here to play the PNE show in August. Looking forward to that. How long has it been since the band’s been touring? I guess a year or two?

Naw, since we’ve been touring?

Yeah.

Well, we’ve been touring steady for the past two-and-a-half years.

Is the right, eh?

Yeah, we did our comeback album last year, Seven Turns.

Oh, yeah.

And we’ve been touring since before we did the album, and we toured all last summer. And then we went to Memphis and just finished Shades of Two Worlds, our new album.

Yeah. Right!

And then, as soon as we got out of the studio we went to Europe. So we just got back from Europe, about last week.

Oh, how you going over over there?

They loved us over there. You know, we haven’t really pursued the international markets so much, and in previous years, but we’re starting to work on it a little bit now. We went to Japan last January.

Oh really?

Yeah, and we had quite a following over there, ‘cause me and Gregg and a number of us had done quite a few interviews with Japanese writers and stuff, but we’d never been over there. So they kind of knew who we were, and they had our records in the record stores and everything, but they’d never seen the band. So we went over, and were received really well in Japan.

Good stuff.

And then, Europe, we’d been there a couple times, but, hell, it’d been ten years–it’d been 1981 since we’d been in Europe. And we had a lot of underground fans thinking we’d never come back, and they loved the band. They loved the band in Europe. You know they’re kind of a jazz-oriented, they really have a deep feeling for jazz in Europe, seems young people do more than young people do here.

Yeah right.

And, you know, our band borders in the areas of jazz quite a bit.

Good stuff.  I was wondering, when the band first started, did you ever expect this would be going in 1991?

(Laughs) It’s really unusual. You know, you don’t think like that when you’re first startin’ out. But, if you were to sit down and think, “Well, what’s the odds of our band still performin’ when we’re 47 years old, when the band’s been together for 22 years”, you know, you’d have to say, well, the odds aren’t in that direction at all (laughs). ‘Cause there’s very, very few bands that have done that, you know–other than the jazz groups.

But rock music now is becoming very sophisticated; it’s growing up. You know, it’s not just a little trendy thing. Like in the fifties, they said “rock ’n roll music, it’ll be here for a year or so and then it’ll be gone.” But, you know, it’s been 40 years, and rock music has grown up and become very diversified, very sophisticated, and taken on some real genuine influences. A lot of the jazz and blues influences are very strong.

So now, a lot of the rock musicians can be compared to the jazz players as far as their authenticity, so it’s not so unusual now to see a rock player that’s older.

Yeah.

And so you’d never look at Dizzy Gillespie and think he was too old to be playin’ at age 50. Well, of course, he’s 70 something now, but I mean, when he was 60, you’d have never thought, “well, he’s too old to be out playin’,” you know. But I think rock is gettin’ to be that way because of the jazz influences, and the strong blues.

Good stuff.  I was wondering, what was the reason for the longevity of the Allman Brothers. Does it come down to you and Gregg Allman gettin’ along so good over all the years, or is that the case?

I don’t know that Gregg and I’ve gotten along so good over all the years, but, you know, we haven’t gotten along so bad, either. You know, a lot of times when you’re in a public light a little bit, as we are, if you do have a disagreement, it gets blown way out of proportion, you know. But just like any family, you can’t work this tight together, and live together like we do, without having a few ups and downs, you know?

Yeah, definitely.

But thank God, most of ours’ve been up, and Gregg and I do well. But I think the longevity of the band is just because we’re a good, honest band, and it relates back to what we were just talkin’ about a lot. We’ve got good, strong genuine roots, from good country music–which is not the greatest influence in our band, but you can hear it in “Ramblin’ Man” and some of that stuff.

Yeah.

And then very strong jazz influence, which runs throughout all the instrumental things. And then, of course, you can hear the urban blues, and traditional blues influence. But it’s real genuine, deep-rooted, uh, foundation for the band, and I think that’s what’s kept us here.

Uh-huh. I was wondering exactly what part of the States did the sort of quote “southern rock” sound come from. Is that from Florida sort of, where that originated? You guys were probably the originators of it, I guess.

Well, we were considered… we were the first band that sounded like us, you know, but we weren’t the first band that could’ve sounded like this, I think. But the thing is, most bands from the south would either move to L.A. or move to New York, you know, to get started. In fact, Atlantic Records tried everything they could to get us to move out of the south. They said we’d never break out of the south. They said “move these guys to Los Angeles,” you know, “dress them up (laughs). Get ‘em out of those damn boots and blue jeans.”

Clicking repeating…

Hello?  Hello?  Hello? Hello?  Hello? Dickey?

Hey, are you there?

Yeah.

God, I got one of these touch phones and my jaw bone, my cheekbone hit it. Okay, where were we at? Okay, and put them in some velvet and out of the blue jeans and boots and stuff, and thank God, we didn’t do that. Because we actually didn’t set out to make something quote “southern rock”. We were just bein’ our band, and we were bein’ honest, and playin’ the way we play, and we weren’t going to change it. 

Yeah.

And the truth is not one of us in the band really felt we would be that ultra-successful, because we were not commercial at all. 

Yeah.

We were purposely trying not to be commercial. We were just sayin’, “we’re gonna play music, and we’re gonna play for our people, you know, here, that we can look in the face and see, and we’re not gonna play for record executives and people that sell things.”

Exactly, yeah.

And that’s the way a lot of people aspired to think, that rebellious kind of thing. Especially when you’re young, and especially during that period of time, you know, when it was really incredible to be rebellious against the establishment and everything back then. And it still is, it’s just not practiced as much as it should be now, but…

Yeah.

But anyway, that’s the way the band was formed, and we were just playing what we wanted to play, and as it started to get popular, bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Marshall Tucker, and Charlie Daniels started following along, and we were all part of one big family, so to speak. Like brother bands, you know, like kinship bands. And not that they were copying us, but they had seen, “well wait a minute, we can play what we want to,” you know.

Exactly.

And so there seemed to be a need in the industry to name these bands something, as a group, so they started callin’ it “southern rock”. It wasn’t that the Allman Brothers Band coined this thing, and started callin’ ourselves that–it’s what the industry started callin’ us. I really don’t think there’s a need for it now, myself. You know, there’s really only one or two bands… really there’s only one southern rock band now, is the Allman Brothers Band, and so why do you need to call it southern rock? I mean, you could call it “a progressive rock band from the south” (laughs). But, you know, the southern rock thing kind of tends to date us.

Uh-huh.

To date us back to the early ’70’s, and I don’t like that connotation, because we’re a very, very modern band right now. I mean, we’re still playing our style of music, but it’s generated greatly from the 1970s and even though it is the same style, we’re much, much deeper than then, and much diversified and a lot better musicians, you know.

Yeah. There doesn’t seem to be many bands that make the kind of music you guys are, at least, you don’t hear it up here in Canada. Are there bands that are doing that sort of thing down there?

Not right now. It’s starting to come back in vogue, a lot of the things that were goin’ on in the late ’60s and early- to mid-’70s. Even some of the metal bands now are starting to play more blues solos that are lyrical that you can follow, you know, instead of the real 90-miles-an-hour, five-million notes in a solo.

Yeah.

You know they’re startin’ to bend notes now and more like lyrical phrases, like the blues players, even in the metal bands and hard-rock bands. The influence is spreading throughout the musical world, you know, and so that’s really good.

But as far as a bunch of bands coming up that are in the tradition of the Allman Brothers Band, that’s not happening, thank goodness. But there’s a lot of young bands that are being influenced by us, and they’ll admit it openly. The Black Crowes, you know, love our band, and will say we were one of their influences. And Nuclear Slab, or…

Raging Slab?

Pardon?

Raging Slab?

Yeah, we’re one of their great influences, you know. They say, “man, the Allman Brothers Band’s our favorite band” (laughs). So it’s nice to see the young guys coming up that appreciate the band.

Where was the cover photo for the Shades of Two Worlds taken, Dickey?

Ah, that front cover was shot in Memphis, and those people sittin’ there with us, that was their house. We gave them a hundred dollars to use their porch to shoot some pictures on there, and that tickled the hell out of them. And we had those acoustic guitars there, we were actually playing music, you know. Hell, we were dancing and playing music and drinking and just having a big party up there. We stayed there for about three hours.

That sounds good.

So that was a good ol’ time, and then of course the back [cover photo] is taken from our light show.

Oh yeah?

That’s part of the projection we show on a screen while we’re playing.

Excellent.

Yeah.

And I see you did you did the majority of the songwriting.

By the way, that light show that does that is called Brotherhood of Light. They’re fantastic.

Brotherhood of Light, oh.

If you go back, their father used to do the lights for us at the Fillmore East.

Pretty psychedelic.

Yeah, Fillmore East. It’s the old oil show, you know?

Yeah.

And it’s really a nice effect. You know, it moves and everything while the music is playing.

Uh-huh. I see you did the majority of the songwriting on the new album, Dickey.

I’m involved in it, yeah. And Warren, right there together with it.

And you did quite a bit on Seven Turns as well.

Yeah.

Is it normal in the case with the Allman Brothers?

I write a lot. Gregg, Gregg doesn’t write as much as I do, you know, he writes in a very unique style. And to tell you the truth, I think only on the Seven Turns album he was in a bit of a writing slump, and he’s just pulling out of it now. This, you know, it’s called writer’s block.

Yeah.

I’m sure you even get it.

Oh yeah, no doubt.

All writers get it, whether it’s writing articles or… You know, you just get a block where you feel like you can’t write.

Yeah.

It’s kind of a common thing with us, and he’s been sufferin’ from it for the last year and he’s just pullin’ out of it now. He’s got a real good song he penned on this last one, that’s pretty typical, you know, called “Get On with Your Life”.

Right. “End of the Line”?

And then he’s got part of “End of the Line”, which a lot of that is his lyrics you can tell. Mm-hmm.

I was wondering if you have a particular favorite tune on the new album, Dickey.

Oh, God, I guess I would have to say the instrumental.

Yeah. I like that.

Yeah, that’s pretty far out.

Yeah.

And, uh, I don’t know, “Nobody Knows” is one of the best lyrical things I’ve ever written, I think.

Uh huh.

You know, that’s a good, real nice abstract, kind of poetic lyric.

Yeah.

I wrote that as fast as I could write the words down one night, at 4:30 in the morning after rehearsal. You know, I asked Tom Dowd what kinda tune we needed and he–‘cause we were just about at the end of rehearsal–he said, “Well, I’d give anything for something like ‘Whippin’ Post’ “. And I said, “Man, that’s a tall order, I don’t know.”

So I thought about it all the way home; it was about an hour drive from my house from rehearsal. I got home, and I sat here for about an hour, and the funniest thing: “I’m just gonna start writing, I don’t know what to write, but I’m just gonna start writin’ and see what happens.”

So I picked up the pen and paper, and the thought going through my mind was, how am I supposed to write anything, nobody knows about what’s going on, so I just said, “Nobody knows about what’s going on,” and I just started writing what I was thinking, and the words started flying out (laughs). I said, “Uh oh,” and so I held on (laughs), and about 30 minutes, I just wrote that thing like I was writing a letter to somebody. So I’m kinda tickled with that one.

Yeah. I was wondering how you came to record Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen”.

Ah, man, we’re students of Robert, you know. We’ve been listenin’ and studyin’, tryin’ to play like him for, you know, 25 years. And we’ve been playin’ that song forever.

Alright.

And, uh, the thing that kind of spurred us to do it on this album was, we did the MTV Unplugged show. 

Mmm.

And that’s all acoustic stuff.  So we chose one of Robert’s tunes to do on television and that was one of ‘em.

Oh.

And it sounded so good we decided to do it on the album.

Sounds good.

Uh huh.

And, uh, what have you been listening to in your spare time, lately, Dickey? Any bands that got you excited?

Well, you know, God, my listening, my music listening is so damn academic. I listen differently than other people because I’m a professional, you know. I mean, I enjoy it, but I enjoy it in a different way. I don’t listen to many contemporaries, to tell you the truth. I like Chick Corea, and some of the Dave Weckl stuff, and I’m listening to a whole lot of Charlie Parker lately. In fact “Kind of Bird” is named after Charlie Parker. You know his nickname was ‘Bird.’

Oh.

So that’s kind of a strong Charlie Parker influence, that opening theme, you know. The swing theme, and then of course, it goes into that Latino thing, which is Allman Brothers “Liz Reed”-sounding kind of stuff.

Alright.

And “Kind of Bird”, that’s like sayin’ “kind of Charlie Parker”.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

I just have one more question for you, Dickey. I was wondering if, you know, if Duane Allman and the boys from Skynyrd were jammin’ in heaven, what tune would they be playin’ do ya think?

(Laughs) Oh, I don’t know. (laughs again) I don’t know. That’s a good one for you. (laughs a third time) I don’t know, but that, that is a pleasant thought, and  I’m sure they are. Hendrix is right there with ‘em, too.

That’s right, yeah.

They’re probably playin’ “Dreams”. You know, that’s a nice drifty, heavenly kinda sounding song.

What album is that from?

Pardon me?

What album is “Dreams” from?

Oh, jeez. (Asks his wife) What album is “Dreams” from, Hon?  (I don’t know, she says in the background). I don’t know, can’t think, I think it’s from our second album.

Oh, that’s one of your old tunes.

Yeah.

Ah, excellent. Well thanks a lot for your time, Dickey. You’re coming up to Vancouver in…

I forgot to mention the guys in the band. You know the guys in the band?

Yeah. The same, they’re on the inside of the new album: Jaimoe, Butch, Warren, and Allen.

Yeah, and we got a new guy, Marc Quinones, that’s a guest on the album.

Oh yeah?

He’s in the band now. He went to Europe, and people love him.

Oh.

He’s a piece of dynamite, too. He plays congas and timbales. And he’s featured on the album, on the instrumental, “Kind of Bird”. That’s Marc Quinones on there.

Oh, good.

So he’s a full-fledged band member now.

Alright. So there’s three percussionists.

Yes, sir!

Right!

Okay.

I look forward to that.

Mm-hmm. It’s exciting.

Thanks Dickey for your time.

Okay, Steve.

Best of luck til you get up here.

Okay, see you later.

See you later.

Interview transcribed by hardcore Allman Brothers fan Lee Morse, 2024.

To hear the full audio of my interviews with Allman Brothers Band members Dickey Betts, Warren Haynes, Gregg Alllman, and Derek Trucks subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.