The first time Rickey Medlocke played the outro lead line from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird was a real test of the guitarist’s mettle – but fortunately, he received Gary Rossington’s seal of approval when he tackled the iconic guitar solo during an early rehearsal.

Medlocke first joined Lynyrd Skynyrd in the early 1970s, completing a brief stint as the band’s drummer. Two decades later, he’d rejoin the band, but not as a percussionist – as their latest electric guitar player.

He’s been with the band ever since, and one of his key responsibilities has been to help take care of Allen Collins' Free Bird guitar solo – a lead effort so legendary that it is widely regarded as undoubtedly one of the finest (and most popular) fretboard workouts of all time.

After rejoining Lynyrd Skynyrd at the behest of founding member Gary Rossington, Medlocke quickly went to work studying the song’s speedy pentatonic runs and, having closely watched Collins compose and record the original effort, was quickly ready to navigate the solo.

Before long, it was time to put it all into practice during a rehearsal with Rossington and the rest of the band.

“When I came back into the band in ’96, I knew that was going to be my lead,” Medlocke told Guitar World. “I broke it down, and I was the drummer in Muscle Shoals when we cut the original Free Bird. I watched Allen, and I knew the licks.

“When I joined in ’96, we had four days of rehearsal in Fort Myers, Florida, and when the day came to play Free Bird, Gary walked in, and goes, ‘Alright, today’s the day.’ I went, ‘Yup. Sure is.’”

Medlocke was fully prepared for the moment. In fact, the first time he played Free Bird, he nailed it, and received the highest praise possible from Rossington.

“I went, ‘Hell, let’s play the damn thing now,’” Medlocke continues. “We rehearsed all the way through the set, got to Free Bird, started it, and when the ending started, I played it on my old reverse-body Firebird.

“At the end of it, Gary came over, shook my hand, and goes, ‘Unbelievable job, Rickey. I couldn’t ask for any better.’”

To this day, Medlocke is in charge of performing the Free Bird solo, and every time he runs through it, it gives him the exact same feeling.

“Every night I play it, the one thing I really love is the energy level it takes from within you. When you get going, and your adrenaline is flowing to where it just takes over, I mean, I know what I’m doing, but it’s like my hands are on autopilot. And when it’s over, I have to snap myself back into reality.”

Best of 2025: Over the holiday season, GW is shining the spotlight on some of its biggest stories of the year.

Southern rock linchpin Henry Paul has carved a career through rootsy experimentation, industry grind, and the resilience to rise again after being fired from The Outlaws, the band that made his name.

The popular outfit’s first national tour was as openers for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Arista Records’ Clive Davis saw gold and cut a deal – after Ronnie Van Zant told him, “If you don’t sign The Outlaws, you’re the dumbest music person I’ve ever met”, which probably helped.

A dream ’70s rock career followed, including a string of stadium and arena shows alongside The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Allman Brothers, and many more. But the ride hit the skids in 1977, when Paul was booted to the curb in a sudden confrontation.

“I’d never had the impression there was a problem,” the upstate New York native reflects. “They said my country rock influence was holding them back and they wanted to move into a more progressive direction. It was very hurtful. But I focused my attention to rebuilding and coming back.”

He went on to further success with The Henry Paul Band and Blackhawk – going double-platinum with the latter's self-titled 1994 debut – while commencing a third, still-ongoing stint with the Outlaws in 2005 (he also re-joined them for a time in the 1980s). He’s told his story in new memoir, The Last Outlaw.

How did you find your way to guitar?

“My stepbrother, being fairly well accomplished, taught me a little. I started writing my own songs and bought a painted plywood job with brass frets for $13. But my first great guitar was a '67 Gibson J-50.’”

Was there a difference in the music scenes of New York and [the Outlaws' native] Florida?

“The scene in Florida was healthy, competitive, and at a high level professionally – light years ahead of the New York scene, which was mired in the ‘50s. In New York, a man asked me to play for Epic Records. They told me to move to Nashville, which sounded far away and abstract.

“I went back to Florida to play a show featuring artists from Tampa who’d gotten big. It was really electric, so I put a band together, and with persistence, The Outlaws got signed.”

“Charlie Brasco decided to manage us, and booked our first out-of-town tour, including two nights in Nashville with Lynyrd Skynyrd. They raved about us and their management formed a partnership with ours. An A&R director from Arista loved us. We cut a record with Paul Rothchild and soon we were on the radio and becoming rock stars.”

Do you remember Ronnie Van Zant telling Clive Davis to sign you?

“I was embarrassed! But Ronnie was like that – he’d taken a personal role and invested himself in helping us. He was pretty persuasive and we were an ascending band, so it was helpful to motivate Clive.”

Did you gain any musical insights from Gary Rossington or Allen Collins?

“You always learn a lot from watching other people. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s musical personality had a very intense quality, and that was a part of The Outlaws. I learned a lot from Pat Simmons on our first tour with The Doobie Brothers, just watching his stage performance.

“When you’re popular in music, popular personalities treat you as equals, which makes you feel good. At one point we were opening for The Rolling Stones, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came into our dressing room to say they loved us.”

How did you come to open for The Stones?

“Those dates fell into our lap out of nowhere. The first time, we played Louisville at Freedom Hall, and the Stones’ audience loved us so much that we were asked to play in Virginia at the Hampton Coliseum, and then in Buffalo at the Rich Stadium in front of 80,000 people.

“We drove to Buffalo, put ourselves out there in front of all these people who didn’t know us, and got them on our side. We always put on a good show for the Stones – we didn’t embarrass ourselves! You animate yourself to be visible because there’s no way you can spread yourself that thin. I played to the first 50 rows, concentrating on the people I could see.”

How was it being a Southern rock guy playing to a UK rock audience?

“They’re much more opinionated and physically invested in the UK. If they don’t like you, they’re pretty creative in displaying their displeasure. They’d pee in beer bottles and throw it at you. You didn’t want to let them down in case they whooped your ass! We played for our lives supporting The Who – but we won them over.

“There was a great deal of variety in the British music charts. I couldn’t find words to express how different it was. The beer was warm, the people were great, really badass and soulful; but we related to them as rednecks.

“One time we pulled into Glasgow and these boys running beside our bus stuck two fingers up at us. I thought, ‘Oh – a peace sign!’ But it wasn’t peace at all, and they didn’t even know who we were!”

Did you take any inspiration from seeing The Who?

“The Who were the most powerful band, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Roger Daltrey was this gorgeous human: the greatest frontman, with his shirt open and his hair curly. Pete Townshend was crazed out of his mind. Each player had such distinct personalities. The music was mind-boggling; so loud, so powerful, and so incredibly played.

“Keith Moon would come and hang with us, although the other guys didn’t. One evening we went to a restaurant and an American couple mistook Keith for a server because he had a tuxedo on. They wanted a bottle of wine, so he grabbed one and poured it all over the guy! He must have paid hundreds of pounds for the guy’s wet clothes. Keith lived in a different place on this Earth.”

Who’s the finest player you’ve ever met?

“Stevie Ray Vaughan was uniquely impressive – it didn’t look like he was playing. His right hand was so free on the strings, like he was strumming, but he was making notations. I toured with Stevie when he was sober and he was a freak of nature. I couldn’t relate to his playing. I’d never seen anyone play like that.”

In 1977, you were kicked out of The Outlaws.

“Band business is a social structure that people manipulate. Some are very skilled and some are naïve. In the ‘80s, The Outlaws’ manager told [late guitarist] Hughie Thomasson to put the original band back together because they’d floundered. Knowing people weren’t digging it made me feel better.

“The reunion lasted for six years, and it was the most fun I’d ever had in music – it was free of pressure. We weren’t getting rich, but we were making money and doing well in the marketplace.

“When Hughie wanted the band back, I went on my merry way. I was happy to move on again; it became clear there were self-absorbed issues, designed to help one person out.”

What has been your most faithful guitar throughout the years?

“Mainly acoustic electrics like Gibson 335s or 330s. My original white 330 with P-90s was my favorite guitar. I wish I had it back! Eventually I started playing Ovations, which really were an improvement.

“All the Outlaws now play red guitars and amps. I couldn’t find a red Gretsch Falcon, so I bought a black one and a guy in Chattanooga refinished it in fire-engine red. it’s gorgeous.

“My everyday road guitars are my red and black Gibson J-200s – they’re beaten to crap but they sound great. There’s a little distortion to my guitar, but I don’t mess with pedals. I plug into the amp and play.”

• The Last Outlaw: My 50 Years in Southern Rock & Country is out now via Mirror Lake Publishing.

Previously unseen footage of Allen Collins playing guitar in the wake of the most tragic moment in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s history has emerged online – and it shows what he had to go through to be able to play again.

In 1977, three members of the band were killed when their plane, which had been boarded after a show at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina, crashed on the way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Three band members – vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines – were among the seven dead, with backing singer Cassie Gaines, Steve’s older sister, the pilot, the co-pilot, and the band’s road manager also lost their lives. Founding guitarist Collins survived but suffered two broken vertebrae in his neck and severe damage to his left arm. Amputation was strongly suggested, but his father reportedly refused, leading Collins to a mountainous recovery journey.

The footage, unearthed from the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s digital archive, was posted online by vascular surgeon and medical historian Dr Craig A. Miller (it has been pulled from YouTube, but can be viewed elsewhere.) It documents his trauma recovery for educational purposes, but from a guitar player’s perspective, it makes for a fascinating and slightly harrowing watch.

Collins can be seen wearing a neck brace and what appears to be hospital scrubs. A second, slightly gruesome close-up shot shows an orthopedic fixator – a metal frame used to hold bones in place to encourage proper healing – bolted into his left arm as he strums some open chords on his sunburst Fender Stratocaster. It’s not good viewing if you’re squeamish.

The pain in his face is noticeable and incredibly moving, but it also underscores his strength of spirit. He’s even able to muster the twanging opening lines of Sweet Home Alabama.

The crash saw the surviving members disband, with Collins eventually making it to the stage again with the Rossington Collins Band, featuring fellow Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington.

As powerful as the footage is, this is 2025, and accusations that the video is AI-generated have been leveled at Dr Miller.

“As far as I know, and only someone present at the filming can confirm it with ‘absolute metaphysical certainty,’ the Collins video is 100% genuine,” he says in a Substack post. “Others with intimate knowledge of the events at the time have confirmed that this film was, in fact, made. It has already been publicly exhibited in an academic setting as genuine.

“The recording of surgical cases for teaching and documentary purposes at teaching hospitals was common in that era, and this appears to be such an example.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird is one of the most iconic rock songs ever written with a solo that every guitarist should try and learn. But how about playing its wicked pentatonic licks on the guitars it was originally written and performed on?

Well, that’s what YouTuber Tyler Larson has (sort of) done with his his friend and fellow guitar player Nathaniel Murphy at the Chicago Music Exchange.

After perusing the store's wares, Larson homes in on the late Gary Rossington's Cherry Red 1961 Gibson Les Paul/SG, with which he recorded the 1973 track. It still sits in its original hard case, emblazoned with the guitarist's name in a stencil font, and showing signs of tireless touring.

It has previously been taken to the stage by Blackberry Smoke's Charlie Starr, and here, Larson takes the lead…literally.

“This is mad to think I'm playing this,” quips Murphy, who's armed with another of Rossington's beloved SGs. “It’s one of the most heard guitars in music.”

Larson, meanwhile, says he can smell the “ancient... important” history of the guitars.

“We don’t quite believe it,” he says, “We’re going to have to check the footage back later. It’s a true privilege.”

Larson also picks up Rossington's glass slide for a “sacrilegious” attempt at the song's haunting lead line. It's not a terrible effort. But he dares not play its solo proper.

Last year, it was confirmed that the Les Paul/SG would be loaned out for a series of A-list gigs, with Starr playing it for a second time just two weeks ago. And yes, he played Free Bird – something Larson feels unworthy to do fully here.

“Everybody told us that we were crazy to put the song on our first album, because it was too long,” Rossington once told Guitar World of the song's creation. “Our record company begged us not to include it.

And when it first came out, they did all kinds of awful edits until it got big enough that it didn’t matter anymore. But it’s not magic – it’s still just a song to us.”

Right from their self-titled 1969 debut album, Southern rock's founding fathers, the Allman Brothers Band, established an impeccably high standard of lead guitar playing as one of the genre’s central tenets, thanks to Duane Allman's Jedi-level slide work, Dickey Betts’ dexterous, melodic style, and the duo’s pioneering twin harmonies.

When their Jacksonvile, Florida contemporaries Lynyrd Skynyrd launched their recording career with Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd’ (1973), the difference in their approaches became immediately apparent.

While the Allmans are best remembered for Allman and Betts' virtuosity, and their traiblazing jam band style, Skynyrd’s legacy was signposted in the timeless quality of their songs, and the razor-tight chemistry with which they were performed.

Their classic tracks are loaded with bluesy solos, which “...are signature parts that everybody in the audience can sing,” current guitarist Rickey Medlocke astutely observes.

In the 70s, Skynyrd fluctuated between two and three guitar line-ups, each player layering their distinctively-voiced licks to form a cohesive solo, sometimes playing lead breaks in blazing unison.

“You perform as a team,” Medlocke explains to GW. “I was there in the Hell House, playing drums. Ronnie Van Zant was Skynyrd’s strongest point, the most incredible writer. And he got us together as a team – he wanted a band that, when they walked out there, was a machine.”

Medlocke has unique insight into Skynyrd’s sound, having served as their drummer between 1971 and 1972, when Van Zant, and founding guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, were crafting legendary songs like Freebird.

After his own successful career as vocalist/guitarist with Blackfoot, Medlocke was invited by Rossington to rejoin Skynyrd in 1996, as part of the reunion initially begun in 1987 in tribute to Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister Cassie (backing vocals), who’d lost their lives in the tragic 1977 plane crash that ended the original band's career.

Tasked by Rossington with faithfully representing the late Allen Collins’ style, Medlocke has also played a key creative role on all Skynyrd’s post-'96 albums.

Since Rossington's passing in 2023, he and frontman Johnny Van Zant are honoring their fallen bandmate’s wishes in driving the band forward. Now, Medlocke joins Guitar World for a run-down of his Skynyrd guitar predecessors and partners.

Allen Collins

“Allen was a huge Eric Clapton fan,” Medlocke reveals, “and he was into Jimmy Page, Hendrix, and Jeff Beck, like myself. Allen [took] that influence and formulated his own thing.”

Collins' frequently-imitated solo on Freebird is a masterclass in composing memorable minor and major pentatonic phrases, and sequencing them dynamically to reach a searing crescendo, balancing speed and precision.

Collins infused every note with his customary fire and passion, setting a template not just for Skynyrd, but for Southern rock.

Gary Rossington

“Gary idolized Paul Kossoff,” Medlocke recalls. “We all saw Free at the skating rink in Jacksonville. Gary always wanted to play unique signature melodies.”

Like Kossoff, Rossington achieved powerful results with a minimum of notes, as his gut-punch double stops and wailing bends on Saturday Night Special attest.

Also responsible for Freebird’s slide guitar lines, Medlocke notes that, “...in his latter years, Gary loved playing more slide than anything.” Fittingly, the band’s most recent album, Last of a Dyin’ Breed, opens with Rossington breaking out the bottleneck.

Ed King

Joining as bassist in 1972 for Pronounced..., King then became third lead guitarist until 1975, returning between 1987 until 1996.

“Incredible guitar player,” Medlocke says. “Sweet Home Alabama – that lead, it's just unique. He used seashells as a pick, that's where he gets all that squank from on that Stratocaster.”

King’s idea of playing G major pentatonic/G major blues licks over Sweet Home’s borderline G major/D mixolydian progression came to him “...in a dream,” he told this writer. “I got up, picked up my guitar, and played it as I saw it in the dream. Sure enough, it was great.”

Steve Gaines

In 1976, Skynyrd chose Cassie Gaines’ unknown kid brother for the third guitar slot over Mountain’s Leslie West and session ace Wayne Perkins. Ronnie Van Zant told writer Cameron Crowe, “The kid’s a writing and playing fool. He’s... scared everybody... into playing their best in years.”

Gaines' lightning-fast chops and “soulfulness,” as Medlocke aptly puts it, light up 1977's Street Survivors with genuinely dazzling moments like I Know A Little’s intro, and his fluid, lyrical lead break at 0:57 and closing exchange of ascending licks and harmonies with Collins on That Smell.

Randall Hall

When paralysis sustained in a 1986 car accident prevented him from playing on the 1987 tribute tour, Allen Collins selected friend and solo band member Hall as his replacement.

“I knew Randall when we were teenagers,” Medlocke says. “He was well known around Jacksonville – a great guitar player. He took a lot of directions off of Allen. He did great.”

Hall's nimble, bluesy style sat well alongside Rossington's measured approach until his departure in 1993.

Mike Estes

Hall’s replacement, present until 1996, was also a friend of Collins, and of Skynyrd stage manager Craig Reed, who invited Estes to collaborate on songs for 1993’s The Last Rebel.

After befriending King and Rossington, Estes joined for Endangered Species (1994), an acoustic album aimed at the country market, co-writing the highlight Devil In The Bottle.

Rickey Medlocke

Blackfoot's classic albums from Strikes (1979) through Highway Song Live (1982) marked Medlocke out as a ferocious lead guitarist, able to fire off slide licks so sharp you could shave a yak with ‘em.

Considered an original Skynyrd member by Rossington, Collins, and Ronnie Van Zant, Medlocke wrote, played drums and guitar, and sang, on the pre-fame Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album.

Sharing influences and a love of Gibson Firebirds with Collins, Medlocke re-energized the reunion-era band in 1996, just as Steve Gaines had the original.

“The exact words out of Gary's mouth were, ‘Rickey, you're the closest thing to Allen I could hope for, and I want to make this band rock again,’” he recalls.

Asked for a favorite track from recent albums, Medlocke chooses drop-tuned bruiser Still Unbroken.

“That was an old riff that I had laying around, I loved playing the lead to it. I'm still a very heavy rocker, because that's what Blackfoot were based off of.”

Hughie Thomasson

Described to this writer by his Outlaws bandmate, Freddie Salem, as “...one of the best American guitarists ever born; the finesse of Chet Atkins and the fury of Jimi Hendrix,” Thomasson would sharpen his picks to rip out biting, warp-speed licks from a glass-toned Strat on classics like There Goes Another Love Song.

Recruited simultaneously with Medlocke, Thomasson remained for nine years, reforming the Outlaws in 2005.

“I loved playing with him,” Medlocke enthuses. “Hughie used to do the beginning of ...Alabama as an instrumental, and it was brilliant. We wish he'd stayed.”

Mark Matejka

“Johnny [Van Zant] knew of Mark,” Medlocke says of Thomasson’s replacement, “and he fit the bill.

“Mark is a very talented player, very educated. He knows that fretboard, and chord structures, like nobody I've ever seen. When we're onstage playing Tuesday's Gone, he adds these little inversions against what I'm playing. He knows every chord in the book.”

Matejka’s lead work in Skynyrd is equally impressive; check out his fleet-fingered, Albert Lee-style hybrid picking on I Know A Little.

Damon Johnson

Prior to playing with Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy, and Black Star Riders, Johnson's band, Brother Cane, supported Skynyrd in 1993.

Brought in as a substitute while Gary Rossington recovered from heart surgery in 2021, Johnson was kept on Rossington’s insistence. The two played together in 2023 at a gig released this year as Celebrating 50 Years: Live at the Ryman.

“Little did we know, it would be Gary's last show,” Medlocke says. “Gary insisted Damon stay there, next to him, with an acoustic guitar. That was a special calling, insisted [on] by Gary.

“I miss Gary, it's still a very sore spot in my heart. We were very fortunate to get Damon. But the stipulation was to play the exact licks, go for the exact tone. He's using Gary's original rig, because Gary requested it. Damon's done an incredible job. The audiences, for the most part, have accepted it.”

In conclusion, Medlocke surmises, “All the guitar players that have been in this band have been unique, and I salute them.”

Looking ahead, he reveals that, “Johnny and I have got a lot of material that we never recorded. When I first joined Skynyrd, he was only 10 years old, I've known him that long. We’ve even got some of Gary on tape, talking.

“If we do another record, I would hope that Damon would bring that essence of Gary into [it]. Johnny and I are gonna make a decision, along with management, and see about doing a new record.”

Steve Morse recently made a surprise appearance at a book launch in Annapolis, Maryland, where he handled classic rock staples with aplomb.

The guitarist once quit music altogether to become a commercial airline pilot, only to be lured back into the arms of rock ’n’ roll by Lynyrd Skynyrd. His showing at the intimate jam session ties into his pilot days.

“Steve and I have been friends since we met aboard the aircraft carrier Kennedy in '86 when I was in my first F-14 Tomcat squadron,” explains author and military commentator, Ward Carroll, who wrote the book the event was celebrating.

Morse was plying his trade in Kansas at the time, with the band aboard just off the coast of the Greek Island Crete for a USO (United Services Organizations) show.

“After the performance, he joined the aviators in our ready room for some guitar jams and a lot of talk about flying,” he continues.

Carroll then leaned into their long-standing friendship ahead of the release of his latest novel, Punk’s Force. Morse was joined by his solo band drummer Van Romaine, Dangerboy bassist TJ Collins, Carroll (on guitar), and guitarist/vocalist Tom Butwin for a five-song set.

That saw the group take on Led Zeppelin’s Good Times, Bad Times, Mountain’s Mississippi Queen, dedicated to the late, great Leslie West, and Cream’s 1968 hit, White Room. They rounded out the set with two Lynyrd Skynyrd classics, Gimme Back My Bullets, and Free Bird in light of the band’s role in his rock revival.

Morse was plugged into his signature and travel-friendly 20W Engl head, and his soloing is on point throughout – faithful to the glory of the originals, but with plenty of Morse-ified flair.

“When we were planning for the release of my latest novel, I asked Steve and his drummer Van Romaine if they'd join me for an ‘all-star jam’ of covers that would showcase Steve's guitar prowess,” Carroll continues. Morse certainly did that.

YouTube legend Rick Beato was also in the crowd, and he bore witness to the quintet of covers, and some hearty quips from Morse about that famed show with Skynyrd after a gruelling nine-flight shift.

For more classics given the Morse treatment, check out his take on Jeff Beck’s Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.

He's also opened up about how a love for modding led to the creation of his ‘FrankenTele’ and Music Man signature, and he’s also revealed what's on his “hybrid” pedalboard.

Charlie Starr has opened up on his experiences of playing one of the most iconic Gibson guitars of all time when he performed a Lynyrd Skynyrd medley using Gary Rossington’s ‘Free Bird’ Les Paul/SG.

In November last year, Starr made headlines when he took to the stage with Rossington’s famed ‘Free Bird’ electric guitar to perform a mash-up of Free Bird and Tuesday’s Gone.

The surprise guest appearance from the legendary 1961 model (originally dubbed a Les Paul in 1961 despite its SG shape owing to naming peculiarities of that year) was part of a new project initiated by the Rossington family and Chicago Music Exchange (CME).

Indeed, the CME was announced as the new custodian of Gary’s guitar collection, with the retailer confirming it would be loaning out the late guitar icon’s Les Paul/SG to a string of high-profile players for live use.

It was a big move. As per CME’s own words at the time, “No-one has ever played these instruments live other than Gary”, with Starr himself describing the whole experience as “sacred”.

Now, in a new interview with AL.com, Starr has reflected on that gig, revealing he decided to slightly subvert expectations when he had Rossington’s six-string in his arms.

“I mean, honored is not the word. Honored, that word is not quite special enough sometimes, but it was really great,” he muses. “There’s actually two of them. They brought two of them, and I chose the one of the two.

“He had several [Gibson SGs] and those two are the ones we’ve all seen the most in video footage and photographs. Anyway, he only really ever played Free Bird on that guitar. So I thought, ‘Wow, this guitar was used as a specific tool for a specific song,’ and I broke rank and played Tuesday’s Gone on it.

“Dale Rossington [Gary’s widow] was there with their daughters, and it was just really emotional. I’m sure other people might think that’s silly, but it was hard to not get emotional holding that guitar.”

Such hallowed guitars are often surrounded by a fair level of mysticism, and when quizzed whether he could feel a spiritual connection with Rossington when he played this particular guitar, Starr adds: “I think so.

“Gary’s, as soon as I played a note on it, it was like, ‘Wow, man,’” he continues. “A lot of these instruments just inherently sound like the tracks that we’re used to hearing them all. Obviously, Gary played a lot of different guitars, but you just hear certain things that ears have become accustomed to hearing, and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s it.’”

It's not the only case we've seen of notable guitars once owned by late guitar heroes being loaned out for live use in recent months.

Last year, it was announced Jeff Beck's own Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster would receive the same treatment – and Steve Lukather and John Mayer have already played it.

Gary Rossington’s iconic Free Bird 1961 Gibson Les Paul/SG – the electric guitar that helped shape one of the greatest rock songs of all time – has been re-homed at the Chicago Music Exchange Vault, and a host of big-name players will soon play it live.

The Lynyrd Skynyrd classic was released in 1974, and Rossington's 1961 Gibson guitar – which was made in the era when SGs bore the Les Paul name before the switch in 1963 – was crucial in its recording. Though lead guitarist Allen Collins played the solo, this particular guitar has become just as famous for its role in such a defining moment in rock history.

Rossington passed in March 2023, and the Chicago Music Exchange (CME) has now revealed it’s been working with the Rossington family “to organize and curate Gary’s entire guitar and amp collection for its next step in life”.

And, in a move that will no doubt delight every guitar fan out there, CME and the Rossington family have no plans to keep the legendary double-cut as a mere museum piece.

Instead, they’re going to loan it out to guitar heroes for live use – and Rossington’s other iconic instruments will seemingly follow suit.

“The family wants to ensure the continuing legacy of Gary’s significant contributions to music via the songs he wrote and helped write, along with the instruments he used,” says the CME. “We will bring this guitar for artists to use in performances worldwide.”

Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr has been the first to benefit from the new arrangement. He took to the stage with the instrument on November 7 during the band’s show at St. Augustine Amphitheatre, Florida, and used it for a medley of Free Bird and Tuesday’s Gone, which kickstarted their encore.

“This next song, we’ve never done before because it’s sacred,” Starr said prior to the performance. “With the utmost humility, we tip our hats to Mr. Gary Rossington.”

The CME has called Starr’s involvement in the new Rossington-honoring project “a dream way to begin this adventure”.

“No one has ever played these instruments live other than Gary,” it continues. “We are excited to share these iconic instruments with the world and can't wait to see them making music on stages for generations to come.”

The Exchange will have a display of Rossington’s “hell house” Peavey Mace combo amps, complete with numerous cigarette burns, two Peavey Mace stacks, his ’70s Dobro resonator guitar, and the Free Bird axe in The Vault for the rest of the year. It says it will “continue to painstakingly document every guitar and amplifier in his collection”.

The trailblazing Southern rock outfit has seen many line-up changes over the years. Current lead guitarist Ricky Medlocke recently discussed his experiences handling the Free Bird solo for the first time and getting Rossington's approval with Guitar World.

“Gary Rossington had this melodic sense; then there was Allen Collins with his Clapton-ish style. Put them together and they work.” That’s how Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke sums up the band’s ’70s guitar magic.

And he should know. It helps that he’s played guitar with Skynyrd since 1996; but before that he played drums for the Southern rock heroes from 1971 to 1972 – and was even in on the original sessions for Free Bird, among other classics.

Medlocke has been the target of more than a few shots since the ‘90s, and the 2023 death of Gary Rossington, leaving the band with no original members, has made that worse. But Medlocke responds: “This is my 28th year in the band. My whole thing is to stick with what was created. The songs are great – they’re timeless. They’ll be here after I’m gone.”

He explains: “My whole purpose in the band is to keep the integrity of this music for the fans. I promised Gary that I’d be here until the last note of Free Bird was played. I hoped he’d be here with us, but he was called away. My intention is to remain here and play what I play.”

Medlocke accepts: “A lot of people have gone back and forth about me. But there’s a video circulating that Gary made before he passed, where he says he and the guys always considered me an original guy. And my old contracts were signed under the heading of being a Lynyrd Skynyrd band member. So, I quit trying to argue. I was there in the formidable years as a band member.”

What’s your approach to covering Allen Collins’ iconic parts?

“When Gary called me in ’96 for the initial audition and wanted me to learn Saturday Night Special, That Smell and Free Bird, he said, ‘If you pass the audition, I’ll put you back in the band and give you a buck fifty and a Snickers bar.’ That was the exact call I got!

“He said, ‘You’re about as close to Allen as I could possibly hope for. We’ve had other guitar players in the band, and it didn’t quite come close.’ I knew Allen’s playing; we both admired Eric Clapton. As a matter of fact, I was in the band playing drums when some of his original stuff was created and underway.”

So you felt that you had view of his playing that others didn’t?

“As far as rhythm and leads, yes. So, that was my role coming back into the band. I promised Gary that I would stick to the integrity of what Allen created. He said, ‘Rickey, you’ve played guitar long enough; if you play those songs with that kind of feel, integrity, and recreation… I want you to be happy.’

“He said, ‘If you stray a little bit, that’s up to you. You’re a guitar player; you’ve got your own thing.’ I said, ‘Well, I might stray a little bit, but nothing where anybody can go, “Wow, he’s not even on it.’’’ So that’s what I’ve been doing for nearly 30 years.”

I’m sure you miss Gary.

“His influences went all the way back to Paul Kossoff. He admired Paul’s melodic presence and vibrato. Gary developed his own thing over the course of all the years he played nightclubs and joints, though. Even when I was playing drums with the band, I could see that the guys were really developing.”

When you were on drums, what were your observations of their developing guitar sound?

“Gary wasn’t a flashy player – he was more into a melodic sense. He created melodies within songs. He played leads that are more recognizable today than they were back then. He was underrated; I think the guy just had a uniqueness about him that worked.”

He was the last original member of Skynyrd. Has it been hard to soldier on without him?

“It’s been over a year and a half, and it’s still a raw spot. I miss the guy. I miss him being up there with me and with all of us. He was a unique person all the way around. But you know what? Such is life. We keep going.”

“Gary wanted me and [vocalist] Johnny Van Zant to know before he passed that he didn’t want the music to die with him. After he passed, Johnny and I talked; we didn’t know what we were going to do. But the fans reached out in multitudes and said, ‘Please don’t let it end here.’”

Even though you’re not considered an “original” member, you have a lineage within this genre and were a part of Skynyrd’s early history. Maybe some of the shots fired aren’t entirely fair.

“I’ve got a lot of different feelings about all that stuff. The first real slap in the face was that I wasn’t inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the guys. The Rock Hall claimed I wasn’t an important enough part of the band. But some band members hadn’t been there nearly as long as I had, and they got inducted.

“I look at that and wonder to myself, ‘What kind of biased and prejudicial stuff is within whoever chooses this stuff?’ But the thing is, I want to stay out of the argument, man. It’s not worth my time.”

And despite your detractors, the fans seem to be filling the seats.

“Every night, I walk out in front of that audience and play those iconic songs. That’s my Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I take that real personal for those people, man. I’m here for them, to give them 100 percent every night, and for them to enjoy themselves and to love the legacy of that music.”

Did the band know that Gary would not have been able to continue, even if he’d lived?

“He made it known to us that he just couldn’t do it any more. He had succumbed to heart problems that were really serious; they just weakened him.”

And you recommended Damon Johnson to take his place, right?

“I got a call from Johnny, saying, ‘Gary is not going to be able to be with us for the upcoming shows. Does anybody come to mind that could come in and play exactly what Gary played and can mimic his tone and sound?’ Damon immediately popped into my head.

“I said, ‘Johnny, I know who could do it. He’s sitting in Nashville, and I know he can cop what Gary did.’ I said, ‘Damon Johnson,’ and Johnny said, ‘Oh my God, you’re right. Can you get a hold of him?’ I called Damon – he was really taken aback!”

He’s been touring with Skynyrd ever since. Was the chemistry there immediately?

“We had a three-day rehearsal, and by the third day, man, he was smokin.’ I feel very blessed and fortunate that he was available. I don’t know what we would have done, you know?”

What the secret to you and Damon copying the parts of two guitar legends?

“I’m playing a Gibson directly into an amp. I don’t use anything between that signal from guitar to amp. I’m playing Wizard Amps, which Damon turned me back onto. I lost my old ’71 and ’72 touring Marshall, and I had three days to get myself up and running. I called Marshall and their representatives told me, ‘No, we’re not going to be able to do that.’

“They said, ‘We’re not interested in resupplying you with amps and cabinets.’ They were more pointed toward newer, young bands, blah-blah-blah. I was thinking to myself, ‘I’ve played Marshall my whole career and you’re telling me that you’re not going to?’ I said, ‘Fine, screw it,’ I called Damon, and I got Wizard amps that sound like the old vintage Marshalls.”

How close do you and Damon get to Allen and Gary’s iconic sound?

Standing up there with Damon, it’s scary close. When Gary came out and was able to do select shows with us to play Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird, he gave Damon his blessing to carry on. He was happy with what Damon was doing.”

From your perspective, are the fans warming up to this version of Skynyrd, just as they did when the band reformed in ’87 with new members?

“The fans thank us for not letting go of this, because it’s a legacy. We’re basically five generations into this music. We get people who are 80 coming, and it’s amazing. The other night, Johnny saw a kid who was about 11 in front of me.

“He reached down and told the security guard, ‘Pull that kid up on stage.’ The kid actually stood up there and sang Simple Man with Johnny. When you see its effect on people, you don’t let go of it; you keep pushing. Hell, man, I’ve always said, ‘If the Rolling Stones can do it, why can’t Skynyrd do it?’”

You’ve mentioned Free Bird a few times… what’s the most challenging thing about executing the classic guitar solo outro?

“You’re probably going to think I’m BSing you, but when I came back into the band in ’96, I knew that was going to be my lead. I was the drummer in Muscle Shoals when we cut the original Free Bird. I watched Allen; basically, he doubled it and would break off one and play something else.

“I knew the licks, so all I did was break it into sections – four bars or eight bars, whatever. We had four days of rehearsal and when the day came to play Free Bird, Gary walked in and goes, ‘Alright, today’s the day.’ I went, ‘Yup. Sure is.’”

You were confident.

“I was – I went, ‘Hell, let’s play the damn thing now.’ We rehearsed all the way through the set, got to Free Bird and started it. When the ending started, I played it on my old reverse-body Firebird. At the end of it Gary came over, shook my hand and goes, ‘Unbelievable job, Rickey. I couldn’t ask for any better.’

“I knew I was on it. And every night I play it, the one thing I really love is the energy level it takes from within you. When you get going, and your adrenaline is flowing to where it just takes over – I mean, I know what I’m doing, but it’s like my hands are on autopilot. And when it’s over, I have to snap myself back into reality.”

What does carrying on the legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd mean to you?

“I’m thankful I’m able to be there to support Johnny and the band. I’m able to uphold the iconic songs. The legacy is very important to me. What the band created is very important to me; I want to be there to support it until the very end.

“A lot of bands go out – and this is no criticism, I’m just pointing it out – and maybe they don’t care as much any more; they just kind of go through the motions. Not this band: we can be dog-ass tired, but it does not matter. We’ll still go out and give 100 percent every night.”

Given the chemistry of the current lineup, is there a plan for Skynyrd to record its first new album since 2012’s Last of a Dyin’ Breed?

“Johnny and I have come across about two dozen songs that we wrote and recorded. These were things that Gary co-wrote; on the tapes you can hear Gary talking and laughing. Johnny and I have started talking about doing a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute to Gary Rossington – you know, what he wrote and co-wrote. We’ll see where that goes.”

• Lynyrd Skynyrd are currently touring North America with ZZ Top.

It’s virtually impossible to write about Southern rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd without mentioning the plane crash that decimated the band at its creative peak in October 1977, killing, among others, frontman Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines.

The group was just four dates into a massive tour in support of its album Street Survivors, released just three days earlier, when the small chartered plane crashed into a Mississippi forest after running out of fuel.

“It was like the sound of a billion baseball bats beating the side of the plane as it went down through the trees,” bassist Leon Wilkeson told journalist Bruce Pilato in 1996.

Rhode Island-born, Florida-raised Wilkeson – affectionately dubbed ‘Mad Hatter’ due to his fondness for wearing outlandish headgear on stage – first picked up the bass guitar as a teenager and began developing a solid but highly mobile style that calls to mind Jack Bruce and Paul McCartney.

After doing the rounds with a number of local bands, Wilkeson joined Skynyrd in 1971, but quit the following year, fearing a rock 'n' roll lifestyle was out of keeping with his Christian faith.

To cover bass guitar duties, Van Zant tapped acquaintance Ed King, formerly of the band Strawberry Alarm Clock. Upon the completion of Skynyrd's 1973 debut album, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Wilkeson was persuaded to rejoin the band, and King switched to guitar.

King – who wrote the music for Sweet Home Alabama during the new lineup's first rehearsal – told Bass Player, “Leon played bass more like a guitar player than a bass player: much of what he put together is counterpoint to the guitar parts, whereas I play a standard foundation bass.”

King left the band in 1975 and was replaced by Gaines, who inspired some of Skynyrd's strongest material, including Street Survivors.

Wilkeson, who died in 2001 at age 49, favored Gibson Thunderbirds and Fender Jazz Basses, making it likely that one, or both, figured on Street Survivors. According to the January 1978 issue of Modern Recording magazine, for the Street Survivors sessions Wilkeson used a Peavey F-800B amp and an 8x10 Altec cabinet miked with an Electro-Voice RE-20, and also recorded direct.

The album opens with What's Your Name, a vibrant swirl of bluesy guitar riffs, honky-tonk piano, country-tinged vocals, and expertly placed horn flourishes. Built around a 12-bar verse and an eight-bar chorus, pick-player Leon Wilkeson lays down bluesy Chuck Berry-inspired basslines – usually in tandem with one of the guitars – that accentuate the 5th and 6th degrees of the principal chords.

Throughout, the chord changes tend to fall on traditionally weak beats, in particular the final eighth-note of the bar, thus anticipating the downbeat and giving the song a strong sense of impetus.

Following another verse, the eight-bar chorus section is doubled in length, helping to build tension before the guitar solo. Check out the subtle sidestep to and from the F#m chord, which Wilkeson accentuates with strong root-5 reinforcement.

Also worthy of note is Wilkeson's single departure from his predetermined patterns, as he fires off a flowing, rising line that features dextrous slides leading back into the chorus. Final recaps of the verse and chorus guide the song to its climax, where Wilkeson joins the guitars for the concluding bluesy phrase.

King also advises checking out several other key Wilkeson tracks: “Listen to That Smell – there's some incredible genius going on there. Also, his take on the chorus of Saturday Night Special is one I would never have come up with.”

Witness also Wilkeson's bold walking lines on Whiskey Rock-a-Roller or his Chuck Rainey-like double-stops and inventive, nimble fingerwork on You Got That Right.

“I don't think Leon knew where any of the notes were,” King says. “He played totally by instinct, and his instincts were usually right. His bass parts were seamless. Like a great catcher on a baseball team, you never really noticed he was there, but when you listened to just his part, the genius of his playing came through big time.”

Fittingly, his bandmates dedicated a bass-heavy song to him titled Mad Hatter on the 2003 album Vicious Cycle. Skynyrd icon King pays his own personal tribute to Wilkeson, saying, “These days whenever I put together a song idea, I ask myself, ‘What would Leon play?’”

Steve Morse has had a stellar career. From founding the Dixie Dregs to becoming Deep Purple's longest-serving guitarist, his name is forever etched in rock history.

However, he recently revealed that there was a period in his life when he quit playing guitar professionally altogether. Instead, he embarked on a career as a commercial airline co-pilot before Lynyrd Skynyrd reignited his passion for music as a profession.

“The [Dixie] Dregs kind of broke up in 1981. We've done six records. I felt like maybe the music business was a little bit too weird for me. So I started doing some odd jobs, running a bulldozer, cutting hay for people, stuff like that. Not trying to work as a musician. It didn't last too long, because I felt like I really missed it,” he says in a new interview with Ernie Ball.

“So I had to figure out something to do, you know, to eat and pay my bills. Phil Walden from Capricorn Records was encouraging me to try to make my own band, you know, 'Wherever the problems were, in the past, do your own thing.' You know, I thought that if I had a trio, I could manage everything and get through the lean times better.

“It would be a real workout for me, musically, but that's something I really relished. So we did the Steve Morse Band, starting in the early to mid-'80s. And went through that for, I don't know, we went for years. And kind of burned out. Or, you know, we've been around the circuit enough times where it was getting repetitive.

“I got the opportunity to work on a new song with Kansas that turned into me doing more songs with Kansas and finally turned into me doing an album and then a tour, then another tour, then another album and tour.”

After this rollercoaster of a career, Morse became jaded by the highs and lows of the music industry, and seriously considered switching jobs.

“I felt maybe I should take advantage of the fact that I had a bunch of flying time from flying my band around. My friends, they were airline pilots. They were telling me what a great job that would be.

“And I thought, ‘You know what? If I had that job, I could just record anything I wanted. And I could do music without having to worry about, you know, pleasing anybody in the business end.’ And that really appealed to me.

“So during that time, I recorded my first solo album called High Tension Wires. And the whole intent of that to record company people was just, ‘I don't care. I'm here to make music and that's it.’

“Getting that job was a lot of fun. A big challenge and I really enjoyed it. But once I did it and did it repetitively, I realized every job has things you don't like about it. Sometimes you just have to deal with stuff.”

It was at this point that Lynyrd Skynyrd got in touch with Morse and offered a spur-of-the-moment opportunity that would change his life forever. “I remember coming back from a long, long day.

“It started in two in the morning and I still have my uniform on, and on the phone was Gary Rossington [Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist] and said, ‘Hey, we're down at the Omni [an indoor arena in Atlanta, Georgia]. Man, you gotta come down. Bring your guitar. We're recording tonight.’

“I said, ‘I've been at work all day and I cut off all my hair.’ He said, ‘Bring your guitar. I'll see you at six.’ I didn't make it at six. I couldn't. I mean, I'm too far away.

“So I [finally] got there. They're already playing. They look over, and Gary gets the message that I'm here. He says, ‘All right, everybody, we're gonna bring up Steve Morse to play on the song Gimme Back My Bullets.’

“So somebody pushed me up on stage. And here's an amp I've never plugged in before…”

Morse didn't have time to think things through, as the band had already started recording what would later become 1998's Southern By The Grace Of God: Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour 1987.

“One of the Lynyrd Skynyrd albums is me sitting in with them. And I said, ‘If it's ever going to be this cool again, I should get back into music full-time. Because this is awesome.’”

Morse would go on to join Deep Purple, who he played with 28 years before stepping down in July 2022. The following year, he reunited the Steve Morse Band for their first tour in 10 years, all while battling pain in his picking hand.

Brother Cane, Thin Lizzy and Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Damon Johnson has been on a long journey to nail his guitar tone, but his early revelation came by way of an amp that he says “was worth every penny” and shaped his tone, and career, ever since.

“In 1990, a friend guided me to ordering a modified ’72 100-watt Marshall Super Lead head that had been worked on by the late great Frank Levy. Spending $1,000 back then would be like spending $10,000 now, but it was worth every penny,” he tells Guitarist.

“That amp quite literally changed my life, as I had just put Brother Cane together and used that amp on stage and in the studio for our first album, and I still have it with me today. The compliments and encouragement I got from everyone around me about the sound of that amp was rocket fuel for my confidence.”

In a recent Guitar World interview, Johnson talked about his gear of choice throughout his impressive career. “My gear odyssey has been a lot of fun. My amp of choice changed after Brother Cane toured with Aerosmith in 1994, following the winter NAMM show. Joe Perry introduced me to Rick St. Pierre, who’d launched this new amp called Wizard. Rick took a real shine to me because he loved my blood-and-guts approach to playing guitar."

“The Wizard stuff was a staple of my rig through Alice Cooper, Thin Lizz, and Black Star Riders. Had it not been for my relationship with Gary Rossington [founding guitarist of Lynyrd Skynyrd] and his family, and how important Gary’s amps are to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sound, I’d be playing Wizards there, too.

He continued, “My gear has been consistent for decades. It’s not that I’m not open to other stuff, but I’m not going to Guitar Center and checking out stuff because effects have not been an essential part of any band that I’ve ever been in. But I argue that Wizard amps are some of the great amps ever made; it’s like classic Marshall adjacent.”

We’re in an era now where many bands from the proverbial ‘golden age of rock n’ roll’ are not quite so golden anymore. Time, in the end, gets to us all.

As such, several bands on the touring circuit rely on newer, younger members to keep their legacies going – Judas Priest are a fine example of that. Meanwhile, bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd continue to exist without original members in their line-ups.

Guitarist Gary Rossington, who founded the Southern rock legends in 1964, passed away last year, and in a fresh interview, his former co-electric guitar player Rickey Medlocke has defended the band’s decision to continue in his wake.

Talking to WDHA FM (via Ultimate Guitar), he mentions how, on several occasions, it was clear Rossington was “struggling to be on the road”.

However, Medlocke says Rossington would turn to his bandmates and say: “‘I never want the band to go by the wayside, and the music just disappear along with myself and the rest of the original guys, only to just be heard on the radio, or just be heard by cover bands.'

“So when [his passing] happened,” Medlocke expands, “Johnny [Van Zant, vocals] and I talked.”

He says “it was a hard decision”, but asserts that “the one thing that was really powerful” was their fan’s reaction to the news.

“When it did happen,” he explains, “tens of thousands of stuff rolled in on the Skynyrd website, and each one of our websites and Facebook and Instagram. The one deciding factor was the fans always said, 'Please don't let this be the end of it.'”

Buoyed by fan power, he and Van Zant set the wheels in motion: “Let's go to all the people that are involved… let's see if we can't work it out, to where we take the band out, and we continue as Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

On the surface, it’s easy to deride a band without any original members as a mere cover act. However, Medlocke holds firm on his belief that the band remains an authentic experience.

“Look, our time in the band, it is Lynyrd Skynyrd,” he says,=. “Johnny, the original singer's little brother [has] been there since '87. I've been back with the band since '96 – going on 29 years now, two and a half years in the very beginning. So my tenure is over 30 years with the band.”

Released in 1974, Sweet Home Alabama is one of the most popular classic rock songs ever written, and it made household names of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their Southern rock sound.

Thankfully, learning to play the song's main hook on guitar isn't too challenging – it doesn’t take long to spot that the riff is written around a simple chord progression (D, Cadd9, G).

Below, we take you note by note through the intro in our video lesson – but you can easily busk your way through these chords if you want to take a simpler approach.

Simply begin each chord with a couple of hits on the root note to get the right feel. If you prefer to the more authentic approach, you’ll find the melodic lines in bars 2 and 4 most challenging.

For the first of these, try keeping your third finger on the second string to keep your fret hand steady. On the second run, break out of the chord shape to move up the fretboard.

Song facts

• Appears at: 0:03-0:22
• Tempo: 98bpm
• Key/scale: D Mixolydian / G major pentatonic
• Main techniques: tight arpeggios and pentatonic phrases
• Learning tip: Get those easy chord changes 100 per cent together first

Damon Johnson was born to rock. He grew up in Georgia and eventually moved to Alabama, idolizing the likes of Eddie Van Halen and even crafting his own Eddie-like Floyd Rose-equipped super Strat – before returning to his Gibson Les Paul roots.

“I guess I’m boring when it comes to gear – I just need a Les Paul,” Johnson says. “But with my band Brother Cane, I’ll step on a wah pedal every once in a while. I guess I’m officially a traditionalist. I’m very happy with that.”

After forming Brother Cane – who toured with Van Halen and Aerosmith and made waves on ‘90s rock radio – Johnson held it down with Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders before taking on the task of replacing Gary Rossington in Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2023.

Some would jump at the chance to make the iconic Freebird solo their own – but Johnson is a purist.

“The fans want to hear those songs,” he says, “and those songs and parts are perfect. You better play the solo for Simple Man or Freebird note for note. If you play those wrong, you’ll hear about it on YouTube the next day.”

Johnson has been in the same spot with Cooper and Lizzy. But he does like to noodle now and again, and that’s where the reformed Brother Cane comes in. 

“I love to improvise; I do it every day in my hotel room or at home. I get plenty of that in with Brother Cane – putting my own style down and expressing myself in my own songs.

“But when it comes to these established classic rock bands, I’m a fan as much as the people in the audience. I want to give them what I’d want to hear if I were sitting in that seat.”

While Skynyrd has ongoing dates with ZZ Top, Johnson is looking to the future, which includes Brother Cane’s first studio record since 1998’s Wishpool. 

“I’m getting the itch to get back into the studio, but the holes in my calendar are pretty scattered,” he reports.

“I’d love to move the Brother Cane thing forward between dates with Skynyrd. The Skynyrd thing has got control over my calendar; but I’ve got space to do other stuff, so I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I feel very fortunate to have all of this activity going on.”

When did the guitar first enter your life?

“My dad had two Gibson guitars that he bought in 1960. He was a traveling farm equipment salesman, and an older colleague had recommended he get something to do to pass the time in hotel rooms. He had an acoustic and an electric, and my very first memory is of seeing those guitars around the house.”

What got you playing?

“They belonged to my dad, who was kind of my superhero, so the two things were connected. I was always intrigued, then I became obsessed – I’d see him play and jam with friends who came over. And my brother was a fantastic acoustic player.

“I was like, ‘Okay, anybody can do this. I can do this one day!’ When I was in grade school in the ‘70s, I discovered all this amazing rock music, and it all hit at the same time.”

Is it safe to assume that most of your early influences were classic rock?

“Kiss, Doobie Brothers, Bad Company, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Zeppelin, Sabbath and Pink Floyd. But in the late ‘70s, things got interesting – Aerosmith and Van Halen changed everything.”

You were born in Georgia but moved to Birmingham, Alabama, early in your career.

“I went from one garage band to another and even had some real gigs in bars. I sometimes set up in shopping malls just to get a little attention. In my early 20s I ended up playing in a house band four nights a week; I was really growing in confidence and belief in myself.

“One night played at a popular nightclub in downtown Birmingham. About two weeks later, a manager who had heard about the gig called and asked if I wanted to join Split the Dark, an established band. I wouldn't have been more excited if David Bowie had asked me to be his guitar player! That’s why I moved to Birmingham.”

How did Brother Cane come about?

“Joining Split the Dark was a huge deal. Everyone in my life said, ‘You have to do this.’ I played in several bands in Birmingham – but I wasn’t the key member; I didn’t start these bands. I went back to the same manager and he offered his support if I put my own band together, which led to Brother Cane.”

What did your rig look like around that time?

“I had a homemade guitar with a Floyd Rose. It was fun, and I had a Marshall half-stack and a bunch of pedals on the floor. I even started getting into rack-mounted effects – at least, as much as I could afford, because of the influence of players like Steve Lukather.

“But in 1989 I played in a Memphis band and the other guitar player – sort of an underground legend, Eddie Shaver, the son of Billy Joe Shaver – was just gifted. When I heard that guy plug a Stratocaster straight into a Mesa Boogie head with no pedals, nothing, and get the tone he had, it changed my life.

“I took the Floyd Rose home, got my Les Paul out, and I’ve never turned back from that. The influence of Eddie, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and the Black Crowes hitting right after that fueled my thinking.”

Is that what shaped Brother Cane’s guitar sound?

“Yes. I felt the parallels between their sound and my other influences. If the Black Crowes could get a record deal, why couldn’t I? We were just down the street in Birmingham. So it was Les Paul's and Marshall's from then on.”

Hair metal and super Strats were the flavor of the day.

“I’m proud that our reputation as an ‘80s hair band was nothing. We weren’t a grunge band; we were just a straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll band that somehow managed to etch out a little real estate on rock radio for the better part of the ‘90s.

“We were like a sub-genre, which is why we couldn’t just go out and tour with anybody. We were grateful to tour with Van Halen, Robert Plant and Aerosmith – but the kids at the time were all going to see Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.

“I get it, but we weren’t part of that, and it led to the demise of Brother Cane. We couldn’t find an infrastructure to succeed, be self-contained and make a living doing our own records. It was tough.”

The first two records – Brother Cane and Seeds – held their own, with And Fools Shine On going to number one and being part of the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers soundtrack. 

“The first record allowed us to make the second, and also the third, Wishpool. We were on rock radio constantly between the summer of ’93 and the summer of ’94; it was just incredible. Looking back, I’m still amazed that it even happened.”

What was touring with Van Halen like?

“It was the greatest experience of our lives. There’s no band I went to see more as a teenager than Van Halen. For me, nothing occupied more real estate than Van Halen. I had a bumper sticker and played every album on vinyl and cassette.

“I did my best to figure out some of Eddie’s insane alchemy. So, yeah, to get a call that we’d gotten even just a couple of opening slots with Van Halen was amazing. And that’s how it started; but Eddie, Sammy Hagar and the other guys took a shine to us and had us come for more dates when they needed an opener.”

Did you get to talk with Eddie much?

“Man, it was life-changing. It was amazing to get behind the curtain and become friends with all four of them. I have priceless memories of conversations and shenanigans with all those guys.

“On that tour in 1994, Eddie was sober, super clear and super focused. He was a proud parent; Wolfgang was maybe three or four then and he’d be running around the dressing room. There’s no way we could have had any idea that the kid would turn out to be what he is!

“Eddie and I would have conversations about family; I had three kids myself then. We connected on other things besides guitar. He was super gracious – he showed me his rig and his guitars and even shipped a brand-new Peavey Wolfgang guitar to my house after the tour. I still have it and I cherish it to this day.”

Did touring with Eddie – and later, Joe Perry and Aerosmith – impact your gear choices?

“My gear odyssey has been a lot of fun. My amp of choice changed after Brother Cane toured with Aerosmith in 1994, following the winter NAMM show. Joe Perry introduced me to Rick St. Pierre, who’d launched this new amp called Wizard. Rick took a real shine to me because he loved my blood-and-guts approach to playing guitar.

“The way I play has more in common with Angus Young and Joe Walsh than with Eddie Van Halen, who’s a technical, flashier player. I love sitting around attempting that stuff, but I tend to be more melodic. Rick recognized that and was familiar with Brother Cane, and that relationship continues today.

“The Wizard stuff was a staple of my rig through Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders. Had it not been for my relationship with Gary Rossington and his family, and how important Gary’s amps are to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sound, I’d be playing Wizards there too.

“But I’m currently playing Gary’s personal Peavey Penta and Magnatone amps. It’s almost like his spirit is there, and it’s such an honor for me. He ran the Peavey and the Magnatone together at the same time to give the front-of-house guy some flexibility.

“If he was playing a rhythm part he’d lean on the Magnatone, but I’d encourage readers to research Gary’s Peavey Penta – it’s badass. It sounds just like a big, nasty, woolly vintage Marshall.”

What was it like sharing space with Scott Gorham in Thin Lizzy?

“I was incredibly flattered that Scott would even ask. When it happened, Alice Cooper was the first person I called. I talked with him about how much I loved Thin Lizzy, and Alice was super supportive. I showed up the first day beyond prepared, knowing the Gary Moore and Brian Robertson versions. 

“After the first couple of rehearsals Scott said, ‘Buddy, you’re playing your ass off and we love it. But don’t feel like you have to play those songs note for note. I want you to be Damon Johnson… I want you to bring your style.

“My gear has been consistent for decades. It’s not that I’m not open to other stuff, but I’m not going to Guitar Center and checking out stuff because effects have not been an essential part of any band that I’ve ever been in. But I argue that Wizard amps are some of the great amps ever made; it’s like classic Marshall adjacent.

Is that the same mindset you bring to Lynyrd Skynyrd?

“That’s how Thin Lizzy prepared me for Skynyrd. When I got the phone call from Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke about needing someone to fill in while Gary was home recovering, they said, ‘Damon, we need you to put in the time and learn these songs note for note.’ I said, ‘Guys, I wouldn’t dream of doing it any other way.’”

Gary’s amps aside, is there room for new discoveries in your rig?

“My gear has been consistent for decades. It’s not that I’m not open to other stuff, but I’m not going to Guitar Center and checking out stuff because effects have not been an essential part of any band that I’ve ever been in. But I argue that Wizard amps are some of the great amps ever made; it’s like classic Marshall adjacent.”

You fired Brother Cane back up in 2022. Is anything new on the horizon?

“Skynyrd’s tour with ZZ Top resumes in August,  but we’ve got some one-offs planned. I’ve got some new songs I’m writing with the newest version of Brother Cane.

“Glenn Maxey and I put the band back together, and the rest of the guys are people I’ve played with in my solo band for the last 10 years. So it’s just me and my friends. I’m grateful they want to play the old songs, but we’ll put out a couple of new ones in October of 2024. A new full-length Brother Cane record is definitely in my plans.”

• Follow Johnson on Instagram.

Damon Johnson has amassed a staggering list of credits across his career, having played electric guitar with the likes of Brother Cane, Alice Cooper and Black Star Riders, while touring with bands such as Van Halen and Aerosmith.

Johnson has also held down roles in not one, but two, classic rock outfits, and in both cases was given the monumental task of stepping in to replace a string of iconic guitar players.

Specifically, in 2011, Johnson was tapped by Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy to fill a role previously held by Gary Moore and Brian Robertson. 

A decade later, he was appointed by Lynyrd Skynyrd, initially as a temporary replacement for Gary Rossington – who was recovering from emergency heart surgery at the time – and later on a permanent basis following Rossington's death.

As Johnson explains in a new interview with Guitar World, both opportunities had their own distinct challenges, but his approach for the gigs remained largely the same: honor the original material as closely as possible.

“I was incredibly flattered that Scott would even ask,” Johnson says of his Thin Lizzy recruitment. “I showed up the first day beyond prepared, knowing the Gary Moore and Brian Robertson versions.

“After the first couple of rehearsals, Scott said, 'Buddy, you're playing your ass off, and we love it. But don't feel like you have to play those songs note-for-note. I want you to be Damon Johnson.' 

“He said, 'I want you to bring your style to the lead guitar of Thin Lizzy,' and I didn't hesitate. I said, 'Scott, I appreciate that, but respectfully if I'm a fan of Thin Lizzy and come to see the band, I don't want to hear this new guy playing his interpretation.'”

Johnson carried this strong desire to closely honor the source material into his Lynyrd Skynyrd stint. That made things slightly easier, given the fact he received far stricter stage notes from the band’s leaders.

“When I got the phone call from Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke about needing someone to fill in while Gary was home recovering, they said, 'Damon, we need you to put in the time and learn these songs note-for-note.' 

“I said, 'Guys, I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way.'”

Gibson has announced the arrival of a new limited edition Custom Shop recreation of Jason Isbell’s 1959 Les Paul Standard, known as a ‘Red Eye’. 

The instrument, a particularly fine example of the fabled ’Burst era Les Pauls, was formerly the “long-term sidekick” of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ed King (who passed away in 2018) before it passed to six-time Grammy-winner Isbell for further gainful employment. 

The ‘Red Eye’ moniker is an allusion to a brighter, red area of finish near the toggleswitch. The story goes that the instrument was on display in a store window and the original finish faded in the process. 

However, the tag that was hung on the toggleswitch covered a nearby area, meaning it kept more of its original pigment, leaving the a ‘red eye’ zone near the switch. 

This new Isbell and Gibson partnership looks to celebrate the guitar’s history – ‘Red Eye’ and all – as part of Gibson's top tier Custom Shop Collector’s Edition series and, as such, is no standard production.

There will only be 59 of this ‘59 Burst recreation made, which – alongside the detailed reproduction, and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard – helps account for its exclusive price tag of nearly $22,000. 

As we’ve come to expect by now, Gibson has spared no expense in translating every last detail of the original ‘Red Eye’ into this exclusive build, not least – courtesy of the Murphy Lab – the wear and red eye finish quirk [it even comes complete with its own toggle switch hang tag - Ed].

Isbell himself reportedly helped pick the tops for the builds. Beneath said tops, you’ll find a one-piece lightweight mahogany body, with mahogany continuing through with its 24.75” neck and Brazilian rosewood fretboard. It also offers 22 medium jumbo frets, a nylon nut, and aged cellulose nitrate trapezoid inlays. 

It sports two un-potted Custombuckers, two Volume and Two tone Gold Butyrate pots and a three-way pickup switch, with an ABR-1 No-Wire bridge, lightweight aluminium stop bar, and Kluson tuners. 

The 59 individuals lucky enough to pick one up will also find some case candy inside its Les Paul Protector Series hardshell case, including a Jason Isbell strap – made by Savas from Midnight Blue Wild Alligator leather with a chain stitched and inlaid Red Eye emblem – two rubber “beer bottle” style strap locks, a certificate of authenticity booklet, and, as mentioned, custom and reproduction hangtags.

“You just know [when a guitar is good], before I even plugged the ‘Red Eye’ in, I just knew,” says Isbell on his first encounter with the guitar.  

Isbell, who rose to fame playing in Drive by Truckers before establishing himself as a solo artist, was tasked with documenting a number of King's guitars in the wake of his passing  and instantly fell in love with the ‘Red Eye’. 

“When I was a kid me and my dad would go shopping for fishing tackle,” he recalls. “He’d take the rod and say 'go stand over there, put the end of the rod on your throat' and he would hold the handle of the rod and I would talk. If he could feel it in his hand, it was a pretty good fishing rod rod. 

“It’s that way with a good guitar. Every point that you touch on that instrument, you feel the vibration moving. I would know if the ‘Red Eye’ was a good guitar even if I was stone deaf, just because you can feel it vibrating.”

Desperate to get his hands on the guitar, he asked his manager to book him for some private shows with the fairly modest provision of “no war criminals.” 

Thus the guitarist, whose latest solo LP, Weathervanes released last year, “wound up at a bunch of weird Bitcoin birthday parties,” to pay for the guitar. It’s since been a staple of his live performances, carrying a torch the King so blazingly lit by King. 

Isbell says he grew up studying Skynyrd’s licks “ad nauseam” and is full of praise when asked about his appreciation for King’s guitar-playing legacy. 

“The Sweet Home Alabama solo is still one of the strangest, most well-constructed solos I can think of because it just does not go where it would expect it to go. The way he creates the tension and releases it – he was a brilliant guitar player.” 

This unique recreation build is available for $21,999,  with only 59 produced. 

Head to Gibson for more information. 

Gary Rossington was one of the founding members of southern rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd. His legacy will survive for many years after his recent and untimely death in March 2023.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1951 Rossington swapped a love of baseball for music, when as a teenager he heard The Rolling Stones. At the time of his death, he was the final surviving member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band that had suffered many losses including a plane crash in 1977 that devastated the line-up, claiming the lives of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines. 

However, the band’s legacy had been firmly set in place with songs like Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird becoming the calling card for an entire musical genre. Many groups have taken inspiration from Rossington and Lynyrd Skynyrd, including the Black Crowes, and perhaps less obviously so, Metallica. 

Skynyrd are regularly placed in lists of the greatest and most influential artists of all time, and have gone on to sell almost 30 million records in the USA alone. Unsurprisingly, they have also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

Rossington himself was inspired by artists such as Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy, and it’s these blues-rock influences that can be heard in our lesson. It’s a 12-bar chord progression in the key of E major (E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#) and the main rhythm guitar parts are built using single-note lines from that scale.

You’ll find a typical bluesy minor 3rd to major 3rd move (G-G#) on several occasions, and a minor 3rd to major 2nd (G-F#) as well. Additionally, another staple of the Skynyrd sound is the minor 3rd to major 3rd to root note movement, and this can be heard over the A major chord, with the notes C-C# followed by a high A.

The solo is constructed around the E minor pentatonic scale (E-G-A-B-D) for the most part, but then switches to A minor pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G) over the A chord. It also makes use of notes from B major pentatonic (B-C#-D#-F#-G#) over the B chord. 

You’ll notice a country-style 6ths phrase that moves up the scale on the third and first strings. This is another indication of the blend of styles that can be heard in southern rock, which took shape by combining rock, blues and country. 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 5, Bass 6, Middle 7, Treble 7, Reverb 3

Rossington was primarily a Gibson Les Paul player, so a humbucking tone is the best place to start. That said, a Stratocaster or Tele will work to good effect for the Lynyrd Skynyrd sound. 

A Fender or Marshall amp tone with enough grit to rock but not too much preamp saturation is the way to go, with minimal effects save for a touch of reverb and perhaps some tape delay-style echo.

Example 1. Rhythm

You’ll notice a blend of rock aggression but also some restraint and finesse in this style of guitar playing, so don’t hit the strings too hard on either the rhythm or lead parts. There’s also some hybrid picking (pick and fingers) in bars 5, 6 and 9, so work on this technique if it’s new to you.

Example 2. Lead

There’s nothing too tricky in the solo, but make sure the hammer-ons from major to minor 3rd are executed cleanly, and that your bends reach their target pitch accurately. Although quite jaunty, you’ll need to maintain a relaxed and laid-back feel here and, as always, avoid rushing!

Leon Wilkeson, the bass player of Lynyrd Skynyrd – arguably the most popular and influential Southern rock band of all time – survived the infamous plane crash of October 20, 1977, that killed Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister vocalist Cassie Gaines. 

When he was rescued from the crash, Wilkeson was lucky to be alive; he had a closed double fracture of his left leg, six broken ribs (one of which punctured his left lung), dislodged teeth, and a left arm that had been so badly broken that doctors were considering amputating it. And to make things worse, swamp water contaminated his open wounds.

Ultimately, Wilkeson recovered from the accident – arm intact – and was able to return to his musical career before landing back with the reunited Lynyrd Skynyrd for a reunion tour in 1987. However, severe nerve damage and minimal range of motion in his left arm meant that he had to hold his bass close to his body at a near-vertical angle for the remainder of his playing days. Check out YouTube for proof, but in a nut shell Wilkeson had to develop a playing style that was entirely his own.  

To accommodate Wilkeson’s left arm, a member of the crew attached a metal extension to the upper horn of his 1963 Gibson Thunderbird. The additional frame support replicated the feel of the horn with the bass held vertically, which was the only way he could reach the frets with his fretting hand. Wilkeson would later turn to a Pedulla Pentabuzz, relying on the curvaceous body shape and extended body horn to achieve the same effect.  

He was also known for playing a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass, and a ‘Fenderbird’ that was reportedly given to him by John Entwistle following a support slot for The Who's Quadrophenia tour. Wilkeson can be seen playing this bass, which melded a Thunderbird body to a Precision Bass neck, on a 1975 TV performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The '63 Thunderbird was eventually sold to a private collector.

Inspired by his heroes The Beatles – and Paul McCartney in particular – a young Wilkeson picked up the bass guitar and soon joined singer Ronnie Van Zant’s pre-Skynyrd band the Collegiates, before becoming a part of Skynyrd in 1973, replacing future Blackfoot bassist Greg T. Walker. Their 1973 debut album, which boasted hits like Free Bird and Sweet Home Alabama, would define their long-term success. Unfortunately, that success was short-lived following the tragic plane crash in 1977.

Wilkeson and the other Lynyrd Skynyrd members eventually reunited and toured for most of the 1990s. It was during this tour with the revamped Lynyrd Skynyrd that Wilkeson faced another brush with death. Guitarist Ed King found him with his throat cut on the group’s tour bus. Wilkeson was rushed to the hospital and was able to continue the tour, but who was to blame remains unsolved. Wilkeson died, aged 49, in Florida, on July 27th, 2001. The post mortem suggested that he was suffering from chronic liver and lung disease.

Lynyrd Skynyrd are still touring. Visit their website for more info.

Lynyrd Skynyrd has released footage of Gary Rossington’s final performance with the band, recorded as part of their 50th Anniversary concert at the Ryman Auditorium on November 13, 2022.

The clip captures the group’s performance of the song Gimme Three Steps, which featured on the band’s 1972 debut, (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd), and here sees Rossington in fiery form. 

A full film – The 50th Anniversary of Lynyrd Skynyrd – is reportedly on the way and will document a night that featured a host of guitar talent, including Brothers Osborne guitarist John Osborne and Marcus King, alongside Shinedown vocalist Brent Smith and country rapper Jelly Roll.

The band are promoting the film with a cross-country premiere at theaters and venues on July 8.

“We are excited to share this special night and celebrate 50 Years of Skynyrd music with the Skynyrd Nation and fans of these timeless songs,” says Johnny Van Zant. 

“We were fortunate to capture this special evening with Gary Rossington and Dale Krantz Rossington and all of the special guests that were able to join us on stage. It is certainly bittersweet because this was Gary’s last show, but we are so fortunate that we were able to share one last special night together on stage, doing what Gary loved.”

Rossington – the band’s last surviving founding member – passed away in March of this year, following ongoing heart trouble. During his five-decade tenure with the group, he co-wrote Sweet Home Alabama and provided the emotive slide that captured hearts on Free Bird.

“The way we lived came out in our instruments, our singing and our songwriting,” Rossington once told Guitar World’s Alan Paul. In the same chat, he recalled an early engineer telling him that they looked mad when they played. “We weren’t always mad,” he commented. “But we learned to play hard and mean.”

Watching the footage above, it shows he kept that spirit until the end of his playing career. As Van Zant comments in his introduction: “Gary... Sick ’em!” 

For more information on the film and to purchase tickets for premiere events, head to the 50th Anniversary of Lynyrd Skynyrd site.

It will be no surprise to guitarists to learn that there are certain perennial favorites that seem to last through successive generations of players. However, despite our suspicions, it’s always been difficult to determine the most popular choices for learners. 

Now new research claims to have done just that. The data, put together by UkuleleWorld.com (in no way affiliated with Guitar World), gathered average monthly searches for lessons on 1,000 popular tracks across piano, ukulele, guitar and violin to identify the top choices for American players. 

Narrowing the supplied data down to just the guitar category shows that the most popular choice for guitarists alone is Oasis’ ballad Wonderwall, which receives a reported 15,620 average monthly searches.

This is closely followed by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, on an average of 14,705 searches per month. Neither of these two tracks is a particularly surprising inclusion. 

A big caveat comes in that the data has some sizeable gaps once you narrow it down to a per instrument basis. The final list is drawn from the cumulative totals across all the surveyed instruments, which creates a very different top 25 than you would expect from a list based on a single instrument.

For instance, Vance Joy’s Riptide is the third most popular guitar track featured on the final 25, with 11,519 searches – a pretty surprising ranking. However, the reason it is in the 25 initially is likely due to the heavy weighting of ukulele searches it receives – a monthly average of 32,085. 

Given that in 2021 there were about twice as many guitars sold as ukuleles (3.4 million, compared to 1.7 million, according to Statista) it seems odd that the top guitar tutorial searches should perform comparatively poorly in this list. All of which is to say, we’d recommend you take any guitar-specific information here with a heavy pinch of salt.

Regardless, Wonderwall continues to be an enduring success when it comes to the repertoires of both guitarists and ukulele players. You can check out Total Guitar’s 2013 Wonderwall video lesson in the clips below. 

If you’re looking for some more challenging playing inspiration, however – why not tackle the best guitar solo of the 21st century?

Across Lynyrd Skynyrd's sprawling catalog and over years of epic good time jams, Gary Rossington left an indelible mark on a generation of guitar players.

Among them was Zakk Wylde. He might be a Hudson County native, born north of the Mason-Dixon, but the Ozzy and Black Label Society guitarist’s sound and style has long marinated in the Southern rock flavors of Skynyrd. Their influence is deep and profound in how Wylde addresses the electric guitar.

In this interview, culled from 2012 but appearing in GW for the first time, he picks five tracks that any Skynyrd neophyte should check out first. And technically it’s six, because he mentions a deep cut that perhaps did not get the love that it should. 

1. Free Bird

“At 11 minutes, the live version [from One More from the Road, 1976] is even longer than the studio one, but both are amazing. Ronnie wrote the lyric about Duane Allman [who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971], but I guess now it makes people think of anyone they know and love that has passed away. And down through the years the ripping instrumental jam at the end has become iconic.”

2. Sweet Home Alabama

“I wonder whether Skynyrd knew what a grand slam they’d hit with Sweet Home Alabama once it was done, or, like Robert Plant once said of Stairway to Heaven, that it was a ‘nice little wedding song’? They must’ve known just how special it was at the time because it’s as timeless as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

3. I Know A Little

“The guitar playing is beyond insane. I first heard it when I was learning how to play and thought: ‘God, I’ll never be able to do that.’ The licks, the phrasing… it’s just amazing.”

4. I Never Dreamed

“It’s one of their less well-known songs, but I really love it. We covered it with Black Label Society [as a bonus track on the Mafia album, 2005]. The lyrics, the vocal delivery and the guitar parts combine to make it an incredible song.”

5. That Smell

“Again, the guitar playing is phenomenal. I could’ve picked something more obscure like Swamp Music, but if you haven’t heard Skynyrd before, this is a great song to check out.”

As Guitar World’s unofficial Southern rock correspondent for the past 33 years, I interviewed Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington, who passed away March 5 at age 71, many times over many years. He was always insightful, good natured and happy to talk.

A few conversations really stand out. Circa 1996, we did a great phone interview, speaking at length about his sobriety, which was quite new at the time. Shortly after we hung up, my office landline rang again.

“Alan, it’s Gary. I need to talk.”

“Ok, Gary, what’s up?”

“I told you a lie and it’s really bugging me.”

He corrected himself and apologized. The “lie” he had told me was minor and inconsequential – not something that would’ve been in the story anyhow – but he couldn’t live with it. He was making amends and following the 12-step commitment to honesty, and I was touched by that. 

Gary was a survivor and a fighter. Most famously, he survived the October 1977 plane crash that killed singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backup singer Cassie Gaines. Rossington was the last-surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, though drummer Artimus Pyle, who joined the band later and survived the crash, is still with us. 

All of the crash survivors were badly injured. Bassist Leon Wilkeson had his broken arm set in such a way that he had to play in an upright position, prompting me to once ask Rossington if the metal plate he had inserted in his left arm forced him to alter his playing style in any way. 

“Not really,” he dryly drawled. “I just had to get used to constant, day-in, day-out pain.”

He said that with a laugh, adding that he had broken “just about every bone in my body.”

Long before the crash, the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd had a reputation for hard living, heavy drinking and regular brawling, and without a doubt, their lifestyle fortified their music with intensity, grit and honesty. 

“The way we lived came out in our instruments, our singing and our songwriting,” Rossington said. He recalled an early studio engineer saying that they always looked mad when they played. “We weren’t always mad,” he said. “But we learned to play hard and mean.” 

The group’s three core founding members – Van Zant, Rossington and guitarist Allen Collins – abandoned baseball and turned to music in eighth grade after seeing the Rolling Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show. And although seeing Gregg and Duane Allman, as well as Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley’s pre-Allman Brothers group Second Coming, had a profound impact on the young musicians, British blues-based riff rockers remained their guiding lights.

“We were influenced by Cream, the Yardbirds, Free, the Animals, the Stones and the Beatles,” Rossington said. The underlying key to their sound was filtering that British blues rock sound through their own Jacksonville, Florida, sensibilities and marrying it all with Van Zant’s country-tinged songwriting and singing. “Ronnie was really a country singer in a rock ’n’ roll band,” Skynyrd guitarist Ed King said.

Collins and Rossington had distinctly different styles, as did King and Steve Gaines, who joined the band in 1977, and every other picker who served in the band since their reunion. 

One thing that always held them together and kept them out of each other’s way was Rossington’s sturdy, crunchy, rooted playing and his ability to not over play and to stay out of everyone else’s way. “We even share solos,” Rossington said. “I think having the different sounds keeps things interesting – especially live, when you never know who’s doing what.”

Two years after the crash. Rossington and Collins formed the Rossington Collins Band, which also included Wilkeson and Skynyrd pianist Billy Powell. Wanting to develop their own sound and avoid comparisons with Lynyrd Skynyrd, the group hired female lead singer Dale Krantz, a move that was as savvy as the Allman Brothers Band replacing Duane Allman with pianist Chuck Leavell; the best way to replace an irreplaceable legend is to pivot. 

Krantz and Rossington were married in 1982 and she survives him. The Rossington Collins Band released two strong albums before disbanding. 

Sadly, Collins remained dogged by tragedy. His wife Kathy died while miscarrying their third child in 1980. His drinking and drug use were out of control, and in 1986, he crashed his car into a ditch, killing his girlfriend and sustaining injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He died in 1990.

Collins served as a non-playing musical director when Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited in 1987 for a Tribute tour with Van Zant’s brother Johnny on lead vocals, and then again in 1991. Though it would’ve been impossible to predict it at the time, they’ve pretty much stayed together ever since. No one was more surprised by that than they were.

“It’s amazing,” Rossington said. “After the plane crash, I honestly thought we’d never play together as Lynyrd Skynyrd again. On the Tribute tour [in 1987], the audiences were real receptive and they knew the words to every song.” 

Rossington said he was especially touched by seeing parents and children singing along together. “The people wanted us to get back together. We weren’t planning on it.”

The band kept going, recording and releasing new music through a variety of lineup changes over the ensuing 32 years. Wilkeson died in 2001 and Powell in 2009, leaving Rossington as the lone surviving original member in the group.

In 2016, Gary and Dale released Keep It on Faith, a stripped-down, bluesy album under the name Rossington. It was his first work outside of Lynyrd Skynyrd in 30 years. 

“We kept getting requests from fans to do something like this again, and it was really touching that people liked Rossington Collins so much, so we really wanted to do it for them,” Rossington told me. “After all these years of being married and having kids and grandkids, it brought us back together and thinking about those early days in really nice ways.”

I last spoke to Gary last year for my upcoming book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and the Album That Defined the ’70s, which includes a fair amount about Lynyrd Skynyrd and the birth of Southern rock. He was, as ever, happy to look back at the band’s career from the perspective of a successful elder. 

We spoke about the impact of the Allman Brothers Band and the power of being an aspiring musician standing in front of Gregg and Duane, who were just a few years older than them, and contemplating what it would take to be that good. But the real turning point for him, Collins and Van Zant, he said, was seeing Free at Skateland, a Jacksonville skating rink that hosted concerts some nights – after the skating. 

“We had heard how good this band was and went to see them,” Rossington said. “They were late arriving, so they came dragging out Marshall amps and setting up their own gear. They were so cool looking, and then they started playing. And, man, Paul Kossoff was so good and so loud – and there was Paul Rodgers singing his ass off. We were really inspired. 

“Right after that show, the three of us went out and spoke for hours about how it was time to buckle down and get tight. From the time we woke up until we went to bed, we only thought about music from that moment. We were trying to figure out how to get better, what it took. We just wanted to make our mark.”   

Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced the band will continue following the passing of Gary Rossington, the group’s last surviving founding member, last month.

The band say they have been in discussions with each other and the families of past members and have come to the conclusion that the group should continue to tour and perform.

Alongside the announcement, the band has shared an extensive list of dates, including a string of previously announced late summer/fall shows with ZZ Top on the Sharply Dressed Man tour, which they intend to honor. 

“I recently lost my husband and partner of over 41 years,” reads a statement from Rossington’s widow, Dale – who performs in the band. “He was an amazing father, grandfather, brother and friend, but most importantly was a world class musician and songwriter.

“It’s been my honor and privilege to share the stage with him for all these years. His music touched so many millions of people around The World, and Gary was always the first to say how, ‘Skynyrd’s music is bigger than me or any one person.’  

“Gary made it known at every chance to express how timeless the music was, and it was always his goal to keep the music alive for his brothers because that was always their dream. He spent his entire life trying to carry on that dream for Ronnie, Allen, Steve and all the others over the years. 

“While he was not able to physically be on stage with the current lineup over the last couple years, he supported them in every way. His dream will continue thanks to Johnny, Rickey and the rest of our band mates to continue to carry his legacy and music on for future generations.”

Vocalist Johnny Van Zant (brother to Skynyrd’s founding member Ronnie Van Zant) has also issued a statement. 

“Gary was not only my brother, bandmate and friend,” writes Van Zant. “I think he loved me as much as I loved him. We would do anything for each other.  We laughed, we fell, we cried and made up, and shared the stage for the last 36 years. Gary, along with my brother Ronnie and Allen started this band and left us all a legacy of music that has stood the test of time, and crossed three generations of fans.  

“The music they created, and the music we created, together since 1987, was always meant to be experienced LIVE. We have come together with the founding band member estates, and everyone involved, and feel the music should continue for everyone to love and enjoy.  So we will continue to perform for the Skynyrd Nation.”

The band’s forthcoming tourmate Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, recently joined Slash and Warren Haynes as part of an all-star tribute to Rossington at last weekend’s CMT Awards. Skynyrd’s full list of live shows can be viewed below. 

2023 Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top tour dates

• 7/21  West Palm Beach, FL                    iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
• 7/22  Tampa, FL                                       Midflorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
• 7/23  Alpharetta, GA                               Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
• 7/28  Rogers, AR                                      Walmart AMP
• 7/29  Fort Worth, TX                                Dickies Arena
• 7/30  Woodlands, TX                               The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
• 8/07  Denver, CO                                     Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre
• 8/10  Mountain View, CA                        Shoreline Amphitheatre
• 8/11  Wheatland, CA                                Toyota Amphitheatre
• 8/13  Phoenix, AZ                                     Ak-Chin Pavilion
• 8/17  Maryland Heights, MO                  Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - St. Louis, MO
• 8/19  Tinley Park, IL                                 Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - Chicago, IL
• 8/20  Noblesville, IN                                Ruoff Music Center
• 8/25  Cincinnati, OH                                Riverbend Music Center
• 8/26  Clarkston, MI                                   Pine Knob Music Theatre
• 8/27  Toronto, ON                                    Budweiser Stage
• 9/01  Charlotte, NC                                  PNC Music Pavilion
• 9/02  Columbia, MD                                 Merriweather Post Pavilion
• 9/03  Burgettstown, PA                            The Pavilion at Star Lake
• 9/08  Saratoga Springs, NY                      Saratoga Performing Arts Center
• 9/09  Hershey, PA                                     Hersheypark Stadium
• 9/10  Holmdel, NJ                                     PNC Bank Arts Center
• 9/15  Raleigh, NC                                     Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
• 9/16  Ocean City, MD                              Ocean City Bike Fest
• 9/17  Camden, NJ                                     Freedom Mortgage Pavilion

Other 2023 Lynyrd Skynyrd live shows

• 4/29  Brandon, MS                                   Jubilee Days – Brandon Amphitheater
• 5/05  West Panama City Beach, FL        Thunder Beach at Frank Brown Park
• 5/19  Bushkill, PA                                    Lost Highway Motorcycle Show & Concert 2023
• 5/20  Cleveland, OH                                 Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica
• 5/27  Laughlin, NV                                   Laughlin Event Center
• 6/16  Santa Rosa, CA                                Country Summer Music Festival
• 6/17  Del Mar, CA                                    Toyota Summer Concert Series
• 7/14  Prior Lake, MN                                Lakefront Music Fest 2023
• 7/15  West Fargo, ND                               Red River Valley Fair
• 8/04  Sweet Home, OR                             Oregon Jamboree Music Festival 2023
• 8/06  Sturgis, SD                                       Sturgis Buffalo Chip

For more information and tickets, head to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s official site.

An A-list ensemble of electric guitar heroes and music heavyweights joined forces at last night’s CMT Music Awards show to pay tribute to the late Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist, Gary Rossington.

As reported late last week, the CMT Rossington tribute was headed up by Slash, Warren Haynes and Billy Gibbons, who sought to emulate the Southern rock outfit’s triple entente of six-string action with the help of a handful of guest vocalists as they performed a medley of the band’s biggest hits.

Paul Rodgers, Cody Johnson, LeAnn Rimes and Wynonna Judd assumed vocal duties, with longtime Rolling Stones touring keysman Chuck Leavell also making an appearance.

Since 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut album, (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd), Slash and co kicked off with a track from the 1973 effort, Simple Man, for which Johnson and Rodgers shared lead vocal duties. 

Layering up the emotive progressions of the verses, the Gibson Les Paul-wielding duo of Slash and Haynes took turns to embellish proceedings with plenty of pentatonic licks in between vocal lines, with Gibbons getting involved with some tasty turnarounds of his own via the fretboard of his Red Devil Fender Stratocaster as the cover reached its peak.

Towards the end of their two-minute take of Simple Man, Haynes can be seen switching from his own Les Paul to a red Fender Stratocaster – a more apt sonic choice for the ensemble’s second Skynyrd track, Sweet Home Alabama, for which the Allman Brothers star took the lead.

Slash’s humbuckers proved a potent partner to Haynes and Gibbons’ single-coil antics, instilling the twangy track with plenty of beefy licks before the trio were each given eight bars to let loose on a quick-fire guitar solo.

Members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd family were in attendance for the show, including Rossington’s wife and band backing singer Dale Krantz Rossington. Some of Skynyrd’s touring operation was also present, including singer Johnny Van Zant.

Rossington passed away early last month at the age of 71. His passing prompted an outpouring of tributes from a huge range of musicians and guitarists.

The band served up their own tribute to Skynyrd's founding guitarist with a touching rendition of Tuesday's Gone during their first performance after Rossington's passing.

Elsewhere on the CMT Music Awards show bill, Gary Clark Jr. paid tribute to blues guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan with a blazing cover of The House Is Rockin’ from the fretboard of what looked like a charcoal flame burst Gibson ES model.

The forthcoming CMT Awards will pay tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington with a live performance featuring Billy Gibbons, Slash and Warren Haynes, among a host of other rock and country music talent. 

The last of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s founding members, Rossington passed away earlier this month (March 5). The 2023 CMT Awards show will take place on April 2 and will take time to celebrate the life of the guitarist in the year that marks the 50th anniversary of ’Skynyrd’s first album (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd).

As you’d hope, Gibbons, Slash and Haynes will handle electric guitar duties for the tribute. Vocals will be provided by former Free vocalist Paul Rodgers and country star Cody Wilson. 

Elsewhere, the lineup features Rolling Stones (and former Allman Brothers Band) touring member Chuck Leavell sitting in on keys, while backing vocals will come from the somewhat over-qualified pairing of LeAnn Rimes and Wynonna Judd –performing here as ‘The Honkettes’.

Other members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd family will be attending the show, including Rossington’s wife and band backing singer Dale Krantz Rossington, plus vocalist Johnny Van Zant and guitarist Rickey Medlocke.

Rossington passed away aged 71 on March 5 and his death drew tributes from a huge range of guitarists and other musicians, many of whom had crossed paths with the ’Skynyrd legend across his 50 year career. 

His cause of death has not been revealed but the guitarist had suffered with ill health and recurring heart problems across recent years. On March 12, Lynyrd Skynyrd paid their own tribute to Rossington during a performance of Tuesday’s Gone at their first show since his passing,

The 2023 CMT Awards will be hosted in Austin, TX and broadcast live via CBS at 8pm ET / 11pm PT. For more information, head over to CMT.

Lynyrd Skynyrd played their first show since the death of Gary Rossington on Sunday (March 12), headlining Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City, FL.

The band put in an emotional performance, with guitarist Damon Johnson taking on Rossington’s parts, as he had done previously during Rossington’s bouts of ill health.

During Tuesday’s Gone, the band displayed a montage of photographs and video clips of Rossington, drawn from across his near-60-year tenure with the band. 

Fan footage of the show has now found its way online, and during the performance, present-day vocalist Johnny Van Zant can be heard introducing Johnson, telling the crowd: “Damon Johnson playing it pretty for Mr. Gary Rossington, up in rock ‘n’ roll heaven.”

Tuesday’s Gone featured on the band’s 1973 debut album (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) and set something of a template for the southern rock movement.

Written by former vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, the lyrics captured the realisation that, having signed to their record label MCA and with the big-time beckoning, life as they then knew it was set to change.

It is thought to be about saying goodbye to the present, with an uncertain future ahead and therefore feels doubly appropriate as a tribute to the group’s last surviving founding member. Not least because the lead guitar on the song is considered to be among the Skynyrd legend’s finest work.

Rossington passed away on March 5, aged 71. The guitarist had survived a number of close calls in his life, most notably the band’s tragic 1977 plane crash and a previous automobile accident.

His cause of death has not been revealed. However, in recent years his health had waned. In 2015 Rossington suffered a heart attack and in 2021 underwent emergency heart surgery.

Of all the artists to emerge from the southern states of the USA, Lynyrd Skynyrd are perhaps the defining band – although they achieved success in their own way.

Fusing the fire of British blues-rock with southern folk and country sensibilities, the group cooked up a hard-hitting gumbo that resonated with audiences in the US and beyond.

The autobiographical lyrics of frontman Ronnie Van Zant were a big part of their appeal – tales of his alcohol-fueled antics were a sharp contrast to the Tolkien-esque scriptures of the prog scene booming at the time of Skynyrd’s 1973 debut, (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd).

But the band’s other USP was their triple-guitar attack – comprising Gary Rossington, Allen Collins and first Ed King, then, later, Steve Gaines – which propelled the band to legendary status, particularly on Free Bird, one of rock music’s all-time greatest epics.

Here, we pay tribute to the Southern rock legends by ranking their best tracks, complete with recollections from Rossington and King on how they made some of the most iconic rock songs of all time.

25. Honky Tonk Night Time Man

Album: Street Survivors (1977)

Like their take on JJ Cale’s Call Me the Breeze and Robert Johnson/Cream’s Crossroads, Lynyrd Skynyrd reimagined Merle Haggard’s Honky Tonk Night Time Man in an original fashion that stamped it as their own even while tipping their hat to a hero.

“We did this song to show our love for Merle and for all country music,” says Gary Rossington. And, like all of Street Survivors, the song was animated by Steve Gaines’ dynamic playing.

“Steve played an incredible solo here and it was a live first take,” says Rossington. “He only knew that it was a G progression and went out and played a mind-boggling solo. He didn’t even hardly know the song, but he played the shit out of it. We were standing in the control room with our jaws dropped, and he strolled in and said, ‘How’d I do?’ We told him to go home and call it a day, because we knew it couldn’t get any better.”

24. Poison Whiskey

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) (1973)

Despite, or perhaps because of, many of the Lynyrd Skynyrd members’ struggles with addictions, Ronnie Van Zant was never shy about addressing the evils of overindulging. From Poison Whiskey on their first album to That Smell on Street Survivors, Van Zant directly addressed the dangers of over-indulging. Van Zant and Ed King wrote the song in one fell swoop.

“We sat down on his couch and wrote it after dinner one night,” King recalled.

This spontaneous songwriting was typical of Van Zant. “Ronnie believed that if you had to write something down to remember it, it couldn’t have been any good,” says Gary Rossington. “Who knows how many songs got away because of that? He would write constantly in the shower, walking around, wherever.”

23. Whiskey Rock-a-Roller

Album: Nuthin’ Fancy (1975)

Skynyrd’s purest romantization of the musicians’ vagabond lifestyle – boozin’, cruisin’ and lady choosin’ – was a vehicle for Ed King’s snapping Strat and Billy Powell’s straight-up Johnnie Johnson piano riffs. It’s a shot of basic rock and roll that resonated with the group’s hard-partying fans.

So no surprise that the song became a staple of concerts and ended up on side two of the pre-crash lineup’s only live album, albeit with Steve Gaines playing King’s parts. All three guitarists were Peavey endorsers at the time, as a glance at One More from the Road’s back cover amply displays. Gaines and Rossington both used the Peavey Mace, a versatile twin-speaker combo now long out of production, onstage.

22. Swamp Music

Album: Second Helping (1974)

Besides their Southern heritage, Skynyrd also shared a taste for harmonized guitar parts with the Allman Brothers.

That’s on display in the chorus of this Ed King and Ronnie Van Zant number from the band’s hit-laden sophomore album, when King and Gary Rossington team up on a descending melody line that packs an extra hook into the chorus. King sets up the tune with his biting Strat tone, and Rossington delivers the guitar break with a little extra punch from his Les Paul.

Along the way Van Zant conjures an idyllic fantasy version of the rural South as an escape from big city life, name-dropping Delta blues icon Son House and pining for long days hunting with his coon hounds. Van Zant was an avid outdoorsman, so the sound of a yelping pack was likely music to his ears.

21. Comin’ Home

Album: Skynyrd’s First and…Last (1978)

This is another track recorded during the band’s initial Muscle Shoals studio sessions of 1971-72, released posthumously on Skynyrd’s First and…Last (and Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album) as well as 1998’s The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Comin’ Home, an original track written by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant, displays more of a country/rock feeling than many of the harder, bluesier tunes recorded during these sessions, and displays the influence of west coast late Sixties rock bands like the Youngbloods and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Collins’ flat-picked arpeggiated guitar part has a fingerpicked, banjo-esque feel, embellished by country style piano fills. The classic harder-edged Skynyrd feel comes in right at the song’s powerful chorus section, accentuated by Rossington’s bluesy and melodic slide guitar licks. The guitar solo section ramps things up a notch higher with a classic, high-energy Allen Collins solo, after which the song settles back into the quieter verse arrangement.

20. Was I Right or Wrong

Album: Skynyrd’s First and…Last

Was I Right or Wrong is a song recorded during the band’s very first recording sessions in 1971-72 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. The songs recorded during these sessions were first issued in September 1978, about a year after the October 1977 tragic plane crash, as Skynyrd’s First and…Last, and later reissued in 1998 as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album.

With guitars and bass tuned down one half, the primary rhythm guitar during the verse sections arpeggiates through the D5/D7-G5-C5 chord progression in steady 16th notes, over which Ronnie Van Zant sings a bluesy/Appalachian folk melody while guitarist Gary Rossington adds subtle slide guitar fills in standard tuning.

The simple and plaintive feel of the music is reminiscent of one of the band’s biggest influences, the British band Free, which featured legendary guitar great Paul Kossoff.

The song then kicks into another gear at 2:32, locking into a Gimme Three Steps-type feel, featuring rhythm parts similar to the Rolling Stones’ Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.

A demo of this tune is also included as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of Second Helping, and the track was also subsequently included on the 1998 compilation, The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd.

19. Don’t Ask Me No Questions

Album: Second Helping

Gary Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant wrote this song on a fishing trip – a getaway from the pressures of the band’s increasingly complicated business affairs. Rossington’s big grinding chords and Ed King’s slide guitar deliver its message about music industry dishonesty with blunt force, but the song also works as an anthem for anybody who puts up with bullshit to hold down a job.

The tune is part of a canon of Skynyrd tunes mocking “the Man” that also includes Mr. Banker and, of course, Workin’ for MCA. It was released as a single in April 1974 and stiffed, but after Sweet Home Alabama followed in June and hit the top 10, Skynyrd would carry a big stick in subsequent dealings with label brass.

18. Gimme Back My Bullets

Album: Gimme Back My Bullets (1976)

As the title and opening track of the band’s fourth studio album, issued in early 1976, Gimme Back My Bullets makes reference to some of the trials and tribulations that the band had suffered at that point, mostly as the result of excessive partying and substance abuse.

Ronnie Van Zant, who at the time was making a concerted effort to get clean, sings on the chorus, “I ain’t foolin’ around ’cause I done had my fun… ain’t gonna see no more damage done,” and adds in the last verse, “I’ve been on top and it seems I lost my dream… But I’ve got it back and I’m feelin’ better everyday.”

With the departure of guitarist Ed King, Skynyrd were now a two-guitar band, and the rhythm/lead roles of Rossington-Collins are more well-defined on this release. On this particular track, Collins lays down the rhythm guitar while Rossington adds succinct, bluesy fills earmarked by pinch harmonics with a hard-driving Billy Gibbons–type delivery.

17. Tuesday’s Gone

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)

Though well known for their rockers and hard-charging attitude, some of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s greatest, deepest, most profound moments occurred on slower tunes; no one could do a power ballad better, as illustrated on Tuesday’s Gone, a melancholy song just begging to be played before an arena full of waving lighters.

“We’ve always liked doing the pretty songs,” says Gary Rossington. “I mean, we grew up on the Beatles.”

Perhaps more relevant than the Fab Four to Van Zant’s approach to ballads is Ed King’s comment: “Ronnie was really a country singer in a rock and roll band.” Songs like Tuesday’s Gone illustrate just how much of an impact Skynyrd had on Nashville, with its acoustic guitar driving the tune atop a steady backbeat, with a surging string section and sweeping piano flourishes making the bed for a muscular guitar solo.

16. On the Hunt

Album: Nuthin’ Fancy

On the Hunt was recorded during the tumultuous sessions that resulted in the band’s third album, 1975’s Nuthin’ Fancy; just prior to entering the studio, original drummer Bob Burns left the band to be replaced by Artimus Pyle, and soon after the recording, both producer Al Kooper and guitarist Ed King stopped working with the band.

Nevertheless, the album was their first to reach the Top 10, peaking at Number 9 and quickly achieving Gold status, though it includes none of the band’s most well-known songs.

On the Hunt prominently illustrates the band’s three-guitar attack, as dual harmonized lines played by Allen Collins and Ed King join Rossington’s single-note driven primary intro/chorus riff. The heavy rock feel of the tune recalls Mountain and Free with a groove very close to the Rolling Stones’ Slave, which was also recorded in 1975.

15. Needle and the Spoon

Album: Second Helping

The Gibson players take the spotlight on this one: Gary Rossington wielding his Les Paul and Allen Collins delivering the meaty, wah-wah–colored solo and transitional riffs with his right-arm guitar, a 1964 Firebird I.

The guitar sported a mini-humbucker in the neck slot and a P-90 in the bridge, for a more snarling, throaty sound. And you can also hear Collins tug on the custom vibrato tailpiece he had mounted on the instrument.

The song is another of Ronnie Van Zant’s cautionary drug tales. And hypocritical, too, considering that his own intake – chronicled in Mark Ribowsky’s band history Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd – was notoriously prodigious.

14. Ballad of Curtis Loew

Album: Second Helping

With Ed King and Gary Rossington alternating slide guitar melodies and producer Al Kooper on piano, this is the classic Skynyrd lineup’s acoustic centerpiece – the tale of an old Black blues guitarist inspiring a young white man to a life in music. But they performed the song just once onstage – at a basement gig in a hotel, according to King.

However, Curtis Loew became a staple of the resurrected Johnny Van Zant-fronted version of the band and remained in their repertoire during subsequent reunions. Perhaps that’s because the song’s subject is really a composite of several musicians the Skynyrd crew knew growing up, including current guitarist Ricky Medlocke’s father, Shorty Medlocke.

The elder Medlocke wrote Train, Train, which became a Top 40 hit for Medlocke’s previous group, Southern rock stompers Blackfoot, in 1979.

13. Down South Jukin’

Album: Skynyrd’s First and…Last

This early Rossington/Van Zant original is another song recorded during the band’s nascent Muscle Shoals sessions in 1971/72, released posthumously in 1978 on Skynyrd’s First and…Last and reissued in 1998 as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album.

The song combines the groove of Gimme Three Steps with guitar riffs and a chord progression very similar to What’s Your Name. This song offers a perfect example of the band’s signature lock-step dual guitar parts executed to perfection by Rossington and Collins.

The countrified solo licks, based on a series of oblique bends (two- and three-note figures wherein one of the two or three notes is bent while the others are fretted conventionally) played over the majority of the chords serve to bring elements of country and blues/rock music together, a definitive signature of the Skynyrd sound.

12. Workin’ for MCA

Album: Second Helping

After Skynyrd lifted this musical middle finger as the first song at a showcase they played for MCA label reps in Atlanta, it became the regular opener of their concerts.

The band’s classic Les Paul, Firebird and Stratocaster lineup of Gary Rossington, Allen Collins and Ed King define the nexus of Pete Townshend bash and chooglin’ boogie as Ronnie Van Zant unfurls lyrics that are half band bio and half protest against what felt like record company indenture as their debut album sold at a trickle and the band members struggled with poverty.

Rock legend Al Kooper, who produced the first three albums and discovered Skynyrd in an Atlanta bar called Funocchio’s, is the “Yankee slicker” in the lyrics, and they really did sign their contract with MCA for $9,000.

11. I Know a Little

Album: Street Survivors

“This song sums up what Steve Gaines, who wrote it, meant to the band,” says Gary Rossington. “He was a great songwriter and singer – and an incredible guitarist. I’ve never heard anybody, including any of us, play his picking part quite right.

“Steve had a lot to do with the writing and arrangements throughout this album and his playing was so good it really inspired us. When he joined, we were kind of in a lull. We were still selling a lot of tickets and records, but the music was getting a little boring to us. We needed a spark of inspiration, and Steve provided it. He put us back in the frame of mind we had had at the beginning; we started getting together and jamming at night.

“Steve was so good, he was a freak of nature. He used to piss us off because he could do so many things that me and Allen couldn’t. Every time I ever went to his house or his hotel room, he had his black Les Paul on. He’d order room service and eat with his guitar on. He’d sit around and talk and not play it for an hour, but it would be strapped on. He’d watch TV with it on and play during commercials. It was like his third arm.”

10. You Got That Right

Album: Street Survivors

Lynyrd Skynyrd was in a bit of a rut by the time of their fourth album, 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets. Ed King had left and the band lacked its three-guitar attack.

The solution was close at hand in the form of Steve Gaines, the kid brother of backup singer Cassie.

Recalls Gary Rossington, “She asked if he could jam and I said, ‘Fuck, no!’ But she convinced us to give him a shot. So he joined us onstage one night, with no rehearsal or anything, and as soon as he started playing Allen and I looked at each other and our jaws dropped. We offered him the job, and he quit his band that night and joined the next day. He could play anything – chicken pickin’, country, blues, hard rock.”

Gaines animated all of Street Survivors, but You Got That Right may bear his stamp most of all; in addition to his usual great guitar picking, he wrote the song and sang it as a duet with Van Zant.

9. Call Me the Breeze

Album: Second Helping

The late Oklahoma guitarist and singer J.J. Cale wrote After Midnight and Cocaine, both of which became hits for his friend Eric Clapton. On a whim, Lynyrd Skynyrd decided to play Cale’s Call Me the Breeze.

“We always liked J.J. Cale and we heard Breeze one night sitting around the house and Ronnie said, ‘Let’s do that!’” says Gary Rossington, who wrote a completely new arrangement for the laidback shuffle.

“It didn’t work for us the way he did it – a real straight shuffle,” says Rossington. “If we had changed the lyrics, it would have been a completely different song. We did the same thing to Merle Haggard’s Honky Tonk Night Time Man.”

8. I Ain't the One

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)

Ed King mostly played bass on Skynyrd’s debut album, temporarily replacing Leon Wilkeson, so the three-guitar lineup that helped the band to history wasn’t yet in place when this song was initially cut.

But many of the group’s signatures, like the twin guitar introduction to this tune, which opened that first album, were.

Gary Rossington and Allen Collins share the bluesy main riff and toss fills between their Les Paul and Firebird, but Collins takes the solo, picking bright cold-chiseled sprays of notes punctuated by tugs on his guitar’s custom whammy bar. It’s a big, rockin’ slab of prototypical southern-fried boogie, made even bigger by the addition of King’s replacement Steve Gaines on One More from the Road.

7. Saturday Night Special

Album: Nuthin’ Fancy

Deep in its guts, this is a blues song built on a shuffle beat and flamed up by Ed King’s E minor pentatonic solo played on his ’60s Strat, likely plugged into a Fender Twin.

But Skynyrd spun it into a Top 40 hit by bolstering the structure with their on-top-of-the-beat attack. The band kicks in on the second beat of the second bar, making the tune edgy from the start.

Add in the storyline about jealous murder with a cheap handgun and it’s a dark and stormy look into the black heart of America’s obsession with firearms – maybe even more timely today than when it was written by King and Ronnie Van Zant in 1974.

6. Gimme Three Steps

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)

Like many of Skynyrd’s best songs, Gimme Three Steps was based on something that actually happened to Ronnie Van Zant.

Says Gary Rossington, “Ronnie went into a bar to look for someone and me and Allen were too young to get in so were waiting for him outside, and he came running out with a big ol’ guy chasing him, yelling. He had started dancing with this chick and this guy came in and was going to beat him up and Ronnie said, ‘Just give me three steps and I’m gone.’ The guy had a gun and he was a redneck and he was drunk – a nasty combination of things – and Ronnie said, ‘If you’re going to shoot me, it’s going to be in the ass or in the elbow.’

“And he took off like a bat out of hell. We got in the car and split and he told us what happened and we were laughing and we kind of wrote the song right there, drove over to Allen’s house, got his guitar and finished it.”

5. What’s Your Name

Album: Street Survivors

Although Skynyrd had hits, those hits were always on their own sonic terms.

What’s Your Name, inspired by the sexual and alcoholic exploits of rock-star life on the road, is the most overtly pop tune in their catalog. Hanging on one of Gary Rossington’s fat, hooky riffs, complimented by the snap of Steve Gaines’ Stratocaster and buoyed by Allen Collins’ mid-song Firebird solo, the tune was calculated; Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant purposely set out to write an upbeat smash with a lighter sound and scored the Number 13 slot on the pop charts.

Unfortunately, Van Zant never got to see their experiment succeed, as the song was released the month after the October 20, 1977, plane crash.

4. That Smell

Album: Street Survivors

Gary Rossington’s booze and drug fueled exploits inspired Ronnie Van Zant’s lyrics and this song’s dark, rumbling, highway-to-hell attitude – and made the Street Survivors sessions drag on. Van Zant calls Rossington out by his nickname “Prince Charming” and sings about the night the guitarist crashed his new Ford Torino into a tree and a house.

But Rossington’s musical redemption comes in the soaring feedback and beefy bawl of his Les Paul sparring with Steve Gaines’ fusillades of singing Stratocaster. Rossington’s burly toned introduction grips from its first note to its perfect feedback trail. And lines cautioning that “the smell of death surrounds you” and “tomorrow might not be here for you” proved horrifically, if more broadly, prophetic when the band’s plane crashed three days after the album’s release, killing Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines.

3. Simple Man

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)

Simple Man, co-written by Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington, has become one of the group’s trademark songs. The epic power ballad about a heartfelt message from a blue collar mother to her striving son starts slow and builds to a powerful Rossington solo; the music hammers home the message, which continues to resonate.

“Ronnie was a great storyteller,” says Rossington. “He wrote about things that were going on, things we saw every day and people related to it – and they still do.

According to Ed King, the group had to fight to even record the song.

“When we were just about done cutting the first album, we played Simple Man for [producer] Al Kooper, and he said, ‘You guys are not gonna record that song,” says King.

“So Ronnie took Kooper out to the parking lot, opened the door to Kooper’s Bentley, and said, ‘Get in.’ Kooper’s sitting there behind the wheel, and Ronnie shut the door and said, ‘When we’re done cutting it, we’ll call you. We cut the whole tune without him. When a band knows what it wants to do, it has to go with its heart and not listen to people on the outside.”

2. Sweet Home Alabama

Album: Second Helping

“I knew Sweet Home Alabama was a classic the minute we wrote it,” said guitarist Ed King, who was primarily responsible for the song’s music, most notably its defining riff. He wrote it on his first day as the band’s guitarist.

King had met Lynyrd Skynyrd when his band the Strawberry Alarm Clock opened for them. When bassist Leon Wilkeson abruptly left the band, they asked King to fill in. When Wilkeson returned, King slid over to Strat, and their dual guitar lineup became a triple threat. Gary Rossington came up with a simple, evocative fingerpicked D, C, G progression – which he terms “the banjo/steel guitar part” – and feeling like he was onto something, kept playing it over and over.

“Gary had been playing his riff for 15 minutes when I walked in and threw mine in to bounce off of what Gary was doing,” recalled King. “That was what you know as the Sweet Home riff, and when Ronnie heard it, he locked in and wrote the words.”

“He had all the lyrics within an hour,” says Rossington. “We used to travel through Alabama a lot and get onto back roads and just marvel at how pretty it was and how nice the people were. And Neil Young was, and still is, one of our favorite artists, so when he came out with Southern Man and Alabama, criticizing the South, we said, ‘Well, what does he know? He’s from Canada!’ So we threw that line about him in there.

“We were told by some people to take out the parts about Neil Young and [former Alabama governor] George Wallace, but we said, ‘Hey it’s just a song. And we’re going to record it the way we wrote it.’”

“I wrote the choruses and everything up to Billy’s piano solo. It was a three-way collaboration as my part inspired Ronnie and I never would've been inspired to write my part without Gary's contribution,” King added.

“Right after we wrote it, Ronnie said to me, ‘Well? There’s our Ramblin’ Man.’”

1. Free Bird

Album: (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)

Guitarist Allen Collins came up with the music to Free Bird very early in the band’s songwriting process. But while everyone recognized the grace of the chord progression, Ronnie Van Zant could not come up with a suitable vocal melody.

Recalls Gary Rossington, “Allen had the chords for the beginning, pretty part for two full years and we kept asking Ronnie to write something and he kept telling us to forget it; he said there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody. He thought that he had to change with every chord.

Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords again, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ He said, ‘I got it,’ and wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes – the whole damned thing!”

Like Stairway to Heaven, one of its chief competitors for the unofficial title of rock’s most epic song, Free Bird starts out as a ballad before becoming a solo-fueled rocker. That was not by design, recalls Rossington: “When we started playing it in clubs, it was just the slow part. Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes.’

“I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen and I traded solos, and Ronnie kept telling us to make it longer; we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up and get a break.”

The structure of Free Bird was set, but it was still lacking one final element; the elegant piano intro, which was written by then-roadie Billy Powell. “One of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie had written as an intro for the song,” says Rossington. “We did – and Billy went from being a roadie to a member right then.”

The original album version of the song clocked in at almost 10 minutes and according to Rossington and Ed King, MCA objected to putting such a long song on the band’s debut album. A 3:30 radio edit was cut and the single, at 4:10, became a Top 20 hit.

“MCA said we couldn’t put a 10-minute song on an album, because nobody would play it,” recalls King. “Of course, that was the song everyone gravitated toward!”

On Skynyrd's first live album, 1976's One More from the Road, Van Zant can be heard asking the crowd, “What song is it you wanna hear?” The overwhelming response leads into the 14-minute version of the song that became iconic. Though Van Zant often dedicated Free Bird to Duane Allman, contrary to urban legend, it was not written for him.

Yesterday (March 5), it was announced that Gary Rossington, the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, had passed away at the age of 71.

The band’s official social media account broke the news with a statement that read, “It is with our deepest sympathy and sadness that we have to advise, that we lost our brother, friend, family member, songwriter and guitarist, Gary Rossington, today.

“Gary is now with his Skynyrd brothers and family in heaven and playing it pretty, like he always does. Please keep Dale, Mary, Annie and the entire Rossington family in your prayers and respect the family’s privacy at this difficult time.”

As the last of the band’s classic guitar lineup – and only founding Skynyrd member to appear on all of the iconic Southern rock outfit’s albums since the band’s inception as My Backyard in 1964 – Rossington has left behind a profound legacy, having carried the Skynyrd torch throughout the decades despite mounting health problems.

In response to the immeasurable inspiration Rossington gave both his peers and aspiring guitar fans alike, the guitar world has come out in full force to pay tribute to music and memory of the Skynyrd founder.

On Twitter, an especially emotional post from Joe Bonamassa read, “This has been [the] worst week in my memory. Literally everyday another legend or friend has passed away. Rest in Peace Gary. Thank you for being so nice to me over the years.”

Metallica frontman James Hetfield, who played alongside Rossington during Metallica’s 30th Anniversary shows in 2011, wrote, “RIP Brother Gary. Thank you for bringing me so much joy with your guitar playing and songwriting in one of my all time favorite bands, Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

Further tributes from Zakk Wylde, Neal Schon, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and more can be found below. 

As we commemorate the life of Southern rock guitar great Gary Rossington, who has died aged 71, we are unearthing some of his most memorable conversations with Guitar World. This feature was first published online in March 2009.

“We used a lot of D-C-G progressions,” Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington says with a shrug and a laugh about his band’s songwriting process. “There’s only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It’s all in what you do with them. I could write a dozen different songs with the same three or four chords but they’d all be entirely different.”

Rossington and company certainly have always had a knack for doing a lot with a little. For while Skynyrd are renowned for their aggressive, three-guitar attack and the seemingly endless soloing such a lineup inevitably produces, what’s really made Skynyrd a staple of classic rock radio is their songs: instantly memorable four-minute rockers like Sweet Home Alabama, Gimme Three Steps and What’s Your Name, as well as extended ballads such as Simple Man, Tuesday’s Gone and, of course, Free Bird.

Remarkably, the latter, one of rock’s most-played, best-loved songs, was one of the first songs Lynyrd Skynyrd ever wrote – penned when singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington were still in their teens.

Like virtually all of their material, Free Bird was written as a collaboration between Van Zant and one the group’s guitarists. This loose but consistent formula served Skynyrd extremely well, producing classic songs which quickly made them one of the nation’s most popular bands.

By 1975, however, when third guitarist Ed King left the group suffering from burnout, Skynyrd had fallen into a bit of a creative rut, as reflected by Gimme Back My Bullets, an unusually flaccid affair. Before anybody could write the band’s epitaph, however, they added guitarist Steve Gaines, whose songwriting and phenomenal playing infused them with a new energy.

The rejuvenated band shines on 1976’s live One More for the Road and the following year’s Street Survivors. The latter is one of the best-arranged and played guitar albums in rock history.

Tragically, before the group could reap the fruits of this rebirth, their chartered plane crashed into a Mississippi swamp on October 20, 1977, killing three members –including Gaines and Van Zant – seriously injuring everyone else and seemingly forever putting an end to the group.

A decade later, the surviving members of the group got together for a “Tribute” tour with Van Zant’s brother, Johnnie, taking over as vocalist. Enthusiastic audience response led to a full-time reunion, which has produced numerous albums, including 2003’s Vicious Cycle (Sanctuary). Here, Rossington recalls the origins of some of the band’s best-loved tunes.

1. Free Bird

Album: (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) (1973)

“I don’t remember that one. Could you sing it for me? Oh, okay. Allen had the chords for the beginning, pretty part for two full years. We were just beginning to write – that was actually one of the first songs we ever completed – and Ronnie kept saying that there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody for it. He thought that he had to change with every chord change. We kept asking him to write something to these chords and he kept telling us to forget about it!

“Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ Allen played it again, and Ronnie said, ‘Okay, I got it.’ And he wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes – the whole damned thing! He came up with a lot of stuff that way, and he never wrote anything down. His motto was if you can’t remember it, it’s not worth remembering.

“So we started playing it in clubs, but it was just the slow part. Then Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes.’ So I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed. It all evolved out of a jam one night.

“So we started playing it that way, but Ronnie kept saying, ‘It’s not long enough. Make it longer.’ Because we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up. Then one of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie, Billy Powell, had come up with as an intro for the song. We did – and he went from being a roadie to a member right then.

“Everybody told us that we were crazy to put the song on our first album, because it was too long. Our record company begged us not to include it. And when it first came out, they did all kind of awful edits until it got big enough where it didn’t matter any more. It humbles us to think that it’s been played so much – and it’s still played. But it’s not magic – it’s still just a song to us.”

2. Gimme Three Steps

Album: pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd (1973)

“This is another true story. Ronnie went into a bar to look for someone and me and Allen were too young to get in so were waiting for him outside, and we were waiting and waiting, then he came running out with a big ol’ guy chasing him, yelling.

“He had started dancing with this chick and this guy came in and was going to beat him up and Ronnie said, ‘Just give me three steps and I’m gone.’ The guy had a gun and he was a redneck and he was drunk – a nasty combination of things – and Ronnie said, ‘If you’re going to shoot me, it’s going to be in the ass or in the elbow.’ And he took off like a bat out of hell.

“We got in the car and split and he told us what happened and we were laughing and we kind of wrote the song right there, drove over to Allen’s house, got his guitar and finished it.

“The more wild experiences you have the better songs you can write. I’m not necessarily proud of everything we ever did, but that’s just true. We always just considered ourselves a working-man’s band and thought every song should tell a story that people could relate to. When we finish a song, you know what it’s about, whereas some groups have songs you may dig but not understand. I think that’s why our songs have lasted as long as they have.”

3. Sweet Home Alabama

Album: Second Helping (1974)

“I came up with the banjo/steel guitar part – it’s just a fingerpicked D, C, G progression – and the little opening riff, which I kept playing over and over again. Ronnie started writing lyrics at rehearsal one day and saying, ‘Play that again. Play that again.’ And after about an hour he had all the words. Then Ed [King] took it home and put in all the little fills and licks and arranged it.

“It was basically a joke song. We used to travel through Alabama a lot and get onto back roads and just marvel at how pretty it was and how nice the people were. And Neil Young was, and still is, one our favorite artists, so when he came out with Southern Man and Alabama, criticizing the South, we said, ‘Well, what does he know? He’s from Canada!’ So we threw that line about him in there. We were told by some people to take out the parts about Neil Young and [former Alabama governor] George Wallace, but we said, ‘Hey, it’s just a song. And we’re going to record it the way we wrote it.’

“Most of our songs come through us. It either happens real quick or it doesn’t happen at all. Actually, Ronnie wrote most of his lyrics either driving around Jacksonville checking out different neighborhoods – especially poor ones, black and white – or in the shower.

“You know how people sing in the shower? Well, Ronnie did that, but he made up songs – melody, verse, chorus, bridge and all. Many times when we were on the road, he’d end up running into my room with a towel around his waist, dripping wet, saying, ‘Check this out. Write some music to that real quick.’ So I’d try to write a few chords to get a rough idea of where the song was going, then either Allen or Ed or I would go back and finish the song.”

4. Call Me the Breeze

Album: Second Helping (1974)

“We always liked J.J. Cale and we heard Breeze one night sitting around the house and Ronnie said, ‘Let’s do that!’ But it didn’t work the way he did it – a real straight shuffle – so I wrote the arrangement, which was completely different. If we had changed the lyrics, it would have been a completely different song. We did the same thing to Merle Haggard’s Honky Tonk Night Man.”

5. Crossroads

Album: One More For The Road (1976)

“We did that as a tribute to Cream, one of our all-time favorite bands. We saw them on their Farewell tour and they completely blew our minds, so we made this a regular part of our set. In fact, it was our encore for years, until Free Bird became so big that we basically had to do that last.

“By the time we recorded the live album, it had been such a part of our set for so long that we felt we had to include it. Also, our producer, Tom Dowd, engineered the Cream version and he told us the story about how it came together, and that really inspired us to want to re-record it.”

6/7. I Know a Little / You Got That Right

Album: Street Survivors (1977)

“I think these two songs sum up what Steve Gaines meant to the band. He wrote both of them and sang You Got That Right as a duet with Ronnie. He was a great songwriter and singer – and an incredible guitarist. I’ve never heard anybody, including any of us, play the picking he did on I Know a Little quite right.

“Steve had a lot to do with the writing and arrangements throughout this album and his playing was so good it really inspired us. When he joined, we were kind of an in a lull. We were still doing well – selling a lot of tickets and records – but the music was getting a little boring to us. We needed a little spark of inspiration, and Steve provided it. We started getting together and jamming at night. It put us back in the frame of mind we had had at the beginning.

“Steve was so good, he was a freak of nature. He used to piss us off because he could do so many things that me and Allen couldn’t. Every time I ever went to his house or his hotel room, he had his black Les Paul on. He’d order room service and eat with his guitar on. He’d sit around and talk and not play it for an hour, but it would be strapped on. He’d watch TV with it on, play it during commercials, then stop. It was like his third arm.”

8. Honky Tonk Night Time Man

Album: Street Survivors (1977)

“This is a Merle Haggard song, which we did to show our love for him and for country music in general. Steve played an incredible solo here also, and it was a live first take.

“We only knew that it was a G progression and he went out and played a mind-boggling solo. He didn’t even hardly know the song, but he played the shit out of it. We were standing in the control room with our jaws dropped, and he strolled in and said, ‘How’d I do?’ We told him to go home and call it a day, because we knew it couldn’t get any better.”

9. What’s Your Name

Album: Street Survivors (1977)

“Me and Ronnie were just sitting in a hotel room one night and I had those chords which I had just written that day. And he right off the bat started singing. The original lyrics were, ‘It’s eight o’clock and boy is it time to go.’ Ronnie had just gotten an itinerary from his brother Donnie, who was in .38 Special and their first stop was Boise, Idaho. So Ronnie changed the first line to ‘It’s eight o’clock in Boise, Idaho,’ which immediately made it a real on-the-road song.

“But it’s all basically a true story. One of our road crew got in a fight at a bar with one of the hotel guests and they kicked us out, and we said we’d leave if they’d send a bottle of champagne to our room. It’s just about being young and free – 21 and unmarried. We’d go to a town and meet a chick, then forget her name. And when you’d come back to town, you’d say, ‘What was your name, honey?’”

10. The Last Rebel

Album: The Last Rebel (1993)

“This is a very moody song. We had to really get in the mood to record it, then we just cut it live. I wrote the music and named it at my house in Wyoming. Then Johnnie and Michael Lunn and Robert Johnson wrote the lyrics. The first verse is about a civil war soldier and the second verse is about me, they say, and the third verse is sort of about us – the last rebels, out on the road, still doing our thing.

“It’s one of my favorite songs to do live, which is a good sign – it really holds up with our old material. When I see it on our set list, I go, ‘All right.’ But we never get sick of playing any of our songs, because of the adrenaline we get from the audience’s response.”

Jared James Nichols recently invited three guest stars onstage for a shred-heavy rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd classic Free Bird. 

Among the onstage talent was Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, Shinedown’s Zach Myers and guitarist Marty Schwartz (of the Marty Music YouTube channel). 

The 10-minute set closer is initially relatively faithful to the original, with Nichols showcasing some tasty slide in between vocal lines. The blues rocker then takes the first of the lead sections – with a sharp shred section – before handing over to Faulkner who adds a bit of speed metal flavor. 

Myers and Schwartz are then invited – via the age-old nod of the head – to give their contributions, which land more in the traditional rock ’n’ roll vein, before all four get together for an explosion of unison bends and guitar stank faces. But in the best possible way.

Skynyrd’s original Free Bird solo sections have become some of the most iconic leads in rock history. Guitarist Gary Rossington once told Guitar World that the solo section was partly invented to give vocalist Ronnie Van Zant time off during long sets.

“Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes,’” said Rossington, in a 2009 interview.

“So I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen [Collins] played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed. It all evolved out of a jam one night. So we started playing it that way, but Ronnie kept saying, ‘It’s not long enough. Make it longer!’”

Due to its length and challenging nature, it’s also become a long-running joke for audience members to request rock bands play Free Bird – a challenge Nichols and co seem to have met with enthusiasm.

Though nothing beats the feeling of playing an actual guitar – be it an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar – sometimes circumstances force us into playing something else entirely: nothing at all.

If it wasn’t clear, we’re talking about the air guitar: a deceptively difficult discipline that, believe it or not, was once a taboo instrument – something that was played away from prying eyes when the overwhelming feelings of separation from a real six-string became too great to bear.

But that all changed when Tom Cruise made air guitar a public nuisance in 1983’s Risky Business. With the house to himself, the underwear-clad Cruise did some mighty Chuck Berry-esque guitar work while frolicking to the chunky blues rock riffs of Bob Seger's Old Time Rock and Roll.

The best thing about playing air guitar? That is, other than the fact you can be entirely tone deaf, you don't have to fork out for an actual instrument, an appreciation of music theory is entirely unnecessary, and you can have all the musicality of a hockey puck? You can play as loud as you like without fear of receiving any noise complaints.

With that in mind, here are 10 tracks of varying difficulty that will put your air guitar abilities to the test. Master these tracks and you’ll be on your way to the Air Guitar World Championship in no time. Yes, that is a real thing.

10. Chuck Berry – Johnny B. Goode

An entry level track for those looking to kickstart their air guitar journey in the easiest possible way. In fact, if you can't navigate Chuck Berry's primal rock 'n' roll riffs, perhaps the discipline isn't for you after all. If the song proves too difficult to learn, never fear: you can still work on that iconic duck walk of his – a stunt best practiced behind closed doors and definitely not in front of mixed company.

9. Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)

With their punk hearts, hip-hop minds and '80s metal sensibilities, the Beastie Boys tried and succeeded for a while in becoming all things to all people. For air guitarists, they did not provide consistently fertile ground, but this frat boy anthem has become a quiet classic in the annals of flailing air-meisters.

8. The Who – Baba O'Riley

Okay, puff that chest out and plant those legs. It's time for one of the greatest air guitar moves developed in the short history of this amazing art form: the Windmill. Thank you, Pete Townshend – though you may be a pretty good real-life guitar player, your contribution to the oeuvre of air guitar poses and mimicry will live on forever.

7. Aerosmith – Walk This Way

A riff that really needs no introduction, Joe Perry’s low-fret throwdown from 1975 separates the good air guitarists from the great air guitarists. It may revolve around only a handful of frets, but that’s no excuse to get complacent – your right hand will need to keep up with your left hand for this one. A lack of synchronization will just put a spotlight on the shortcomings of your technique.

6. Boston – More Than a Feeling

Tom Scholtz's hermetic guitar artistry is legendary, so it comes as no surprise to see his byline on a list of air guitar songs. The tone alone allows air guitarists to feel the heat of the spotlight, hear the roar of the crowd and think about what would have happened if they had only learned to play a real guitar.

5. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird

As the solos that close this epic veer off in a million directions like a gorgeous display of fireworks, a seasoned air guitar vet knows that they need not follow one solo arc specifically, for Free Bird is more about "feeling" than it is about technique. Still, those lightning-fast pentatonic licks are not for the faint of heart.

4. The Troggs – Wild Thing

Like the primal scream of the Troggs themselves, this song is great for beginner air guitarists. The melody is familiar and there are enough vocal hooks to distract any onlookers from noticing big gaps in your technique. Simply put, it's a three-chord masterpiece, and one that needs to be in the repertoire of all serious air guitarists.

3. AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long

With his manic gestures and incessant mugging, Angus Young may just be the quintessential role model for an air guitarist. Not only is this chord progression standard for all air-heads, but it also provides an amazing sing-along chorus for those players who aren't afraid to sing and play at the same time.

2. Jimi Hendrix – Foxy Lady

Hendrix doesn't turn up on a lot of air guitar lists because, well, frankly, not many air guitarists dare take on the Great One. The fact is, even pretending to be Hendrix is difficult. Tackle at your own risk. For experienced air guitarists only.

1. Derek and the Dominos – Layla

Multiple guitar parts are the ultimate challenge for air guitarists, no matter what their skill level. In this instance, do you follow Clapton's rhythm track on this classic, or do you take the high road and play Duane Allman's memorable lead line? It's a no-brainer, really...

Lynyrd Skynyrd have cancelled a series of upcoming concerts, as guitarist Rickey Medlocke has tested positive for COVID-19.

In a social media statement, the band said that they are “unable to perform the next four shows in Canton, OH, Jackson, MI, Atlanta, GA and Cullman, AL”.

“Longtime band member Rickey Medlocke has tested positive for COVID-19,” the statement reads. “Rickey is home resting and responding well to treatment. We will continue to update you on his condition.”

While the band's shows in Canton, Jackson and Cullman have been cancelled, the Atlanta show has been rescheduled, and will now take place on Saturday, October 23.

Medlocke's COVID-19 diagnosis is the latest health issue to face members of Lynyrd Skynyrd; last month, the band announced that founding guitarist Gary Rossington is recovering from “emergency heart surgery”.

In a statement on social media at the time, the band said that Rossington “is home resting and recovering with his family”, adding that “he is doing good and expects a full recovery”.

“After this past year, the country being shut down and everything we have all through, the Rossingtons encourages the band to go perform in his absence,” the statement continued. “Music is a powerful healer! We all felt playing the shows and brining the music to y'all was a better option than cancelling the performances.

“We wish Gary a speedy recovery and we will see the Skynyrd Nation very soon!”

Lynyrd Skynyrd's current lineup consists of Gary Rossington – who is the only remaining founding member – Johnny Van Zant – brother of founding vocalist Ronnie – guitarist Rickey Medlocke, drummer Michael Cartellone, guitarist Mark Matejka, keyboardist Peter Keys and bassist Keith Christopher.

Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced that Gary Rossington is set to miss a number of upcoming tour dates as he recovers from “emergency heart surgery”.

Alabaman electric guitar star Damon Johnson has been recruited by the legendary Southern rock outfit to temporarily fill in during the next leg of shows while Rossington recovers.

Posting to social media, Lynyrd Skynyrd reported, “Our thoughts and prayers are with Gary Rossington as he recovers from emergency heart surgery. Gary is home resting and recovering with his family. He wants everyone to know he is doing good and expects a full recovery.

“After this past year, the country being shut down and everything we have all been thru, The Rossington’s encouraged the band to go perform in his absence,” they continued. “Music is a powerful healer! We all felt playing the shows and bringing the music to y’all was a better option than cancelling the performances.

“We wish Gary a speedy recovery and we will see the Skynyrd Nation very soon!”

Rossington is the sole remaining member of the band’s original set-up from, with Lynyrd’s line-up currently comprising frontman Johnny Van Zant – brother of late Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant – as well as Rickey Medlocke, Michael Cartellone, Mark Matejka, Peter Keys and Keith Christopher.

Lynyrd’s lead guitarist experienced similar health difficulties six years ago, which forced the band to cancel the last two shows of their 2015 tour.

In his own statement on social media, Johnson – founder of Brothers Cane, former Alice Cooper band member and touring guitarist for Thin Lizzy since 2011 – wrote, “Gary Rossington’s guitar playing consumed me from day one of discovering Skynyrd’s music in my youth.

“It was an honor to lend a hand to the band this weekend, and my family is sending buckets of healing energy [in] Gary's direction. Thank you, Skynyrd Nation.”

The Alabaman guitar man lined up alongside Lynyrd Skynyrd for two performances last week: on July 22 at Twin Cities Summer Jam in Shakopee, Minnesota, and July 23 at North Dakota State Fair.

Lynyrd Skynyrd are next slated to appear on August 9 at the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, which will precede shows at Jackson County Fair, Cellairis Amphitheatre at Lakewood and Rock the South.

For a full list of tour dates, head over to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s official website.

Conventionally, we've been led to believe that the ideal song length if you're in the business of writing hits is between three and four minutes. However, in the world of rock, that isn't always the case.

From Guns N' Roses to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd to Tool, the heavyweights of guitar music have long defied this notion, captivating audiences throughout winding, solo-laden epics that clock in at well over 10 minutes (sometimes even 20...), shattering the idea that the process of writing hits is in any way formulaic.

And with that, we bring you 10 of the best tracks over 10 minutes long...

1. Guns N' Roses - Coma (10:16)

When Guitar World asked new Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke which song in the band's back catalog was the toughest to learn, he answered with no hesitation, "Without a doubt, Coma. I still don't know it. It's like this 15- or 20-minute song with no repeats."

On a pair of albums with no shortage of long, challenging songs, Coma stands out as perhaps the most challenging and definitely the longest. While the live version could peak at nearly 20 minutes in length, the studio version came in at just over 10, plenty of time for Axl, Slash and Co. to pack in everything but the kitchen sink — and that includes a defibrillator.

As Gilby implied, Coma lacks any semblance of a definable chorus, all the more fitting for a song that sees the band taking listeners on a visceral journey through the mind of a coma patient.

Oh, and when we asked Gilby what his favorite Guns N' Roses song to play was, he said, "Oddly enough, Coma. I really love playing it because it's different every time."

2. Iron Maiden - Rime of the Ancient Mariner (13:39)

The list of bands that could write a 13-plus-minute song based on an 18th-century poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and make it rock is pretty short, and the only one ballsy enough to try it — and succeed — was Iron Maiden.

The band's longest and perhaps most-ambitious undertaking to date, Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner closes out Powerslave with a re-telling of Coleridge's epic tale of a maritime curse, which includes a pretty grim scene of a sailor stuck at sea with the corpses of his shipmates for a week after he allegedly brings a hex upon the ship for killing an albatross.

The track put an exclamation point on the classic Maiden era, serving as a fitting bookend to an astounding trio of albums that also includes The Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind.

3. Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand (10:31)

Listening to the pummeling, proto-Maiden gallop of Achilles Last Stand, you'd never know the song was written during one of the darker points in Led Zeppelin history.

Most of Presence was written and recorded while singer Robert Plant was in convalescent period after suffering serious injuries in a car crash in late summer of 1975. Despite all the trials and tribulations — which included Plant being wheelchair-bound for most of the rehearsals and recording sessions — the band miraculously recorded Presence in just 18 days.

Plant would later say that Achilles Last Stand and Candy Store Rock were the album's saving grace, thanks to "the rhythm section, on that it was so inspired."

Indeed the track is a testament to the raw power of Zeppelin's dynamic rhythm duo, with John Paul Jones holding down the galloping rhythm while Bonzo pounded away in furious fashion.

While the track and the album are often looked over by casual fans, Jimmy Page — who recorded the orchestral overdubs in a single session in Munich, Germany — would later call Presence the band's "most important album."

4. Tool - Rosetta Stoned (11:11)

Even without its nearly four-minute intro, Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman), Tool's Rosetta Stoned still clocks in at an impressive 11 minutes and 11 seconds of acid-tinged hard rock.

Among Tool's downright heaviest numbers, the song pushes and plods its way through a lengthy narrative, backed by Adam Jones' grinding, off-kilter guitar riffs and the always-potent rhythm section of bassist Justin Chancellor and drummer extraordinaire Danny Carey.

While much of singer Maynard James Kennan's opening spiel might be lost on listeners, the track tells the tale of a high-school dropout encountering an extra-terrestrial that looked like "a blue-green Jackie Chan with Isabella Rossellini lips and breath that reeked of vanilla Chig Champa." The alien then proceeds to inform the song's protagonist that he is the chosen one and imparts the secrets of the universe unto him.

The narrative ends with our hero realizing he's forgotten his pen and must return to Earth remembering nothing of the meaning of existence. A fitting end considering Tool's strength as a band has always been the ability to write complex, thought-provoking rock music without ever losing their sense of humor.

5. Pink Floyd - Dogs (17:05)

We couldn't have gone wrong picking any of Pink Floyd's sprawling compositions — hell, Animals alone has three — but Dogs somehow manages to capture the vital energy, wordly cynicism and pent-up frustration that makes Floyd more than just another mellow prog band.

Originally written in 1974 by Gilmour as You Gotta Be Crazy, it took only a change of key, a slowing of tempo and the mighty pen of Roger Waters to transform the song into a its final form as arguably the centerpiece of Pink Floyd's underrated classic.

Gilmour turns in his lone vocal appearance on Animals during Dogs, but his majestic, double-tracked guitar leads are the real star, adding a dreamlike quality that seems to further the metaphorical blur between businessmen and farm animals.

While you may be tempted to think the guitar sound of Dogs is all Gilmour's fabled Strat, he's actually playing a Fender Custom Telecaster on the track, which he pairs with a Yamaha RA-200 cabinet containing three rotating speakers for most of the song.

6. Dream Theater - Octavarium (23:58)

With five movements and three lyricists, Octavarium remains a crowning achievement in the back catalog of a band who have made a career on always topping themselves.

After heading into far heavier waters than ever before on 2003's Train of Thought, Dream Theater set out to create "a classic Dream Theater album" on Octavarium, which means essentially pulling out every trick in the book while still serving the songs. (It's well-documented that the band wrote each of the album's eight songs in a different key.)

Nowhere is this more evident than the album's title track, which serves as a microcosm for what the band was trying to accomplish on the album. Beginning with a lengthy lap steel guitar solo from keyboardist Jordan Rudess, the track navigates through five distinct-yet-connected narratives, quoting from and acknowledging many of the band's influences along the way.

One could spend hours dissecting the themes and references found within the 24-minute track, and if you're inclined to do so, you might want to start with the song's lengthy Wikipedia page.

7. The Doors - The End (11:43)

When their eponymous debut album came out in 1967, no one quite knew what to make of the Doors and their bizarrely charismatic frontman Jim Morrison.

What began as a simple break-up song eventually evolved into an ominous, Oedipal and occasionally ravenous performance from Morrison, particularly in the song's spoken-word portion that begins, "The killer awoke before dawn ... "

"Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song," Morrison told Rolling Stone in 1969. "Probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be. "

Robby Krieger also turned in one of his most memorable guitar solos on The End, which was good enough to make Guitar World's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos, coming in at No. 93.

8. Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Chile (15:00)

While they both appear on 1968's Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" has far earlier roots than its close cousin, "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

Coming in at 15 minutes flat, the more traditional blues of "Voodoo Chile" started life as "Catfish Blues," a live jam and homage to the great Muddy Waters, of whom the young Hendrix was a great admirer.

Recorded in only three takes — and at 7:30 in the morning after a night out on the town in New York City, no less — the song incorporates tricks and licks from all eras of the blues, with Hendrix guiding the listener through the genre's pedagogy as he pays his dues to his heroes.

Today, "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" may be known as one of Hendrix's definite songs, but its original version still holds the distinction of being the legendary guitarist's only song to reach No. 1 in the U.K. singles charts.

9. Rush - 2112 (20:38)

After having an album come over as a commercial flop, most bands under pressure from their record labels would turn in a nice batch of short, easy-to-digest songs for their next album.

Not Rush.

Instead, after 1975's Caress of Steel didn't move a substantial number of copies, the Canadian prog-rock trio turned in their most challenging — and ultimately one of their most successful — albums to date.

Eclipsing the 20-minute mark, the title track to Rush's 2112 album kicks off with a sci-fi-themed overture before guiding the listener through a storyline not dissimilar to the one found in Ayn Rand's 1938 novella Anthem.

Through seven movements, Rush's unnamed protagonist who sees the light, so to speak, after finding a guitar in a cave by a waterfall, shaking his perceptions, igniting his creative spirit and eventually pitting him against dark forces that seek to stifle original thought.

If that's not a rock and roll epic, we don't know what is.

10. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird (10:07)

You've yelled it out at concerts. You've held your lighter in the air to it more times than you can count. It makes you tear up whenever you see Old Glory. How could we not end this epic list without Free Bird?

Whittled down to under five minutes for the single and just over nine on the album — 1974's (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) — the "full" version of Free Bird, in all its majesty, only barely eclipses the 10-minute mark.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's crowning achievement has its origins in a keyboard piece played during a high school prom, one which netted then-roadie Billy Powell a job as the band's keyboard player.

Armed with a Gibson SG, a glass Coricidin bottle for a slide and a small piece of metal slid under the strings to raise the action, lead guitarist Gary Rossington set out to pay tribute to Duane Allman on the song's tender intro, doing more than OK by his late hero, who passed away in 1971.

Rossington ditched the SG for a Les Paul by the time he joined fellow guitarist Allen Collins for the song's trademark ending, a marathon guitar solo that somehow always leaves the audience begging for more.

In this excerpt from the GW archive - the February/March 2005 issue of Guitar World Acoustic, to be exact - Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington shares the story behind the band's iconic song, Free Bird.

“Ronnie [Van Zant, Skynyrd vocalist] didn’t like it in the beginning. He complained that the opening chord progression was too complicated, and he couldn't find a melody for it. Every once in a while we’d bring it up again, and he’d just tell us to forget about it.

"Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen [Collins, guitarist] started playing the chord progression, and Ronnie said, ‘That’s pretty.’ And he wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes - the whole damn thing!

"We started playing Free Bird in clubs, and initially it was just a slow ballad.

"Then Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so that I can take a break for a few minutes.’ So I came up with the ending chord progression and Allen played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed - it all evolved out of a single jam we had one night.”

ZZ Top have announced the full details of their 50th anniversary tour. The trek, which kicks off August 16 in Washington, will feature support from Cheap Trick, with Lynyrd Skynyrd onboard for two shows in Irvine and Concord, California.

“It’s been five decades, and I think we’re starting to get pretty good at all this,” ZZ Top guitarist and singer Billy Gibbons said in a statement. “We’re truly excited to be appearing across the continent this summer and fall, playing our bluesy kind of rock like we started in ’69. The beards, Frank [Beard]’s excepted, are perhaps a bit longer, yet nothing else has changed.  We’re keeping it that way.”

Tickets for the trek go on sale beginning April 12th. 

For more information, head over to zztop.com.

ZZ Top 50th Anniversary tour dates:

August 16 – Ridgefield, WA @ Sunlight Supply Amphitheatre*
August 17 – Airway Heights, WA @ Northern Quest Casino Theater
August 20 – Yakima, WA @ Yakima Valley SunDome
August 21 – Woodinville, WA @ Chateau Ste. Michelle*
August 23 – Irvine, CA @ FivePoint Amphitheatre**
August 24 – Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion**
August 25 – Paso Robles, CA @ Vina Robles Amphitheatre*
August 27 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Arlington Theater
August 28 – San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre*
August 29 – Phoenix, AZ @ Comerica Theatre*
September 1 – Kansas City, MO @ Starlight Theatre*
September 4 – Milwaukee, WI @ BMO Harris Pavilion”
September 6 – Maryland Heights, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre*
September 7 – Tinley Park, IL @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre*
September 8 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheater*
September 10 – Huber Heights, OH @ Rose Music Center *
September 11 – Burgettstown, PA @ KeyBank Pavilion*
September 13 – Ocean City, MD @ Ocean City BikeFest
September 14 – Gilford, NH @ Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion*
September 18 – Boston, MA @ Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion*
September 19 – Wantagh. NY @ Jones Beach Theater*
September 21 – Cleveland, OH @ Jacobs Pavilion *
September 22 – Louisville, KY @ Champions Park
October 5 – Raleigh, NC @ Walnut Creek Amphitheatre*
October 6 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion*
October 9 – Charleston, SC @ Volvo Cars Stadium*
October 11 – Cherokee, NC @ Harrah’s Cherokee Event Center*
October 12 – Manchester, TN @ Exit 111 Festival
October 13 – Alpharetta, GA @ Verizon Amphitheatre*
October 15 – Augusta, GA @ James Brown Arena*
October 16 -St. Augustine, FL @ St. Augustine Amphitheatre*
October 18 – Estero FL @ Hertz Arena*
October 19 – Tampa, FL @ MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre*
October 20 – West Palm Beach, FL @ Coral Sky Amphitheatre*

* with Cheap Trick
**with Lynyrd Skynyrd

Blackberry Smoke performed a two-night stint at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on February 22-23 as part of their Find a Light tour. Late in their set on the 23rd, the band welcomed Marcus King onstage for an extended cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, “Tuesday’s Gone.”

“Last time we saw Marcus was in Germany,” Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr said, then joked to him, “Did you learn any German? I didn’t learn any German.”

You can check out fan-filmed footage of the performance above.

The night before, Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett joined Blackberry Smoke during their encore for a run-through of the Beatles’ “Get Back.” You can watch that performance below.

For all of Blackberry Smoke's upcoming tour dates, head here.

Lynyrd Skynyrd have been out on their Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour since the spring of 2018. Now, the iconic southern rock outfit have announced a new leg of what is being billed as their final trek, scheduled to kick off May 10 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

The band will be joined by Bad Company, Hank Williams, Jr. and Cody Jinks on select dates. Tickets are on sale February 8 at 10 A.M. local time.

Back when the tour was first announced in 2018, guitarist Gary Rossington, Skynyrd’s only remaining original member, said in a press release: “It’s hard to imagine, after all these years, the band that Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins and myself started back in Jacksonville, would resonate for this long and to so many generations of fans. I’m certain they are looking down from above, amazed that the music has touched so many.”

“We’ve been blessed by these great songs and the messages they carry to the fans," added Jonny Van Zant, the band's lead singer. "It’s been a true honor to try and fill in my brother’s footsteps for the past 31 years, keeping the music and his spirit, alive.”

You can check out the full itinerary below. 

For more information, head to LynyrdSkynyrd.com. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd tour dates:

April 27 – Indio, CA @ Stagecoach *
May 10 – Tuscaloosa, AL @ Tuscaloosa Amphitheater +
May 11 – Arlington, TX @ KAABOO Texas *
May 17 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center ^
May 18 – Lafayette, LA @ Cajundome ^
May 24 – Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
May 31 – Gilford, NH @ Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion ^
June 1 – Bangor, ME @ Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion ^
July 13 – Canandaigua, NY @ Constellation Brands–Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center: CMAC
July 19 – Welch, MN @ Treasure Island Resort & Casino *
July 20 – Walker, MN @ Moondance Jam *
July 26 – Portland, OR @ Sunlight Supply Amphitheater #
July 27 – Seattle, WA @ White River Amphitheatre #
August 9 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater
August 16 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
August 17 – Wheatland, CA @ Toyota Amphitheatre
August 23 – Irvine, CA @ FivePoint Amphitheatre presented by Mercury Insurance
August 30 – Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion ^
August 31 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center ^
September 13 – Southaven, MS @ Bank Plus Amphitheater +
September 14 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre +
September 20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheater +
September 21 – Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green
September 27 – Jackson, MS @ Brandon Amphitheater +
September 28 – Orange Beach, AL @ The Wharf Amphitheater +

+ with Cody Jinks
^ with Hank Williams Jr
# with Bad Company
*Previously announced U.S. dates

Country music legend Charlie Daniels has been hosting his (sort-of annual) Volunteer Jam concerts in Tennessee since 1974. As you can probably imagine, there have been scores of kickass shows and guests over the decades, including the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, Carl Perkins and more.

That said, the 1987 version (Jam XIII) has gone down in history as one of the best. It was, after all, the show where Stevie Ray Vaughan shared the stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band and, of course, Daniels.

Above, check out an energetic performance of JJ Cale's "Call Me the Breeze," which, at that point, had appeared on Skynyrd's Second Helping and One More from the Road albums.

At 1:29, singer Joel "Taz" DiGregorio (the Charlie Daniels Band's keyboardist) steps away from the mic and lets Vaughan do his thing. At 2:10, Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle joins Taz at the mic. The other guitar solos include Mason Ruffner (2:29), the Marshall Tucker Band's Toy Caldwell (3:30), Skynyrd's Ed King (4:30) and Gary Rossington (5:02) and the Charlie Daniels Band's Tommy Crain (6:30).

After Skynyrd guitarist Randall Hall solos at 7:10, Skynyrd bassist Leon Wilkeson plays a John Entwistle-influenced bass solo at 7:31 (remember that Skynyrd opened for the Who back in the day). Enjoy!

Ed King—guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd from 1972 to '75 and 1987 to '96 and the co-writer of the band's iconic hit, "Sweet Home Alabama"—has died at age 68. Though the cause of his death was not specified, King had reportedly been battling lung cancer. 

A message on King’s Facebook confirmed his death: “It is with great sorrow we announce the passing of Ed King who died at his home in Nashville, Tennessee on August 22nd, 2018. We thank his many friends and fans for their love and support of Ed during his life and career.”

Before his time with Lynyrd Skynyrd, King was a co-founder of the famed psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock, best known for their 1967 hit single, "Incense and Peppermints." King first joined Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1972 as a bassist, but soon switched to guitar, cementing the three-guitar sound that would become the band's trademark.

King would go on to play on the band's first three albums—1973’s (Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd), 1974’s Second Helping and 1975’s Nuthin’ Fancy—and co-write "Sweet Home Alabama," an iconic hit that would become synonymous with the group. 

King quit the band in 1975, following a falling-out with frontman Ronnie Van Zant, though he would later re-join the group in 1987, before retiring again in 1996 due to his struggles with congestive heart failure. 

Following King’s death, Gary Rossington released a statement. “I’ve just found out about Ed’s passing and I’m shocked and saddened,” he said. “Ed was our brother, and a great songwriter and guitar player. I know he will be reunited with the rest of the boys in Rock and Roll Heaven. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

As most of you know, pretty much every band—at one time or another—has played Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird." It's very difficult to escape it. It's actually been requested at bar gigs so often that, today, it often is requested as a joke—because people love to hear themselves scream, "play 'Free Bird'!"

Anyway, even heavy metal titans Slayer have played the classic 1973 tune, as evidenced by the video below, which was shot—vertically—a couple years back during Slayer's soundcheck at The Joint at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas.

We're not sure why anyone would shoot a video vertically, but it's too late to change that now. Please remember, however, that horizontal videos are almost always more enjoyable to watch.

In the clip below, the lengthy guitar solos—which are played by Gary Holt and Testament's Alex Skolnick (there's no sign of Kerry King)—kick off around 2:23; after fading into the background for a minute or so, they reappear at 3:30.

“‘Free Bird’ was actually one of the first songs we ever wrote,” Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington told Guitar World several years ago. “Allen [Collins] had the chords for the pretty part in the beginning, two full years, but Ronnie [Van Zant] kept saying that because there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody for it. We were just beginning to write and he thought that he had to change with every chord change.

“Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ Allen played it again, and Ronnie said, ‘Okay, I got it.’ And he wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes—the whole damned thing! He came up with a lot of stuff that way, and he never wrote anything down. His motto was, ‘If you can’t remember it, it’s not worth remembering.’

“So we started playing it in clubs, but it was just the slow part. [A demo of this version of the song appears on the Lynyrd Skynyrd box set (MCA, 1991)—GW Ed.] Then Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes?’ So I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed…it all evolved out of a jam one night. So, we started playing it that way, but Ronnie kept saying, ‘It’s not long enough. Make it longer.’ Because we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up. Then one of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie, Billy Powell, had come up with as an intro for the song. We did—and he went from being a roadie to a member right then.”

The iconic Southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced that—after one final American tour this summer—they will disband.

Though only one member—guitarist Gary Rossington—remains from the band's original, best-known lineup, they have been a touring institution since 1987, when they returned after a decade-long hiatus following the death of their lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant, in a plane crash.

The Last of the Street Survivors tour will run from early May to the beginning of September, and will send the band across the United States. Tickets for the tour will go on sale to the general public on November 2 at 10 a.m. on livenation.com.

“It’s hard to imagine, after all these years, the band that Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins and myself started back in Jacksonville, would resonate for this long and to so many generations of fans. I’m certain they are looking down from above, amazed that the music has touched so many,” Rossington said in a press release.

“We’ve been blessed by these great songs and the messages they carry to the fans," added Jonny Van Zant, the band's lead singer. "It’s been a true honor to try and fill in my brother’s footsteps for the past 31 years, keeping the music and his spirit, alive.”

The band will be joined by a long list of friends throughout the tour, including but not limited to Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr., Charlie Daniels Band, Bad Company, Marshall Tucker Band, 38 Special, Blackberry Smoke and Blackfoot.

You can check out the band's full itinerary below.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour

• May 4 – Coral Sky Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach, Fla.
• May 5 – MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa, Fla.
• May 11 – Starplex Pavilion, Dallas, Texas
• May 12 – Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion Presented by Huntsman, Houston, Texas
• May 18 – Ak-Chin Pavilion, Phoenix, Ariz.
• May 19 – Mattress Firm Amphitheatre, Chula Vista, Calif.
• May 25 – Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, Calif.
• May 26 – Glen Helen Amphitheater, San Bernardino, Calif.
• June 22 – PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J.
• June 23 – Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theatre, Wantagh, N.Y.
• June 29 – Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh, N.C.
• June 30 – PNC Music Pavilion, Charlotte, N.C.
• July 6 – Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, Virginia Beach, Va
• July 7 – Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, Va.
• July 13 – Darien Lake Amphitheater, Darien, N.Y.
• July 14 – Xfinity Theatre, Hartford, Ct.
• July 20 – Xfinity Center, Mansfield, Mass.
• July 21 – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, N.Y.
• July 27 – Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
• July 28 – Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, Pa.
• Aug. 3 – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, Ill.
• Aug. 4 – Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center, Noblesville, Ind.
• Aug. 10 – DTE Energy Music Theatre, Detroit, Mich.
• Aug. 11 – Budweiser Stage, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Aug. 17 – Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
• Aug. 18 – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, St. Louis, Mo.
• Aug. 24 – Lakeview Amphitheatre, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Aug. 25 – KeyBank Pavilion, Burgettstown, Pa.
• Aug. 31 – Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, Pelham, Ala.
• Sept. 1 – Cellairis Amphitheatre at Lakewood, Atlanta, Ga.

Although this video hit the YouTubes a few years ago, we thought you'd enjoy hearing the isolated guitar-solo track from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird."

The solo on the song—which was played by Allen Collins and Gary Rossington—comes it at Number 3 on Guitar World's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.

On the studio version of "Free Bird," which appeared on Skynyrd’s debut album, Collins played the entire solo himself on his Gibson Explorer, with Rossington playing rhythm on his Les Paul (“Bernice”) and adding the slide fills on his SG.

“The whole long jam was Allen Collins himself,” Rossington says. “He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again and it was done.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced they'll be canceling or rescheduling their two remaining 2015 dates so that founding member Gary Rossington can recuperate from his recent heart procedures.

Rossington, 63, Skynyrd's only remaining original member, suffered a heart attack in October.

The band had shows scheduled in Loveland, Colorado, December 4 and Mescalero, New Mexico, December 5.

Lynyrd Skynyrd have plans to resume touring next year and are among the acts slated for the annual Tortuga Music Festival April 15 to 17 at Fort Lauderdale Beach Park, Florida. We'll keep you updated.

On October 23, Eagle Rock Entertainment will release Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin'nérd and Second Helping Live from Jacksonville at the Florida Theatre on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats.

It also will be released as a DVD+2CD set exclusively at Walmart.

Recorded earlier this year, this release captures Lynyrd Skynyrd performing their first two studio albums, Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd and Second Helping, in their entirety for the first time at two specially staged concerts at the Florida Theatre in their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida.

Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd was released in 1973 and includes “I Ain’t the One,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Tuesday’s Gone” and “Free Bird.” Second Helping was released the following year and includes “Workin’ for MCA,” “Swamp Music,” “Call Me the Breeze” and “Sweet Home Alabama.”

The shows captured on Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin'nérd and Second Helping Live from Jacksonville at the Florida Theatre represent a special occasion for Lynyrd Skynyrd and their fans, as the band performed tracks they’d never or rarely played live before, along with classic songs that are an essential part of any Lynyrd Skynyrd live show.

With the bonus features offering a "behind-the-scenes with Lynyrd Skynyrd section," this release offers nearly two hours of peerless entertainment.

Below, you'll find a trailer for the album/DVD ("Gimme Three Steps") and its complete track listing.

For more about Lynyrd Skynyrd, visit lynyrdskynyrd.com. For more about Eagle Rock Entertainment, visit eagle-rock.com.

BAND LINEUP:

Gary Rossington (guitar), Johnny Van Zant (lead vocals), Rickey Medlocke (guitar), Michael Cartellone (drums), Mark Matejka (guitar), Peter Keys (keyboards) and Johnny Colt (bass). The Honkettes include Dale Krantz Rossington (backing vocals) and Carol Chase (backing vocals). Additional musicians include Jim Horn (alto sax), Paul Jackson (trumpet), Myles Moore (baritone sax), Nick Campbell (percussion) and Steve ‘Boxcar’ Traum (harmonica).

TRACK LISTING

• 1) I Ain’t The One
• 2) Tuesday’s Gone
• 3) Gimme Three Steps
• 4) Simple Man
• 5) Things Goin’ On
• 6) Mississippi Kid
• 7) Poison Whiskey
• 8) Free Bird
• 9) Sweet Home Alabama*
• 10) I Need You
• 11) Don’t Ask Me No Questions
• 12) Workin’ For MCA
• 13) The Ballad Of Curtis Loew
• 14) Swamp Music
• 15) Needle And The Spoon
• 16) Call Me The Breeze * Track One of CD2 format

Lynyrd Skynyrd founding guitarist Gary Rossington reportedly suffered a serious heart attack on October 8 and has been under observation since then.

Rossington’s daughter Mary Elizabeth posted the news at the Ronnie Van Zant fan page on Facebook.

“We were very close to losing him this time and just pray that they will develop even better techniques soon to deal with heart disease,” she writes.

According to the note, the 63-year-old guitarist—the only founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd in the current lineup—has been battling heart problems for years. After this most recent heart attack, doctors have added and repaired stents inserted in previous surgeries, including during a quintuple bypass he underwent in 2003.

“They went in to repair and unclog the two stents they did previously in the year which had a blood clot,” his daughter notes, “added a third stent to one vein and in two weeks we will need to go in to do a fourth stent in one of his bypassed veins from 12 years ago.”

Former Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle sent a message of support to Rossington via social media that read: “I love you, Gary. Our band loves you. Stay strong and ‘May the force be with you.’”

Rossington was hospitalized earlier this year with an abdominal infection that forced Skynyrd to cancel a tour date. Two shows in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, have been cancelled due to his heart attack and will be rescheduled for 2016. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tour schedule currently shows just two more performances for the remainder of this year.

Rossington cofounded Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1964 in Jacksonville, Florida, with his friend Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins, at which time they were named My Backyard. He was among the survivors of the October 1977 plane crash that killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, among others.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s One More from the Road is among the greatest live rock concert albums—in the pantheon alongside the Who’s Live At Leeds, the Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys and Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same.

It captures the band of misfits from Jacksonville, Florida, at their absolute instrumental peak, featuring the scalding three-guitar lineup of Skynyrd co-founders Gary Rossington and Allen Collins and then-newcomer Steve Gaines.

The 1976 double-LP also introduced the definitive 13:30 version of “Free Bird,” which became a Top 40 hit, a staple of FM radio and one of the most enduring rock songs—and punch lines—of the late 20th century.

“Free Bird” was Skynyrd’s “Whipping Post,” the 22-minute song recorded live in 1971 at New York City’s legendary Fillmore East by a band they idolized, the Allman Brothers.

It was also, along with the follow-up studio album Street Survivors in 1977, the last great hurrah for Southern rock, a style that apparently none of its trailblazers ever intended to invent.

“We just wanted to be a rock band,” says Rossington today, via phone from his mansion in Georgia. “Sure, we were from the South and we grew up on blues and country, but we really loved the blues and rock that was coming from England, and that’s what we wanted to play.” Like the Allman Brothers’ Dickey Betts, who thought of his band with Duane and Gregg Allman as progressive rock, Rossington made peace with the brand over time.

Today, Rossington, who’s 63, says he’s also made peace with his demons. The original Lynyrd Skynyrd were a hard-partying bunch, inclined to an excessive amount of excess—booze, drugs, groupies and fights that sometimes sent its members to the hospital, all chronicled in Mark Ribowsky’s new book Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The first half of that title is pulled from the opening lines of “That Smell,” a song original Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant wrote for Street Survivors after Rossington smashed his new Ford Torino into an oak tree and a house while on a bender.

“I did get in a car wreck, but we got a good song out of it,” says Rossington. “I still remember the day we cut that in the studio. My guitar sound was hot…with the feedback.

“Eventually I learned that drugs are just horrible for you,” he continues, “but that’s the way it was in rock and roll in our time. I can’t do any of that stuff now. I’m not in such great health. I’ve had some heart problems and I’m on the straight and narrow. It’s a lot better than being fucked up all the time, and I thank God I made it through those days.”

Rossington is the sole survivor of the original incarnation of Lynyrd Skynyrd, which lasted for 11 years. The group’s decade-long hiatus began with a nightmarish post-concert plane crash on October 20, 1977, near Gillsburg, Mississippi, that killed Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray just three days after the release of Street Survivors.

The accident understandably hangs over Rossington’s conversations about the band like a ghost. He rarely mentions it directly, preferring to complete relevant sentences with terms like, “until, well, you know…” or simply pausing to skip a beat.

He understandably prefers to dwell on the positive stuff, including the concert the current version of Skynyrd—featuring him, Blackfoot frontman Rickey Medlocke and Mark Matejka on guitars—played on November 12, 2014, celebrating One More from the Road. Like the original, it was staged at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre and recorded. It’ll be released later this summer as a DVD and CD called One More for the Fans! featuring a slew of guests including Gregg Allman, Peter Frampton, Robert Randolph, Warren Haynes, Blackberry Smoke, Charlie Daniels, Jason Isbell and John Hiatt.

“All the guests got to pick a Lynyrd Skynyrd song,” says Rossington. “I wish all the guys who wrote them could have heard it. I think I had the most fun playing with Robert Randolph, who came in carrying his pedal steel under his arm like a purse—no case or anything. And when he plugged in…man! He is so good it’s scary.”

There’s more Skynyrd on the way, too. In early April the band convened at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville to record two concerts. The first featured the songs from their debut album, 1973’s (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), played in its entirety, and the next night they did the same for the 1974 follow-up, Second Helping. And the group is starting to write songs for what will be the 14th Lynyrd Skynyrd studio album.

But Rossington says he’s still got a special place in his heart for One More from the Road and the people who he shared the stage with during its recording on July 7, 8 and 9 in 1976, which is where our conversation begins:

One More from the Road caught Skynyrd at an instrumental peak, although the July 7 show was only Steve Gaines’ third gig with the band. What did Steve bring to Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Steve was a great player and a great songwriter, and he had a hand in writing some of our best songs for Street Survivors, like “I Know a Little,” and would have written a lot more great ones if things hadn’t worked out the way they did.

After Ed King quit the band, Allen and I played as just two guitars for about a year. But we decided we needed another guitarist so we could get back to playing those double and triple leads. We played with Leslie West in New York, and he was going to join us, but that petered out.

Then Barry Harwood, who Allen and me later started the Rossington Collins Band with, nearly joined. And then Cassie Gaines, our backing vocalist, introduced us to her brother and told us he was a great guitar player. Everybody says that, but when we met him and he sat in, he had a slide and he was playing the hell out of it! He grew up more on Motown and country, which was different than the blues we came up on. And when he played with us, it was kind of country and jazzy, and that expanded our sound.

We rehearsed for a couple of weeks and then recorded One More from the Road. He didn’t even know some of the songs, but he played his ass off. He became a real inspiration to me, Allen and Ronnie.

Steve was one of those cats who always had his guitar strapped to him. Even when he was home, he’d be walking around playing guitar. He’d answer the door with his guitar on and play while he was on the phone. If he was watching TV, he’d play during commercials. He inspired me and Allen to really get back into chompin’ down.

Talk to me about Ronnie. He had a reputation for being rough and mercurial.

Well, you have to understand that there were two versions of Ronnie. When he was a normal, down-to-Earth guy, he’d be your best friend and do anything for you. But sometimes when he drank he’d go nuts.

Mostly, though, we all got along good. He and Steve were close really fast. Steve moved from Oklahoma to a house near Ronnie’s in Florida. He and Ronnie would go to each other’s houses almost every day. They both had little kids and the kids would start playing and Ronnie and Steve would start writing songs. We all used to hang out together all the time, like a big family.

But didn’t Ronnie get in a fight with you on your first tour in Europe that was so bad you both had to go to the hospital?

That was a bummer, man. It was the first time we drank schnapps. People in the South don’t usually drink strawberry schnapps. We went to this bar in Hamburg, Germany, where they served us ice-cold schnapp—so when we drank it, it tasted like water. I don’t think he meant to do that to me, but he was drunk and out of his gourd. He cut up my hands with a broken bottle.

I was hurt, but I could still play. He felt bad about it, and the next day we were friends again. That was all that mattered. My hands hurt when I played and the band was mad at him for a while, but everybody got over it. The bottom line is, we were a band of brothers. All we lived for was playing and being out on the road. That was our dream and it came true.

You and Ronnie grew up together, and even then he had a reputation as a bully who everybody feared. How did you get past that?

Once we got to know Ronnie, he was like a father to Allen and me. My father died when I was 10 and Allen’s mother and father were divorced, so neither one of us had a man around the house. Ronnie was a couple years older and he taught us how to drive, how to fight, how to ask a girl out…

All the stuff you want to learn when you’re growing up. Ronnie and I loved to fish. We learned how to fish together and when we’d get back in town after a tour, we’d go fishing every day or every two days, and maybe even write a song. We were good friends and those were great times.

How important was the influence of Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on you and the band?

We loved Cream and Clapton’s style, and all the guitar players with the British bands—Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and also Hendrix. But mostly it was Clapton because he was so good and he played more of the kind of blues we were raised on. I grew up listening to him and hoping to be that good one day. Of course, I never made it and I never got near Hendrix, either. I don’t know if anybody will ever be as good as Hendrix again.

And Duane and Gregg were big deals to us. They inspired us before they were the Allman Brothers. We would go see all the bands they were in while we were growing up. The Allman Joys played a lot in town, at clubs and teenage dances. We’d go see them anywhere they played.

Duane and Gregg were already great, even then, and you could see Duane get better on guitar every week or two. Plus, they were older than us doing exactly what we wanted to do, and they were driving and smoking and had long hair and were out of school. They were as cool as sliced bread!

My ’59 Les Paul “Bernice” is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sitting right next to Duane’s and Clapton’s guitars. They were my two biggest idols coming up, so having my guitar right between theirs is great!

Are you still a Les Paul guy?

Yes, I’m still playing my Les Pauls and my SGs. I also got a D’Angelico EX-SS. It looks like a great big Gibson hollowbody, and it has a really big sound that’s great for slide. Most of the time I use standard tuning for slide. Early on, we didn’t have the time to change tunings onstage, plus I only had one guitar back then, so I learned to play slide in standard.

I use a Marshall and I still use a Peavey Mace in the studio. I have a signature Peavey Penta amp for myself that’s kind of like the old Peavey Mace, which they don’t make anymore. But nowadays all the good amps sound about the same. If you’ve got tube and analog gear, it’s all gonna sound warm and good.

From the GW Archive: This feature originally appeared in the May 2002 issue of Guitar World. The story has a "time capsule" theme: We asked several veteran guitarists to choose the one song they'd most want to be remembered by after many years. Here we are, 13 years later (Does that qualify as "many"?), opening the time capsule to examine its contents! Enjoy!

A few decades ago, NASA sent a probe called Voyager straight out of the solar system. Its mission: to make contact with alien intelligence.

The capsule was crammed with artifacts—including greetings in more than 50 languages—intended to convey information about Earth's cultures. But just in case those items failed to communicate across language barriers, NASA also included a recording of Chuck Berry performing his rock and roll masterpiece "Johnny B. Goode."

For a while after Voyager's launch, the joke around the agency was that a reply had been received from an alien civilization: "Forget the scientific shit," went the message. "Send more rock and roll!" But what songs should be sent? We at Guitar World decided the logical place to start would be the musicians themselves.

In a project that started almost five years ago (hence the inclusion of George Harrison in Part 1), we began asking many of the most influential guitarists in rock, blues and metal one deceptively simple question: "If you had to put one of your songs in a time capsule to be opened sometime in the future, which would you choose, and why?"

Check out Part 2 of the story below.
Part 1, featuring Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Dimebag Darrell, Joe Satriani, Kirk Hammett, John Paul Jones and more, is available here.

Dave Mustaine (Megadeth),
"Holy Wars...The Punishment Due"
Rust in Peace (1990)

“Because we will never cease trying to dominate one another.”

Steve Vai,
"Love Secrets"
Passion and Warfare (1990)

"If it's going to be aliens that will discover this piece of music thousands of years from now, I'd pick 'Love Secrets.' The song is an unbridled ride though my imagination. It was void of any contemporary parameters when I wrote it, because the approach I took to composing it was rather unorthodox.

"The harmonic structure is very rich; it's a thought-out piece of music, and it's not just a bunch of noise. Somehow, it's very arranged but it's still completely chaotic.

"I had a profound dream experience when I was 15 or 16, and the song is the audio reality of that very bizarre and lucid dream stat. After researching this phenomenon, I realized that I was not alone in experiencing incredibly dynamic, rich music in a dream. It was like witnessing a thousand-piece orchestra.

"The experience was very intense-it wasn't like I was listening to it with my ears; I was hearing the music with 'inner ears.' The music was raging, and I can't even express what I was experiencing visually.

"I tried to reproduce this music, and even though my attempt was a complete failure at best, I still think it's one of the best pieces of music I've ever written. I really think it represents the pinnacle of my ability to combine my spiritual quest in life with my absurd technical inclinations."

Slash (Guns N' Roses),
"Paradise City"
Appetite for Destruction (1987)

"This is the song that's most indicative of what I'm really into as a musician. One of the things I enjoy about being a guitar player is striving to reach some kind of a goal, even when I'm not sure what that is.

And 'Paradise City' was the closest I got to doing what I would consider great, loud, fuckin' riff rock that clocks in at just three minutes. That's where I was headed, and that was the closest I got to realizing my goal in terms of expressing myself on the guitar in GN'R."

Buddy Guy,
"Damn Right, I've Got the Blues"
Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (1991)

I am especially proud of the lyrics and I really feel them every time I sing this song. If you don’t understand what it’s about, just keep living and you’re going to find out. People think money will make them happy, but if you’re rich you got to worry about keeping it and if you’re poor you got to worry about getting it. That’s why ‘Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues’ is a story that speaks to everyone.

“It’s like my pal Bo Diddley said: ‘Even Donald Trump’s got the blues,’ because he has to keep all those women away from his money. Or take Bill Gates: the guy invents ways to make money and every month they try to take him to court for something else.

"Someone’s always after him, and that is what they call the blues. It comes to you in all forms and fashions. When I was a kid plowing with a mule, I thought that if I just had $5,000 I’d never have to plow again. I didn’t know you can’t ever get away from it. Damn right.”

Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne),
"No More Tears"
No More Tears (1991)

"People seem to like this little ditty. Why? It's a cool tune; I guess the solo's alright, and the guitar tone sounds pretty cool. People ask how I got that low, growling sound at the end of the verses.

"It was just a 50-watt amp and a Les Paul with EMG pickups. And I went straight in, didn't run it through anything. When they mixed it, I think they put some SPX90 effect on it. It was in drop-D tuning, and we were at the A=440 pitch. It wasn't like I dropped down to some really low tuning."

John Petrucci (Dream Theater),
"Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence"
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (2002)

"I'm very lucky because i can get away with choosing an entire CD—this 42-minute composition is the title song of our new album.

"It's an easy choice because it is the best possible representation of both my playing and the band's sound, running the gamut of every facet of our music. And because I co-wrote and co-produced it, I am, of course, particularly attached to it."

Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains),
"Rain When I Die"
Dirt (1992)

"This is a song that makes me feel kind of 'purged' when I play it. I think a lot of our material is like a trip trough a dark place and out the other side.

"This is a song about a relationship between a man and a woman.You have that rolling, really dark, heavy snaky riff, and the lyrical content is dark. Yet it's very uplifting in the chorus. For me, the chorus is the resolution, coming out of the darkness."

Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd),
"Simple Man"
Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd (1973)

“ ‘Simple Man’ says a lot, philosophically. I really think I am a simple man, and that’s the best way to be. Just be yourself and believe in God and find a good woman and don’t worry about getting rich and all that.

"That’ll come along with the simple things. I went through the drugs and alcohol and that crap, and I quit it all. I wish it hadn’t taken so long, because it ruins a lot of stuff. It’s a dead-end road, and once you get to the end, you gotta turn around and go all the way back.

"But when it’s all over, it’s great and you really do get grounded and realize it’s about making music—so enjoy the process.”

Kerry King (Slayer),
"Payback"
God Hates Us All (2001)

“On this record I tried to write more directly about feelings that people have every day, so they don’t have to wonder what I’m talking about and how it relates to them. I think fans are going to hear a song like ‘Payback’ and say, ‘Man, that was me the other day!’

"‘Payback’ was written because everybody at some point in their lives has been wronged, pissed off or cut down by somebody—it’s a feeling everybody knows.

"I wanted to pick some dark subjects that would be appropriate on a Slayer record and make them more personal and see if this stuff means more to the fans than some of the stuff on our earlier records.”

Dickey Betts (The Allman Brothers Band),
"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"
Idlewild South (1970)

“It’s an awfully strong piece of music in that it allows all of the other players to have something they can really participate in.

"It offers a lot of room for players to express themselves, and all of the musicians that have played in the Allman Brothers over the years have loved to play that song. It’s true for me too; we all really enjoy the improvisation that the song allows.”

Andy Summers (The Police),
"Message In A Bottle"
Regggatta De Blanc (1979)

“I think, as a pop song, ‘Message’ has perfect form, with just enough alternation between tension and release to maintain the listener’s interest. Plus, the strong forward motion of the guitar riff maintains excitement all the way through the song.

"The lyrics are among Sting’s best—the graphic image of a man alone on an island, the message in a bottle as a metaphor for loneliness, and the surreal image of a hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore to indicate how much loneliness is out there. It also has what I consider Stewart [Copeland]’s finest drum track.

"When we recorded it, we learned how to keep the energy of the music up by doing a take and keeping the tape going while we rolled right into another take. For a while we opened our shows with ‘Message,’ and it always made us feel great and totally blew the audience away. To me, the sound of this song is the Police.”

Peter Frampton,
"Do You Feel Like We Do"
Frampton Comes Alive (1976)

“It started as a song about a hangover. I woke up with a wineglass by the bed and then went to rehearsal with a hangover.

"I started playing these chords I’d come up with on the acoustic the night before—D-F-C-G-D—which became the chorus. I added this riff we’d been jamming on in rehearsal, and it all came together. The guys in the band said, ‘C’mon, Pete, write some words—it’s almost there.’

"I said I couldn’t, that I had this really bad hangover. They said, ‘Well, sing about that.’ So I started with, ‘Woke up this morning with a wineglass in my hand.’ Nowadays that’s as far as I get before the audience takes over and sings the whole thing.

"When I emphasize the second ‘you’ in the chorus, ‘Do you—you…’ everybody’s arm is in the air, pointing. I didn’t know it when I wrote it, but when I start involving the audience, then the personal suddenly becomes universal. And then it’s not my song anymore—it’s everybody’s.”

Scott Ian (Anthrax),
"Only"
Sound of White Noise (1983)

“Because [Metallica’s] James Hetfield told me it was a perfect song.”

Kenny Wayne Shepherd,
"While We Cry"
Ledbetter Heights (1995)

“I was going to say ‘Blue on Black,’ but I went with this one instead, partly because it’s an instrumental. Years from now words, language, may be totally different, but people will still be able to understand the emotion in an instrumental like ‘Why We Cry.’

"I mean, we still feel what Mozart and Bach’s music was about 300 years later.

"When the guitar is the only voice in an instrumental or a solo, I can get into a state where the music just flows out of me. And when it’s time to wind down, it almost takes me down with it.”

Jimmie Vaughan,
"Planet Bongo"
Do You Get The Blues? (2001)

“ ‘Planet Bongo’ sums up everything that’s influenced me in music in a single song.

"It’s me looking at exactly where I’m from through a pair of blues-tinted sunglasses. It’s all American; you could pick the song apart and find blues, jazz and gospel elements but nothing that’s not uniquely of this country. It’s not going to change the world, but it will help make it a little bit of a more fun place to be.”

Johnny Winter,
"Be Careful With a Fool"
Johnny Winter (1969)

“I don’t really know why I’d pick this song, but I think it has a lot of soul and a lot of that good blues feeling. I also think it represents my sound and my style of guitar playing well. I learned it from B.B. King’s original version, which I love.”

Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam),
"Nothingman"
Vitalogy (1994)

"The way this song came together, the way it sounds, the simplicity of it and the intention behind how it came about are all connected. It was a period of time when everybody in the band was a little frustrated.

"All of us had been writing, and I knew Jeff [Ament, Bass] was in the studio with this song he had been working on.

"So I dropped by to see if I could add some stuff—and within 20 minutes we had that song worked out. With that song, everybody in the band really took some steps toward each other, and something beautiful came out of it."

These videos and audio files are bonus content related to the July 2015 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at the Guitar World Online Store.

Lesson Videos

• Time to Burn with Michael Angelo Batio: More on Developing Proper Sweep Picking Technique — Video
• In Deep with Andy Aledort: Tribute to the Influential Style of Mountain's Leslie West — Video
• Metal for Life with Metal Mike: How to Reinvent the Penatonic Approach to Forge New Melodic Riffs — Video
• String Theory with Jimmy Brown: Neat Ways to Conjure Haunting, Mysterious Melodies — Video
• Thrash Course with Dave Davidson: Moving Freely Throughout Different Tonal Centers (NOTE: This month's edition of Thrash Course with Dave Davidson does not include a video.)

Audio Lesson Files

• Acoustic Nation with Dale Turner: The "Folk Baroque" Stylings of John Renborun

Gear Review Videos

• Review: Eventide H9 Max Harmonizer/Effect Processor — Video
• Review: EVH Gear Wolfgang WG Standard Guitar — Video
• Review: Orange Rockverb 100 MKIII Guitar Amp — Video
• Review: Musicvox Space Cadet Custom Floyd Rose Guitar — Video
• Review: Earthquaker Devices Afterneath Reverb Pedal — Video