Howard Duane Allman

The main causes for the development in Duane's technique and sound were his progress from a Fender Guitar/Amp combination to a Gibson/Marshall marriage. He started off using a Fender Telecaster with a Stratocaster neck, before moving on to a 1954 Fender Stratocaster, which he played through an assortment of Fender amplifiers (a Twin in particular). In order to thicken out the sound a little, he used a Fuzz Face distortion box, which he insisted to be used in conjunction with nearly flat 9V batteries. His justification for this was that the sound takes on a slightly creamier quality when the batteries are flat, while the amp can then be used to provide the main raunch and overdrive. He moved to Gibson guitars shortly after the formation of the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. During the recording of this album he used a Hollowbody guitar (possibly an ES-345 or 355), while co-guitarist Dickey Betts also used a variety of Gibsons, in particular an ES-345 and an SG. It is highly likely that both Dickey and Duane occasionally swapped guitars with each other, and maybe took spares on the road with them. From photo evidence though it can be seen that Duane switched between several Gibson guitars, although his early favourite was a 1957 Les Paul Goldtop (serial number 7 3312) with PAF pickups. He part-exchanged this guitar in Daytona Beach, FL on the 16th September 1970, having played a concert with a local group there, (also having recorded the large part of Layla with it) for a plain-top 1958/59 cherry sunburst Les Paul that was at that time in the posession of the guitarist in the opening group; they were called "The Stone Balloon". The plain-top is the guitar he can be seen to play in the Fillmore Video; it is also the guitar that he used to complete the recording of the Layla album. When he did that exchange, he also switched over the PAF pickups from the 57 Goldtop to the 58/9 Cherryburst - apparently he preferred the sound of the Goldtop's bridge pickup to that of the newer guitar, and consequently swapped them over in a Hotel Room after the concert where he found the Cherryburst.

In March 1971 he asked a friend of his, who had previously been a bass player with Billy Gibbons but was also into Vintage Guitars, to find him a Tobacco Sunburst Les Paul. It wasn't until a few months later that out of the blue the dealer had a call from Chris Geppert (later Cross), offering to sell him a 1959/60 Les Paul in part exchange for a vintage '54 Strat and some cash difference. This Les Paul had been treated for a broken headstock, and in the repair process the serial number was painted over. There is a lot of misinformation in circulation about this guitar - firstly, it is not the guitar used on the Fillmore East album. Duane didn't receive it until late June 1971 (the closing of the Fillmore East weekend). Also, it had extremely hot pickups, apparently significantly hotter than anything the dealer or Duane had seen before. This explains the slight tonal difference in Duane's sound on the bootlegs from Aug. 1971 onwards compared to the other Cherryburst which can be heard on the Fillmore East album. It also implies that the guitar was not a '58 as is most commonly assumed, as the pickups were never wound that hot for the first few years of production.

Late in 1971 he began to use a cherry Gibson SG that had been used previously by Dickey Betts (who had replaced it in mid-1971 with a vintage '58 Gold-Top Les Paul, the guitar which Dickey gave Dan Toler in 1978, who had it refinished in a cherry sunburst colour) exclusively for slide work. Before this Duane had retuned on stage between lead and slide songs, although he continued to play slide in standard tuning in songs with both lead and slide parts (the only two Allman Brothers songs like this are Dreams, Mountain Jam, and very briefly Midnight Rider, which both feature Duane playing both lead and slide). As far as amplifiers are concerned, he switched from Fender to Marshall when playing live at the same time as he switched from Fender to Gibson Guitars. In the studio he continued to use Fender amps occasionally. As far as Marshall amps are concerned he tried 100W heads, but switched to 50W soon after as he could push them to heavier distortion at quieter volumes (remember that these amps didn't have distortion channels like modern amps, but required natural volume to push the valves to overdrive) - although quiet is still relative (i.e. loud). This is an interesting note when comparing his sound with that of fellow guitarist Dickey Betts, especially on the "at Fillmore East" album. Dickey used 100W heads, so the overdrive is still far cleaner when he played at the same volume as Duane. They both used half open modified Marshall 4x12 Cabinets, which were altered to use JBL-D120 speakers; these have a very different tone and character to the standard Celestion 25 watt speakers found on speaker cabs from that era. There are many photos around of Duane using a Bass top cab, which he probably used to get the smoother, essentially bassier tone that he preffered. Because the amps do not feature a channel switch, both used the volume controls on their guitars to alter the clean/distorted texture when playing rhythm or lead. Duane, however, used the Tone and Pickup controls far more during his solos than Dickey did.

Duane's tone on the slide is unique due to a number of points that set him apart from his other contemporaries. Firstly, he played with a glass Coricidin Medicine Bottle. This is not actually long enough to cover the whole neck of a Les Paul, so he never played full chords with it, preferring never to reach beyond triads (3 string chords). It also means that he had to position the slide differently as he moved across the neck. He held the slide in such a way that the inside rim of the bottle rested on the second knuckle of his ring finger, and he used the tip of that finger to position the slide over the frets (see the picture to the side). In order to keep the slide at the correct angle, he held the guitar high, and angled it up slightly higher than most guitarists do (see the picture below for an idea of what I mean). He also occasionally put his middle finger across the strings behind the slide in order to mute the other strings and prevent unwanted overtones. This is difficult to do properly unless the action is set rather high, implying that Duane liked his guitars set up that way. His slides around the strings while playing normal fretted work also tend to imply that his guitars were set up with fairly low frets. As far as Duane's fretted technique goes, he also had a number of idiosyncrasies that made his playing all the more unique. Firstly, he used a technique called circular picking, whereby the pick doesn't move simply perpendicular to the strings, but in a circular motion. Not only does this soften the attack, but it allows you to jump strings in a far more even, controlled manner. As he held his pick between his thumb and forefinger, he kept the other three fingers on his right hand virtually still, making his right hand seem almost motionless as his fingers moved the pick as opposed to his whole hand. This can be seen quite clearly on the Fillmore Video. Also, Duane was in fact left-handed, despite playing the guitar as if right handed. This added strength in his fretting hand gave him a greater degree of control when bending notes or adding vibrato, plus it meant that his picking hand was not quite as strong, seeming to give him a very light touch. Listen to the version of Dreams from the debut album for an example of his extraordinary control over slow bends and slow vibrato. This also gave him added strength and dexterity with his pinky on his fretting hand.

Duane always used a pick when playing lead work, but also never played slide with a pick. Instead, he used his thumb, index and middle fingers to pluck the strings. He backed off the tone a little to prevent squeals from being audible, and he used a variety of pickup positions, depending on how high he intended to play. When his notes extended past the fretboard, as in "Layla", "Mountain Jam" and "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" and others, he would use the Bridge/Treble Pickup (although with the tone backed off considerably). On most others, he used the Neck/Rhythm pickup, or both. When playing fretted lead for extended solos, he used both pickups, and manipulated the tone controls extensively. The solos in "Whipping Post" and "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" from the "At Fillmore East" Album are good examples of this. Note also that he would often end the solo for Whipping Post by getting gradually quieter - this let him reset the volume controls gradually lower to the required rhythm volume for the next verse - this was necessary since he had used both pickups at full wack. In other songs with shorter solos, such as the first section of "You Don't Love Me" and "Hot 'Lanta", he would set one pickup to be quiet for rhythm work, and the other to be loud for solo work, and he could use the pickup selector as a sort of channel selector.

One of the most important parts of Duane's slide sound is his use of alternative open tunings. Of the tunes he recorded with the Allman Brothers Band with slide features in them, the tunings were grouped thus:

Open E	Statesboro' Blues, Done Somebody Wrong, One Way Out, Trouble No More (Live), Drunken Hearted Boy, Stand Back, Don't Keep Me Wonderin', Little Martha
Standard Tuning	Dreams, Mountain Jam, Midnight Rider, Trouble No More (debut album version)

Since you've read all this, please note that these are entirely personal deductions, based on a few years trying to emulate aspects of his style, and on seeking out video footage and pictures of Duane playing. If you find any mistakes or are able to help add anything at all, please don't hesitate to mail me. I'd like to acknowledge and thank Jim Marshall and Carter Tomassi, two talented people whose warmth shines clearly through the pictures they took of Duane throughout his career; some of which I have used as helpful diagrams within this webpage.

Huge thanks are also due to Kurt Linhof, John McGough, Peter Young, Eric Porck and the myriad of writers whose articles in various guitar magazines have made the research I've put into this page a little easier.

It seems apt to let Duane himself have the last word - here are some quotes that I've amassed from various sources over the last 18 months, mostly from past issues of Guitar World magazine and from the Allman Brothers Official Webpage.

"There's a lot of different forms of communication, but music is absolutely the purest one, man. You can't hurt anybody with music. You can maybe offend somebody with songs and words, but you can't offend anybody with music - it's all just good. There's nothing at all that could ever be bad about music, about playing it. It's a wonderful thing, a grace."

"Eric Clapton wrote the book, man - The Contemporary White Blues Guitar, Volume I. His style and technique is what's really amazing. He's got a lot to say, and the way he says it just knocks me out."

"Miles Davis does the best job, to me, of portraying the innermost, subtlest, softest feelings in the human psyche. He does it beautifully. John Coltrane, probably one of the finest, most accomplished tenor players, took his music farther than anybody I believe I ever heard."

- On his and Gregg's first proper band, the House Rockers: "We were a smokin' band! Boy, I mean, we would set fire to a building in a second. We were just up there blowing as funky as we pleased; 16 years old, $41 a week - big time. And all we wanted was to hear that damn music bein' stomped out. That's what I love man, to hear that backbeat POPPING, that damn bass plonkin' down, man, Jesus God!"

- On the brothers' first professional band, Hour Glass: "A good damn band of misled cats was what it was. They'd send in a box of demos and say, "Okay, pick out your next LP." We tried to tell them that wasn't where we were at, but then they got tough: "You gotta have an album, man. Don't buck the system - just pick it out!" We figured maybe we could squeeze and ounce or two of good out of this crap. We were squeezing rock! It's cats tryin' to get off on things that cannot be gotten off on."

- On his moving to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, as a session player: "I rented a cabin and lived alone on this lake....I just sat and played to myself and got used to living without a bunch of that jive Hollywood crap in my head. It's like I brought myself back to earth and came to life again, through that, and the sessions with good R&B players."

- On becoming disenchanted with studio life: "Studios - that's a terrible thing, man! You just lay around and get your money. All of those studio cats I know, like one of them gets a color TV, see, and then the next day, man, they're all down to Sears or wherever - 'Hey' I'd like to look at some color TVs.'... They're just keeping up with the Joneses and not playing their music. The sessions I do now, I just go in there and do it and leave."

- On the first grouping of the to-become Allman Brothers Band: "We set up the equipment and whipped into a little jam. It lasted two-and-a-half hours. When we finally quit, nobody ever said a word, man. Everybody was speechless. Nobody'd ever done anything like that before - it really frightened the shit out of everybody. Right then I knew - I said, 'Man, here it is!' I told Rick [Hall - owner of Fame studios at Muscle Shoals] I didn't want to do session work full-time anymore. I had found what I really wanted to do."

- On the imminent recording of the At Fillmore East album: "The stage is really our natural element. When bands start to play, they just play live. We haven't got a lot of experience in making records. I do, a little bit, from doing sessions, but not like a polished session man or anything. We get kind of frustrated doing the records, so consequently our next album will be for the most part a live recording to get some of that natural fire on it. We have rough arrangements, layouts of the songs, and then the solos are entirely up to each member of the band. Some nights we are really good, and some nights ain't too hot, you know. But the naturalness of a spur-of-the-moment type of thing is what I consider the most valuable asset of our band. When you make records, you can't just do it over and over if somebody makes a mistake. Plus, the pressure of machines and stuff in the studio makes you kind of nervous. So a live album, I'm sure, would probably be the best thing."

- On free concerts: "Anytime you're getting paid for something, you feel like you're obligated to do so much. That's why playing the park is such a good thing, because people don't even expect you to be there. About the nicest way you can play is just for nothing. And it's not really for nothing - it's for your own personal satisfaction and other people's, rather than for any kind of financial thing. A lot of bread hangs people up; they try too hard. You can either do something or you can TRY to do something. Whenever you're trying to do something, you ain't doing nothing."

- On Layla: "I went down there to listen to them cut [Layla], that's what I went for. And well, like he'd heard my playing and stuff, and he just greeted me like an old partner or something. He says, 'Yeah, man, get out your guitar. We got to play!" So I was just going to play on one or two, and then as we kept on going, it kept developing. Incidentally, on sides 1,2,3, and 4, all the songs are right in the order they were cut from the first day through to 'Layla' and then 'Thorn Tree'. I'm as proud of that as any albums that I've ever been on. I'm as satisfied with my work on that as I could possibly be."

- On Eric Clapton's slide sound: "He gets more of an open, slidey sound. But here's the way to really tell: He played the Fender, and I played the Gibson. The Fender is a little bit thinner and brighter, a sparkling sound, while the Gibson is just a full-tilt screech."

- On Rock 'n' Roll: "Everybody is expending all this energy in various ways to get the same old feeling out of it that Little Richard can get in five minutes. And people are finally waking up to the fact that you can get as much of a good feeling out of a simple thing as you can out of something that's hard. A lot of people who would have you believe they are intelligent musicians are playing bullshit. Music's become so intellectualized. Man, music is FUN. It's not supposed to be any heavy, deep intense thing - especially not rock music, man. That's to set you free! Anybody that ever listened to Chuck Berry or any of them cats knows that. Rock is like a newspaper for people that can't read. Rock and roll will tell you where everything is at. It's something to move your feet and move your heart and make you feel good inside. You know, forget about all the bullshit that's going on for a while, fill up some of the dead spaces."

- On other musician's albums: "Develop your talent, man, and leave the world something. Records are really gifts from people. To think that an artist would love you enough to share his music with anyone is a beautiful thing."