Free One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Paul Alan Page B

going all over Macon and shooting anywhere that looked photogenic: fields, old houses, railroad tracks, the cemetery. We shot a lot. They looked scary but they were sweethearts and they would do anything. I even went with Duane when he had oral surgery and shot him there—and, of course, they posed full-frontal naked! That wasn’t my idea. I would not have had the guts to propose it. It was Phil Walden’s idea. They trusted him and he said to do it, so they did. [ Rolling Stone editor/publisher] Jann Wenner happened to be there, with Boz Scaggs, who he was producing. We were outside near a brook on Phil’s brother’s property and it just seemed like a natural thing to do.
    TRUCKS: It was preplanned, because we had a bunch of soap bubbles, the idea being we’d put them in to generate bubbles to cover us up, but it was a pretty free-flowing stream so that didn’t cut it. Luckily I had sliced my leg open the day before and had about thirteen stitches, which is why I’m standing up; I couldn’t get that water in the cut, so I kind of positioned myself behind Oakley.
    PALEY: Phil knew the band was special musically and I think he was trying to exploit every aspect of their image to draw attention. It’s like being a street musician; you want to draw a crowd any way you can.
    TRUCKS: After we took those pictures of everyone sitting down, Phil said, “Let’s take some pictures of everyone standing up for posterity.” And we all said, “Hell, no!” And he goes, “No one will ever see ’em.” So we did it. The first time we played the Fillmore East [ December 26, 1969 ], I’m walking around looking at everything and just feeling good and sort of amazed that here we are. I walk in the lobby and hanging up there is a double gatefold from Screw magazine of us standing up naked, full hanging and everything.
    PALEY: That wasn’t Screw. It was a broadsheet alternative newspaper that was the size of the New York Times and that picture was there full-size for all to see. It wasn’t pornographic, though.
    TRUCKS: The thing is all those guys had been sitting in that freezing water and I had been standing up, which worked to my advantage. Duane said the next day he went and visited Jerry Wexler at Atlantic and he had that picture sitting on his desk and said, “There’s one thing for sure; you ain’t the natural leader of this band.”
    JAIMOE: Everybody had their records that they listened to and we just shared them. I had no idea who the Grateful Dead or Rolling Stones were, though I had heard some of their songs on the jukebox. Butch turned me on to all that stuff. Dickey was into country and Chuck Berry. Duane, Gregory, Berry, and myself were the rhythm and bluesers—and to this day I consider Gregg an R and B singer.
    BETTS: I always loved jazz—guitarist Howard Roberts, for instance—but once the Allman Brothers formed, Jaimoe really fired us up on it. He had us all listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane and a lot of our guitar arrangements came from the way they played together.
    JAIMOE: Thank God I figured out that music is music and there are no such things as jazz, rock and roll, country, and blues. I got caught up in that mess earlier. I wanted to be the world’s greatest jazz drummer and didn’t want to play rock and roll or funk. I used to say, “That shit’s easy.” Then I got a chance to do it and what a surprise: I couldn’t play what needed to be played. That turned my head around and opened my mind. Everything has to be played right.
    ALLMAN: The main initial jazz influence came from Jaimoe, who really got all of us into Coltrane together, which became a big influence. My brother loved jazz guitarists like Howard Roberts, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow, and Kenny Burrell. I brought the blues to the band, and what country you hear comes from Dickey. Butchie was more the technician; he taught drums. We all dug different stuff, and we all started listening to each other’s music. What came out was