1976 - Lynyrd Skynyrd on top of their game

1976 - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Written by Kate Simon and Jonh Ingham

LYNYRD SKYNYRD on Tour in Britain

QUESTION: What’s sillier than a four-month tour of America?

ANSWER: A one week tour of Britain.

Kate Simon’s mother used to warn her, “Katherine, beware of people who
drink before two p.m.” My mom advised me to keep that first glass at a
party firmly affixed to the right hand and stretch out its contents over
the course of the evening, keeping a sharp eye and firm resolution for
those only too eager to top up the wassail bowl. If they could only see
us now, Mrs. Simon’s daughter consorting with people who slip into their
first drink before noon.

Kate doesn’t understand the subtleties of alcohol indulgence, how that
double screwdriver, Bloody Mary, Jack Daniels, or Heinekens isn’t so
much addictive greed as medicinal; that, ultimately, the simplest and
best way to cure a hangover is to have another drink. Ah, innocence.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD are very knowledgeable about alcohol. Ronnie Van Zant
and Gary Rossington used to knock off two-fifths of whiskey a day each;
Ronnie professes a real appreciation for scotch. Now, though, Ronnie is
probably straightest of all the lads.

Apart from keyboards whiz Billy Powell, those in the band with a tast
for a tripple tend to favour bourbon (brandy in a pinch), always double.
Straight up, with a chaser on the side. No timewasters, these guys.
Thursday night in Glascow, the one free night on their recent
whirlwind tour, proved to be a quiet affair. At the dinner table sat
Billy and Steve Gibbons, owner and operator of the Steve Gibbons Band,
tour support.

Billy has a very open face; he tends to take things at face value. He
wore Levi’s and a check shirt. Steve Gibbons cultivated an outlaw pose,
face moulding to brooding, fiery perfection, clothes very unique, very
Steve Gibbons.

Within 90 minutes Billy had revealed most of his life, described his
impressive home backing onto a lake stocked with bream, perch, and
trout, and shown a wallet photo of his wife and beautiful child.
Steve Gibbons had said about ten words, he looked amazing. As Billy
piled into his fourth double scredriver — as you sipped your second
glass of wine — with the same gusto as he had the first, it occurred
that one was in the presence of seasoned drinkers.

Over in the corner, Billy Connolly and Mike McGear began to amass a
court, everybody turning onto the funny stuff, which wasn’t too hard,
since Connolly has never heard W.C.Fields. He confessed that when
everbody started comparing him Lenny Bruce he had to go to the library
and get all his books to discover who the blighter was. He and McGear
had taped a TV show to be broadcast at 10 the next morning. After a
while, Connolly leaves

The party returned to the bar. At the Albany, the bar never closes. A
local fellow joins the encampment, hankering for a sing-song. “All you
kinky people — none of you want to have a sing-song. Woddy Herman and
his lot were here last week; they didn’t want to sing, either. C’mon,
which one of you can sing?” He takes off his jacket and tie, unbuttons
his cuffs, orders four bottles of champagne, and settles in.

Steve Gaines and Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Immediately to his left sit Ronnie Van Zant and Steve, both watching
him with bemusement. People are pointed out as singers. One of these is
Watson, sound engineer for Tommy and the Bijoux, moonlighting with the
Steve Gibbons Band and therfore incognito. Tommy had ordered a vacation,
but Mr. Watson needed some seven per cent solution.

“Any Umbrellas!” he cried whe hearing of a sing-song. “C’mon,’Any
Umbrellas’! Let’s see you do that! You want to hear what Holmes has to
say on the subject?” He grabs a volume of almost compleat Sherlock
Holmes and starts rifling through the pages. “Its so hard to find your
place with so many pages…”

The first bottle of champers exhausted, Watson was thinking of bed,
when the hotel sneakily offered to uncork a bottle of Dom Perignon, at
15 pounds, the bottle.

Our Scot friend baulked at the price, but threw caution to the wind,
soon enough, Mr. Watson was dancing on the table. Behind him, McGear was
telling bass wizard Leon Wilkeson about Penny Lane in Liverpool. “Some
friends of mine wrote a song about it a few years ago.”

He produces a photo from his wallet, showing a line-up of rock n’ roll
finery. There’s Billy Fury, looking more-like Eddie Cochran than the man
himself, who stands a few persons away. God, Adam Faith looks so
spindlely! Gene Vincent leers with finesse, and elsewhere are Joe Brown
and Marty Wilde. Now that’s some photo you got there, Mike.
As the sixth through tenth bottles of champagne appear on the horizon
it becomes all too much. Exit. There was no sing-song.

Friday is Lacey’s birthday. Lacey is Ronnie’s father, touring with the
band for the first time. He is 61 today. He sits quietly in the corner,
doling out homilies. ‘You come here wanting and you leave here wanting.’
‘Its never late until two, and two’s too late.’

He and Mr. Watson are the two reasons to be in a room. He spends
Friday afternoon sipping Canadian Clubs and eyeing Glascow’s wonderful
women, especially the waitresses. ‘That pretty black uniform? And that
white trim across the bottom? Boy, it catches mah eye.’

Lynyrd Skynyrd are from Jacksonville, Florida, which isn’t as South as
Alabama or Georgia is mythically South, but it does imbue them with a
sense of being southerners. They’re very polite, these boys applaud
after the dinner jazz combo’s every number, and toast their audiences.
Their accent is a soft drawl, with a choice of words that is
consisitently entertaining. They’re one of the few American bands to
come out of the poor working class and in England at least, look exactly
like their audience. (There isn’t a Robert Plant, Rod Stewart or Steve
Gibbons among them, though I bet Allen Collins fancies himself a bit of
a looker.) They play some amazing music.

The pre-gig dressing room atmosphere is unusually relaxed — in fact,
its just the party continuing in a different room. The band aren’t
really into dressing that much, but the three lady singers
counter-attack with a vengeance.

Cassie Gaines, Leslie Hawkins and JoJo Billingsley

Leslie is a vision in white, Cassie — who spent six months in Santa
Fe and a year in Mexico — favours sueds and dripping turquoise, while
Jo is definitely ina Billie Holiday vein, turquoise rings on every
finger, lots of boas, and feathers in her hair.

She turns to Ronnie and drawls, “Do you think we’re overdressed?”
Ronnie looks her up and down and grins. She looks pretty amazing, “Well,
if that’s how you feel comfortable, then dress like that.” Ronnie is in
patched jeans, Confederate flag t-shirt and a faded denim jacket patched
with flags and embroidered on the back with a huge sun covered in rain
and a Rolling Stones eagle-jet.

The girls are a new addition. Ronnie’s so tickled with the idea he
can’t look at them onstage for fear of laughing.
Trevor Burton, bassist with the Steve Gibbons Band, bounces in with
good news from the front lines. He’s wearing a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt.
Ronnie listens to him. “Yeah, but when you tour America with the WHO”
– The Gibbons Band is doing this in March — “Its a whole different
ballgame. Those kids are out there to see one group. Our first big
concert was our first night with them. We got on stage and just lost it.
The second and third nights weren’t much better.”
Treveor nods, but it hasn’t sunk in.

Suddenly there is that ritual, the exchanging of the T-shirts. Jimi,
still damp from the ardours of the stage, settles himself on Ronnie. “He
was one of my heroes.”

After the gig, the party continues. Some people got off, some didn’t.
Mr. Watson jovially accosts Gary Rossington, who is developing a Greg
Allman style beard that outshines the original.

“I’m beginning to find out you’re quite a rascal. Outside of Eric,
you’re the person I know who can sound like FREE. I respect you for that
because he’s bloody hard to beat.” Mr. Watson is referring in this
instance to Paul Kossoff.

Gary ragrds him with a bemused eye. “Yeah, well he copied me.” He
cracks up and then collapses in a fit of flu.
Lacey’s birthday party was a quiet affair though the volume was high.
Watson and Leon danced pas-de-deuxe on the tables, champagne flowed
freely. My Holmes prescribed freely, and toasts were made. A family
affair.

During ‘Happy Birthday’ drummer Artimus Pyle called out “to the man
who made it all possible,” and another mentioned, while watching Lacey
eyeing the proceedings with wonderment, that in the early days he had
given the band considerable support, but Lacey is deprecating on the
matter.

“When yuh do something for a group of people, and then talk ’bout it,
that’s patting yuhself on the back. What yuh do for yuh family comes
from the heart, not the pocket book.”

He and Ronnie have a tight bond. When Ronnie is off the road the
family immediately get together. Ronnie’s younger brother has a band,
.38 Special, another brother is just beginning in a band, and two
sisters sing. Lacey played and sang in the forties and reckons his
relatives still berate him for not sticking to music. Although he
doesn’t work much now, he’s a trucker. So he’d understand all that lingo
in ‘Convoy’? “Oh yes.”

The reception area snapped to gestapo alert at the sound of breaking
glass, not knowing that an over enthusiastic Billy was harmlessly
disposing of half a dozen empty champagne bottles. The party was shut
down. The barflies gravitated towards the watering hole, propping up the
bar until six. The bus left for Leeds at ten-thirty.

“What’s wrong with you?!? Sitting on the bus as if you’ve been up all
night! We didn’t have this back in Poona in ’32 with Lord Flooty and the
14th Doozahs!”

Watson strides the length of the bus with the energy of a man well
rested in body and spirit; parhaps the moral concern of his
two-year-old son, whose first question was to ask if daddy was being
good, was inspiring discipline. Leon bounces with him, self-appointed
tour guide and music co-ordinator. The others sleep or take in the
Northumbrian countryside.

During lunch break in some hamlet, Artimus occupies his time
purchasing a pair of thick, woolen socks, which seems as typical Artimus
as anything. With his amazing mane of hair he looks like one of William
Blake’s wilder visions. Watson, meanwhile, discovers a man celebrating
his 60th birthday the next day. He intends drinking 60 pints.
The afternoon rolls by. Lacey watches the band’s activities slightly
wide-eyed. Touring, he says, is an education. At the back of the bus the
Steve Gibbons Band is intensely into the Steve Gibbons Band. Manager
Peter Meaden can earbash about the band and its connections ad
infinitum.

They slip a cassette of their upcoming album into a portable deck and
and a fine roar blasts out. The band tap to the beat, grinning and
commenting. Steve stands behind them all, still more devoted to attitude
dancing than verbalising. Which is great, but it could get boring on a
desert island.

Leon sits with them and listens; later they are joined by Artimus, who
comments on the great chord progression that suddenly leaps out of
‘Tupelo Mississippi Flash’, “I don’t know how you do that, but keep on
playing it…”

“You know, that’s the trouble with this kind of set-up — none of us
can jam together.” The others nod. “Because that’s the only way I can
learn something new — to play with different people. Otherwise you dry
up.”

The half-dozen surrounding him voice agreement. The front half of the
bus sleeps on. In two weeks they start a four month tour of America.
“One hundred and something dates.”
But four months only has 120 days…

AllenCollins - 1976