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Lynyrd Skynyrd Biography | ||||
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Lynyrd Skynyrd Links
Allen Collins, Gary Rossington and Ed King (replaced by Steve Gaines) were a formidable guitar attack, but they understood when to shut up--and the first couple of Skynyrd albums strike a poised balance between their intricate jamming and the homey simplicity of Ronnie Van Zant's songs. A track such as "Tuesday's Gone" begins simply, but eventually escalates to anthemic heights. By the third album, Nuthin' Fancy, the band's rhythm section was unparalleled. The special whipcrack of "Saturday Night Special" is a virtual "Honky Tonk Women," with its promise of violence and sexuality instilled in the beat. Skynyrd recorded their fifth studio album, Street Survivors, and then tragedy struck. A plane crash took the lives of Ronnie Van Zant, and Steve and Cassy Gaines. The Rossington-Collins Band formed afterwards--and eventually, in 1987, they reconvened under the Skynyrd name. By 1991 they were recording anew, but times were different and there was no escaping just how much of Van Zant's band they really were. |
While
the Allman Brothers took Southern rock and twisted and stretched it into
hour-long jams that either mesmerized or bored the audience held
captive, Lynyrd Skynyrd preached greater economy and a stronger root in
country music. The band recorded demos in Sheffield, Alabama in 1970
that already exhibit their strengths in full force (they take up much of
the first disc of the boxed set). Singer Ronnie Van Zant had an
unnerving sense of pathos and was able to train his voice on the note
only to let it fall in futile rejection. The triple-guitar attack was
anything but excess, leading the songs through each simple-yet-complex
schematic. "Freebird" dates from this period, and while it became one of
the more painful elongated classic rock FM staples, in demo form the
song shows off its magnificence in four packed minutes.