I remember at one particular concert, I kept seeing a commotion
out in the crowd. It moved around to the side of the stage and then
disappeared behind the left of the stage. Within minutes of this, some
guy came running right behind the stage without a shirt on. A couple
of security guards came after him so the guy ran underneath the stage
and tried to come on the stage right in front of Ronnie. I ran over to
catch him, but he stabbed me in the left elbow with a knife. I kicked
him and knocked him about eight feet into the crowd. The security
guards got him then.
The band was finished playing by the time things were back to normal,
so I went with them back to the dressing room. The moment we
got inside, Billy Powell screamed out, “Don’t you think you were a little
rough?” I started laughing and said, “Not rough enough. He wasn’t
in my presence long enough.” Billy was really mad then and screamed,
“I don’t like what you did to that guy.” When he said this, I got mad too.
About this time, Ronnie noticed the blood running out the sleeve of
my shirt and said, “What’s wrong with your arm?” I said, “That guy
Billy is all upset over stabbed me with a knife.” They rolled up my sleeve
and there was about a two-inch cut on my arm. Billy’s attitude sure changed then.
He said, “Man, I didn’t know he did that. I’m sorry.” I said, “You mind your music
business and I will mind the security business.” Ronnie said, “I told you it wouldn’t
be easy. You’re just earning your pay.” He started laughing in that old Westside
laugh of his and said, “Hey, I’m sorry.” I said, “Hell, I’m tough,” and then I went
back to work to prepare for leaving the show. I didn’t have any trouble with Billy after that.

Thanks,
Gene

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — Hometown rockers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, suffer another tragic loss. Keyboardist Billy Powell died Wednesday in his Orange Park home of a suspected heart attack. He was 56 years old.

The news came as a shock to family, friends, and fans. Gene Odom worked security for the band in its heyday. And like Powell, he survived the 1977 plane crash that devastated the band, killing frontman Ronnie Van Zant. Bonded from that moment on, Odom calls Powell a rock and roll rarity. “On the road, he was true blue. He was the guy that didn’t let rock and roll ,and the fame, and the women mess up his marriage. He was a great family man,” says Odom.

Odom also says Powell’s death is the end of an era, “Not only should they bury Billy Powell, they should bury the name Lynyrd Skynyrd with him, because it’s over now.”

Billy Powell, a longtime keyboard player for Lynyrd Skynyrd who survived the band’s 1977 plane crash, died at his Orange Park condo, according to police in Orange Park.
Police Chief James Boivin said Powell called 911 from his condo in Club Continental and was pronounced dead after rescue crews performed CPR on him. Boivin said he was told Powell had an appointment with his heart specialist Monday but never made the appointment.
Powell joined Skynyrd in 1972 after working for the band for a couple of years as a roadie.

“Billy was a good, good family man,” said Gene Odom, a security guard for the band who was also in the Oct. 20, 1977 plane crash that killed singer Ronnie Van Zant and five other people. “Ronnie Van Zant was fond of his keyboard playing and always bragged about him.”

Guitarist Gary Rossington and Powell were the only members of the pre-crash incarnation of Skynyrd who were still playing with the band.
You will be missed Billy..RIP

I have 5 or 6 of my double CD Collections of Interviews(audio only). One of the interviews is from Toronto, Canada. The longest live studio interview ever hosted by John Derringer. The second one is from Monroe, NC at WIXE. If you would like one send $30.00 dollars in the form of a money order to the following Gene Odom 10846 East Barret Lane Inverness, FL 34450 YOU CAN NOW ORDER ONLINE !!! This is a 2 Disc CD Collection

I have a very few books left for anybody that wants a personally autographed hardback copy. On January 24, 2009 I will have Coach Leonard Skinner to autograph them as well. You can purchase them next Saturday at the tribute or send a $29.00 money order. This will include handling and shipping to the following:

Gene Odom
10846 East Barret Lane
Inverness, FL 34450

This will be Coach Leonard Skinner’s last personal appearance!

Coach Leonard Skinner, Susan Hughey, and Gene Odom

Former bodyguard penning tale about
life after accident
By RYAN TRARES
DAILY JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The death of a rock ‘n’ roll legend can define an era.
The death of a close friend can define a man.
No matter how many years pass, Gene Odom always will
remember the night of October 20, 1977.
Music fans will recognize the date.
Some where over Mississippi, the airplane carrying rock band Lynyrd
Skynyrd crashed, killing charismatic lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and
Four other people aboard. Odom was on that plane. As the band’s security director and Van Zant’s personal bodyguard, he helped pull his childhood friend into a plane seat and strapped in the sleeping Van Zant.
“That was probably three seconds beforethe crash,” he said.
The rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.

For Odom, the crash ended the chapter of his life with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
But his story extends further than his association with the famed band.
With the help of Franklin resident Scott Coner,he’s telling his own tale.
The two joined forces to write “Theirs Forever: The Ballad of Gene Odom,
“a retrospective of Odom’s life,complete with an accompanying album of
original music Coner wrote. Odom and Coner came together through their musical interest and while Odom was doing a favor for one of Coner’s friends. The friend, a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan who was suffering from cancer, wanted to see the band’s old neighborhood. Coner contacted Odom, who escorted the man through their old haunts. The friendship built from there. Odom has published two books about his time with the band. The first, “Lynyrd Skynyrd I’ll Never Forget You,”
was a self-published collection of memories he had growing up with Van Zant. The second, “Lynyrd Skynyrd, Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock,” follows the same formula, focusing on Odom’s time with the band. With this book, Coner felt it was time for Odom to tell his own story. “His life, the interesting portions, didn’t stop in 1977.They really started then,” he said.

For the past week, the two have been working at Coner’s Franklin home and office as Odom tells his story. While not dwelling on it, Coner knows it would be difficult to write the book without starting with the close relationship between Odom and Van Zant. The two were childhood friends. They grew up in the same poor neighborhood in
Jacksonville, Fla., and spent time fishing and hanging out, often wreaking havoc. They stayed friends after Van Zant started playing music. When Lynyrd Skynyrd started its meteoric rise, Van Zant asked Odom to be his bodyguard. Despite all of the tales that come from living with a rock band, Coner was fascinated by the parts that came after the plane crash. He wanted to delve into Odom’s rehabilitation from that wreck, which severely burned him and cost him his left eye. After two years spent recovering, Odom went to work as an ironworker. But a work accident in 1990,combined with the injuries sustained in the plane crash, made it too difficult to work. He has been living on disability since then. The book will touch on Odom’s divorce in 1989,an event he calls horrendous. He also will write about his two daughters and grandchildren, who are referenced in the title “Theirs Forever.” To go with the book, Coner, his musician friend Johnny Burbrink and Odom have been working on an album of original songs.

The lead track is “The Ballad of Gene Odom,” a haunting song detailing the fateful plane crash and legal troubles that arose in the 1980s with the surviving band members. Odom still holds some resentment for the current version of the band, which he refers to as “second-class Skynyrd” and “that clown act.” Their touring under the Lynyrd Skynyrd name and playing the old songs without Van Zant violates an agreement they all signed after the crash. But Odom tries not to dwell on that. He instead
wants to honor his friend while also saying something about his own life.
Coner hopes they appeal to Lynyrd Skynyrd fans while opening up new veins of music to their ears. The plan is to have the package ready to go by fall. Coner said they hope to have some music available on Odom’s Website, www.LynyrdSkynyrdDixie.com as well as perhaps a sample chapter. “We’re going to try and coerce them into taking a step out here in faith and saying maybe there’s something outside of Freebird’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” he said.

If Forby Leonard Skinner had gone by his first name instead of just plain old Leonard Skinner, then who knows? Perhaps Lynyrd Skynyrd might now be known worldwide as Fyrby Skynyrd.

Oh, but don’t broach that subject to him.

“Don’t call him Forby,” warns his son, Leonard Skinner, middle name Sheldon. “He’ll remember that he doesn’t like that.”

The elder Skinner – “Big Leonard,” or just plain “Coach” – is 76 now, and he’s showing the effects of Alzheimer’s.

But he still remembers enough to recognize foolishness when he sees it, so he wants to know why some people – OK, this person – still want to talk to him about some long-haired boys in his gym class who’d go on to form one kick-butt Southern rock band.

“That was 100 years ago!” complains Leonard Skinner.

Well, the reason this time is because he’s the headliner at A Tribute to Coach Leonard Skinner & Southern Rock, to be held Saturday at the National Guard Armory on – where else? – the Westside.

It’s for his former students. For those who played on the teams he coached. For those who knew him when he ran bars such as The Still and Leonard Skinner’s. And for the many friends he made along the way.

Organizers are hoping they’ll come to listen to some Southern rock and to say hello to Skinner, who never asked to have one of the most famous bands in the world named after him.

He was just a regular Westside guy, a coach and businessman with a strong code of honor, a disciplinarian at home and at school. “There was right and there was wrong, and you’d better not deviate,” says his daughter, Susie Moore.

And he was an accomplished athlete who played competitive basketball into his 60s, loved the dog track and burned with a competitive streak as wide as the St. Johns River.

“If you measured feet, he wanted to have the biggest feet,” his wife, Rosemary, says fondly.

So the elements were in place for a bit of rock history to be made.

Rules are rules

The story goes this way: The band named itself in a smart-aleck tribute to the basketball coach and gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, the tough guy who sent some of the musicians to the assistant principal’s office because their hair was too long – it touched their collars in the back.

It was apparently a big deal to them. To Skinner, though? Not so much. Even as the band was making it big in the ’70s, he admitted he didn’t recall their names or faces: He remembered the athletes he coached, not the longhairs.

It rankled him then, and it rankles him now, that some say he was too tough on them, or that it was he who kicked Skynyrd out of school. They were breaking the school dress code, after all. And he was just doing his job by sending them to the office – if they were expelled or suspended after they got to the office, it wasn’t his doing.

“It was against the school rules. I don’t particularly like long hair on men, but again, it wasn’t my rule,” he says.

At their home on the Westside, Rosemary has arranged some yearbooks, newspaper clippings and photos that document her husband’s life. In most of the pictures, he has the same haircut, a sturdy flattop. Rising to the top, though, is a photo of mid-’70s vintage, in which he’s sporting stylishly shaggy hair and honest-to-goodness sideburns.

He leans forward as she shows it to him. “I violated my own rule?” he says. Then he laughs, a big belly laugh.

Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd

In the early ’70s, Leonard Skinner’s daughter, Susie, was at a dance at Jeb Stuart Middle School where a young band with a familiar name was playing.

“I went up to one of the band members at the break and said, ‘Which one is Leonard Skinner?’ I thought that was so cool that one of the band members had the same name as my dad, and rather than give me the long explanation, he said, ‘There’s no one named Leonard Skinner.’ And dumb me, being 14 years old, I took everything literally, and I said, ‘Well, OK.’ ”

A couple of years later, Leonard Skinner’s son, Leonard, liked to listen to a new record called Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd. His dad wasn’t crazy about it. “I had the album, and he’d say, ‘What the hell kind of noise are you listening to?’ ”

Somewhere around that time, a relative called: She’d heard a radio show on which a new band told how they’d come up with their unusual name. Ever since, Leonard Skinner has been tied to the band – and is forever having to take out his billfold to show his ID to people who don’t believe that that’s his real name.

So perhaps he’s warmed up to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s music after all these decades?

“No,” he says flatly, resisting a golden opportunity to play nice. “I don’t. I don’t like rock ‘n’ roll music.”

“That’s the truth,” says Rosemary, teasing him. “He likes that elevator music. He listens to that Jones College radio.”

Others wanted to make a big deal of the Skynyrd thing, but it never turned Skinner’s flat-topped head, says long-time friend Bill Rogers, who worked in the insurance business with the ex-coach: “It was water off a duck’s back. He didn’t pay any attention to it.”

But Skinner was savvy enough to use his name on a couple of bars he owned at the Beaches after quitting coaching in 1969. And he made friends with some of the guys from Skynyrd when they’d come to jam at The Still, Skinner’s place on San Juan Avenue. Lynyrd Skynyrd even asked him to introduce them at a concert in their hometown. He agreed.

And he let them use a photo of his Leonard Skinner Realty sign for the inside cover of their third album. The sign had his phone number on it, which led, of course, to numerous middle-of-the-night calls from fans. The inevitable reaction when they found they were talking to the actual Leonard Skinner? “Far out.”

Reporters turned to him after the 1977 plane crash that killed six people on Skynyrd’s plane, and found Skinner as stubborn as always. In an interview with the Times-Union, he spent paragraphs complaining that people always misunderstood his role in the band’s history. Again: It was not he who kicked them out of school, and he certainly never picked on them in particular. He was just doing his job.

Still, he softened a bit when he spoke to the reporter of getting to know Skynyrd. “They were good, talented, hard-working boys,” he said. “They worked hard, lived hard and boozed hard.”

A pretty good epitaph for the band with which he is forever linked, though he never asked for it.

matt.soergel@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4082

Leonard Skinner : This photo taken for the 1952 Robert E Lee High School yearbook. Leonard Skinner continued to play basketball into his ’60’s.

Coach Leonard Skinner, Susan Hughey, and Gene Odom