What songs do you hear on the radio or on your iPod that take you right back to your high school cafeteria? Answering that question may tell us just how intergenerational this blog community is!
For me, 3 Dog Night, CCR, Jim Croce, the Eagles, Steppenwolf, America, the Doobie Brothers, Guess Who, Grand Funk Railroad, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young — well, you get the idea.
But the sound of southern rock takes me back there, too. Starting with The Allman Brothers Band.
A couple weeks ago I finally got around to reading Skydog - The Duane Allman Story
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Even if you didn’t grow up with ABB, you’ve heard their sounds. Rolling Stone named Duane Allman the second best guitarist in history (behind Jimi Hendrix and ahead of B. B. King and Eric Clapton). And one of their concerts at Fillmore East has been recognized as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, live recording ever.
Still not ringing a bell for those of you who are younger? Go to iTunes and check out “Midnight Rider,” “Melissa,” “Ramblin’ Man,” “Jessica,” and “Blue Sky” — and then listen to snippets of the Live at Fillmore East concert.
In SKYDOG, Randy Poe tells the story of this great musician: the good and the tragic. The tragic, of course, included the obligatory experiments with drugs and the 1971 motorcycle wreck that took Duane Allman’s life in Macon. (Ironically, almost exactly one year later, another member of the original ABB died in a similar motorcycle accident just four blocks away.)
A couple anecdotes give a feel for the scope of the book.
First, there’s a chapter on how Allman intersected Clapton’s life at an important time.
“‘Layla’ was, without question, the most lyrical song on [Clapton's] album. But melodically it was pretty simple — three great verses in search of a hook. Clapton was desperately in need of a guitar line that would bring more life to the song. He had created some of the greatest guitar riffs in rock, but he was stuck when it came to ‘Layla.’ When Clapton told Allman of his dilemma, Duane went to work, soon coming up with the seven-note phrase that is now one of the best-known guitar licks in the history of rock: 16th-notes ascending from A to C to D to F, and then descending back down to D and C before returning to a long, vibrating D. It was exactly what ‘Layla’ needed.”
I also loved Poe’s insights about the Fillmore East concert, like . . .
“When Betts hits his last long sustained note [of 'You Don't Love Me'], the whole band, including Doucette, jumps back in. Soon the two lead guitarists are playing together in harmony, and it sounds for all the world as if the band is about to bring the song to its logical conclusion. But once again Duane is suddenly alone in the spotlight. He drops the tempo as he plays a series of slow, bluesy licks. And then IT happens: exactly 16 minutes and 16 seconds into ‘You Don’t Love Me’ — in the middle of a natural pause between two notes during Duane’s freeform solo — a voice from the audience cries out, ‘Play all night!’ It is one of the defining moments in rock: a single jubilant fan caught up in the excitement of the greatest live rock concert ever captured on tape, expressing the feelings of an entire audience — an audience that would grow from fewer than 2,000 in attendance that night to millions of listeners around the world in the decades to follow.”
All right — back to the beginning. What songs take you back to your high school days?