Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars (27 page)

Copping an Allman Brothers' pose, Skynyrd lines up on a Macon, Georgia, street and shows some attitude for the cover of
(pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)
, which would eventually go double platinum. From left to right are Leon Wilkeson, Billy Powell, Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Bob Burns, Allen Collins, and Ed King.
GETTY IMAGES

In this shot from May 6, 1973, taken during sessions for Skynyrd's debut album at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, Al Kooper, in the glasses, works the control board as Ronnie and Gary try to lend a hand and engineer “Tub” Langford stands by.
GETTY IMAGES

During Skynyrd's 1973 tour with the Who, trying to keep up with the manic-eyed Keith Moon (left) Ronnie hoists a J&B in front of Allen's face while Gary appears to look for something to ingest from a candle bowl.
GETTY IMAGES

Lacy Van Zant, who dubbed himself the “father of Southern rock,” poses here with son Ronnie in 1975.
DAVID M. HABBEN

If Ronnie was apt to take a swing at all the others in the band at any given moment, he had nothing but admiration and even some envy for the clean and sober guitar virtuoso Steve Gaines, who became Skynyrd's newest member in 1976.
AP

The essence of Skynyrd in a single image: Ronnie Van Zant, front and center, flanked by the guitar firepower of Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, the thunder of Leon Wilkeson's bass rolling in from stage right and Billy Powell's funky piano swirls from stage left—and a giant Confederate flag hanging over Artimus Pyle's booming drums. GETTY IMAGES

Ronnie and Gary rock out under blue skies that are so blue, not only in Alabama, but in Oakland, California, where this concert occurred.
RALPH HULETT

October 20, 1977: Southern rock died in a swamp in Gillsburg, Mississippi, with the twisted wreckage of Skynyrd's rickety Convair CV-300 strewn between the trees that tore it apart, killing Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, Dean Kilpatrick, and its two inept pilots. Miraculously, the other nineteen passengers on board survived.
AP

A simple headstone in Jacksonville's Riverside Memorial Park marks the grave of Skynyrd's front man and of the southern rock movement. The original grave site was vandalized in 2000, necessitating that Ronnie's remains be moved to a concrete vault deep under the stone.
DAVID M. HABBEN

The “Father of Southern Rock,” as truck driver Lacy Van Zant dubbed himself, was laid to rest in 2004 alongside his wife, Marion Hicks “Sis” Van Zant, in Riverside Memorial Park, the same grounds where Ronnie Van Zant is buried.
DAVID M. HABBEN

March 13, 2006: Oft-denied, Skynyrd was finally elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, giving the band a chance to bask in pride—though the body language of everyone but Billy Powell betrays the hurt feelings that still existed for Gary Rossington, Artimus Pyle, Ed King, and Bob Burns.
AP

The Freebird Live Cafe on Jacksonville Beach—owned by Judy Jenness, Ronnie's widow and the executor of his estate—is the sort of place where the fledgling Lynyrd Skynyrd might once have honed their sound.
CAMERON SPIRITAS