“I have chills running down my spine,” Vince Gill told the crowd. “This was the guitar that Duane Allman played with the Allman Brothers.” Gill got the chance to play the guitar, while in Macon, Georgia, home of the Allman Brothers Band, on May 5 to do a benefit concert for the Alzheimer’s Association of Georgia.
The 1957 Les Paul Gold Top Standard is the instrument on which Allman actually recorded the rock classic “Layla” with Eric Clapton on the Derek And The Dominoes’ immortal set, 1970’s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Allman also played this guitar on the first two Allman Brothers Band albums.
Allman traded the guitar a mere week later, obviously with no inkling of the importance the instrument would have in the history of rock music. He died in a motorcycle wreck the following year. The guitar had been played in public at the band’s annual March Beacon Theater run in NYC—by band members Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks—but this is the first time it was played in Macon, GA since Allman’s death.
Watch Gill play some extended guitar solos at the concert on “Pretty Little Adrianna” below.
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David M. Ross has been covering Nashville's music industry for over 25 years. dross@musicrow.comView Author Profile
