Eat a peach?
I’ve done it many times.
[It’s an acquired taste, y’see.] [I hope I don’t have to explain that in detail.]
My girlfriend bought me Eat A Peach when it first came out (1972) because she knew I was so taken with “Blue Sky,” an amazing and beautiful song. It’s on the Peach album by the Allman Brothers Band, which I still have in vinyl.
The two guitar solos on “Blue Sky” are by Duane Allman and Dickey Betts (superb guitarist & composer of the song), in that order, with a brief overlap in the middle. For years I longed to be able to play Duane’s solo.
But this is 2023! I looked on YouTube and found, to my immense joy, an isolated track of just Duane, everything he played on that song. I’m in the process of learning it. In another ten or twenty years I might get it. [Edit: Took me just under six months. I now have it COLD.] Here’s a bit of Duane’s original:
Duane Allman played lead guitar on Wilson Pickett’s “Hey Jude” cover. That solo got the attention of Eric Clapton. Long story short, Duane and Eric became the best of friends. When I first heard “Layla” I was convinced Clapton was the greatest guitarist of all time. Turns out the bits I loved in Layla were all from Duane Allman.
I just read his daughter Galadrielle Allman’s fine book, “Please Be With Me,” about her father (Duane died when she was two) which confirmed that it was Duane who came up with the lead riff on “Layla.” Tom Dowd, who actually mixed the original recording, confirmed it on another YouTube vid. Here’s the song from which Galadrielle got her book’s title, with Duane on slide. In case you can’t tell, he’s playing a resonator acoustic guitar: