A Musical Epiphany

On the Surprising Influences of The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band

Here’s one of those sentences that makes me feel old:  I’ve been listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd for 41 years. 

And for 40 of those years, if you asked me to name Skynyrd’s musical influences I would have said:

-         = Outlaw country, particularly Merle Haggard

-          = Old school Blues

I had good reason for thinking this.  Skynyrd covered Haggard’s Honky Tonk Night Time Man on their last album.  Lyrically, they had much more in common with the Bakersfield sound than, say, rock and roll contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen or The Rolling Stones. Heck, Merle Haggard sang at Ronnie Van Zant’s funeral!

As for the Blues…they name-checked Son House in Swamp Music.  The fictional Curtis Loew is a character out of a Delta blues song.  And of course, they cover Robert Johnson’s Crossroads on ‘One More From the Road’.

But I had a musical revelation recently.  And since today is the anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, and Dean Kilpatrick, I thought I’d share it with you.

 

One of the quirks of the Era of Music Streaming is that the classic albums offered on Spotify, Apple Music, etc., are often ‘Deluxe’ and ‘Extended’ and ‘Super Deluxe Extended’.  They have outtakes and alternate takes and duplicate takes, which can be awesome but is also sometimes really annoying.  Like, maybe I just want to hear Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers’ as it was originally released, and not 9 other songs I don’t associate with that album?

About a year ago I was listening to the Skynyrd live album ‘One More From the Road (Deluxe Edition)’, specifically the alternate take of Crossroads.  I had always thought they were doing the old Robert Johnson blues song, which is actually called Cross Road Blues.  In fact, they ARE doing the old Robert Johnson blues song Cross Road Blues, albeit a rock and roll version. 

But in my deluxe edition Ronnie told a little story I’d never heard before:

"I remember one time when Allen and Gary and myself had to collect some Coke bottles* to go down to Miami to see a group we wanted to see.  And we did, and I thought they were the best group we ever saw.  I still do.  This is a song by them.  We’re going to try and do it for you."

 

In their minds, they weren’t playing Cross Road Blues, a 1936 blues song by Robert Johnson.  They were playing a 1968 Cream song!  When they were in high school, they weren’t country boys listening to old blues and country, they were hippies listening to rock and roll.  They weren’t idolizing Merle Haggard and Robert Johnson – their God was Eric Clapton.

* echoes of ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew’

 

From here, I dug into another story I sort of know, which I’ll share with you here along with some of my own theorizing. 

Not too long after Ronnie and Allen and Gary saw the best group they ever saw, they formed their own group, named after their high school gym teacher, Leonard Skinner.  And that band started kicking ass, and then that band got a record contract.  And they went to the fabled Muscle Shoals studio and made a record.  And they gave the record to the record company, which led to the following conversation, which I completely made up but also might be true:

Record Company Executive:  ‘What the hell is this?’

Skynyrd:  ‘It’s our record.  Do you like it?’

RCE:  ‘Um, no, we don’t.  It sounds like every other record.  It sounds like a bad Cream record.  We like you guys because you have something different.  You’re rock, but you’re also…I dunno…Southern.  Like, um, Rock Southern.  Or something.  Now go back to the studio and give us a completely different album.’

 

And they did.  They went back into the studio and came out with a completely different album, ‘Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd’.  

Oh, you want a different album Mr. Record Company Executive?  How about one with Freebird, Gimme Three Steps, Tuesday's Gone and Simple Man!  You like this record?

Sadly, 5 years, 5 studio albums, and one incredible live album later, on this day in 1977, a plane crashed.  And we’d never get another Lynyrd Skynyrd album again.

Or would we?  Somebody remembered that old Muscle Shoals album and released it in 1978 as ‘Skynyrd’s First…and Last’.  And you know what – it’s a really good record!  It’s very different than Pronounced, and I think in some ways sounds more like the pop sound of ‘Street Survivors’, which preceded it in release.  On the other hand, there are songs on there that make me feel that record company executive's pain.  What the hell is this?

I guess none of this should have surprised me.  After all, Sweet Home Alabama’s was co-written by a southern California guy who was in a psychedelic band called Strawberry Alarm Clock.  The anxiety of influence, indeed. 

Note:  I doubt very many people got this far, but if you did and want to hear more about my teenage obsession with Skynyrd, check out my sort-of obituary for Billy Powell.

The Kings (and Queen) of Rock

Forget Album Sales.  The Way to Track Artists Today is Spotify Stats 

About a year ago I was talking to my friend Windex about a recent musical obsession, an early 90s alt-country band called Uncle Tupelo.  I was in the middle of explaining how influential they were when his daughter looked them up on Spotify, and found they had fewer than 300,000 monthly listeners.  

In other words, borderline irrelevant.

The idea of ranking musicians by Spotify stats had never occurred to me before.  And since I’m a perfectly normal person who does perfectly normal things in his spare time, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive on classic rock artists and glean from the data what I could.

Let me be clear: I am well aware that Monthly Listeners, like all statistics, is deeply flawed.  It doesn’t factor how many songs are listened to, or how many hours.  It doesn't capture how many people are listening on other streaming platforms, or on other mediums.  It is quite simply the number of unique individuals who listened to that artist that month on that streaming platform.

But it is not, like Uncle Tupelo, irrelevant.  Streaming gives us meaningful metrics about what people are choosing to listen to.  Before streaming, record sales was the best metric we had.  But just because you bought that O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, it didn't mean you were throwing it on the turntable every day. To compare artists who were at their peak 20 or 30 or even 60 years ago, to see how many people are listening to them today, means something.  

Not artistic value, I’ll grant you.  But here’s the thing about artistic longevity: the really good stuff holds up.  Shakespeare may have been fighting Christopher Marlowe for the attention of London playgoers in the 1590s, but half a millennium later it’s no fight at all.  Moby Dick, Mozart, Michelangelo – artistic greatness persists.

And rock and roll as an art form is now old enough that maybe, just maybe, seeing who people (or at least, Spotify subscribers) are actually listening to is at least interesting, and possibly meaningful.  

Or maybe it’s just a fun way for me to spend an evening!

A Word About Methodology

This is a snapshot in time: particularly, the day of February 1, 2023.  Every statistic presented here is the Monthly Listeners (MLs, from now on) of a particular artist on that day.

My criteria was rock artists whose first album was released before I graduated college in 1988.  An arbitrary date, for sure, but it just worked out that way.  I started with the biggies – Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, etc.  I looked at solo artists like Billy Joel and Bruce.  I kept digging until I ended up with 30 artists.  These are not necessarily the top 30, but close enough.  You won’t see Rush or Grateful Dead or CSNY or other popular acts, because they tended to have numbers that were neither interesting or surprising (generally in the low single digit millions).  But you will see, for example, various members of the Beatles as solo artists, because their individual numbers tell us something about the enduring popularity of the biggest and most important rock and roll band.  

To give you a little context, here are the monthly listeners of the Top 3 artists on Spotify right now:

1. The Weeknd 97m

2. Taylor Swift 79m

3. Ed Sheeran 77m

The top Classic Rock artist is in 40th place today, with 48 million MLs.  The Beatles, with 27 million monthly listeners, are sandwiched in 120th place between Em Beihold and DJ Snake*.

*  Before you think this is a Sign of the Apocalypse, remember two things:  1) Millions of older folk are still listening to CDs and their iTunes library, so Spotify Monthly Listeners is far more likely to undercount older acts than they are to undercount, say, Mr. Snake.  Also, I’m pretty sure those two artists won’t be doing as well as the Beatles 52 years after their last recording.

My list of 30 artists is at the bottom.  But first - some observations.

Captain Fantastic

You will probably be surprised to hear the list is topped by… Sir Elton John, with 48 million Monthly Listeners!  

But I think that is a fluke.  His top-streamed song, by far, is "Cold Heart (Pnau remix)", a 2021 hit.  Pnau, as I’m sure you all know, is a trio of Australian producers who took a trio of Elton John songs from the 70s, added some vocals from the English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa, and produced a monster hit.  

It's quite good.  But the timing of this hit has Sir Elton much higher on the list, methinks, than he normally might be.  If I was doing this little experiment in 2015, when Paul McCartney was topping the charts with "FourFiveSeconds", his collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye, the numbers would have been similarly skewed.  So you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I declare the true Classic Rock Spotify Monthly Listeners crown goes where crowns often sit, on the head of the...

Queen!

With 42m MLs, Queen has nearly as many listeners as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined.  Nearly 7 times more than The Who.  Two and a half times more than U2.  What the what?

Yes, the movie Bohemian Rhapsody won Oscars and put them back on the map, but that was in 2018.  A lot has changed in the world since then!  You might be equally surprised to hear that their most listened to song, by far, isn’t "We Are The Champions" or “We Will Rock You" or even "Another One Bites the Dust".  It is "Don’t Stop Me Now’, which has more than twice as many listeners as any song produced by any of the artists in the paragraph above.  Color me shocked.

Oh, and if you're wondering how the King did...Elvis Presley has 17 million Monthly Listeners.  Not bad when you consider most of his surviving fans have no idea what Spotify is.

The World Makes Sense Again

Once you get past the first two anomalies on the list, the world regains its normalcy with The Beatles, who as usual beat all of their British Invasion rivals, with 27m listeners.  It’s also worth noting that Paul McCartney (10.7m), John Lennon (10.6m), and George Harrison (7.3m) all have respectable numbers.  Indeed double those of  Rush and the Grateful Dead.  Heck, even Ringo has a million MLs.

Fleetwood Mac vs. The Eagles

The two California-based 70s bands with colorful backstories and monster albums both did well – but it’s Fleetwood Mac with the easy win.  They are 4th on my list, with 25m MLs.  The Eagles are back in 15th place, with a very respectable 18m.

Heavy Metal Still Rules

How about this:  the next 3 artists on the list, all with roughly 24m MLs, are AC/DC, Guns ‘N Roses, and Metallica.  All of them rather easily beat Led Zeppelin (17m), their spiritual forerunner, and a band that was much bigger in their prime than any of these 3 (with the possible exception of AC/DC).  Most surprising to me is GNR, given how small their discography is.

The King of New Jersey

The growing popularity and respectability of Bon Jovi is one of the mysteries of our times.  This was a cheesy hair band, a less menacing version of Motley Crue.  And now he’s* beloved and respected and in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?  Warren Zevon can’t get in but this dude with the stone-washed denim jeans and frosted tips feathered hair writing cringey high school poetry lyrics can? 

Well, it’s worse than you thought: his Spotify MLs (24m) are significantly higher than Bruce Springsteen (14m).  Now look, if I'm in a bar and "Living on a Prayer" comes on I'm going to sing along about Tommy and Gina as loudly as the next guy.  But seriously, how did we allow this to happen?

On a related note, Bruce also lost the Battle of the Tri-State Troubadors: Billy Joel’s 13th place finish edged out The Boss, too.

* Yes, I am aware that I'm slipping back and forth between 'they' and 'he' as if I'm not sure if Bon Jovi is a person or a band.  That's because I'm not sure and I don't care enough to find out.  

Random Notes

• Tom Petty (solo) beat Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty had 18 Top 100 Billboard hits with the Heartbreakers, and only 7 without them.  He released 13 studio albums with the Heartbreakers and 3 without them.  I consider this an upset.  (bonus fact: Petty’s biggest hit was actually released on a Stevie Nicks album ("Stop Dragging My Heart Around".  Put differently, Stevie Nick’s' biggest hit was written by Tom Petty.)

• Creedence Clearwater Revival existed for 4 years.  But they have more MLs than Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers, and The Who…combined!

• Another shocker: Aerosmith just missed out on the Top 10, but still easily beat the likes of U2 and Pink Floyd.

• Perhaps the saddest thing on the list is The Who.  I always considered them one of the Big Four (along with Beatles, Stones, and Zep).  Alas, today, they can barely beat out George Harrison’s solo work.

• And finally: in the skirmish between Southern Rock bands, my beloved Lynyrd Skynyrd absolutely trounced the far more respected Allman Brothers.  I guess if you stick around for 30 years making one shitty record after another, it keeps those listeners rolling.  Maybe Neil Young (who has 2m fewer listeners than Neil Diamond) was wrong: it’s better to fade away than to burn out.

Here's the list:

1 Elton John                                        47,734,430 

2 Queen                                         42,222,980 

3 The Beatles                                 27,523,606 

4 Fleetwood Mac                         24,893,393 

5 AC/DC                                         24,418,378 

6 Guns N' Roses                         24,386,262 

7 Metallica                                         24,384,583 

8 Bon Jovi                                         22,734,657 

9 The Rolling Stones                         22,156,356 

10 CCR                                         21,557,748 

11 Aerosmith                                 21,404,458 

12 The Police                                 20,126,177 

13 Billy Joel                                         19,299,273 

14 U2                                                 18,568,809 

15 The Eagles                                 18,281,069 

16 Elvis Presley                                 17,386,843 

17 Pink Floyd                                 17,354,383 

18 Led Zeppelin                                 17,289,419 

19 Bruce Springsteen                          14,327,632 

20 Lynyrd Skynyrd                         13,011,316 

21 The Clash                                 10,760,711 

22 Paul McCartney                         10,754,194 

23 John Lennon                                 10,650,950 

24 The Beach Boys                         10,142,970 

25 Bob Dylan                                 9,267,357 

26 Tom Petty                                 8,187,505 

27 The Who                                         7,415,837 

28 George Harrison                         7,359,429 

29 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 6,262,043 

30 The Allman Brothers                 3,999,466