Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars (51 page)

Pyle and Rossington, two old warhorses, had come through hell together and were indeed the last of a dyin' breed. They had long since left Jacksonville, Pyle to live in North Carolina, Rossington in Georgia. Time had healed their physical wounds. But with Skynyrd, personal grudges never seemed to heal.

Clearly not
Skynyrd
anymore, they weren't a rock-and-roll dynasty as much as a Duck Dynasty, full of gun erection and prideful simplemind-edness. The soggy grits of their 2009
God & Guns
were even soggier in 2012's
Last of a Dyin' Breed
, which Stephen Thomas Erlewine called “sturdy, old-time rock and roll for an audience that's likely peppered with Tea Partiers, the kind of Middle American worried that the world they knew is slipping away, and [for whom it] provides a bit of a rallying point.” Ryan Reed, in the
Boston Phoenix
, was blunter: “The shit quality isn't much of a surprise: Skynyrd haven't released a listenable album since Ronnie Van Zant's plane-crash death…. [Now] the once-venerable flagship of genuine, heartfelt, inventive Southern Rock have plummeted with no remorse into the grimy waters of Redneck Rock…. Ronnie Van Zant rolls wildly in his grave. For God's sake, for America's sake, for Coon's sake, for Rock's sake—let's hope
Last of a Dying Breed
is an endangered species.”

Still, whatever and whoever they were, they could position themselves between a South that had been new in the 1970s and a newer South that had begun to look a lot like the old South Van Zant had tried to navigate around. Late in 2013 another tour was announced with Skynyrd and Bad Company—Ronnie's favorite—coheadlining a fortieth anniversary summer tour, playing at venues such as Jiffy Lube Live in Barstow, Virginia. Then they would play on what they called the Simple
Man Cruise to Miami before jetting off to Australia for their first tour down under.

Once, Ronnie Van Zant had worried that the band he'd fought so hard for was becoming too mired in the mud of the South or crass provincialism. He craved the world. And while old Lucifer may have taken him down, those who perform under the name of Lynyrd Skynyrd do so on international stages and invoke his memory, even as they sell it short. That leaves Artimus Pyle with an even greater sense that the band not only sold him out but themselves out as well. He told Marley Brant, “If there would have been integrity and character within the band [they] would be able to raise money for cancer and AIDS and Eric Clapton would be jamming with us.” For Charlie Brusco, the sense of loss was more personal, centering on their cursed front man. “Had Ronnie lived, he would have been the biggest rock star in America. He would have made solo albums—he was about to do one with Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings when he died. Skynyrd would have been as big as the Rolling Stones. As big as they were, they never made a video, never won a Grammy, never had the artistic freedom to do exactly what they wanted to do, but they would have been given a king's ransom to do that—
if
Ronnie could have survived himself.”

Nearly four decades after Van Zant ran out of time, the fighter surely remained, in spirit, punching through the lyrics of the old songs. It was the only thing left of Lynyrd Skynyrd that could pay for the whiskey bottles and the brand-new cars, and keep the smell of death and the clutches of the devil off them all. At least for one more day. God help them—please, just one more day.

L
iterally one day before this book went to press, the author was contacted by someone who claimed he had been a member of the Skynyrd inner circle since the mid-1980s. He said he had “invaluable” information about the band and “[was] willing to help anyone who will try and tell the story of Skynyrd as it really was.” But he would only share this insider information off the record for fear of retribution from the band, which he said would try and “shut down” the book if they discovered he was involved.

If one lives in or around the ongoing Skynyrd culture for many months, this is the sort of thing that often crops up. People who claim to know the “real story” of the band seem to exist far and wide, but especially in the beehive of Jacksonville and its environs, which is where the late-arriving source lived. Many of these people are flat-out crazy, drunk, or both—a byproduct of the band's legendary craziness and drunkenness—and these old-timers spend much of their time in the same honky-tonk bars as they did forty years ago. The difference was that this fellow was armed with a sheaf of documents and photos he said Artimus Pyle had given him years ago, and his name could be traced to some Skynyrd studio work.

And so the author interviewed him at length. While the results of this interview can hardly be called “the real story”—much of what he claimed seemed to be overwrought conspiracy theory, paranoid, and delusional (hey it's
Skynyrd
we're talkin' about here!)—he did add a counterpoint to several areas of discussion in the book. So though it goes against the author's grain to use unnamed sources, the saner claims are offered here in chronological order, mainly as a glimpse into the underbelly of the “this-is-the-real-truth” Skynyrd culture and with the caveat that, in the world of Skynyrd, reality can seem to appear at the bottom of a shot glass.

• Below the surface, Ed King was a more prominent member of the band than he let on. He purportedly “manipulated the band,” and also ran up hotel tabs that at times reached $10,000. “Ed King used to tell people that Ronnie gave him permission to run the band. After a while, Ed was interfering in the band's business and Allen got real peeved about it. He'd say, ‘Hiring Ed King was the worst thing we ever did.' And Ronnie agreed.” A laugh. “I think Ed left before the band could kill him. He left without taking his guitars, just left 'em behind, blew out without telling anyone he was leaving.”
  
• Ronnie came to so detest Gary Rossington that by 1977 he would call out, “yonder comes pretty boy” during Gary's solos. “In Ronnie's way of speaking, he was calling Gary a faggot, 'cause Ronnie thought that was what he was.”
  
• Linda Blair may have served other purposes than as an underage conquest for Dean Kilpatrick. She was indicted for conspiracy to buy cocaine shortly after attending the Skynyrd funeral. After singing to the authorities, she was given three years' probation and a $5,000 fine. “Everyone in Skynyrd used Blair's dealer to buy their coke. But they were never charged, and I still can't believe they weren't. That's what big-time lawyers can do.”
  
• “Allen Collins never had a thing with Dale Krantz. Dale first threw herself at Allen, who blew her off. Allen told me, ‘Everyone bagged her but me.'” She then turned to Gary, in order to “gain power within the band,” provoking the inevitable static between Allen and Gary.
  
• When Gary barred Allen from coming onto the stage any longer, “it killed Allen. That was Gary and Dale's payback to Allen. If you ask me, they murdered that man.”
  

INTERVIEWS

Charlie Brusco, Bob Burns, Alex Hodges, Jimmy Johnson, Ed King, Rodney Mills, Barry Rudolph, Alan Walden.

BOOKS

Allman, Gregg with Alan Light.
My Cross to Bear
. New York: William Morrow, 2012.

Ballinger, Lee.
Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History
. Los Angeles: XT377 Publishing, 1997.

Brant, Marley.
Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story
. New York: Billboard Books, 2002.

Brant, Marley.
Southern Rockers: The Roots and Legacy of Southern Rock
. New York: Billboard Books, 1999.

Goodwyn Jones, Anne and Susan Van D'Elden Donaldson.
Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts
. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1998.

Kemp, Mark.
Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South
. New York: Free Press, 2004.

Kemp, Mark. “On Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ed King, and Trayvon Martin.”
Rock's Backpages
, July 18, 2013.
http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/on-lynyrd-skynyrds-ed-king-and-trayvon-martin
.

King, Richard H. and Helen Taylor.
Dixie Debates: Perspectives on Southern Cultures
. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Kooper, Al.
Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor
. New York: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2008.

Nuzum, Eric.
Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America
. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Odom, Gene with Frank Dorman.
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Rock
. New York: Broadway Books, 2002.

Watts, Trent.
White Masculinity in the Recent South
. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Young, Neil.
Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream
. London: Penguin Books, 2012.

ARTICLES

“1977—Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines of Lynyrd …” This Day In Rock.
www.thisdayinrock.com/index.php/general/1977-ronnie-vanzant-and-steve-gaines-of-lynyrd
.

“Aircraft Accident Report, Convair 240, N55VM, Gillsburg, Mississippi, October 20, 1977, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, Washington, D.C.”
www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR78-06.pdf
.

Associated Press. “Billy Powell Obituary.”
Legacy.com
, January 28, 2009.
www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=billy-powell&pid=123423955
.

Bell, June D. “Guitarist: Lynyrd Skynyrd Pushed Me Out.”
Jacksonville Times-Union
, June 6, 1997.
http://jacksonville.com/special/lynyrdskynyrd/guitaristtheypushedmeout.html
.

“Billy Powell.”
Wikipedia
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_powell
.

Boucher, Caroline, “Who the Hell Are Lynyrd Skynyrd?”
Disc and Music Echo
, February 1974.

Bull, Roger. “The Band Plays on—Lynyrd Skynyrd to Continue.”
Florida Times-Union
, March 16, 2009.
http://jacksonville.com/interact/blog/roger_bull/2009-03-16/the_band_plays_on_-_lynyrd_skynyrd_to_continue
.

“Bryan Cole: Mose Jones.”
Sweethomemusic.fr
.
www.sweethomemusic.fr/Interviews/MoseJonesUS.php
.

Campbell, Mary. “Lynyrd Skynyrd Works on Pride.”
Hutchinson News
, May 30, 1975.

Carter, John. “Remembering Lynyrd Skynyrd,”
Florida Times Union
, October 19, 1997.
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/101997/1019Skyn.html
.

Charlesworth, Chris. “Memories of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Rudge.”
Rock's Backpages
, 2001.
www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/memories-of-lynyrd-skynyrd-and-peter-rudge
.

Charone, Barbara. “Lynyrd Skynyrd Interview.”
Zoo World
, April 1974.

Clark, Rick. “American by Birth … (Southern by the Grace of God).”
Simple Man
,
www.angelfire.com/tn/LSkynyrd/history.html
.