LYNYRD SKYNYRD – A Sound Of The South

Lynyrd Skynyrd - 1975

A SOUND OF THE SOUTH: LYNYRD SKYNYRD

Salina Journal, Salina, Kansas
June 29th 1975
By ERNEST LEOGRANDE

One of the strongest new sounds in rock music is something that’s been labeled Southern rock, and Lynryd Skynyrd is one of its representative names. Maybe not an easy one to pronounce, but a big one.

Try it this way, the way the band says to do it: Lehnerd Skinnerd. “It was made as a joke,” the band’s leader Ronnie Van Zant, said, “and we’re still gettin’ trouble with it.”

The name goes back to high school days when the band being formed by schoolmates Ronnie Van Zant vocalist, Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, guitarists and Bob Burns, drummer.

They had a gym teacher who used to tell them their hair was too long. They thought it would be a good joke to use his name (changed a little for safety’s sake) for their group. It stuck and now covers a band expanded to take in bassman Leon Wilkeson and keyboard man Billy Powell. Burns just dropped out, to be replaced by drummer Artimis Pyle, “Like in Gomer,” Ronnie said.

What the group used to do a lot was drive the 300 miles from Jacksonville, Fla. where they lived, to play dates in Atlanta, Ga., where Al Kooper discovered them and signed them to a record contract with his new label, Sounds of the South.

“The Allman Brothers were definitely the group that opened up the door for the Southern groups,” Ronnie said. “There are some young musicians down there that are very good. “The Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead had their scene. There was a scene in New York. Now the South has theirs. How long it will last I don’t know. I’m just glad we have it.”

The song which made them famous, “Free Bird”, is an excuberant excercise with sweeping, runaway guitar riffs , dedicated to Duane Allman. “All Southern groups associate with one another, ” Ronnie said.

The song, written by Ronnie and Allen, is a statement of the need to be free, on the road, and not bound by romantic entanglements. The group and road crew are not crazy about flying to gigs, so they’ve done what so many traditional country and western singers have done: bought and outfitted a bus for traveling.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s bus sleeps 12, has a living room with color TV and individual rooms for sleeping. It’s on the truckers’ radio band, a network linking commercial drivers so they can pass information back and forth. Drivers on this band take code names for their vehicles. So if you happen to tune into that band and you hear a message from Free Bird, you’ll know who it is.

Another of their songs, “Sweet Home Alabama”, also proved extremely popular. It was an answer to Neil Young’s “Southern Man”, which had had some hard things to say about life in the South. Ronnie said Al Kooper and Neil Young had bumped into each other and discussed “Sweet Home Alabama”, and there were no hard feelings.

“He was real happy about the song,” Ronnie said, which is hard to believe since at one point the song remarks, “Well, I hope Neil Young will remember/A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow!”

Also, later that night, with Lynyrd Skynyrd headlining a sold-out concert at New York City’s famed Academy of Music, Ronnie responded to the sight of some kids in the front seats waving a Confederate flag and stated, in blunt terms, as the song struck its opening chords, that he didn’t care what Neil Young thought.

At one point in our conversation that afternoon Ronnie had been talking about how much emphasis he put on his arrangements for the group, especially since it has 3 lead guitars. “We put our music together, piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “Times we all play together, other times 2 of us play harmony and one rhythm and then at times one will just play the chinks, fillin’ in.”

He said his inspiration for arranging had been the way the Buffalo Springfield worked, which is a bit ironic when you know that Neil Young was one of the key men in the Buffalo Springfield. But then there’s a theory that true art exists on its own, separate from political or sociological feelings.

Anyway, if Ronnie is representative of Southern men, he’s a good representative — genial, accommodating and with a sense of humor. He did lapse into some criticism of New York City as representative of the North. “It’s ridiculous,” he said, “to come from places in the South where you can get all you can eat for $2.50 and pay $12 here and not get filled up.”

LYNYRD SKYNYRD DOCUMENTARY

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