Inspired by The New Riders Of The Purple Sage & The Outlaws threads... Lynyrd Skynyrd - An Open Discussion. Let's have some fun! I love them! been a fan since their debut... I play/played their songs on my players and on my guitar...great, great band...
Weirdly enough, for the most part they are fairly new to me. Obviously Sweet Home Alabama, is really well known everywhere. I got Southern Surroundings on bluray in 5.1 not too long ago. Last week with encouragement from @Anthrax I got the deluxe One More From The Road. Excellent band
I was blessed to have seen them in 3 different lineups : 1974 - with Ed King 1976 - no 3rd guitarist 1976 - with Steve Gaines Spooky but true : When Ed visited Steve Gaines' grave, he learned they shared the exact same birthday.
Finally saw the doc "If I Leave Here Tomorrow" a few weeks ago. Outstanding. Such heartbreak and tragedy in that band. Too bad that Gary and Artimus are so estranged.
Random useless Skynyrd personal facts: - One of my key fave bands growing up in the 70's. - My introduction to them was hearing Sweet Home Alabama on the radio. All us kids in the neighborhood loved it. I bought that album on cassette and played it to death. Freebird was not even a hit yet (think that didn't get the airplay until after they broke with SHA despite it coming from the older album). - Amusingly one of my friends titled that song "Neil Young we hate you" because of the Neil shoutout. - Used to have a big Skynyrd poster hanging up in my bedroom at home. - When I went to college and the plane crash happened I had tickets to see them back home on that tour. My mom sent me an article about the crash in the mail cutout of the Philadelphia Inquirer. - That year was a bad one for rock & roll deaths. Keith Moon died around the same time IIRC. - I learned about the crash at college, think one of my friends told me to sit down b4 he told me. I thought he was just making a sick joke to torment me though. Same as what happened with Keith. - The album got pulled from the record stores at college b4 I could buy my copy (by that time I had graduated to buying LPs instead of cassettes). Had to settle eventually for the replacement cover when that came out but I was able to get an original cover release by ordering an import from the UK somehow (this is all pre-internet days obviously). - Luckily I did get to see them, was one of those crazy outdoor fesitval gigs at JFK stadium on a summer day. Peter Frampton was the headliner. Can't remember all the acts, think it was something like Dickey Betts, J Geils, Skynyrd, then Frampton. Probably started around noon, musta got there in the morning. We sat on the field rather than in the stands. We bought some food the night b4, hoagies & such, at a local pizza place. There were some cute girls there (i 4get if they worked there or were other customers) who told us they were going also. Amazingly we found them on the field (or they found us) and setup right next to us. The stadium was a sea of teenagers partying & having fun for hours, bongs galore. Almost everyone crashed at the same time and were sleeping/lying down by the time Skynyrd came on. I stood up and jumped up & down in excitement but I could not stir my friends, they spent the set lying on their backs, some asleep. I stayed with my crew but one of my friends who was also a big fan decided to see how far up he could get to the stage and disappeared into the sea of humanity. When we hooked up again later he said that he got all the way right up to the foot of the stage. I regret not setting forth with him to get close up to this day. Fun times! - I did go to the reunion tour and thought it was great. I also find much to like from the reunion albums over the years despite it being a vastly different band. - Pisses me off seeing the classic band go the way that they did, right at their peak, losing Ronnie & co. like that. Such a tragic waste & loss of life made all the more frustrating by how avoidable it was. That plane should never have been in service let alone for a band that should have been able to afford much better transport.
I recommend The Drive-By Truckers' "Southern Rock Opera" for an interesting telling of Skynyrd, Rock and Roll, and growing up in the South in the 70's.
Street Survivors FTW. Would've been great to see subsequent albums with Steve Gaines on board. I used to have a bootleg of a concert they did in Wales. Sound quality was excellent and the band smoked.
I 4got to add. During our teenage musical discussions I made the statement that Freebird was "the greatest guitar song ever written" referring to the ending jam. Most of my friends did not agree and I took endless grief over that comment. Think it morphed at times into comments to tease me like "that was the greatest pizza ever baked" or "greatest bong hit ever" or use your imagination.
Grew up listening to these guys, as a kid. My folks saw them a few times, including Soldier Field in 1977.
I admittedly don't listen to much of them outside of the classic rock staples, but Tuesday's Gone is one of my favorite songs ever, and of course Free Bird and Sweet Home Alabama are timeless classics that I always enjoy. I also have mad love for Call Me the Breeze and that bad ass piano solo.