Ronnie normally wore the “Hi Roller” from?Texas Hatters from Buda, Tx. However, when the album cover photo shoot was being done at Universal Studios in Ca,?for the “Street Survivors” album, his black “Hi Roller” had not arrived. He needed a hat for the photo shoot. He had given me his last one after the summer tour had ended. (more…)

Heaven Awaits in Two Days – this image shows the Confederate flag in the audience, brought by Bobby Sanders. See the lower left circle in front of Ronnie Van Zant. This photograph was taken at the Lakeland auditorium in Lakeland Florida, just two days before the plane crash that killed many of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band members.

What’s Ronnie Pointing At?

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Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering The Free Birds Of Southern Rock

?Fred Mills
http://www.magnetmagazine.com/interviews/skynyrd.html

While growing up in a tiny (population less than 5,000) Carolina textile and farming town, I witnessed a fair share of overtly racist acts practiced by some of the most virulent rednecks the burg could offer up. By the time I became a teenager I must have made a subconscious decision to deny much of that Southern heritage. Move-in day my first year at college and this guy in my suite we called Big Bill (who wasn?t from the deep South but from upper Maryland) finds it necessary to play ?Sweet Home Alabama? and ?Free Bird? over and over and over?to the point where all I could do was grit my teeth, regret the fact that my daddy?s .22 rifle is several hours? drive away and complain to as many of my fellow dormies about how here we are off at school, finally free of our hometown shackles, being forced to endure that most egregiously redneckish Southern-rock combo, Lynyrd Skynyrd. (Cue up four ensuing years of sanctimonious musical stiff-upper-lipdom on my part, courtesy of as much U.K. and German prog I could get my well-manicured mitts on.) (more…)

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering The Free Birds Of Southern Rock

by Gene Odom, with Frank Dorman
On Nov. 28, 1976, Lynyrd Skynyrd rocked Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters as few bands ever did. Storming the sold-out hall like redneck rebels, the South rose again with anthems like “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” and naturally, “Freebird.” Less than a year later, the band was history, four of its members and crew dead, and the rest injured in a plane crash in the Mississippi swamps.

Lynyrd Skynyrd opens with Gene Odom’s harrowing, first-person account of the hellish accident. He then recalls growing up with founder/vocalist Ronnie Van Zant and working for the band as they chased fame. He paints Van Zant as a rooster of a frontman, short and stocky with a cock-of-the-walk attitude that swelled when he took the microphone. The band’s prodigious drug and alcohol consumption, and Van Zant’s propensity for rowdiness? Products of the era. The Jacksonville, Fla., swampers were unique, however, melding Allman Brothers’ bluesy soul with a metal whammy, and blue-collar choruses of faithless women, bad luck, and hard livin’. Odom’s strength as a storyteller lies in having been there, so it’s hardly an unbiased account. But his insight into the relationships between band members and the sad fate of the survivors (two have died since) is told with empathy and humor (including interviewing the real Leonard Skinner).

Hi Guys !

Thanx for the DVD. Here is a picture for you.

Regards from the band

Leonard Skinner (Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Band)

Coach Leonard Skinner, Susan Hughey, and Gene Odom

by Billy Cox
FLORIDA TODAY June 2, 2006

Leonard Skinner can’t remember exactly which young rebel he sent to the assistant principal’s office for dress-code violations at Robert E. Lee High School in the late 1960s. Maybe Gary Rossington, maybe Bob Burns, he can’t be sure.
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