It was originally written as a response to Neil Young's “Alabama” and “Southern Man,” a critical rebuke of slavery in the South. Written by Rossington, Van Zant and Ed King, none of whom were from Alabama, the complicated legacy of “Sweet Home Alabama” followed the band for decades. We made ‘Second Helping.’ It had ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ It made the charts. "We went back to clubs for enough money to get us to the next club. Back then, it was too long," Rossington told the AP in 1993. “Radio didn’t play ‘Free Bird.’ It was on the first album. A collection of country-tinged blues-rock and Southern soul, the album included now-classics like “Tuesday’s Gone,” “Simple Man” and “Gimme Three Steps,” but it was the closing track, the nearly 10-minute “Free Bird,” that became the group’s calling card, due in no small part to Rossington’s evocative slide playing on his Gibson SG. Rossington, Burns, Van Zant, and guitarist Allen Collins later gathered at Burns’ Jacksonville home to jam the Rolling Stone’s “Time Is on My Side.”Īdopting Lynyrd Skynyrd as the group’s name - both a reference to a similarly named sports coach at Rossington’s high school and to a character in the 1963 novelty hit “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” - the band released their debut album "Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-’nérd" in 1973. Upon meeting drummer Bob Burns and bassist Larry Junstrom, Rossington and his new friends formed a band, which they tried to juggle amid their love of baseball.Īccording to their bio in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it was during a fateful Little League game, Ronnie Van Zant hit a line drive into the shoulder blades of spectator Bob Burns and met his future bandmates. 4, 1951, in Jacksonville, Florida, and raised by his mother after his father died. At recent shows, Rossington would perform portions of the concert and sometimes sat out full gigs. In later years, Rossington underwent quintuple bypass surgery in 2003, suffered a heart attack in 2015, and had numerous subsequent heart surgeries, most recently leaving Lynyrd Skynyrd in July 2021 to recover from another procedure. He survived a car accident in 1976 in which he drove his Ford Torino into a tree, inspiring the band’s song “That Smell.” A year later, he survived the plane crash that killed singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, with multiple broken bones and internal injuries. “Gary is now with his Skynyrd brothers and family in heaven and playing it pretty, like he always does." “It is with our deepest sympathy and sadness that we have to advise, that we lost our brother, friend, family member, songwriter and guitarist, Gary Rossington, today,” the band wrote on Facebook. Gary Rossington, a co-founder and last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd who helped write the classic answer song “Sweet Home Alabama” and played unforgettable slide guitar on the rock anthem “Free Bird,” died Sunday at age 71.
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