Who wrote one man band4/30/2023 ![]() He says, ‘You play the motherfucking song or I’m gonna blow your brains all over this room.’ This was just a rehearsal.” And this from the guy who wrote one of the best anti-gun anthems of our time, “Saturday Night Special.” As a band leader, VanZant was nasty, brutish, and short-tempered-in one telling passage, a friend describes what happened when early drummer Bob Burns declined to play a certain song: “Ronnie…stuck up to Bob’s head. Where to start? With Ronnie VanZant, of course, who despite myriad testimonials to his big heart comes off as a drunken brawler with a terrifying tendency for sudden and extreme violence. Not even her pedestrian prose and status as a shiny-eyed Skynyrd sycophant can dull the sheer sociopathic luster of this star-crossed band’s breathtaking dysfunctionality. On this front, Brant’s book succeeds wonderfully. And I’m not alone despite its reputation as a band that only a lout could love, Skynyrd is also revered by such critical luminaries as Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, and Chuck Eddy.) Because Brant doesn’t really succeed in shedding the slightest amount of light on just how this miracle occurred, and because she gives over half the book to the band’s long twilight following the death of VanZant and the others, Freebirds should be read-as should most rock biographies-as an accretion of really stupid rock anecdotes. (Call me the breeze, but among American groups I’d put Skynyrd behind only the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival in terms of the quality of their overall output. Instead, it’s the story of some really kind of brainless guys who, between bouts of alcohol- and drug-inspired madness, just happened to produce some of the finest American folk music of the late 20th century. Nor is it a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit or a demonstration of unity in the face of outrageous misfortune. The Skynyrd story is not inspiring, edifying, or even particularly illuminating. Unfortunately for her book, it’s neither. She wants to convince us that the tale of Skynyrd-in which a longhaired crew of working-class “whiskey rock ‘a’ rollers” from Florida get together and, through simple perseverance and true grit, win glory and overcome tragedy-is mythic and inspiring, a story of redemption. Which is the biggest problem with Marley Brant’s Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story. The Skynyrd saga is one of nasty habits, car crashes, suicides, drug abuse and more drug abuse, violent tempers, abused hotel rooms, backbiting, sellouts, betrayal and counterbetrayal, slit throats, grave robbing, child molestation, and enough broken bones to keep your average orthopedic surgeon busy for a year. Similarly, bassist Leon Wilkeson survived only to die in a drug-related accident last year. Guitarist Allen Collins survived, only to be paralyzed in a subsequent car accident and die young. Being a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd was not a recipe for a long life-a fact that singer and bandleader Ronnie VanZant summed up by saying, “We done things only fools do.” VanZant himself perished in that swamp, as did guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie Gaines, who sang backup vocals for the band. ![]() (The resilient Pyle took some pellets in the shoulder but lived.)Īlthough that probably stands as the nadir of Pyle’s career with Skynyrd, the terrible truth is, compared with some of his bandmates, he got off easy. When the hirsute Pyle finally reached civilization in the form of a farmhouse, he was a jabbering, blood-splattered mess who looked, to use his own description, “like Charlie Manson.” The farmer, being the kind of “simple man” Lynyrd Skynyrd liked to celebrate in its songs, did the natural thing: He produced a shotgun and shot the longhair. 20, 1977, drummer Artimus Pyle slogged through the muck to get help. After the Convair 240 chartered by Lynyrd Skynyrd plunged from the sky into a Mississippi swamp on Oct.
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