The story of Lynyrd Skynyrd

A line drive in Jacksonville

The story begins on the west side of Jacksonville, Florida, in the summer of 1964. Gary Rossington, bassist Larry Junstrom and drummer Bob Burns had already started a little trio they called Me, You and Him. Around the same time, a sixteen year old named Ronnie Van Zant was making a name for himself on the local ball fields. He was a tough kid who admired Muhammad Ali and dreamed of playing baseball for a living. Rossington had the same dream. He wanted to play for the New York Yankees, until he heard the Rolling Stones and music took over. Fittingly, it was baseball that brought the band together.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Van Zant and Burns played on rival teams. One afternoon Ronnie hit a line drive that slammed into Burns. Accounts differ on exactly where it struck him, but Burns later said it knocked every breath out of his body. Instead of a fight, the meeting turned into a jam session. That same afternoon they set up their gear in the carport of Burns's parents' house and played the Rolling Stones' Time Is on My Side. They liked the sound so much they decided on the spot to be a band. When Burns's parents complained about the noise, rehearsals moved to Junstrom's carport. Over the next few years the group went through names like My Backyard, the Noble Five and the One Percent.[1] [2] [3] [4]

They needed another guitarist, and they knew a skinny kid named Allen Collins who owned his own guitar and amplifier. Collins had learned with a few lessons from his stepmother, a country guitarist, and had been fired up by seeing the Beatles on television. When Ronnie and Bob Burns pulled into his driveway, Collins assumed they had come to beat him up. Both had reputations for trouble, so he jumped on his bicycle and hid up a tree. Once they talked him down, he agreed to join. Collins and Van Zant would become the band's main songwriting team. Ronnie, three years older than Rossington, also became a father figure to the younger boys, and even taught them how to drive.[1] [2]

The name that stuck came from a gym teacher. Leonard Skinner taught physical education at Robert E. Lee High School, where most of the boys studied, and he strictly enforced the school's rule against long hair on boys. Rossington was suspended over his hair and eventually dropped out to play music full time. Ronnie's father, Lacy Van Zant, even went to the school to argue that long hair was part of Gary's job, because his widowed mother needed the money he earned with the band. In 1968, tired of hecklers joking that the One Percent had one percent talent, the band took a suggestion from Burns and became Leonard Skinnerd. The spelling soon changed to Lynyrd Skynyrd.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The joke had a second layer. Burns was also thinking of a character called Leonard Skinner in Allan Sherman's 1963 novelty hit Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. By 1970 Lynyrd Skynyrd had become one of the top bands in Jacksonville, headlining local shows and opening for national acts. To sharpen their sound they rehearsed for endless hours at a remote cabin by a creek outside town, which they nicknamed Hell House because of the brutal Florida heat. Rossington later admitted the band was also taking speed there and brewing tea from mushrooms they found in a nearby cow pasture. The long hours paid off. By the time they reached a real studio, every note of their songs was worked out.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Muscle Shoals and Al Kooper

Around 1970 the band found managers. Pat Armstrong, a Jacksonville native, and Alan Walden, younger brother of the Capricorn Records boss Phil Walden, took them on, and Walden stayed until 1974. In 1971 the band recorded a batch of songs at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama with producer Jimmy Johnson, meant to be their debut. By then Larry Junstrom had left, and Greg T. Walker was playing bass. A childhood friend named Rickey Medlocke joined as a second drummer and singer, sometimes playing alongside Bob Burns. Medlocke soon wanted to be out front with a guitar, and in 1972 he left to revive his own band, Blackfoot. The Muscle Shoals album was shelved, and only came out after the crash.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1972 the producer Al Kooper walked into a club called Funocchio's in Atlanta and saw the band play. Kooper was a New Yorker with an astonishing track record. He had played the organ on Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone and founded Blood, Sweat and Tears. Now based in Atlanta, he was starting a label called Sounds of the South, backed by MCA Records. By one account the band had already been turned down by nine record companies. Kooper later said he hated Ronnie and liked him at the same time, and called him a very weird frontman. He signed them anyway and produced their debut at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, amazed at how thoroughly rehearsed they were.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The lineup kept shifting right up to the sessions. Leon Wilkeson, a Paul McCartney fan who had become one of Jacksonville's best bassists, joined in 1972, but nervous about fame, he walked away and went back to stocking ice cream at a dairy. To replace him, Ronnie called Ed King, a Californian who had played in the psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock, famous for Incense and Peppermints. King had met an early version of Skynyrd years before and told Ronnie to call if they ever needed him. King played bass on most of the album. As the sessions wrapped, Ronnie visited Wilkeson and talked him into coming back, and King moved to guitar. Skynyrd now had its three guitar army.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Another new member came from the road crew. Billy Powell had grown up in a Navy family, spent part of his childhood in Italy, and briefly studied music theory. He was working as a roadie for the band when they played a prom at the Bolles School in Jacksonville in 1972. During a break he sat down at the piano and played an introduction he had worked out for Free Bird. The band had no idea their roadie could play like that, and they made him their keyboardist. Free Bird itself had taken years to arrive. Collins wrote the chords long before Ronnie could find a melody for them. When Collins played them again at a rehearsal, Ronnie wrote the melody and words in a few minutes.[1] [2] [3]

The debut album, Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, came out on the thirteenth of August 1973. It included Tuesday's Gone, Gimme Three Steps, Simple Man and, closing the record, the nine minute Free Bird. Its long guitar finale had begun as a way to rest Ronnie's voice during long club nights, and Allen Collins played the whole closing solo himself. Kooper, credited under the joke name Roosevelt Gook, added organ, and Rossington doubled his slide guitar part to give it a ghostly shimmer. Label people wanted the song cut to three minutes, and the band flatly refused. Kooper doubted Simple Man too, so Ronnie walked him out to his car and the band recorded it without him. The album eventually went double platinum.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Second Helping and an answer to Neil Young

Kooper was friends with Pete Townshend, and he got Skynyrd the opening slot on the Who's American Quadrophenia tour in late 1973. Night after night, a barely known Southern band faced arena crowds, and their following grew fast. On stage, Ronnie dedicated Free Bird to Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band, who had died in a motorcycle crash in 1971. On British television in 1975 he dedicated it to both Allman and the Allmans' bassist Berry Oakley, calling them free birds. Released as a single in November 1974, Free Bird climbed to number nineteen on the Billboard Hot 100. In time, fans shouting Free Bird at any concert, by any artist, became one of rock's longest running jokes.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Their second album, Second Helping, arrived on the fifteenth of April 1974, with King, Collins and Rossington all writing alongside Van Zant. Its biggest song began with a little picking riff Rossington kept playing while the band waited for everyone to turn up to rehearsal. Ronnie told him to play it again, then wrote the words, while Rossington and King built the music. The song was Sweet Home Alabama, and none of its three writers came from Alabama. It answered Neil Young's songs Southern Man and Alabama, which the band felt blamed the whole South for racism. Ronnie said Young was shooting all the ducks to kill one or two. That's Ed King's voice counting the band in at the start.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Sweet Home Alabama reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1974. It was the only top ten single of the band's career, and it became their first hit in Britain too, at number thirty one. The swipe at Neil Young never became a real feud. Van Zant and Young admired each other, and Ronnie often wore a T-shirt of Young's album Tonight's the Night on stage. He wears it on the cover of Street Survivors. Young said in 1976 that he was proud to have his name in a song like theirs. In his 2012 memoir he went further, writing that his own song Alabama had deserved the shot Skynyrd gave him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The song's most debated moment is a line about the governor of Alabama, then George Wallace, a champion of segregation, followed by a chorus of boos. Van Zant said listeners missed the boos, and that he did not like what Wallace said about Black people. Rossington said the boos were the band's way of saying they did not like Wallace. The session singers added another layer. Two of the voices credited on the track, Merry Clayton and Clydie King, were Black women. Clayton first refused the job, thinking of the four girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham. In the end she took the session, and said she decided to let the music be her protest.[1] [2] [3]

Skynyrd's image hardened in these years. They played in front of a huge Confederate flag, a gimmick Van Zant later said came from their record label and called nothing but hype. Yet their songs were often more thoughtful than their rowdy reputation. Second Helping included The Needle and the Spoon, a warning about heroin, and The Ballad of Curtis Loew, about a boy who spends his days listening to an old Black bluesman play the dobro at a country store. The band said Curtis Loew was a blend of real people from the Van Zants' old neighborhood, among them Rickey Medlocke's grandfather Shorty, a blues and bluegrass player. The album went gold that September.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Torture Tour

Success came with a punishing schedule, and the strain showed first on Bob Burns. While the band was recording in Los Angeles, a power failure sent them off to see The Exorcist, and Burns became convinced he was possessed and that his wife and even his cat were the devil. The episode passed, but it returned on a European tour, where Rossington's diary described Burns rearranging his hotel room furniture and speaking in a strange voice. Burns left the band around the turn of 1975. His replacement was Artimus Pyle from Louisville, Kentucky, a former Marine sergeant who had worked as an aircraft electronics mechanic before drumming with a band in South Carolina.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The third album, Nuthin' Fancy, was recorded in just seventeen days in early 1975, because a tour was already booked. Kooper was unhappy with how unprepared the band was, and after the tracking they parted ways by mutual agreement. Its single, Saturday Night Special, was a hard hitting warning about cheap handguns and the violence they fuel. Van Zant said in an interview that such guns ought to be thrown away, and admitted, without details, that he had once been shot himself. Nuthin' Fancy became their first top ten album, peaking at number nine. Inside the sleeve was a photo of a sign for Leonard Skinner Realty, and the old gym teacher's phone started ringing in the middle of the night.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The tour that followed was so gruelling the band called it the Torture Tour. The drinking and fighting that defined Skynyrd in those years wore on Ed King, who called himself a peaceful Southern California hippie. In May 1975, Ronnie and King's guitar tech were jailed overnight in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and only reached the next show minutes before the band went on. King had to play on old strings and broke two during Free Bird. Afterward Ronnie tore into him in front of the others. King went back to his room, packed his things and left. Ronnie had his own run ins with the law in that era, including an arrest for hurling a table out of a second floor hotel window.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Skynyrd carried on with two guitarists and added a trio of female backing singers, JoJo Billingsley, Cassie Gaines and Leslie Hawkins, whom Ronnie nicknamed the Honkettes. For the fourth album, Gimme Back My Bullets, released in February 1976, they worked with Tom Dowd, the veteran producer behind records by Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton and the Allman Brothers Band. It reached number twenty. In 1976 they also opened for the Rolling Stones at Knebworth in England. Ronnie sent his guitarists out onto the stage's long ramp, shaped like the Stones' famous tongue logo. Rossington said Mick Jagger was furious, because staying off the tongue was the one rule the opening band had been given.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The missing third guitarist came through family. Cassie Gaines recommended her younger brother Steve, a guitarist and singer from Miami, Oklahoma, who had been hooked on music since seeing the Beatles live as a teenager. The band was reluctant, but on the eleventh of May 1976 in Kansas City they let him sit in on the old Jimmie Rodgers song T for Texas. On stage nobody could hear him, but sound engineer Kevin Elson was listening on headphones and told them Steve was outstanding. After a couple more jams he was in. His third show with the band was the first of three nights at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta in July 1976, recorded for the double live album One More from the Road.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Street Survivors

One More from the Road came out in September 1976 and went platinum before the year was over. The Fox Theatre shows had been benefit concerts to help save the old movie palace from demolition, and the album's long Free Bird, launched by Ronnie asking the crowd what song they wanted to hear, became the definitive live version. But the band's excesses were catching up with them. Over the Labor Day weekend of 1976, both Collins and Rossington had car crashes in Jacksonville. Rossington, drunk and high on Quaaludes, drove his new Ford Torino into an oak tree. The band had to postpone a tour, and Rossington was fined five thousand dollars for the delay.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Rossington's crash inspired one of Ronnie's darkest songs, That Smell, written with Collins. It was a stark warning to his own bandmates about drink and drugs, and Rossington admitted many times that the reckless young man in the song was him. By then the band had been using alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, speed and Quaaludes. Ronnie himself, whose daughter Melody was born in 1976, was trying to rein in the boozing and brawling that had become part of the band's reputation. He said he had a creepy feeling that things were going against them, so he decided to write a morbid song. It turned out to be one of the last songs he ever wrote.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Street Survivors was recorded twice, first with Tom Dowd in Miami and then again at Studio One in Doraville, and the second version was the one released. It became a showcase for Steve Gaines. He shared lead vocals with Ronnie on You Got That Right, brought in his own boogie I Know a Little, and sang lead on his blues Ain't No Good Life, a rare Skynyrd song of that era with a singer other than Ronnie. Van Zant told anyone who would listen that one day they would all be in Steve's shadow. The album also carried What's Your Name, a rowdy tale of life on the road. It was released on the seventeenth of October 1977.[1] [2]

The band was riding high. Street Survivors went gold within ten days, and the new tour was their biggest yet, with a long dreamed of date at Madison Square Garden ahead. Their transport was less grand. Rowdy behavior had made them unwelcome with many charter firms, and manager Peter Rudge leased a Convair 240 built in 1947 from a company in Texas, for three payments of five thousand dollars. Aerosmith's crew had inspected the same plane earlier that year and turned it down. On the eighteenth of October, leaving Lakeland, Florida, the right engine backfired and shot out long flames. The band agreed this would be the last trip on that plane. In Baton Rouge they planned to switch to a jet.[1] [2] [3]

Many around Ronnie believed he sensed what was coming. For years he told people, including Artimus Pyle, his father Lacy and Ed King, that he would never live to see thirty, and that he would go out with his boots on. King said he heard it so often he got sick of it. Backing singer JoJo Billingsley, who was recovering in Mississippi from health problems linked to substance abuse, planned to rejoin the tour in Little Rock. She later said she dreamed of the plane crashing and begged Allen Collins by phone not to keep flying on it. Cassie Gaines was so frightened of the Convair that she wanted to ride in the equipment truck. Ronnie talked her into flying.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The twentieth of October 1977

On the afternoon of the twentieth of October 1977, twenty six people boarded the Convair in Greenville, South Carolina, where Skynyrd had just played the Memorial Auditorium. They were heading for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to play Louisiana State University the next night. The mood was light. Some passengers played poker in the back. Ronnie, who had been up most of the night before and had a sore back, stretched out on the floor near the front. Late in the flight the right engine sputtered and quit, and the crew realized they were almost out of fuel. The pilot radioed for the nearest airport and was steered toward McComb, Mississippi. Then the left engine died too.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The pilot, Walter McCreary, came back into the cabin and told everyone they were out of fuel and to brace themselves. Artimus Pyle, who had been up in the cockpit, said he could see death in the man's eyes. By most accounts there was no panic. People sat in silence, some praying. Pyle said Ronnie stopped by him in the aisle, shook his hand and smiled. The crew tried to reach an open field, but just before seven in the evening the plane skimmed the treetops and tore into a forest near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Survivors remembered a noise like hundreds of baseball bats hitting the fuselage. The cockpit and tail were ripped away.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant was killed instantly by a blow to the head. He was twenty nine. Steve Gaines, twenty eight, died too, as did assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick and both pilots, Walter McCreary and William Gray. Cassie Gaines survived the impact but bled to death before help could reach her. She was twenty nine. Twenty people lived. Because the tanks were empty there was no fire, which saved lives but made the wreck hard to find in the dark. Gary Rossington woke up with the plane's door on top of him. Leon Wilkeson's heart stopped twice on the operating table. Billy Powell's nose was nearly torn off. Allen Collins cracked two vertebrae and almost lost an arm.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Artimus Pyle, with broken ribs, set off through the swamp with two crew members to find help. They waded a creek, crawled under a barbed wire fence and crossed a cow pasture toward the lights of a farmhouse. The young farmer, Johnny Mote, thought they were escaped convicts and fired a shot, before he understood there had been a crash. He then led a convoy of pickups back to the site. Rescuers bulldozed a path through the woods, and neighbors drove the injured to hospital in their trucks. Not everyone who came was there to help. In the dark and confusion, souvenir hunters stole wallets, jewelry and even pieces of the plane.[1] [2] [3]

The National Transportation Safety Board found that the plane ran out of fuel because of crew inattention to the fuel supply, with an engine problem of undetermined nature as a contributing factor. Rumors that the pilots had been drinking were not supported by their toxicology tests. Street Survivors had been in shops for three days. Its cover showed the band standing in flames, and at the request of Steve Gaines's widow, Teresa, MCA replaced it with a plain black version. The album climbed to number five, the band's highest chart position. Billy Powell, on crutches and stitched up, was the only band member able to attend the funerals. Ronnie was buried with his black hat and his favorite fishing pole.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The lost decade

Lynyrd Skynyrd was finished. Two days after the crash, a battered Billy Powell told reporters he did not think the band could go on. The survivors spent months healing. Rossington played again with steel rods in his right arm and leg, but spent years addicted to the painkillers he was given. On the thirteenth of January 1979, the surviving members walked on stage together at Charlie Daniels's Volunteer Jam in Nashville and played Free Bird as an instrumental, with Daniels announcing that Lynyrd Skynyrd was back. Leon Wilkeson, his arm still in a cast, watched from the wings. It would be Allen Collins's last performance with the band.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Rossington and Collins then formed the Rossington Collins Band with Powell and Wilkeson. To avoid being seen as Skynyrd reborn, they hired a woman as lead singer, Dale Krantz, who had sung backup for 38 Special. Their 1980 debut, Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, went gold, and their encore was always an instrumental Free Bird for the friends they had lost. Then tragedy struck again. Just as their first tour began in 1980, Collins's wife Kathy died of a hemorrhage while miscarrying their third child. Collins began drinking heavily and using drugs, and started missing shows. The band split in 1982. Rossington married Dale Krantz that year, and he and Collins fell out, partly over her.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The rest scattered. Artimus Pyle had been set to drum with the new band until a motorcycle accident broke his leg. He later spent about three years in Jerusalem, studying at a yeshiva known for drawing spiritual seekers and musicians, and said he was trying to become a better human being. He then led the Artimus Pyle Band. Billy Powell, who became a Christian after the crash, toured with the Christian rock band Vision and spoke from the stage about his faith. JoJo Billingsley, who also turned to faith, was never invited to the 1979 reunion. Rossington and Dale formed the Rossington Band and made two albums, and Collins led the Allen Collins Band.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The darkest turn came on the twenty ninth of January 1986. Allen Collins, then thirty three, lost control of his new Ford Thunderbird near his home in Jacksonville and crashed. His girlfriend, Debra Jean Watts, was killed. Collins was left paralyzed from the waist down, with limited use of his arms and hands. Police said his license had already been suspended numerous times for drunk driving, and after the crash it was revoked for good. He pleaded no contest to DUI manslaughter, and he would never play guitar on stage again. At the time he had been working to bring the Skynyrd survivors back together, and had even considered Paul Rodgers as a singer.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The band flies again

In 1987, ten years after the crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited for a tribute tour. Rossington, Powell, Wilkeson and Pyle were joined by Ed King, back after twelve years away. On lead vocals was Ronnie's youngest brother Johnny Van Zant, who had fronted his own band. Randall Hall stood in for Allen Collins, who served as musical director from his wheelchair. As part of his plea deal, Collins was wheeled out each night to tell the crowd why he could no longer play and to warn them about drinking and driving, usually just before That Smell. Free Bird was played as an instrumental, and Johnny let the audience sing his brother's words. The tour became the live album Southern by the Grace of God.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The reunion was meant to be a one time tribute, and carrying on brought a lawsuit. Judy Van Zant Jenness and Teresa Gaines Rapp, the widows of Ronnie and Steve, said the survivors had agreed after the crash not to exploit the band's name. Under the 1988 settlement, the widows collect nearly thirty percent of touring income, and any band called Lynyrd Skynyrd had to include Rossington and at least two other pre-crash members. The decree also required the new band to add the year after its name, which is why the first new album was called Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991. Allen Collins died of chronic pneumonia on the twenty third of January 1990, aged thirty seven, and was buried beside Kathy.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991 was the band's first album of new songs since the crash, and on that tour Johnny sang Free Bird for the first time, in Baton Rouge, the city his brother never reached. Tensions followed. Artimus Pyle left during a show in Toronto in August 1991, later saying drugs and alcohol were still a problem in the band. In 1993 Pyle was charged in Florida with sexual offenses involving two young girls. He denied the charges, but in 1994 he pleaded no contest rather than risk a life sentence at trial, and was sentenced to probation and registration as a sex offender. In 2009 a jury acquitted him of a later charge of failing to register.[1] [2] [3]

In 1996 Ed King had to stop touring because of heart failure, and the band did not take him back after he recovered. Two Southern rock veterans came in: Hughie Thomasson of the Outlaws, and Rickey Medlocke, the drummer from the early days, now a lead guitarist and singer after two decades fronting Blackfoot. Medlocke said Rossington called and asked whether he still remembered how to play Free Bird. The 1997 album Twenty marked two decades since the crash, and on one track used an old recording of Ronnie to create a duet with Johnny. Drummer Michael Cartellone, formerly of Damn Yankees, joined in 1999 and was still behind the kit as of 2026.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The losses kept coming. Leon Wilkeson was found dead in a hotel room in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, on the twenty seventh of July 2001. He was forty nine, and the medical examiner cited chronic liver and lung disease. Ean Evans took over on bass. Hughie Thomasson, who had left to revive the Outlaws, died of a heart attack in 2007. On the thirteenth of March 2006, Lynyrd Skynyrd entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols, and Bob Burns, Artimus Pyle and Ed King joined in on Free Bird. Then in 2009 Billy Powell died of a suspected heart attack at fifty six, and Ean Evans died of cancer at forty eight.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Flags, farewells and the last founder

The band pressed on with keyboardist Peter Keys and guitarist Mark Matejka, releasing God and Guns in 2009 and Last of a Dyin' Breed in 2012, which turned out to be Rossington's final studio album. They played Sean Hannity's Freedom Concert series in 2010 and later appeared at the 2016 Republican National Convention. The Confederate flag became a flashpoint. On CNN in 2012, Rossington said groups like the Ku Klux Klan and skinheads had hijacked the flag, and the band said it would stop using it. After a backlash from fans they reversed course, citing Southern heritage. By their farewell tour the flag was gone from the show, and Rossington admitted it was naive to say it never meant to offend.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Original drummer Bob Burns died on the third of April 2015, aged sixty four, when his car left the road on a sharp curve near his home in Cartersville, Georgia, and hit a mailbox and a tree. Rossington's health was failing too. He had had quintuple bypass surgery in 2003 and a heart attack in October 2015. In 2017 old wounds reopened in court. Judy Van Zant, Rossington, Johnny Van Zant and the estates of Collins and Steve Gaines sued to stop a film about the crash made with Artimus Pyle's input. A judge blocked it in 2017, an appeals court lifted the ban in 2018, and Street Survivors, the True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, came out in 2020.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

In January 2018 the band announced the Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour, starting that May in West Palm Beach, Florida, with guests including Kid Rock and Hank Williams Junior. The documentary If I Leave Here Tomorrow premiered that same year. Ed King died at his home in Nashville on the twenty second of August 2018, aged sixty eight, after a battle with cancer. He had survived a heart transplant in 2011. Founding bassist Larry Junstrom, who spent thirty seven years in 38 Special, died of a brain tumor in October 2019. Then the pandemic halted touring. When the band returned in 2021, Rossington had just had emergency heart surgery, and Damon Johnson stepped in on guitar.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Gary Rossington died at his home in Milton, Georgia, on the fifth of March 2023, aged seventy one. He was the last surviving founding member and the only musician to play on every Lynyrd Skynyrd album. The band's statement said he was now with his Skynyrd brothers in heaven. About a week later the band was back on stage, and in April they confirmed they would carry on with the blessing of the families. His widow Dale said Gary always insisted Skynyrd's music was bigger than any one person. That summer they toured with ZZ Top. Rickey Medlocke recalled that as they prepared to say goodbye to Gary, a plaque arrived certifying one billion Spotify streams of Sweet Home Alabama.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Rossington's last recordings included slide guitar on a new version of Free Bird. In November 2023 Dolly Parton released it on her album Rockstar, with Skynyrd members, Artimus Pyle and Ronnie's original vocal woven in. Parton said Judy Van Zant allowed Ronnie's voice for her, though not for the band. The song keeps finding new audiences. American hockey teams adopted its guitar solo as their goal song, including at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, and the United States used a remix of it as its goal song at the 2026 World Cup. As of 2026, Lynyrd Skynyrd, led by Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke, is still on the road, more than sixty years after that ball game in Jacksonville.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

The people around Lynyrd Skynyrd

Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington. Ronnie was three years older than Gary, whose father died soon after he was born, and he became a big brother and father figure, even teaching him to drive. Together they wrote Sweet Home Alabama, Simple Man and Gimme Back My Bullets. When Gary crashed his car drunk in 1976, Ronnie answered with That Smell. Gary then spent the rest of his life carrying the band Ronnie started.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins. Collins once hid up a tree thinking Ronnie had come to beat him up, but they became the band's core writing team. Together they wrote Free Bird, Gimme Three Steps, Tuesday's Gone, The Ballad of Curtis Loew and That Smell. Collins had the chords for Free Bird for years before Ronnie found the melody in a few minutes.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant and Neil Young. Sweet Home Alabama called out Young by name, but the two men were admirers, not enemies. Ronnie wore Young's Tonight's the Night T-shirt on stage, and Young said he was proud to be named in their song. Young sent Ronnie a tape of Powderfinger for Skynyrd to record, but Ronnie died before they could. Young released it himself in 1979.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant and Al Kooper. Kooper discovered and produced the band's first three albums, but the relationship was tense. He said he hated Ronnie and liked him at the same time, and admitted he feared him. When Kooper disliked Simple Man, Ronnie sent him out of the studio. They parted after Nuthin' Fancy, yet Kooper later wrote that Ronnie ran the band with an iron hand and that nothing would have happened without him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant and Ed King. King, a Californian, gave Skynyrd its three guitar sound and the riff of Sweet Home Alabama, but he hated the band's brawling. After Ronnie berated him over broken strings in 1975, King quit on the spot. He returned for the 1987 reunion, and in 2009 publicly contradicted his old bandmates about the meaning of their biggest hit.[1] [2] [3]

Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines. The brother and sister from Miami, Oklahoma, joined the band months apart. Cassie became a Honkette in late 1975 and kept pushing the band to hear Steve, who joined in 1976. Both died in the crash of October 1977. Steve was killed on impact, while Cassie, who had begged not to fly on the Convair, bled to death before help arrived.[1] [2] [3]

Gary Rossington and Allen Collins and Dale Krantz-Rossington. The two surviving guitarists built the Rossington Collins Band together after the crash, choosing Dale Krantz as singer so no one would mistake it for Skynyrd. The partnership broke apart in 1982, amid Collins's grief over his wife's death and a falling out over Krantz's affections. Rossington married her that year, and she sang with the reformed Skynyrd for decades.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie Van Zant and Donnie Van Zant and Johnny Van Zant. Three brothers from Jacksonville all fronted bands. Ronnie talked middle brother Donnie out of quitting music for a railroad job, and Donnie formed 38 Special, which Ronnie later connected with Skynyrd's manager Peter Rudge. Youngest brother Johnny took over Skynyrd's microphone in 1987. Donnie and Johnny also recorded together as Van Zant.[1] [2] [3]

Judy Van Zant Jenness and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ronnie's widow became the guardian of his legacy. She and Teresa Gaines Rapp sued the reformed band in the late 1980s, winning a share of touring income and rules about who could use the name. She later sued again to stop a film about the crash, yet she also helped unveil the 2019 monument and let Dolly Parton use Ronnie's voice.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Artimus Pyle and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Pyle drummed on the band's peak albums and walked out of the crash to fetch help. He rejoined in 1987 but left in 1991, citing drugs and alcohol. Relations soured further when the band, Judy Van Zant and the estates sued over a crash film based on his account. He declined to join the farewell tour, yet played with Skynyrd members on Dolly Parton's Free Bird.[1] [2] [3]

Charlie Daniels and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The fiddler and bandleader was one of Ronnie's closest friends. He read a poem he wrote at Ronnie's funeral, and his Volunteer Jam raised money for the crash victims' families before hosting the survivors' first return to the stage in 1979. He later wrote a song remembering Ronnie, and his band's tribute after Rossington's death called him the last of the original free birds.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Peter Rudge and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rudge, who also managed the Who, took over management from Alan Walden in 1974 and helped launch 38 Special. He leased the Convair cheaply, and friends said the band had soured on him by the time of the crash, seeing the old plane as a sign he was doing things on the cheap while he himself reportedly flew first class.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Lynyrd Skynyrd

• When Ronnie and Bob Burns came to recruit Allen Collins, he fled on his bicycle and hid up a tree. Both Van Zant and Burns had reputations for fighting, and Collins assumed they had come to beat him up. They talked him down, and he joined the band about two weeks after it formed.[1]
• At Allen Collins's 1970 wedding, the whole band wore wigs to hide their long hair. His bride Kathy worried their hair would upset her parents. The reception became one of the first public performances of Free Bird with its long guitar ending.[1]
• Gary Rossington's favorite Les Paul was named Bernice, after his mother. He bought the 1959 Gibson from a woman whose boyfriend had left it behind. His mother raised him alone after his father died, and they were very close.[1] [2]
• A Leonard Skinner Realty sign appeared in the Nuthin' Fancy artwork, phone number included. Fans started calling the old gym teacher late at night. He recalled answering with his name and hearing callers say far out, which he did not find so far out at four in the morning.[1]
• The gym teacher who inspired the band's name later opened a bar where Skynyrd played. Leonard Skinner became friendly with the band, and they played at his Jacksonville bar, The Still. He also named a couple of bars after himself to cash in on the fame.[1]
• Leon Wilkeson played a hybrid Fenderbird bass that he got from the Who's John Entwistle. It paired a custom Gibson Thunderbird body with a Fender Precision neck. He can be seen playing it on the British TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975.[1]
• Before stardom, Leon Wilkeson stocked ice cream at a Jacksonville dairy. He joked that he got paid every two weeks and could eat all the ice cream he wanted. When nerves made him quit the band in 1972, he went straight back to that job.[1]
• Leon Wilkeson's colorful stage hats earned him the nickname the Mad Hatter. After his death in 2001, the band dedicated a song called Mad Hatter to him on their 2003 album Vicious Cycle.[1]
• Steve Gaines and Ed King were born on the very same day. Both men were born on the fourteenth of September 1949. Gaines took the guitar chair that opened up when King quit in 1975.[1] [2]
• Cassie Gaines had never heard of Lynyrd Skynyrd when she was invited to sing with them. JoJo Billingsley lent her copies of the band's first two albums so she could catch up.[1]
• Ed King sold snacks to his bandmates on tour at a hefty markup. Rossington said King would buy about a hundred dollars' worth of Slim Jims, keep them in a briefcase and sell them to the hungry band on long drives for triple the price.[1] [2]
• The name Curtis Loew was borrowed from a chain of movie theaters. Ed King chose the spelling while writing the liner notes, naming the bluesman after Loew's theaters. The original band played the song live only once.[1]
• What's Your Name mentions Boise, Idaho, but the true story behind it did not happen there. Ronnie changed the city after learning that his brother Donnie's band, 38 Special, was starting its first national tour in Boise.[1]
• Gimme Three Steps grew out of a real night when a man pulled a gun on Ronnie in a bar. According to Rossington, Ronnie had been dancing with another man's woman in a Jacksonville bar when the gun came out.[1]
• Simple Man was inspired by the death of Ronnie's grandmother in November 1971. The song is framed as a mother's advice to her son, and Rossington plays its guitar solo. It later became the band's third best selling digital song.[1]
• Robert Nix of the Atlanta Rhythm Section, not Bob Burns, played drums on Tuesday's Gone. Ronnie and Al Kooper asked for him. Kooper also played bass and added strings on a Mellotron to the track.[1] [2]
• Right after the debut album's cover photo was taken, Gary Rossington threw up on the sidewalk. It was the last shot of a long day shooting on Main Street in Jonesboro, Georgia. Everyone pictured on that cover had died by March 2023.[1]
• A line in Cry for the Bad Man was aimed at the band's former manager Alan Walden. Walden kept urging them to save money rather than spend it. Van Zant later said he regretted writing the jab.[1]
• Ronnie Van Zant was said to have a near photographic memory for car parts. As a young man he worked at his brother-in-law's auto parts store in Jacksonville and was described as a walking catalog.[1]
• Ronnie Van Zant's mother had a lifelong fear of flying after seeing a fatal crash as a child. Because of it, Marion Van Zant did not fly to Mississippi after the 1977 crash. Ronnie's father Lacy went to identify his son.[1]
• The Convair that crashed in 1977 was only the third of its model ever built. It was made in 1947, making it about thirty years old at the time of the crash. Skynyrd leased it for three payments of five thousand dollars.[1]
• Identifying victims after the crash was slowed because many had their wallets out for a poker game. Wallets and ID cards were scattered across the forest floor, and some were later taken by souvenir hunters.[1]
• The Scottish band Nazareth, touring with Skynyrd, were wrongly reported among the dead. They had declined a ride on the plane with a made up excuse. The road crew assumed they were aboard, and Dan McCafferty's wife burst into tears of relief when he called.[1] [2]
• Leon Wilkeson said that during his surgery he saw Ronnie and Duane Allman, who told him to go back. His heart stopped twice on the operating table. He described sitting on a cloud shaped log with them, and Ronnie telling him it was not his time.[1]
• The 2019 crash monument in Gillsburg has six steps, one for each person who died. The seven ton black granite monument was the idea of local people who had rescued survivors in 1977, and fans paid for it.[1]
• A 1988 court settlement required the reformed band to add a year to its name. That is why the first new studio album was titled Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991. Judy Van Zant testified the band dropped the year around 1993.[1] [2]
• Johnny Van Zant first sang Free Bird in Baton Rouge, the city the 1977 flight never reached. On the 1987 tribute tour it was played as an instrumental while the crowd sang. Johnny finally sang it himself on the 1991 tour.[1] [2]
• On the 1997 album Twenty, Johnny Van Zant sings a duet with his late brother. The band used Ronnie's old vocal tracks on Travelin' Man, a song first released on the 1976 live album.[1]
• Billy Powell played on Kid Rock's All Summer Long, which borrows from Sweet Home Alabama. Eight people are credited as writers of the 2008 hit, including Van Zant, Rossington and Ed King. Its success sent the original back into the UK chart.[1] [2]
• Since 2009 Alabama has used Sweet Home Alabama as a slogan on its license plates. Governor Bob Riley had already adopted the phrase for a multimillion dollar tourism campaign in 2007.[1]
• A dance medley of Free Bird and Baby, I Love Your Way hit number one in 1988. The band Will to Power combined the Skynyrd song with Peter Frampton's ballad, and it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for one week.[1]
• In 2016 Bob Dylan and his band played a snippet of Free Bird after a fan shouted for it. It happened at the last encore of a show in Berkeley, California, in June 2016.[1]
• Director Matthew Vaughn chose Free Bird for Kingsman's church fight because the solo was long enough. The guitar solo plays through the whole brawl scene in the 2014 film.[1]
• Original bassist Larry Junstrom was a ham radio operator whose call sign stood for Known 4 Excellent Bass. His call sign was K4EB. He later spent thirty seven years playing bass in 38 Special.[1]
• Rickey Medlocke was performing on television with a banjo at the age of three. His grandfather Shorty Medlocke, a bluegrass and blues musician, raised him and taught him to play.[1] [2]
• Lynyrd Skynyrd appeared on a 2008 Universal Music list of artists whose master tapes may have burned. It is not known for certain which, if any, of their masters were lost in the Universal fire.[1]
• Artimus Pyle's cowbell on stage was a real cowbell. The former Marine also asked Slingerland for drums without bottom heads, to make miking them easier.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.