Still, Rossington, who’d grown up imitating Elvis in front of the mirror and was inspired to buy his first guitar at 13 after seeing The Rolling Stones perform on television, remained grateful for it all.

You can’t just talk about it real casual and not have feelings about it.” “I’ve talked about it here and there, but I don’t like to,” Rossington told Rolling Stone of the crash in 2006, the same year the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Four more studio albums and a live album would follow before the plane crash brought it all to a screeching halt. They worked hard, lived hard and boozed hard.” Their self-titled 1973 debut LP, subtitled Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd, went double platinum and hit No. They switched the name of the group to The Noble Five, then to The One Percent, then finally to Lynyrd Skynyrd, paying “tongue-in-cheek homage” to a gym teacher who had tortured Rossington for his shaggy hair.Īs the real Leonard Skinner would later observe to The Times-Union of Jacksonville, “They were good, talented, hard-working boys. It was 1964 they began calling themselves My Backyard, and spent the next five years gigging around the area. Growing up playing baseball together in Jacksonville, Rossington, Van Zant, and Burns decided to try jamming together after Burns was smacked in the shoulder by a ball hit by Van Zant. The band’s original lineup was Rossington, Van Zant, drummer Bob Burns, guitarist Allen Collins, and bassist Larry Junstrom.

“Everybody who comes to see us is told that during the show, and probably knows before they even get there. “It’s a tribute band right now, and everybody knows it’s not the original,” he told Rolling Stone last year. During “Free Bird,” the band’s iconic nine-minute opus defined by Rossington’s slide guitar solo, a screen overhead would flash through the names of all its deceased members.Īt the time of Rossington’s death, the band was gearing up for a 22-city summer tour with ZZ Top. Skynyrd would soldier on in the years to come, eventually chewing through more than 25 members. The band was able to reform for a reunion tour in 1987 with Van Zant’s brother Johnny leading them (and Rossington playing with steel rods in his arm and leg). “I had a creepy feeling things were going against us, so I thought I’d blow lines, slam some H and write a morbid song,” Van Zant said, according to author Tim Morse. On it was the single “That Smell,” a darkly finger-wagging song that Van Zant had been inspired to write after Rossington had narrowly escaped death the year prior, drunkenly crashing his Ford Torino into an oak tree. Three days before the crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd had released Street Survivors, their fifth studio album. “I went ‘What happened?’ I was in shock and they said, ‘Don’t tell him anything, it’ll freak him out.’ And I went ‘Mama?’ And she told me.” “When I woke up after a few days, there was just a priest and my mama standing there,” he told music journalist Lee Ballinger for his oral history of the band. Rossington was left with two broken arms, a broken leg, a punctured stomach and liver, injuries grave enough that the news of his bandmates’ deaths was initially kept from him. Tragedy dogged Lynyrd Skynyrd, most notably in the form of the 1977 plane crash that killed six people, including three of the band’s members-frontman Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines-and devastated the 20 survivors.

A long-haired cat from Jacksonville, Florida, Rossington was undoubtedly living out his ninth life in his final years.

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