Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars
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Authors: Mark Ribowsky
This book tells the intimate story of how a band of lost souls and self-destructive misfits with uncertain artistic objectives clawed their way to the very top of the rock 'n' roll peak, writing and performing as if beneficiaries of a deal with the devilâa deal fulfilled by a tragic fall from the sky. The rudderless genius behind their ascent was a man named Ronnie Van Zant, who guided their five-year run and evolved not just a new country/rock idiom but a new Confederacy in constant conflict with old Southern totems and prejudices.
Placing the music and personae of Lynyrd Skynyrd into a broader cultural schema for the first time,
Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars
is based on interviews with surviving band members and others who watched them. It gives a new perspective to a history of stage fights, motel-room destructions, cunning business deals, and brilliant studio productions, offering a greater appreciation for a band that, in the aftermath of its last plane ride, has sadly descended into self-caricature as the sort of lowbrow guns-'n'-God cliché that Ronnie Van Zant wanted to chuck from around his neck.
No other book on Southern rock has ever captured the “Free Bird”âlike sweep and significance of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ribowsky's cohesive narrative gives the band its full due while not ignoring the cruel irony and avoidability of the band's tragic end.
Copyright © 2015 by Mark Ribowsky
All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-56976-146-5
Interior design: Jonathan Hahn
Cover design: Marc Whitaker /
MTWdesign.net
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ribowsky, Mark.
Whiskey bottles and brand-new cars : the fast life and sudden death of Lynyrd Skynyrd / by Mark Ribowsky. â First edition.
     pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56976-146-5 (cloth)
1. Lynyrd Skynyrd (Musical group) 2. Rock musiciansâUnited StatesâBiography. I. Title.
ML421.L96R43 2015
782.42166092'2âdc23
[B]
2014037743
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
FOR MY SON JAKE,
WHO THINKS “FREE BIRD” IS TOO SHORT
4
   “They Sound Too Much Like the Allman Brothers”
7
   “Chicken-Skin Music in the Raw”
8
   We All Did What We Could Do
11
   “We Done Things Only Fools'd Do”
14
   Better Get Outta My Way
16
   Look What's Going On Inside You
17
   Striking Fire and Drawing Blood
Epilogue: A Sort of Hereditary Obligation
Index
Readers of this book will be able to play a participation gameâtrying to figure out who and what the man who almost singularly made Lynyrd Skynyrd was. Ronnie Van Zant, who dominates these pages, was both a redneck and an anti-redneck, which makes every effort to define him a very complicated thing. How complicated was he? There may not even be a definitive answer to the question. The fun and the challenge will be watching him grow and mature into a man who, no doubt, would have grown only larger in dimension but for an inept flight crew on an old, troublesome airplane.
Not much that has been written before about Van Zant puts flesh on his bones. An alarming amount of the Skynyrd literature, such as it is, falls under the category not of history but hagiography, lore, legend, andâlet's face itâbullshit. What's more, his family and his band are either dead or have vigorously pledged not to be helpful to any outsider seeking the truth rather than a fableâunless there is something in it for them to pocket; this reality today serves as “that smell,” not the scent of drug addiction and self-destruction Van Zant sang about in the famous song with that title. The mercenary profit motive of the extant Skynyrd is also well documented here, as part of the band's tragic epilogue.
For all these reasons, the copious research that formed the book made me feel more like a miner, not necessarily for a heart of gold but for observations with the satisfying ring of truth. There was indeed gold in them thar hills of books, newspaper articles, magazine pieces, and Internet postings, though mainly that turned up fool's gold. Thus I am indebted to several souls who were there in real time and knew Van Zant like few othersânot dilettantes who pretend they didâand whose recollections were invaluable to history's ultimate place for Lynyrd Skynyrd. My thanks to two original Skynyrd members who played with the
band as it rode to eminence, Bob Burns and Ed King, and two former managers of the group, Alan Walden and Charlie Bruscoâall of whom still bear the scars of that ride, none having been able to stay on the horse without being thrown from it painfully.
My thanks also go to Alex Hodges, one of the most respected men in the entertainment industry, who learned the lessons of his trade booking gigs for Skynyrd as part of the management agency that put them on the map. Alex had never before spoken of being on the inside of the Skynyrd operation, and his name had never been mentioned in that respect. His “coming out” to me was of inestimable value to the story. The same could be said of the studio wizards who helped turn screaming guitars and backwoods pride into nuanced music of technical perfection, Barry Rudolph and Muscle Shoals legend Jimmy Johnson. My deep appreciation also goes to Jennie Thomas, head archivist at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Paul Friedman of the New York Public Library's peerless Music Division and Library for the Performing Arts; and to Vanessa Kromer, Alex Hodges's personal assistant, who patiently arranged interviews with him and made sure they went off like clockwork.
Finally, this book is as much to the credit of my agent Jim Fitzgerald of the James Fitzgerald Agency and Chicago Review Press editor Yuval Taylor, both of whom saw the need for a definitive Skynyrd biography after all these years and wanted it to be more than a timeline and playlist but instead a story that breathes life into the southern culture that bred it and then was gone with the same wind that took Van Zant to his demise. Kudos to them for that insight and perspective.
A Sunday night in Boca Raton, Florida, January 2014
The gray-haired man in his sixties wears a T-shirt with L
YNYRD
S
KYNYRD
printed across the chest. He orders some food at a fast-food counter and walks toward the door.
“Hey, Skynyrd!” comes a call of the wild from a slightly older man with thinner, grayer hair, the back tied up in a ponytail. The voice has long been scabrous, obviously from way too many unfiltered cigarettes and whiskey shots, and the southern accent has gotten only thicker. A T-shirt from an auto body shop hangs loose over an ample belly. After asking the man in the Skynyrd shirt, “Ever see 'em?” he wanders down a memory trail, eyes focused on days long ago.