Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History

These Cameron Crowe anecdotes were all compiled in 1998 for the book

On Ronnie Listening To Country Music
I don’t really remember him listening to country music or anything like that, or much blues. Mostly it was Free, Stones, Clapton, even the Beatles that we talked about or that I heard them playing. That was sort of the extent of it.

On The Hunt
I was a journalist, it was 1973, and I was on the road with the Who on their Quadrophenia tour for Playboy. I was sixteen and it was a big assignment. The tour opened in Atlanta at the Omni and Lynyrd Skynyrd was opening the show. I had just had a cover story come out in Rolling Stone on the Allman Brothers – it was Gregg Allman on the cover – and I wasn’t sure how the Allman Brothers felt. There was a lot of stuff in the article that was truthful, spooky, personal – it was the result of a lot of reporting. I was a young guy and I just disappeared inside that story and it meant a lot to me.

Ronnie Van Zant sought me out because he knew I was around. He came to me backstage at the Omni. The Who had just played their show, it was an amazing show, but there were problems with the tapes that were being played to synch up with their performance of Quadrophenia. The Who did this amazing show and then immediately went into their dressing room and started trashing their dressing room, throwing themselves around, and you could stand outside and hear the Who going nuts inside this dressing room.

In that environment, Ronnie sought me out, introduced himself, and said, “Man, I read your Allman Brothers story and you are quite a writer. I can really relate to you because you’re a young guy starting out and I’m a young guy starting out and, man, aren’t the Allman Brothers an amazing story? They’re part of my crowd, but I don’t really know those guys. But I loved your story.”

That was the beginning of my relationship with Ronnie. He was the first musician that crossed the line and talked to me like I was an artist or a writer. It blew me away. He was a guy who treated me like I was an equal, and it gave me a lot of confidence, doing that. A straight-ahead, sensitive guy. No agenda, he didn’t ask me to write about him, just took the opportunity to tell me the story had reached him. Over the next three years, we stayed pretty tight, and I did write about them and went on the road with them and all kinds of stuff.

They stopped playing Quadrophenia at a certain point, because they could never get the tapes right, and I think Daltrey was all pissed off because Entwistle had mixed the album and he wasn’t happy with the mix, nobody was happy with the mix. The audience just didn’t want to hear it. It was like, “What is this garbage? What are these songs? What is Keith Moon singing ‘Bell Boy’ for? Let’s heart ‘Baba O’Reilly’!” But Skynyrd was opening on that leg and they were amazing. They were a great band and they went over with the audience really well. Ronnie’s mind was blows that they were playing with the Who: “Can you believe it, we’re playing with the Who?”

On Peter Rudge – The Who Manager
I think Ronnie was very enamored of Rudge, he had ties to the Who and the Stones, and he was just a guy who was part of the royalty even though he was a manager, and he had a relationship with Ronnie where they talked a lot. Ronnie wanted to learn the business from him.

Down South Jukin’
I don’t know that the band was that important to MCA early on that they would spend that kind of effort to think about an image they would pursue. I think it came from the guys. They were rough-and-tumble guys. They were like guys that I had gone to school with that I was almost too scared to hang out with. In the early years, it was always veering wildly, almost off the tracks. I don’t know that there was anybody that would have conceived of an image and had the balls to sit down and tell them to adhere to the image.

My experience with Ronnie later was, he was trying to fight that image and was very concerned with staying intact for the long haul and he wanted to be a major band. Often that image, in the later years, would bite ’em, because people would want to pick fights with them everywhere they went. Often, they would accept the fight, sometimes they wouldn’t. I know toward the end that Ronnie was very much Papa Ronnie, and did not want to see his guys getting beat up or beating anyone else up when they had a more important job to do. But in the early times, I didn’t see that they were trying to live up to an image; it was who they were. If somebody tried to push one of them around, I don’t remember them not pushing back. Ronnie less than the others, frankly. But they were sweet, smart, responsible, heartfelt, soulful guys who would drink and veer off the rails. That’s the heartbreak of it. I’m not sure that in the basic image that came up, people understood how deep they really were. Musically, you can they’re deep. They didn’t stumble into those records – they came from their hearts.

If you think of it in terms of Seattle stuff, the Allman Brothers were Nirvana. The Allman Brothers had the spotlight of the world on them and they defined the scene by their success. So with most of these bands at a certain point, the conversation would come around to the Allman Brothers Band. With Duane gone, with Gregg in his place being the guy in the center. I know Ronnie wanted to be accepted more by Gregg than he was. Around ’73 or ’74, I remember a conversation with him. There was a Capricorn Records picnic at Hilton Head or someplace like that. Phil Walden had a big party and he brought in a lot of people, brought in a lot of journalists. Ronnie was on a bus going to that picnic, and he had taken the opportunity to compliment Gregg on the music, and he didn’t feel like Gregg was giving him too much back in terms of respect or acknowledgement. It wasn’t a rift or anything, but I know Ronnie sort of wanted his props from Gregg, more than he was getting. It was very similar to the whole Seattle thing when Cobain was alive and that band was really happening. Did you talk to Gregg? Did Gregg say anything to you? Do you know how Gregg’s feeling? How’s Gregg’s health? Lynyrd Skynyrd were considered at that time a satellite band to the Allman Brothers in that scene. Ronnie knew he wasn’t just a satellite band, was not a soundalike. They had been able to benefit from the Allman Brothers success to be heard, but there was no guilt, there was no thing of we’re sucking off the Allman Brothers “scene.” It was more like, we’re a band in our own right. He had a lot of confidence. Just as a guy, he wanted Gregg to reach out to him a little more than Gregg did.

Sweet Home Alabama
Neil Young gave a tape to Joel Bernstein to give to me which I gave to Ronnie, that had three songs on it – “Captain Kennedy,” “Sedan Delivery,” and “Powderfinger” – before they’d come out. And he wanted to give them to Lynyrd Skynyrd if they wanted to do one of his songs. They didn’t fit on Street Survivors.

Neil loved that band and said they reminded him of the Buffalo Springfield and they made him yearn for the days of the Buffalo Springfield. He loved Lynyrd Skynyrd and he loved being mentioned in the song.

Being a huge Neil Young fan, I sort of appointed myself as cheerleader for that love affair to happen and blossom. I think it was happening – Ronnie was wearing that [Neil Young] shirt on the album cover and on the road. I was really happy to be able to play a part in getting some new Neil songs into Ronnie’s hands. I don’t remember what he had to say about it, but he was a huge Neil Young fan.

Simple Man?
Most of the raps I had with him were about stepping up and being Papa Ronnie, which was one of his nicknames in the early days. I have this vivid memory of him trying to shake sense into the other guys in the band as far as squandering opportunities. I know it meant a lot to him to be playing Knebworth with the Stones. And I think there was an ache inside of him about not wanting to be just a bunch of guys who were partying in their way through an incredible opportunity and who just threw away everything they made in hotel damages. Instead, he wanted to be like the bands he loved, and become a timeless band like the Stones or Free or the Allman Brothers. He knew there were sacrifices involved in getting to the top, he knew that he had to give up some of the fun in exchange for true longevity as a band, and he was prepared to do it, but he wanted the band to do it too.

His dad was discussed reverentially, almost like he was a figure to live up to, not so much to please. It was kind of like, “Check out what my dad said,” or “Here’s what my dad did.” I think he represented a kind of classic toughness to Ronnie. He was always spoken of that way to me. It would be like, “Check out what Lacy once did,: that kind of stuff.

It was almost like a boxer saying, “You like my style, check out where I learned my style.” It was nothing angsty. I don’t know if it was Ronnie’s personality to be a “woe is me” guy.

Whiskey Rock-A-Roller
It was very committed, a committed group effort, and never felt like they were going through the motions, which always made it really vital. There was a show at Winterland that they did in ’76 that was the best show I’d seen. They were really at the peak of their powers. Everybody was really firing on all cylinders.

I don’t think I ever saw them going through the motions. Even when they were tired, the show was never phoned in. It really seemed like when they played they connected to their roots and who they were and what excited them in their lives was all about what was happening on the stage.

I never saw them do a bad show, that’s for sure. They always had the set balanced very well and “Free Bird” was never on autopilot, either.

On Guitarist Allen Collins
Allen was just a wild character. He was like his hair, just kind of flying out in different directions and really standing out. He had a great look and he had a great kind of towering personality and yet he was incredibly fragile and genuine.

I don’t know if Allen was as rooted – he was sort of an all-over-the-place guy but essential in terms of, this was a guy who was never gonna go showbiz. And he never did. It seemed to always be about the music. If he fucked up, it was sort of what came with that package. He was essential in that he was so free of bullshit. I don’t know if he ever changed much. It’s sort of a glorious thing to see a guy like that finding success and not succumbing in a personal way. It might have helped kill him in the end, because he was so vulnerable and wide open. He was forever one of the youngsters in the band.

Gimme Back My Bullets and New Producer Tom Dowd
They were always respectful of Dowd. I didn’t feel that they were longing for Al again as producer as much as they seemed to long for Al personally, because Al was just a really infectious, great guy. I think it was more like Dowd was more of a father figure, whereas Al was more of a guy who played with them live and was almost one of them. They probably missed that spirit. It probably felt like they were going to school with Dowd.

I think they were cool in that there wasn’t a lot of finger-pointing, like sometimes you get working in the movies. “Oh, the actor fucked it up!” They held themselves accountable for things that bummed them.

One More From the Road (On Guitarist Steve Gaines)
Steve was a sweet, quiet guy, kind of a Mick Taylor guy. What he played was as important as how he fit in. There are some guys that try to take over and then there are some guys that slip in and are seamless. Those are the rare guys. Their minds were all sort of blown at how they found him, and that it worked. That was a big topic of conversation when he wasn’t around.

I remember being on a plane with him once, and he just quietly sat there listening to music on some headphones – I guess he was working on his own music. That was the other thing. He had so much music in him that he was bound to be doing his own thing.

I saw him as that rare guy that you never find, and they found him. The tendency is to find somebody that destroys the spirit of the band, tries to take over, pisses off the longtime fans, moves the band in a direction that reeks of commerce. That wasn’t Steve. Steve was like a band saver. And he came in a package with his sister, whom everybody loved. She was that kind of person who walks up to you, starts talking to you, and you feel better just standing with her.

Searching and The Back Up Singers – The Honkettes
The feeling that the girls brought to the tours was great. They were great color, personally. Everybody would talk about how they gave the tours a woman’s touch. It helped move the band more toward being a responsible unit, with an eye to the future. It made them more roadworthy.

They were very protective of the girls. It wasn’t like, “Heh-heh-heh, we’ve got some babes.” It was really not that. It was aggressively not that. They were slightly protective of Steve, too, like giving him a good sendoff as a member of the band. They were quite loving about the new members.

It came from the girls, it came from Mary Beth, it came from Ronnie, it came from Rudge, it came from a feeling of, let’s not squander our opportunity. Let’s grow up a little. I went to Japan with them in ’76 and I saw that that was the beginning of a real new way of handling themselves. Ronnie felt a responsibility toward keeping it on that track.

I remember walking out of the disco with Ronnie after somebody else had caused a fight, knowing their reputation, and he was just kind of reluctantly dealing with the residual effect of their image. I think it had happened in other ways, too. There wasn’t a smooth transition toward being real responsible immediately. It was like that Elvis scene where he just wants to go in and play the jukebox and there’s always somebody there ready to pick a fight. I know that was something they were struggling with. The strongest memory I have is Ronnie wanting to keep the ship in the water, sailing right, moving forward, doing the right thing. He very definitely had recognized the fact that the “hell, yeah” rough-and-tumble southern image was not gonna be good for the long haul.

I thought it was so honorable because… today’s bands are so conscious of their marketing and so forth and I never heard Ronnie say, like, “Yeah, it’s our image, we gotta live up to it!” It was more like, “Goddamnit, I just wanna play music, why is this guy picking a fight with me?” It was a valiant struggle he was winning when he died.

I remember Ronnie going through the artwork on Gimme Back My Bullets and he was happy at the progression they were making. He had a toe in the waters of business and I think he was trying to learn more as he went. I know he was sort of amused that they had that double meaning on the title, Gimme Back My Bullets. He was trying to work his way through the business and the people involved in their career, just trying to be smart. I never heard the “Hey, man, I’m just an artist” thing. It was more like “I’m an artist, but I want to look out for what we do, at the same time.”

Street Survivors
They were getting away from the Southern image. You could hear that, more and more, with each record. Street Survivors was taking them away from that. They were getting rid of the southern rock image, basically, and moving into more mainstream rock and roll.

Tuesday’s Gone
Dean [Kilpatrick, assistant Road Manager] was an important guy. He was a great guy, a skinny, lively guy. He was like a spark plug and he would kind of dance around in between these other characters and really kind of set them off in a great way. It was a nice kind of chemical that was in the mix.

Bands tend to have that one guy that’s kind of a link to the beginning – trustworthy, entertaining, quick with the joke, keep things up, keep things moving. Pearl Jam has a guy like that named Eric Johnson who reminds me of Dean. Those guys are the unsung heroes of a road tour. He was part of it. These are the guys who keep rock alive, real important parts of the spirit of a band and, ultimately, the music of a band. It’s sad when you see a guy like that disappear from the history books.

Roll Gypsy Roll
Allen, I don’t know if he was ever the same. Gary, I think, sucked it up and actually became greater in a lot of ways. Allen was always wounded, and to lose Dean, and, of course, Ronnie and Steve, who’d become a really important guy, and even Cassie – these are the people that you need.

He was a fragile guy, and I think he would admit that, and I don’t know if he recovered as well from the accident as Gary. It was sort of obvious, he kept sinking lower.

Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History – Lee Ballinger – October, 1999