Rock Giants:

Here's a road worn group of American rockers that have fought some battles to protect their music and their way of life......that's right, we are talking about freedom again.  Lynyrd Skynyrd makes their way onto stages across America every week and your leader, el Bandito, has them here on the pages of Banditoamps for your reading and listening pleasure.

The story starts out in the college town of Iowa City, IA around 1973. A new southern rock band is getting a lot of play time on the FM stations and they are scheduled to tour the midwest during the winter. Your roving reporter, el Bandito, files into the auditorium on the Univ. of Iowa campus (quietly hippyish) and takes up residence with about five thousand other strangers. The air was thick and smelled like burning campfires. Lynyrd Skynyrd takes the stage and there's a few moments of discomfort as these long-haired, yallin' drallin' types from the deep south try to get a read on who these Eskimo looking dweebs are from a podunk town in Iowa.

They started out tight and melodic with some really good vocal harmonies from a couple lady backup singers, and a very solid rhythm section enhanced with a first class pianist.  But, the most dynamic and charismatic part of the scene was a kind of hermit looking fellow center stage, in a kind of Little Joe Cartwright western hat. He swayed with the music and his voice was not pretty, but he seemed to weave a spell on the crowd and the sound of his voice began to hypnotize the pre-med, future farmers crowd.


Your Bandito was flyin' solo that night, but flyin' for sure, and his toes were beginning to tap out the rockin', stompin' tunes these young fellers were puttin' down.  Nice, very nice!  It was so easy to forget about the animal husbandry final I had to study for; so darn easy to release my inhibitions and fall captive to the tight, dynamic sound of this new band.  And then, something special happened.

"Are you talking about me being 'something special' Bandy?  Did you want to try some of that animal husbanding on me?"  Leann has popped back up in Bandy's cloudy memory banks, and she's forgotten to put on her moomoo again.

Where were we?  Oh yeah, Ronnie Van Zant and the Skynheads (borrowed handle from those peacenick Deadheads) from Jacksonville, Floridia.

So your Bandito is beginning to see the 'Exit' signs at the University of Iowa Cow Palace Ballroom and Auditorium start to wink at him. Hmmmm, I start to ponder a break for some fresh air and the idea of a crappy treck back to the dorm to study. Then, before I make my break out the exit, I hear Ronnie VZ tell the crowd, "Yeah, Iowa City, or wherever this place is? It's been a real gas playing for you tonight. Here's a song we dedicated to Duane Allman. It's called 'Free Bird'."

The song started out slow and dreamy-like. The student body was quiet and relaxed. Then, as the song progressed, the volume started to increase and the tempo of the music began to bump and pulsate.  Louder, faster, then louder some more and faster yet.  On it moved, into the brain matter of the midwestern mush heads.  All of a sudden, I was on my feet, I was starting to yell, "Go you rebel bastards, go!"  They must of heard me cuz Van Zant winked at me, threw me his Little Joe cowboy hat, and started kicking his boots out into the now, swarming, screaming crowd. Blam, blam, rip and tear; higher, faster, louder these rebels went. The dueling guitars were flawless and omnipotent. The Cow Palace was beginning to shake and the foundation was moving back and forth with the fever pitch of these young lads from Dixie. 

Then it was over.....aaaaah, what a great song. I felt exhausted and elated at the same time. I put Van Zant's cowboy hat on and two twin sisters that looked like angels grabbed me.  They were pre-med and they wanted to know if they could 'examine' me?  What a night mi banditos!  What a night, and what a great rock band. Lynyrd Skynyrd is still out on the road making great music and pleasing crowds across the states.  Catch their act whenever possible and for sure, get yourself a couple of their early works.  You won't be disappointed.  Bandy's honor.

Early years

In the summer of 1964, teenage friends Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins, and Gary Rossington, formed the band "The Noble Five", which then changed in 1965 to "My Backyard", when Larry Junstrom and Bob Burns joined in Jacksonville, Florida. Their early influences included British Invasion bands such as Free, The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, as well as Southern blues and country & western music.^{[citation needed]} In 1968, the group won a local Battle of the Bands contest and the opening slot on several Southeast shows for the California-based psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock.^{[citation needed]}

In 1970, roadie Billy Powell became the keyboardist for the band, and Van Zant sought a new name. "One Percent" and "The Noble Five" were each considered before the group settled on Leonard Skinnerd, a mocking tribute to a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, Leonard Skinner,^[4] who was notorious for strictly enforcing the school's policy against boys having long hair.^[5][6] The more distinctive spelling was adopted before they released their first album. Despite their high school acrimony, the band developed a more friendly relationship with Skinner in later years, and invited him to introduce them at a concert in the Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum.^[7]

The band continued to perform throughout the South in the early 1970s, further developing their hard-driving, blues-rock sound and image. In 1972, Leon Wilkeson replaced Larry Junstrom on bass, but left just before the band was to record its first album (Wilkeson rejoined the band shortly thereafter at Van Zant's invitation).^{[citation needed]} Strawberry Alarm Clock guitarist Ed King filled in as bass player, later switching to guitar after the album's release, allowing the band to replicate the three-guitar mix used in the studio.

In 1970, the band auditioned for Alan Walden, who would later become their manager on the newly formed Hustler's Inc. Walden worked with the band until 1974, when management was turned over to Pete Rudge.

[edit] Peak years (1973–1977)

In 1972 the band was discovered by musician, songwriter, and producer Al Kooper of Blood, Sweat, and Tears, who had attended one of their shows at a club in Atlanta. They changed the spelling of their name to "Lynyrd Skynyrd",^[8] (pronounced 'leh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) and Kooper signed them to MCA Records, producing their first album (pronounced 'leh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd). Released January 1, 1973,^[9] the album featured the hit song "Free Bird", which received national airplay, eventually reaching #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and is still considered a rock and roll anthem today.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's fan base continued to grow rapidly throughout 1973, largely due to their opening slot on The Who's Quadrophenia tour in the United States. Their 1974 follow-up, Second Helping, was the band's breakthrough hit, and featured their most popular single, "Sweet Home Alabama" (#8 on the charts in August 1974), a response to Neil Young's "Alabama" and "Southern Man." (Young and Van Zant were not rivals, but fans of each other's music and good friends; Young even wrote the song "Powderfinger" for the band, but they never recorded it.^[10] Van Zant, meanwhile, can be seen on the cover of Street Survivors wearing a Neil Young t-shirt.) The album reached #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 Skynyrd's third album, Nuthin' Fancy, was released the same year, though guitarist Ed King left midway through the tour. The album has the lowest sales and Kooper was eventually fired. In January 1976, backup singers Leslie Hawkins, Cassie Gaines and JoJo Billingsley (collectively known as The Honkettes) were added to the band. Lynyrd Skynyrd's 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 Skynyrd's "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 in Atlanta, Georgia, 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. Rossington's 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's 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 Skynyrd's reputation.

1977's 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 Skynyrd's 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 Skynyrd's leader of Gaines' abilities that the album (and some concerts) featured Gaines delivering his self-penned bluesy "Ain't 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 "What's Your Name" and "That Smell". The band was poised for their biggest tour yet, including fulfilling Van Zant's lifelong dream of headlining New York's Madison Square Garden.

[edit] Plane crash (1977)

On Thursday, October 20, 1977, just three days after the release of Street Survivors, and five shows into their most successful headlining tour to date, Lynyrd Skynyrd's chartered Convair 240 ran out of fuel near the end of their flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had just performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Though the pilots attempted an emergency landing on a small airstrip, the plane crashed in a forest in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray were all killed on impact; the other bandmembers suffered serious injuries.

Following the crash and the ensuing press, Street Survivors became the band's second platinum album and reached #5 on the U.S. album chart. The single "What's Your Name" reached #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, Steve's widow), MCA Records withdrew the original cover and replaced it with a similar image of the band against a simple black background .^[11] 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 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.

Special Bandito thanks to Wikipeepeea for the historical data used for the edification of the banditoamps readers.

Billy 'The Hammer' Gibbons  This information was borrowed from the on-line encyclopedia  Snickerpemia  thx guys, Bandy

The band rolled on, intensively touring and recording/releasing albums until 1977, when they took an extended hiatus. Their long-time manager/producer/image maker Bill Ham used this time to negotiate a deal that allowed the band to keep control of their previous recordings, to be distributed by their new label, Warner Bros. Records. They reunited two-and-a-half years later in order to start recording under a new Warner Bros. Records contract. Unknown to each other at the time, both Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons had grown the chest-length beards that quickly became a part of their "wild man" image. Despite a short uniform beard in the 1990s, drummer Frank Beard always kept a clean face, with an occasional goatee.

The band hit international prominence and their commercial peak with the release of 1983's multi-platinum-selling disc Eliminator. Named after Gibbons's customized 1933 Ford Coupe (which, along with leggy party girls, was featured in several music videos), Eliminator featured the hits "Legs," "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Sharp Dressed Man," and "TV Dinners."

In 1994, the band signed a multi-million dollar, five-disc deal with RCA Records.

In 2003, a comprehensive collection of recordings from the London and Warner Bros. years entitled Chrome, Smoke & BBQ was released. In 2004, ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They have the distinction of being among a very small group of bands with a 30-year-plus history that still has all of its original members. As of 2006, it is reported that ZZ Top is recording their 15th studio album.

Johnny Winter:

Approximately one year after the gas attack commonly known as the Woodstock Rock Festival, a lesser known venue called The Wadena, Iowa Rock Festival happened and Senor Bandito was there to make sure no one got out of hand (really?) Wadena started on Friday night but Bandy was camped out on the gentle sloping hill 35 feet from the stage on Thursday night waiting to see if Governor Robert Ray was going to let the rockathon happen in the rolling hills of northeastern Iowa. As Bandy relaxed watching the orange sun set behind the large scaffold stage, a man of unknown origin came up and said, "Alright guys, here's the deal. You gotta be cool for a little while longer because Governor Ray is going to visit the site and if he says we can have the festival, we're home free. And, if you stay cool and Governor Ray leaves, Johnny Winter is going to come in and do a sound check on the stage."  This guy seemed excited about Johnny Winter but Bandy and his group were perplexed. They thought this was suppose to be a rock music festival. What would a funny guy like Jonathan Winter be doing checking the sound system? How odd they wondered could this place called Wadena, Iowa be?