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.
