Eagles Star Taught Tom Petty Guitar

I was working in that music store in Gainesville and like I said, the only way I had to make money was after school I would go teach guitar in this music store. One day this kind of scrawny, scraggly blond-haired kid came in and wanted guitar lessons. I started teaching him guitar and we became friends and I went over to his house a couple of times. He had actually set up a microphone in one of the rooms in his house and he was playing bass in this little band. He wanted to learn guitar so he could play guitar instead of just bass in the band. So I went over to his house and was hanging around and he would play songs.

Then I tried to help this band called the Rucker Brothers, which Tommy played bass in, and they had two guitar players named Rodney and Ricky Rucker. It was a little bit of a train wreck because the two guitar players didn't know how one should take a step back while the other takes the floor and one would play rhythm and one would play lead. They were just both kind of trashing away so I organized and arranged some of their songs a little bit so they made a little more sense that way. I went to a few of their shows and just kind of hung around. It was a very small town and between Tommy and his band, the Rucker Brothers, and later Stephen Stills and I had a band. The Stephen left and Bernie Leadon arrived four or five months after his departure. Bernie kind of stepped into Stephen's spot playing guitar and singing. The Allman Brothers were there during the school year and on weekends playing fraternity parties. During the summer the only place to work was over on Daytona Beach, so all the bands from Gainesville would go over and work off the strip on Daytona Beach or a dance club or off of the pier. So everybody knew everybody. - Read the full interview here

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