~ Todays Classic Concert: Lynyrd Skynyrd ~ (73 min) Live at Asbury Park N.J. - 1977 Full Concert Setlist: Workin for MCA I Aint the One You Got That Right Saturday Night Special That Smell Whats Your Name Gimme Three Steps Call Me the Breeze T for Texas Sweet Home Alabama Free Bird Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band best known for popularizing the southern hard-rock genre during the 1970s. Originally formed in 1966 as the The Pretty Ones in Jacksonville, Florida, they then went through two name changes: The Noble Five and One Percent, before coming up with Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1969. The band rose to worldwide recognition on the basis of its driving live performances and signature tunes Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird. At the peak of their success, three members died in an airplane crash in 1977, putting an abrupt end to the bands most popular incarnation. In the summer of 1966, teenage friends Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins, and Gary Rossington formed the earliest incarnation of the band in Jacksonville, Florida as My Backyard. The band then changed its name to The Noble Five. when Larry Junstrom and Bob Burns joined. The band used different names before using One Percent during 1968. In 1969, Van Zant sought a new name. The group settled on Leonard Skinnerd, a mocking tribute to a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, Leonard Skinner, who was notorious for strictly enforcing the schools policy against boys having long hair. Rossington dropped out of school, tired of being hassled about his hair. The more distinctive spelling was being used at least as early as 1970. Despite their high school acrimony, the band developed a friendlier relationship with Skinner in later years, and invited him to introduce them at a concert in the Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum. Skinner also allowed the band to use a photo of his Leonard Skinner Realty sign for the inside of their third album. In 1970, Pat Armstrong, a Jacksonville native and partner in Macon-based Hustlers Inc. with Phil Waldens younger brother, Alan Walden, became the bands managers. Armstrong left Hustlers shortly thereafter to start his own agency. Walden stayed with the band until 1974, when management was turned over to Peter Rudge. The band continued to perform throughout the South in the early 1970s, further developing their hard-driving, blues-rock sound and image, and experimenting with making studio recordings. During this time, the band experienced some lineup changes for the first time. Junstrom left and was briefly replaced by Greg T. Walker on bass. At the same time, Ricky Medlocke joined as a second drummer and vocalist. Medlocke grew up with the founding members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Some versions of the bands history also have Burns leaving the band for a short time during this period. The band played some shows with both Burns and Medlocke, using a dual-drummer approach similar to that of The Allman Brothers. In 1971, they made some recordings at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio with Walker and Medlocke serving as the rhythm section, without the participation of Burns. Medlocke and Walker left the band to play with another southern rock band, Blackfoot, and when the band made a second round of Muscle Shoals recordings in 1972, Burns was featured on drums and Leon Wilkeson was Larry Junstroms replacement on bass. Also in 1972, roadie Billy Powell became the keyboardist for the band. Medlocke later returned to play drums for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Medlocke and Walker did not appear on any album until 1978, when First and... Last, which collected the bands recordings in the biennium 1971-1972, was posthumously released. This album was considered essential by most fans. Peak years (1973–1977) In 1972 the band (now Van Zant, Collins, Rossington, Burns, Wilkeson, and Powell) was discovered by musician, songwriter, and producer Al Kooper of Blood, Sweat & Tears, who had attended one of their shows at Funocchios in Atlanta. They changed the spelling of their name to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kooper signed them to his Sounds of the South label that was to be distributed and supported by MCA Records, producing their first album. Leon Wilkeson temporarily left the band during the early recording sessions for the album, only playing on two tracks. Wilkeson rejoined the band shortly after the albums release at Van Zants invitation and is pictured on the album cover. Strawberry Alarm Clock guitarist Ed King joined the band and played bass on the album (the only part, which Wilkeson had not already written being the solo section in Simple Man), along with some guitar work. King stayed in the band and switched solely to guitar after the albums release, allowing the band to replicate the three-guitar mix used in the studio for their live performances. Released August 13, 1973, the self-titled album with the subtitle Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd featured the hit song Free Bird, which received national airplay, eventually reaching No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Lynyrd Skynyrds fan base continued to grow rapidly throughout 1973, largely due to their opening slot on The Whos Quadrophenia tour in the United States. On their 1974 follow-up, Second Helping, the band successfully avoided any sophomore slump, with King, Collins and Rossington all collaborating with Van Zant on the songwriting. The album was the bands breakthrough hit, and featured their most popular single, Sweet Home Alabama (#8 on the charts in August 1974), a response to Neil Youngs Southern Man, and featuring some outstanding guitar work by King (Young and Van Zant were not rivals, but fans of each others music and good friends; Young even wrote the song Powderfinger for the band, but they never recorded it. Van Zant, meanwhile, can be seen on the cover of Street Survivors and in concert wearing a Neil Young Tonights the Night t-shirt. The album reached No. 12 in 1974, eventually going multi-platinum. In July of that year, Lynyrd Skynyrd was one of the headline acts at The Ozark Music Festival at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia, Missouri. In January 1975, Burns left the band and was replaced by Kentucky native Artimus Pyle on drums. Lynyrd Skynyrds third album, Nuthin Fancy, was released the same year. The album had lower sales than its predecessor. Kooper and the band parted by mutual agreement after the raucous recording of the LP. Kooper was left with the tapes to complete the mix before release. Midway through the tour, Ed King left the band, citing tour exhaustion. In January 1976, backup singers Leslie Hawkins, Cassie Gaines and JoJo Billingsley (collectively known as The Honkettes) were added to the band, although they were not considered official members. Lynyrd Skynyrds fourth album Gimme Back My Bullets was released in the new year, but did not achieve the same success as the previous two albums. Van Zant and Collins both felt that the band was seriously missing the three-guitar attack that had been one of its early hallmarks. Although Skynyrd auditioned several guitarists, including such high-profile names as Leslie West, the solution was closer than they realized. Soon after joining Skynyrd, Cassie Gaines began touting the guitar and songwriting prowess of her younger brother, Steve. The junior Gaines, who led his own band, Crawdad (which occasionally would perform Skynyrds Saturday Night Special in their set), was invited to audition onstage with Skynyrd at a concert in Kansas City on May 11, 1976. Liking what they heard, the group also jammed informally with the Oklahoma native several times, then invited him into the group in June. With Gaines on board, the newly reconstituted band recorded the double-live album One More from the Road at the Fox Theatre (Atlanta, Georgia) in Atlanta, and performed at the Knebworth festival, which also featured The Rolling Stones. Both Collins and Rossington had serious car accidents over Labor Day weekend in 1976, which slowed the recording of the follow-up album and forced the band to cancel some concert dates. Rossingtons accident inspired the ominous That Smell – a cautionary tale about drug abuse that was clearly aimed towards him and at least one other band member. Rossington has admitted repeatedly that he was the Prince Charming of the song who crashed his car into an oak tree while drunk and stoned on Quaaludes. Van Zant, at least, was making a serious attempt to clean up his act and curtail the cycle of boozed-up brawling that was part of Skynyrds reputation. 1977s Street Survivors turned out to be a showcase for guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, who had joined the band just a year earlier and was making his studio debut with them. Publicly and privately, Ronnie Van Zant marveled at the multiple talents of Skynyrds newest member, claiming that the band would all be in his shadow one day. Gaines contributions included his co-lead vocal with Van Zant on the co-written You Got That Right and the rousing guitar boogie I Know a Little, which he had written before he joined Skynyrd. So confident was Skynyrds leader of Gaines abilities that the album (and some concerts) featured Gaines delivering his self-penned bluesy Aint No Good Life – the only song in the pre-crash Skynyrd catalog to feature a lead vocalist other than Ronnie Van Zant. The album also included the hit singles Whats Your Name and That Smell. The band was poised for their biggest tour yet, with shows always highlighted by the iconic rock anthem Free Bird. In November, the band was scheduled to fulfill Van Zants lifelong dream of headlining New Yorks Madison Square Garden. The song Freebird in the movie Freebird the Movie was actually filmed on July 2, 1977 at the Oakland Coliseum and not on July 4 as stated by Bill Graham and in the credits. Plane crash (1977) Following a performance at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina, on October 20, 1977 the band boarded a chartered Convair CV-300 to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where they were scheduled to appear at LSU the following night. Due to a faulty engine, the airplane ran low on fuel and the pilots were diverted to the McComb-Pike County Airport. But the fuel was exhausted and they attempted an emergency landing before crashing in a heavily forested area five miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray were killed on impact; the other band members (Collins, Rossington, Wilkeson, Powell, Pyle, and Hawkins), tour manager Ron Eckerman, and road crew suffered serious injuries. The accident came just three days after the release of Street Survivors. Following the crash and the ensuing press, Street Survivors became the bands second platinum album and reached No. 5 on the U.S. album chart. The single Whats Your Name reached No. 13 on the single airplay charts in January 1978. The original cover sleeve for Street Survivors had featured a photograph of the band, particularly Steve Gaines, engulfed in flames. Out of respect for the deceased (and at the request of Teresa Gaines, Steves widow), MCA Records withdrew the original cover and replaced it with a similar image of the band against a simple black background. Thirty years later, for the deluxe CD version of Street Survivors, the original flames cover was restored. Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded after the tragedy, reuniting just once to perform an instrumental version of Free Bird at Charlie Daniels Volunteer Jam V in January 1979. Collins, Rossington, Powell and Pyle performed the song with Charlie Daniels and members of his band. Leon Wilkeson, who was still undergoing physical therapy for his badly broken left arm, was in attendance, along with Judy Van Zant, Teresa Gaines, JoJo Billingsley and Leslie Hawkins. Allen Collins was stricken with pneumonia in 1989 and died on January 23, 1990. He was 37. Leon Wilkeson, Skynyrds bassist since 1972, was found dead in his hotel room on July 27, 2001; his death was found to be due to emphysema and chronic liver disease. He was 49. On January 28, 2009, keyboardist Billy Powell died of a suspected heart attack at age 56 at his home near Jacksonville, Florida. youtu.be/QoEZa5oG4b4
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:39:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015