(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 20 January 2026 19:00, UK
While overlooked by the classic rock layman, Duane Allman stands as many a guitarist’s personal hero.
He may not command the same presence as some of rock and pop’s lauded axemen, but his work with the namesake Allman Brothers Band with younger brother Gregg yielded admirers across the 1960s counterculture and beyond, Jimmy Page name-checking the southern rocker over the years, and reportedly original Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant was often sporting Allman T-shirts during their 1970s heyday.
Yet, whatever career awaited Allman was cruelly cut short in 1971, dying of a motorcycle crash at the age of 24 years old. Despite departing far too young, Allman had already made a brief but seismic impact on the world of rock, giving the likes of the Grateful Dead a run for their money with their mastery of jazzy blues wanderings and a reputation for showing their real magic live on stage rather than studio efforts.
Allman didn’t count too many interviews in his short life, but there was one guitarist of the day he wasted no time in expressing a deep admiration for.
“Eric Clapton, man,” Allman enthused in a 1970 radio interview. “Let’s talk about him, he’s a gas, he wrote the book, you know. He is a contemporary white blues guitarist, volume one. But his style and his technique is what really amazes me. He’s really got a lot to say, too but the way he says just knocks me out, man. He does so well, man.”
The feeling was more than mutual. Ever since hearing Allman’s lead break on Wilson Pickett’s ‘Hey Jude’ cover as a session guitarist, Clapton was a serious fan. Before long, the two would join forces. After an Allman Brothers show in Miami, both the band and Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes ensemble would head back to the city’s Criteria studios during the recording of the latter’s only album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Staying up all night jamming, Allman would eventually cut guitar lines for the majority of the double-LP, even being offered a permanent position in the Dominoes.
But, despite the love, Allman couldn’t turn his back on “family”. Clapton remained a fan, however, reflecting to writer Bob Beatty in 2022’s Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East, “I was mesmerised by him, Duane and I became inseparable. Between the two of us we injected the substance into the Layla sessions that had been missing up to that point. (…) Because of Duane’s input, it became a double album.”
Such a bond was attested by Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ producer Tom Dowd, revealing that the pair’s studio synergy felt like two long-lost brothers. Both sharing a profound love of the blues, there was plenty for the two to build a musical comradeship with.
“I love his playing, I love the attitude with which he plays,” Allman confessed not long before his death, never candid about his veneration for the former Cream guitarist. “I love everything he does. He’s a very wonderful, very beautiful man, you know?”
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