
Duane Allman
had three primary Les Pauls
during his time with the Allman
Brothers Band.
The 1957 goldtop he played on
the band’s first two albums as
well as most of the Derek and
the Dominos Layla sessions has
been on display at the Big House
Museum in Macon, Georgia.
The other two Les Pauls, a 1959
cherry burst and a 1958 or 1959
dark burst, are owned by Duane’s
daughter Galadrielle and have
long been on display at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in
Cleveland. She made sure that
both guitars made it to the
Beacon, along with Duane’s
goldtop, for the Allman Brothers
Band’s final performances this
past October.
“I’ve always wanted to see them
play the guitars, knowing that
it would be amazing for
everyone,” Galadrielle says.
“It’s a daunting thing to try to
imagine these fragile and
valuable things out in the
world, and it had to be the
right time and place.”
The guitars’ histories are long
and varied. In September 1970,
Duane traded the goldtop for the
cherry burst after swapping the
pickups between the instruments.
The cherry burst became his
primary guitar, heard on At
Fillmore East. In June 1971,
guitar dealer Kurt Linhof sold
Duane the dark burst, which
became his main guitar until his
death on October 29, 1971.
According to Galadrielle’s
moving memoir, Please Be with
Me: A Song for My Father, Duane
Allman, her mother Donna took
the cherryburst from Duane’s
apartment after his death and
soon lent it to a musician
friend—who had introduced Duane
and Donna. She asked him to
return it when her daughter was
21.
[[ For more about the Allman
Brothers' six-night run at New
York City's Beacon Theatre, pick
up the January 2015 issue of
Guitar World! ]]
Gregg had the darkburst, but the
band’s road manager Twiggs
Lyndon was worried about its
fate. A classic car aficionado,
Lyndon traded Gregg a 1939 Ford
Opera coupe for the guitar,
determined to hold it for
Galadrielle until she was “old
enough not to give it to the
first guitar player she dated.”
He took the guitar on tour with
the Dixie Dregs, and it was on
the road with him and band when
Lyndon died in a skydiving
accident in 1979.
Dregs guitarist Steve Morse
safeguarded the guitar for over
a decade, recording several
tracks with it. On April 2,
1990, Twiggs’ brother Skoots
Lyndon met Donna Allman at
Duane’s Macon grave and
presented her with the guitar
for her daughter.
Fittingly, it was Skoots who
traveled to Cleveland to
transport the guitars to New
York, guarding them with the
expected vigilance. After
decades behind glass, both
guitars were not in playable
shape. Lyndon, who is on the
Deep Purple crew, asked Morse
guitar tech Tommy Alderson to
prep the guitars. He began
working on them at 10:30 at
night on an ironing boarding in
room 805 of the Millburn Hotel,
pronouncing them done at about
three in the morning.
“I kept it really simple because
they are very fragile,” Alderson
says. “I cleaned the pots real
good and got the intonation as
right on as you can get with
flattened frets. I flattened the
necks with the truss rod so I
could measure and set the bridge
so it didn’t buzz or fret out.”
Alderson was struck in
particular by the pickup setup
on the cherry burst. “They are
set different than anything I’ve
ever encountered,” he says,
“dropped down a fair amount
below the pickup ring. The
pickup pole adjustments had the
screws turned up so they would
pick up the signal. Also
unusual, the bridge pickup is a
lot weaker than the neck pickup.
I plugged it in and put it in
the middle, and it was the ‘One
Way Out’ sound. It was just
crazy to hear.”
The guitars’ unique sounds were
apparent the moment Haynes and
Trucks played them.
“You plug them in and the sound
of Duane is unmistakable,”
Haynes says.
“The sound is so distinct and
powerful,” adds Derek Trucks.
“There was definitely some extra
spirit in the room. At one
point, [his uncle, drummer]
Butch looked down, saw I was
playing Duane’s goldtop and was
really struck.”
“It was during ‘Dreams,’ ” Butch
recalls. “And seeing and hearing
Derek play the solo on the
guitar Duane used was very
emotional.”
Alan Paul is the author of One
Way Out: The Inside History of
the Allman Brothers Band.