Lynyrd Skynyrd perform before 93,000 at Anaheim Stadium in California in 1977

Tales Of Southern-Rock Survival

By John Swenson

In 1973, Lynyrd Skynyrd made its official music-industry debut in a packed Atlanta club, Richard’s,where the Sounds Of The South label introduced what producer Al Kooper heralded as “the American Rolling Stones.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd was a finished package that night The group’s astonishing live intensity was branded into the minds of everyone who witnessed this historic event. From the grim statement-of-purpose “Workin’ For MCA” to the apocalyptic finale of “Free Bird,” it was obvious that this was a band for the ages. Ronnie Van Zant, its frontman and leader,pushed each story forward with violent, poetic purpose; Allen Collins, Gary Rossington and Ed King spun interlacing ropes of electric guitar lines crackling through the mix, a sound that created mayhem despite its carefully calculated precision.

This was the real future of rock ‘n’ roll, destined not for Hollywood fame but for blood, tragedy, redemption and, ultimately, survival on its own terms. The band was derailed by the infamous 1977 plane crash that killed Van Zant, Steve Gaines, the guitarist who replaced Ed King, and his sister, vocalist Cassie Gaines.

A decade later, the remaining members reassembled for a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Ronnie’s youngest brother Johnny singing. That band, after a few more changes, is still going strong. Twenty-five years after that memorable debut, Lynyrd Skynyrd played a pair of shows at New York’s Beacon Theater that bristled with the energy of a new band trying to prove itself. The following interview took place after the first night, with all nine members offering their observations on Skynyrd history; vocalist Johnny Van Zant, guitarists Gary Rossington, Rickey Medlocke and Hughie Thomasson, keyboardist Billy Powell, bassist Leon Wilkeson, drummer Jeff McAllister and background vocalists Dale Krantz-Rossington and Carol Chase.

You guys were obviously having a lot of fun out there last night.

Johnny Van Zant: We’ve been having a real good time. We’ve been at this over 11 years now. I’ve been in the band longer than Ronnie was.

Gary, you used to talk about how you first got together through playing baseball.

Gary Rossington: Me and Bob Burns had a little band, and Ronnie was in a band called Us, and Allen was in a band called the Mods. Our band was called Me You And Him. Larry Junstrom played with us. Me and Bob went to watch Ronnie play baseball one time; he was on one team, and we were on a team called the Mustangs. We were right on the third-base line, and Ronnie hit a line drive and wham it hit Bob Burns right in the head and knocked him out. Ronnie thought he’d killed him, so he came runnin’ over.
Then we went back and talked, and we went over to Bob’s house. Ronnie just lived down the street. He saw the drums and the guitar, and we just started playing “Last Time” by the Stones and “Gloria.” We got a band up that day, and we went and got Allen Collins. He was riding his bike down the street. Ronnie was the badass of the town, and he had this big old red Mustang. Me and Bob were in it going down the road, and we saw Allen, and Bob went, “Hey, that guy’s got a guitar, and he’s pretty good, Ronnie.” We were looking for anybody with equipment. So we pulled up and yelled “Hey Allen!,” and he saw Ronnie, and Bob was pretty bad at the time too, so he took off, riding his bike out in the woods, threw his bike down and
climbed up a big old oak tree. The rest of us are saying, “Come on down, we only want you to play with
us,” but he thought Ronnie was gonna beat him up. So we started to play music together ’cause we liked the
Beatles and the Stones, the Yardbirds, and we started to dream, and the dream came true.

Billy Powell: I played guitar in Leon’s band, the Little Black Eggs. I had been taking classical piano lessons for years, then one day I decided to pick up the guitar, and we started this band the next day. We only knew one song. Allen Collins later taught me how to play “Light My Fire.”

Leon Wilkeson: Little did we know that we were gonna end up with a band as famous as Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Johnny, you watched these guys at rehearsals as a kid, right? What was that like?

Van Zant: I just thought it looked like fun, y’know. It was kind of like any other family, except around
our house it was just music. I guess it’s like a family of lawyers or doctors, they’re always talkin’
medicine or whatever. Our family was always talking music.

Was there a point where, as a kid, you said, “I gotta get in on this”?

Van Zant: I started out playing drums; that’s what I wanted to do, because I always loved being around the bands and jumping on the drum set; every kid loves doing it. After a while, people would tell me, “You can sing, go on and sing.” I think I was too shy, that’s why I liked to hang out in the back by the drums. That all changed. They rehearsed in the house, then in a trailer behind the house. So you would watch them.

Van Zant: Yeah. I was still young, I don’t know how old I was. I don’t think any of us has a lot of
formal schooling, but we’ve had the street schooling. Sometimes, I think that might be better. I was
so young then, and they would always say, “Don’t curse around Johnny, don’t talk about chicks around Johnny,” all that stuff. Gary seemed real shy, he’s always been kind of reserved and shy; back then, if you look at pictures of them, he’s always got the hair down in front of his face. They called him Prince Charming; he was popular with the girls.

Gary, one of the defining characteristics of Lynyrd Skynyrd is the three-guitar interlace. How did
you develop that distinct sound?

Rossington: There was only one other group that did that in a way we loved; Buffalo Springfield had three guitars, but they didn’t all play at the same time. We would just sit there for hours and play counter parts. For instance, in “Sweet Home Alabama,” there’s two or three different guitar parts that lock in together, and if you just play one at a time it doesn’t sound right. You’ve got to hear them all together. We’d sit there, one guy’s playing one part, another guy’s pickin,’ and they fit it in. They call it counter parts, parts that interlock. We’d sit around all day doing that, hoping to get it better and better. In the studio, we would go in and put down a basic track, then everybody would put their parts on, and then it would become a song. It was a lot of work, and it still is today. I remember the feeling of watching the band live back then was like watching chaos; there was a tremendous, pent-up anger that came flying off the stage.

Rossington: [laughing] It was chaos, all right. Back before the crash, with the original band we were just kinda like kids still, in our early 20s; we were just learning. We fought a lot though and argued
like brothers and sisters. Lives are hard to get along with sometime, and we didn’t get along with some people. Now we’re getting along real good. We even go fishing on time off and go hang out. It’s still chaos on stage, though. There’s a lot of chaos, and the energy is still there too. Now there’s a little less chaos. We were newer then. We’re a little more organized now, but, it is still chaotic.

Rickey Medlocke: I go back to 1970 to ’73, when I played with them, and I remember how everything was put together, and I remember watching them. Even though I was the drummer then, I was always able to watch Allen and Gary, how they put things together. So, when I was forming ideas for the band, I just said, “If it were Allen sitting in the room, how would Allen have approached it?” and do it that way. But it’s always gonna come out Rickey Medlocke too. Basically, that’s how I approached it with this band. You’ve
got to have some insight into the people who were there before, who gave it that essence; put yourself in that position and write to that.

Hughie Thomasson: I’ve known the Skynyrd boys since 1972. I started the Outlaws in 1968. Our managers knew each other; we opened for them at Mother’s in Nashville. We’ve been good friends ever since. The Outlaws ended up doing several tours with Skynyrd after that. The band would always invite me up to jam on “…the Breeze” and a couple of songs, so we’ve known each other since then. It wasn’t like walking into a band full of strangers for me, it was more like joining up with old friends.

Dale Krantz-Rossington: I was from Detroit, so I don’t think I really understood, even though I was
singing with .38 Special. We toured with Skynyrd early in 1977. I really learned to appreciate them
when I stood at the side of the stage in ’77, and in about 20 seconds I got it when I saw Ronnie just
kind of cruise that stage, walking against the beat, just totally in control. I’ll never forget the impact
they had on me that night. They were the most magical, frighteningly powerful band I had ever seen.

Powell: I was a roadie for the band for a year and had been taking classical piano lessons since I was six years old. I wired amplifiers for the band back then. One night, after a high school prom in Jacksonville, there was this old piano up there on stage, and after the gig I sat down and played my
version of “Free Bird,” and Ronnie’s jaw dropped. “You play piano like that, and you didn’t tell us?”
he asked. I hadn’t mentioned it before. Ronnie said, “You wanna join the band?” It was my first dream come true.

We were going good, then the tragedy, Oct. 20, 1977, just took the rug right out from underneath all of us.

Wilkeson: For me, the plane crash was total instant amnesia, which I count as a blessing.

Powell: I guess I’m the one who’s cursed with remembering every detail. I wasn’t knocked unconscious. It was terrifying, it was unbelievably, indescribably, don’t-wanna-know terrifying. You don’t wanna know. When you know you’re fixin’ to die in 15 minutes, gliding over the palm trees and swamps, fixin’ to die, it is terrifying. There’s nothing you can do about it. It felt like being hit with 150 baseball bats while rolling down a hill in a garbage can. I was getting hit all over the place. On impact, every seat belt broke. The nose cone was all the way off, a steel rod went right through my arm. Leon was out cold, all his organs were shoved up into his chest, his teeth were knocked out. Here I am, trying to hold my nose on my face over here. That’s as far as I’ll tell you about it. For three years, all we could do was ask why God did this at the peak of our career. The ones up front were the most critically injured and killed. The ones in the back, some of us just got out and walked around in a daze, in one or two feet of swamp mud with the sun going down and alligators and snakes everywhere.

Rossington: I have to think about it sometimes. People do ask me. This is October, the reunion month and all that. You do think about it. When something that dramatic happens, you always think about it. You remember when your parents die, when your first dog dies. My father died when I was 10, that was the only big thing that ever happened to me until then. You learn to live with it, you have to in order to survive and not let it drive you crazy. It did drive us to drinking and drugs for a while, but now we’re back. I don’t really like to talk about it just because all that stuff happens and everybody has a different story of what they saw; there’s a lot of freaky things that happened from that. When you fall out of the sky and people die all around you and you’re in the swamp, it’s like Viet Nam or something, seeing all your friends and family dead and screaming and metal and flames, it’s a heavy thing to lay there for hours waiting for help. It’s real weird, but God gives you the power to forget all the bad things and the real bad hurts, physical and emotional. You just learn to live with it. I have. All the guys in the band now, they lived it through us.

Jeff McAllister: The band is a story of survival. The older members have gone through so much in their lives; Hughie, Johnny, Rickey, everyone has had the things they survived. Lynyrd Skynyrd is a band about survival; we started over here and came out the other end.

Van Zant: Before I was ever asked to be a part of this, I was a fan and, looking at it from a fan point
of view, you have to say it is a survival story.

Medlocke: One night during the first tour, after I rejoined the group, Gary looked over to me and said, “I wanted to ask you this ever since you got back in the band. Where were you that night? You were supposed to be with us that week. Ronnie had invited you to go out and ride with us. Where were you?” I was right down the road, playing a club in Columbia, S.C. They were in Greenville, I was in Columbia. When it happened, some guy came running into the club, yelling about it. I quit and immediately went back to the hotel room and got on the phone. Momma picked it up, and she was in hysterics. I went through a period for a while feeling guilty, that maybe if I had been there something would have changed, I could have made the difference somehow. Maybe it was my destiny. Gary said, “You were meant to be here
now.” I’m so glad to be back with Gary anyway, because he’s like a long-lost brother.

Powell: Then we formed the Rossington Collins Band with Dale singing the lead vocals.

Rossington: We did that to kind of try to get away from being compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd right off the bat. Me, Allen and Ronnie were so close, we didn’t want people to think we were just gonna come right back out with another singer; we had Paul Rodgers was gonna sing with us, Ronnie Hammond, we talked with Gregg Allman, but we went with Dale, a female; she was the perfect choice.

Van Zant: I was happy about that because Ronnie was my brother and I couldn’t see anybody taking his place. But a woman singer was a whole different direction.

Dale Krantz-Rossington: It was an amazing time. I was a little background vocalist from Indiana. I had to sing from my toes because I was scared to death of them, and that’s the truth. I was so scared of Gary and Allen. I had led a band, but I had never written lyrics. When they said, “Write a song,” you did because they told you to. We opened the show for them in the spring of ’77 with .38 Special, Donnie’s band. I was singing background vocals with my younger sister at the time. Two years after the crash, I was still working with .38. They were throwing around some heavy names, Paul Rodgers, Gregg Allman, but they were so worried about falling into the comparison. They burst through the door one night and said, “Would you like to work with us?” I said, “Yeah.” They said, “Do you write lyrics?” I said, “Yeah,” even though I hadn’t before, but it worked out.

Rossington: That was a great band, and we would have gone on except there were so many other things. Allen’s wife died, pregnant; that drove him to drugs and drinking, just terrible, and I was his best friend, so we were in it together, and, boy, it was terrible. That had to end. I get upset about Allen Collins; he kind of gets forgotten about. You read more about Steve and Cassie than Allen because he didn’t die in the crash, but he was as big a part of the band as Ronnie and me. We wrote all those songs together.

Powell: All we did was fight, fight, fight, because everybody was so upset over the plane crash. The band broke up, and Leon and I began playing with Mark Farner in a Christian band.

Wilkeson: I got out of the band I was playing in with Billy, because I sensed something was fixing to
happen with the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy. And it did.

Powell: In 1986, the Rossington band was playing in Atlanta, and we jammed with them at the Fox Theater at the end of their set. We did “Sweet Home Alabama” and “…Three Steps,” and the place went nuts. We brought the house down. So we talked to Charlie Brusco about doing a tribute. Gary didn’t want to do it at first, Johnny didn’t want to do it, but we said it’s 10 years on; we need to have a tribute. Charlie agreed and talked to Gary; that’s how we got the wheels turning in 1987. It was going to be a short tour, a six-week tour, but the magnitude of the tour was so great that here we are. How hard was the decision to start over?

Powell: Anybody’s entitled to change their mind after 10 years; we weren’t on pain medication anymore, we weren’t bitter.

Krantz-Rossington: I knew that Gary had a really rough time with this [the new Lynyrd Skynyrd] from ’87 on. He took this project on, assuming it was gonna last for literally one week. We were going to do a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Nobody at that time thought we’d do 100 shows, let alone come to grips with writing new material under that name. Every step of the way, this has been a big step for Gary to take. But just in the last two years with Hughie and Rickey coming in, it has really worked. The spark for Gary really was the guitar army, and I’m not sure he had found that and the camaraderie with the other gentlemen that he did with Rickey and Hughie. Man, they brought some life into this thing.

Gary was a big package to take on. I thought Skynyrd, with all the ghosts and the emotional baggage, was only going to be heartache for him. I wanna tell you I fought it for a long time. I was afraid it was gonna somehow be bigger than us, then it dawned on me about five years into it that it definitely is bigger than all of us. Skynyrd is huge, and once you kind of give up to it and support it you can ride that wave. It’s so huge, it’s bigger than the band, it’s bigger than Gary and I. We couldn’t have fought this. It’s got an energy of its own.

Van Zant: I never dreamt I would be playing with these guys. Never wanted to really; that thought never crossed my mind. Even 10 years after the plane crash, it never crossed my mind, until Gary actually came up to me and said, “We wanna do something besides it being the last thing Lynyrd Skynyrd did was to have an airplane crash.” The more I thought about that, the more I realized that Ronnie put his life and soul into this band, and he wouldn’t have wanted that to be the last thing that the band ever did. It gives me great pleasure to go out and sing songs he wrote. He was a great writer, great singer, he was a stylist. It’s pretty amazing that his songs still live on. After we’re all dead and gone, his songs will live on.
At first, during the “Tribute’” tour, the band played “Free Bird” instrumentally…

Van Zant: I remember, it was in Sacramento. Gary came back and said he wasn’t gonna play “”Free Bird”‘ anymore, not unless I sang it. He said Ronnie was a songwriter and a singer, and he wants you to sing those words.” Was that a scary moment?

Van Zant: Sure, it was. That’s a tough song to sing. I used to think the Skynyrd songs were a piece of cake to sing, but there’s a lot of attitude, little things, especially “Free Bird,” there’s a lot of little low notes, little things Gary and I have to tune in on because the slide guitar goes with the vocal. If we’re not right on pitch, we’re crashing.

Krantz-Rossington: Johnny’s grown up over the years. He’s come a long way. It was tough to see him grow up into this role, believe me, but it was beautiful in a very bittersweet, tough way; we had to pull those “Free Bird” lyrics out of him. We had to fight him to get him to do it. I remember Gary saying, “I’m not gonna play it one more night if you don’t get out there and sing it.” And Johnny said, “Well, I won’t.” Gary said, “He wrote those words, he wants people to hear the words.” He didn’t
care about doing it instrumentally anymore. Johnny’s come a long way.

Thomasson: Johnny is always a surprise. I’ve known Johnny since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. The Johnny Van Zant Band, he had his own band. He’s doing a fabulous job. There’s nobody else on this earth who could stand in and do what he has done. He may be the one that knows it the least of all. He’s not one for patting himself on the back, but his brother would be proud of him.

The current lineup came about after Ed King, who’d been part of the reunion lineup, had to leave for health reasons.

Thomasson: The band called up and said they needed someone to fill in for Mr. King; he had health problems. The Outlaws were still playing. I would have not done this, had it been any other band. I’ve been offered jobs with numerous bands with much higher stature than the Outlaws, and I turned them down, because, while it was a great honor to be asked, I wasn’t done with what I was doing, and it wasn’t the kind of music I wanted to play. This was the only band that I would have even considered playing with, much less being here right now, doing this, because it’s a rock ‘n’ roll band. That was three years ago, and I’m still here, so I guess I passed the audition. Rickey came in right after that.

Rossington: Ed King had a heart problem, and he had to get off the road, so we got Hughie. And I had just seen Rickey at the premiere of the “Free Bird” movie in Atlanta. We almost thought at first we didn’t know if he could just settle down into a sideman role; he was fronting his own group, Blackfoot. He was pretty wild, and he just did his thing. But he fit in perfectly. He’s just a good old boy. He was around; we all knew each other. We started together. He was part of the Skynyrd blood.

Medlocke: When we did the “Free Bird” movie premiere with that all-star jam, I got a call from Judy Van Zant, Ronnie’s wife, who said, “We really want you to be part of this.” I was getting ready to go on tour with my own band, so I had to cancel two weeks’ worth of dates to do it. The band wasn’t too happy with it, but what can you say? My ma, Ruby Juanita, had died in March ’94; this was 1995, a year later, so I was thinking about her. She told me everything would turn out OK after she was gone, and it was really weird to me because, all the way up there, I was thinking, “Is this what she had in mind?” Because she loved them guys an awful lot. I don’t think Gary and Ronnie and Allen ever really realized how much she cared about them guys from when they used to come over and sit on the porch with my dad and listen to him play. “Simple Man” was always her favorite song. I remember coming home and hearing her playing it
on her 8-track. Ruby Juanita Medlocke. She was Shorty’s wife. I remember her saying, “Once I’m out of the way, everything’s gonna be all right.”

After the jam, I got the call on my answering machine: “Hi, this is brother Gary. I want you to learn “I Ain’t The One,’ “Saturday Night,’ “That Smell’ and “Free Bird,’ and I’m comin’ over to audition
you, and if you pass the audition I’m gonna give you $1.50 and put you in the band.” So he came down to my house, I sat down with my boombox and my little amp, and I played “I Ain’t The One” note for note. He didn’t listen to the rest of it. He said, “You should be in this band, let me call Johnny.” Johnny was worried that I wouldn’t want to be just a guitar player because I was a singer and a front man all these years, but I remember my daddy always told me, “If you can’t be a passenger in the back seat of a car, you’ll never get to be the driver.” I said, “It’s all yours.” I promised Gary, on top of it. Allen was such a special person and friend. I’ll learn all those songs note for note, leads and everything, and I’ll try to be your Allen in the band.” I play the things note for note, and I try to enhance it with
my own style, to pay tribute to what he did. Coincidentally, me and Allen’s styles were very similar,
and we played the same style guitars. It’s weird that it came out that way. Every once in a while,
Gary or Leon will say, “It’s the eeriest thing, a lot of times when you’ve got your back to us like Allen, the way you move on stage makes it look like it’s him there.” I don’t notice it because that’s the
way I’ve always done things. It’s just a pleasure being here.

Krantz-Rossington: When Hugh and Rickey came into the band, there was another shot of energy, but then they became part of it. It’s not just seven members or nine members; this band has always been an entity unto itself. Once they got settled into a groove, everything got really exciting.

Rossington: God bless the guys that died, but then there was a lot of other ones that are still with us,
where we had our falling-outs or partings of the ways, but you lose each other too. Losing someone who’s still living is hard too, if you’re arguing or not working with them, it’s still hard feelings. We go
through drummers like underwear. I think this music wears drummers out. This lineup is it.

Wilkeson: Sometimes I think we should call the band Skynal Tap.

Van Zant: In the past, since I’ve been in the band, some of the members didn’t get along together that well. Being a team is essential. That’s why they call it a band, it’s a teamwork thing. If somebody’s not picking up the ball, somebody else gets it. As the new drummer in the group, were you a Skynyrd fan?

McAllister: It’s unAmerican not to like Lynyrd Skynyrd. I was with Hank Williams Jr. for three tours. In
1995, we toured with Skynyrd, and I got to know Johnny and Leon a little. Hank is liable to throw in
a couple of Lynyrd Skynyrd songs in his sets, “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Gimme Three Steps”, you really have to be on your toes, you never know what he’s gonna throw at you. Johnny and Leon went out to hear me play a couple of times, and, when their last drummer spontaneously combusted, they gave me a call. Playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd is physically taxing on the drummers, it’s a workout. You’ve got to hit ‘em as hard as you possibly can, which I do every night. You have to go for the throat. The new songs you’ve been writing fit right into the Skynyrd mold.

Thomasson: One of the things that was discussed is that we had to maintain the Lynyrd Skynyrd sound. Even though we had two other guitar players, like Rickey and myself from two other dominant bands like Blackfoot and the Outlaws, we’ll forget about Blackfoot and the Outlaws. This is Skynyrd. That’s how we dealt with that, and that was the right way to do it. We focused totally on Skynyrd, went back and listened to the old stuff, refamiliarized ourselves with the style of the band, talked about it and wrote the songs with that understanding. And, if it didn’t sound like Skynyrd, boy, it got tossed right away.
We work really hard at writing new material. We all sit down with an open mind, and we all throw ideas out, and we weed “em out real quick between Gary and Johnny especially; they can tell if it’s sounding like a Skynyrd lick or not. So we get rid of the stuff that doesn’t fit immediately, focus on the stuff that is the Skynyrd lick, work on those. We have so many ideas that it’s not hard to do that.

Medlocke: Gary and I had written songs before, in the early days, but the four of us had never written together. Gary was in Skynyrd, Johnny and Hughie and I had our own bands, each guy collectively successful. We didn’t know how to start. I would try to come up with a chorus and an idea on guitar. Hughie and Gary would play ideas, and we all picked up on each other and cut our own little niche while we did it. I put myself in what I call “the Lynyrd Skynyrd frame of mind.”

Van Zant: It’s taken a while for me to fit into Lynyrd Skynyrd. Hopefully, it only gets better. The
writing thing is starting to come around, especially with this lineup, with Rickey and Hughie, myself and Gary. We have a blast writing together. We just got through writing four songs down in Nashville. We’ve got one called “Workin,’” another called “Big Brother.”
“Workin’” is just about getting up and doing it every day, no matter what; we all work. “Big Brother” is about, hell, you can’t sneeze these days without somebody knowing about it, there’s a camera or something.
I’ve always been compared to Ronnie ’cause we’re all from the same family. It’s always been around us, all my life, and every song I’ve ever written has always had a message to it. I think that’s the one cool thing about Skynyrd, a message in a song.

Rossington: We’ve been out on the road with some bands who’ve been around for a while. They don’t look the same, they don’t play the same, they don’t sound the same. We’re real proud of ourselves because we’re still there. Everybody knows it’s not Ronnie and Allen and Steve anymore, it’s Johnny and Rickey and Hughie, and they’re coming to see us, they’re coming to see this band. It ain’t new Skynyrd to me, it’s just the continuation of Skynyrd. Johnny took Ronnie’s place, but Ronnie would have loved that. He’s been with me longer than Ronnie was now, so it’s kind of cool, Skynyrd has gone on. We do the old songs good or better than ever, and the new stuff is us now.

Powell: We worked really hard on “Twenty” to get back to our roots. It has a live-room, noise-in-the-studio sound. We recorded it at the Muscle Shoals Sound studio. Ego, success has never gone to our head. That’s why we’re still around. We’re not that much different than you. The ego is the sign of downfall with most bands.

Rossington: We just stick with our music. Music’s our gimmick and what we do. You either dig it or don’t. We play the music with our own style. I think it’s time again. Things go around in circles. I think people are ready for us again.

Wilkeson: I think we are, right now, the best lineup since the beginning. I roll with the changes. I’m
on the seventh drummer now. The last two drummers were studio-experienced, so they could read charts, which makes it easier to show them what to do. But it’s still more the attitude and personality and the team spirit that has to be good. This lineup now is where the band has been striving to be since the pane crash. Now is the happiest, most positive it’s been since the tragedy. Every night is exciting, and it seems to get a tad better each show. I kind of wish we had waited on the live album, because we’re even better now.
How long can you see yourselves doing this?

Powell: The Rolling Stones are in their mid-50s. We’re in our mid-40s, and they’re still doing it, so
we don’t see any reason why we can’t. And, right now, there’s a new electricity and fire in this band.
Being sober, nobody gets in fights anymore. There’s a new electricity, and that surprises me. I thought we’d all be sitting around in chairs when we were pushing 50. How many more years do we have ahead of us? I’m hoping 10, but, if that comes, who knows what might happen?

Medlocke: If the band quits enjoying what we’re doing, playing and touring, we probably should get out of it and not let it fall to the bottom, where everybody goes, “These guys are tired old rock ‘n’ rollers.” I think consistency is very important. The band has that consistency every night. We’re not beat up and fractured, angry at somebody, screwed up on drugs and alcohol. We want to appreciate what we have while we have it and be able to hold on to it as long as we can hold on to it and give that audience; especially the young ones who are coming out now, which is an incredible thing on its own; we want to give them their money’s worth every show. Sixty-five percent of our audience is teenagers now.
Now you have mosh pits in front of the stage.

Rossington: Lynyrd Skynyrd with a mosh pit! These kids get going and the kids are body surfin’, passing each other across the top of the crowd. At first, it freaked us out. Johnny was afraid somebody was getting seriously hurt, and his kid had to say, “Dad, this is what we do, it’s cool to do that.” When you see it and they’re having a good time, there’s just nothing like it.

Carol Chase: We were playing this little gig in Italy, and the people were crying; they couldn’t believe Lynyrd Skynyrd had come there. Then they did the soccer chant at the end; we had to come back and play again.

Krantz-Rossington: It has really picked up over the last year, especially this year. Looking out and
seeing these young kids moshing to “Simple Man,” we knew it had crossed over to another generation.

Chase: I think kids are surprised at how much energy we do have. I think they thought this was their
parents’ band.

Medlocke: It’s almost like a new birth of the band. I just wanted to play music; I never thought it was
going to be as big as it became. It freaks me out when I start thinking about it.

Thomasson: We’re on a mission. We know we love what we do, and we’re blessed to be able to do it, so we try not to forget that. We’re fortunate that this many people are into Lynyrd Skynyrd and want to see the band. It’s fun for me again. There was a time when I was successful, but the thrill was gone out of it. It’s back, it’s real, it’s exciting. I’m gonna make the most of it. I’m looking forward to going back on the bus, that’s how much I like it.

Van Zant: The cool thing about doing this now is that we have gotten so many young kids turned on to us, it’s amazing. I love the old fans, too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s really cool to take the music to new fans too, who never got to see the band. It’s like Ronnie was the quarterback and I’m the receiver going for the touchdown.

Do you feel Ronnie’s spirit on stage?

Van Zant: I can feel his presence every time we’re out there. You can’t possibly not feel it. There’s
a driving force behind Lynyrd Skynyrd that’s bigger than any of us.

The Original Lynyrd Skynyrd at the height of their fame in 1977