Original subtitles

(southern rock music)

When Lynyrd Skynyrd emerged on to the world stage in 1973

for the band it was the result

of their collective determination.

Having struggled to gain real recognition

since they had formed eight years beforehand,

and although they were immediately identified both

in the music industry and the press as yet another act

in the booming Southern Rock movement of the time

it soon became apparent that these Floridians were not only

an entirely distinctive musical unit,

but also one of the greatest rock bands in the world.

- They wanted to cash in on something you know,

that would be unique to them you know,

a Southern Redneck biker band.

It was just such a crazy concept, but they were

just audacious enough to make it work.

- Lynyrd Skynyrd was the show stopper.

When I walked to the stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd the hair

on the back of my neck stood up.

It was like the Gladiators going into the arena.

- [Voiceover] The driving force

of the band was Ronnie VanZant,

a tough, blue-collar brawler that led Skynyrd from the front line

with his powerful stage presence, distinctive vocals

and his gritty, honest lyrics.

Head strong and domineering,

his energy and vision propelled the group

from it's formation until it's tragic end in 1977.

- From the minute I joined the band

to the minute we had the plane crash

he was the hardest working band I've ever known of,

that was due primarily to the work ethic of Ronnie VanZant.

He was the true leader, writer, mentor of that band.

- Ronnie was spectacular.

He just had a charisma all of his own.

Man, he grabbed my heart hook, line, and sinker.

I said, "Man, everything that comes out

"of his mouth is meaningful."

- [Voiceover] Ronnie VanZant was a great song writer.

He was a terrific lyricist too, an observant person,

and a very smart guy, and he knew how

to be ambiguous about stuff.

He was was very sharp.

They put out six albums,

and 80, 90 % of those songs are absolutely top-rated.

It's amazing.

- [Voiceover] Ronnie Van Zant was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1948.

The eldest child of parents Lacy and Marion Van Zant

At the time this port city on the Northeastern tip

of Florida, was undergoing rapid expansion,

yet the Van Zants settled away from the industrial

and commercial center of downtown Jacksonville

in the semi-rural area of the Westside.

Here Ronnie grew up alongside his five siblings

in a small family home close to the unspoiled beauty

of the Cedar River, known to the locals a Cedar Creek.

- They weren't guided by any particular rules.

Lacy Van Zant was almost never there.

The Father he was hard living, truck driving man,

and he was very rarely home and the Mother who

everybody called Sis was kind of a hands off kind of parent.

- Ronnie was a barefoot country boy you know,

on the Westside of Jacksonville.

We lived down the street there on Mull Street,

and me and Ronnie just became fishing buddies.

We'd ride our bicycles down to Cedar Creek.

I'd be on the handlebars

or he'd be on the handlebars,

and we'd go down and take a croaker sack

and we'd catch mullet.

We'd catch a sack full of mullet,

and we'd bring them back and give them to everybody,

some black folks on the other end of the street down there,

we gave fish to everybody.

- [Voiceover] Although fishing was the young Van Zant's

favorite past time during his childhood

the area surrounding the family home

on Mull Street was a rough, working-class neighborhood

renamed Shantytown by it's residents,

and the quick tempered Ronnie soon developed

in part through necessity,

into one of the toughest kids on the block.

- The old saying then and now even,

the farther North you go into Florida,

the more in the South you are,

and when you were in Jacksonville you were at the upper tip

of Florida, and it was pretty bad.

It was bad country.

- Ronnie lived in a neighborhood that where

12 o'clock noon on a summer day you don't want to be

in that neighborhood.

Okay, and I lived about 1/4 mile away

and the houses, not much bigger than this room,

but they were brick and they were a whole level

up from where Ronnie's people were.

They used to call us the rich folk.

He lived in the roughest neighborhood they was.

- It was blue-collar and it was working-class people,

rednecks you know.

I'm happy to be a redneck, you know. (laughs)

It was a great neighborhood back then.

We called it Shantytown.

They call it the bottom now.

- The Westside was everybody knew each other

in the Westside.

We played baseball together.

We went fishing together.

We wanted to live here all our lives,

but we knew we weren't going to

really amount to much of anything here.

You work for the railroad or you join the Navy.

That was pretty much it

or you went to college to become a lawyer,

and starting a band just seemed to be a whole lot more fun.

- [Voiceover] Despite being drawn to music from an early age

in particular country in the work of Merle Haggard

and having already developed

an enthusiasm for singing, Van Zant's

earliest ambitions were not artistic,

yet they all involved breaking out of Shantytown.

Growing up within walking distance from Jacksonville's

Speedway Park his initial childhood aspiration was

to become a champion stock car driver.

Although with his enrollment in Robert E. Lee High School

in 1961 his thoughts turned to more athletic pursuits.

- At Lee, early on, he wanted to play football.

He wanted to be a running back,

and he got to play and they did a scrimmage

and the first play from scrimmage he got his ankle broken.

They put pins in it and made him 4F,

so he couldn't be drafted.

Right before that when Cassius Clay was in his heyday

before he turned over and changed his name

to Muhammed Ali, Ronnie loved Cassius Clay,

and he wanted to be a boxer, but boxer,

and I wasn't there that day Orestes Godwin which lived

over on Pangola, the other side of Woodcrest,

Ronnie's side boxed Ronnie and he just beat the hell

out of Ronnie, so that changed Ronnie's mind

about wanting to be a boxer.

You get your ass beat the first time you want

to be somebody you don't want to be that, next day.

- [Voiceover] The single event that caused Van Zant to focus

not on sport, but on music occurred in 1965

when he and a friend attended a concert

at the Jacksonville Coliseum.

Despite the rich, musical heritage of the South

it was a British band channeling this heritage

into their own distinctive sound that provided the young

Floridian with a clear roadmap for his future.

The Rolling Stones played to a packed house on May the 8th,

and that performance proved inspirational.

- Mick Jagger and the Stones is what inspired him.

He liked music, country music.

Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones is what put the shuffle

in his feet and what put him into wanting to be

in the music business.

♪ I can't get no ♪

♪ I can't get no ♪

♪ When I'm driving in my car ♪

♪ A man comes on the radio ♪

♪ Telling me more and more ♪

♪ About some useless information ♪

♪ Supposed to fire my imagination ♪

♪ I can't get no ♪

♪ A no, no, no ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ That's what I say ♪

He seen the reaction of the fans and the people

especially the girls, and the girls loved the singers.

They don't care much about the band,

but they loved that front man.

Ronnie loved it.

He just had that reaction because truthfully speaking

he wanted to get out of Shantytown.

He hated it.

He didn't bring nobody over to his house,

us close friends, but if he didn't if you wasn't

a close friend you didn't come over to Shantytown.

In Ronnie's eyes he wanted to be somebody.

Mick Jagger did that dancing.

Ronnie Van Zant come back, "Hey, I want to be

"I want to be in rock-n-roll."

He put that in his mind, and that is what guided him.

Ron Van Zant had a goal.

- [Voiceover] It didn't take Van Zant long

to begin working towards this goal.

Within weeks he had joined young teen-aged group

The Squires, and several years older than the other

band members, he quickly took charge.

Renaming them Us.

This would soon bring him into contact with rival bands

The Mods which featured young guitarist,

Allen Collins and bassist, Larry Steele.

- I first met Ronnie Van Zant in 1965.

Allen and I had a band together called The Mods

We attended Lake Shore Junior High School together

as did Gary Rossington and Allen and I's band

had a Battle of the Bands coming up with another band.

We had had a Battle of the Bands previously

and we won.

But now this band that we were competing against, now,

thier new lead singer was Ronnie Van Zant.

Ronnie came over to Lake Shore Junior High School

to kind of advance the gig.

He was always calculating.

He was like a field general and he had requested

through someone to meet with me.

That was terrifying, you know?

It was like, what?

It just didn't sound good at all, you know?

I knew of him.

I knew the name everybody on the Westside

of Jacksonville knew the name because Ronnie had

a fairly big reputation as a street fighter.

He was a tough guy.

I was expecting to meet Attila the Hun,

but he was very soft spoken.

He was very polite.

He was very intelligent.

He knew what he wanted to do.

He was as nice as he can be.

- [Voiceover] Although Us won the contest,

Van Zant quickly decided that his band mates lacked

the skill and focus to match his own ambitions,

and he began looking for a new outfit to front.

Another group on the local high school circuit

soon caught his attention.

A recently formed three-piece band

consisting of bassist Larrry Youngstrom,

guitarist, Gary Rossington, and drummer,

Bob Burns.

- First it was me and Larry.

We were trying to do something and I said,

"Larry, we got to get us a guitar partner."

He said, "I don't know none."

I said, "I do."

- Gary Rossington, yes, I told Gary about it and he said,

"Sure." Because he didn't have an amplifier.

So we walked about two miles and got one,

and that's what we started practicing with.

We named the band Me, You and Him.

The way I met Ronnie, he knocked on my door

one morning to say, right before school.

I said, "I don't want to fight you, man."

He said, "I ain't here to fight."

He said, "I'm a singer."

I said, "You're a singer?"

He said, "Yeah."

I said, "Well, I'll be dang."

I said, "I got a bass player and I have a guitar player.

"Let's try to put something together."

- [Voiceover] As they began to practice, however,

this new as yet unnamed band quickly realized

that something was missing from their sound.

Enter guitarist, Allen Collins.

- Allen was playing in a band called the Mods.

He was their lead-guitar player.

We were practicing.

We stopped.

We said, "Look it's just not full enough, you know?

The sound is just not full enough."

I said, "We need another axe."

Everybody said, "Yeah, where?"

I went, "Bingo, Allen Collins."

And Gary just about thought about it

at the same time because he didn't know Allen

like I did.

He was just a distant, distant friend.

I know Allen, good

He was in a lot of my classes.

We approached him about it.

- They needed another guitar player.

Ronnie was of the opinion that he could take

two mediocre at best, at that time, the truth is

Allen and Gary neither one, they were both learning

from each other.

Ronnie felt like if he could take the two of them

and combine that energy and have them feed off

of each other that ultimately he could come up with

at the very least a very good guitar player.

As it turned out, he knew exactly what he was talking about.

As it turned out he got two very good guitar players.

- [Voiceover] With the band's line-up in place

after some rehearsing, they made their way on to the

Jacksonville Live Circuit.

Although as the majority of the members were still

high school students, they were restricted to playing

teen clubs and youth centers.

Their set list almost exclusively made up of covers

of songs by British invasion acts, this group eventually

named the Noble Five was the first step

in the journey towards Lynyrd Skynyrd.

- That band right there, if we jumped on a copy tune

at first it was good, people were very impressed.

Then they were saying, "Damn, that sounds good."

And before we quit playing copy tunes

and we played anywhere from the Doors and the Stones

to Beatles, a lot of rock-n-roll, some blues-rock,

just on and on forever, good stuff.

All the copy tunes, okay.

And I'll vow it to say this the band Ronnie, me, Gary,

Allen and Larry probably had one of the best copy bands

in the world.

We knocked it out.

People loved it.

- How good were they?

Not really good.

The Noble Five when they were the Noble Five

they were playing other people's music and they were trying

to put some of the original stuff, you know,

trying to come up with something.

You know, they were average young band, young musicians,

they didn't hit every note perfect.

- [Voiceover] If the Noble Five still had to develop

instrumental prowess and musical creativity one thing

it wasn't lacking was a commanding presence out front.

From the get go Ronnie Van Zant was a striking

and very singular lead singer.

- I would say that Noble Five was very average,

but he knew his limitations and he was very confident.

He had a lot of stage presence, a lot of charisma.

In the beginning I think that's what got him by

more than anything.

At that time he had not really come

into his own as a singer.

He had just recently made up his mind that that's what

he wanted to do.

Actually to phrase it like Ronnie did to me,

not what he wanted to do, what he had to do.

He took it from there, he had, like I say,

all the confidence in the world and he had his plan,

his idea about how it was all going to come together

and he stuck to it.

- [Voiceover] As a Top-40 cover band the Noble Five

were competing in a crowded market.

The coming of the Beatles, The Stones and the numerous

other artists from across the Atlantic had seen

an explosion of musical activity across the US.

The major hub for the artists who developed in the wake

of this British invasion was California.

Here the members of The Byrds, The Mama's and the Papa's,

and the Greatful Dead, among many others were forging

new sounds.

The musicians dragging themselves out of the once

dominant folk revival scene and into the brave new world

suggested by the British acts.

As distant as this all seemed to the young bands playing

cover songs in the South and actually on occasion

played the same clubs as the Noble Five had made

an attempt to break into this competitive world.

Brothers Dwayne and Gregg Allman from Daytona Beach

had initially began playing on the Florida Circuit

in the ensemble The Escorts in 1964.

The following year they had become The Allman Joys

and they quickly rose to the top of the scene.

Playing venues not only in their home state,

but across the South.

In 1967 they became the Hour Glass and with industry

support behind them they relocated to Los Angles.

Yet, despite several high profile shows and two albums

they failed to make their mark.

To musicians on the Florida Circuit however, including

the ambitious, young members of the Noble Five,

they were an inspiration.

As well as Gregg Allman's powerful vocals

and Dwayne Allman's technical virtuosity as a guitarist,

the band wrote original material.

- We opened up for the Allman Brothers.

They were called the Hour Glass back then,

but it was the Allman Brothers.

We were on first.

We got in there and Gregg and Dwayne just sat there.

They said, "Look, you guys got a tremendously

"powerful band."

"You sound great, but you'll never go anywhere

"until you do your own stuff."

He said, "What you gotta do is get you a place

"that to where you can practice seven days a week

"from morning till night, you know, and put a little

"recorder in there to keep place with the songs."

So we did that for seven years.

- [Voiceover] Inspired by Dwayne Allman's advice the band,

having recently changed their name to the One Percent.

looked for a location in which they could work up

new material and hone their musical skiills

through repetitious rehearsals.

After exhausting the patience of family and friends

they eventually found a run down cabin in the town

of Russell which they would call over time

Hell House.

Under Van Zant's stern leadership they began their slow

metamorphosis into a major rock band.

- We practiced seven days a week, from 10 in the morning

until 10 at night.

Tin roof, no air conditioning, it was hard work.

It was hard work, but we loved it, man.

You know, we loved it.

- Ronnie was just realizing that we were going to have

to work harder than everybody else to make it.

His work ethic just went into overdrive.

There was no time off.

If you weren't playing a gig you were rehearsing

to play the next gig.

As a result of that there was a huge transition.

When they became One Percent basically it was the same band

the whole attitude was completely different.

- [Voiceover] This new vigor led One Percent to quickly rise

to the top of the local circuit and in 1968

they began playing regularly at the recently opened

Comic Book Club, the most vibrant venue in Jacksonville.

As the band continued to develop, the following year

there was a significant shift in the music industry

of the South.

After the collapse of their band The Hour Glass

guitarist Dwayne Allman who worked as session musician

at famed studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,

immediately drawing the attention of Atlantic Records,

Jerry Wexler.

He in turn introduced Allman to an associate, Phil Walden

a manager from Macon, Georgia, who has previously

represented R&B heavy weights, Otis Redding and Al Green.

So impressed was Walden by the young guitarist's talent

he encouraged Allman to form a new band

and set up a record label, Capricorn

to release their albums.

In March 1969, The Allman Brothers Band was born

bring together musicians from Floridian groups

The 31st of February and the Second Coming alongside

Greg and Dwayne.

By April they had moved to Macon.

Here Walden set up a studio and began to build Capricorn.

a record label that would become a beacon for talented

young, local acts playing rock music.

Phil Walden totally believed that there was a lot

of creativity where we lived, where we came from

and we experienced it.

We experienced it in Alabama, in Macon, Georgia, where

I'd gone to school and Phil grew up.

Phil was the leader of this thinking

and his brother Alan joined in, too.

You know, you've got great players around

just look over your shoulder.

Turn around and look about.

Joe got a call from Gary Wexler

about Dwayne Allman and then he took action

on that phone call.

Dwayne was ready to make a move.

♪ I've been run down ♪

♪ I've been lied to ♪

♪ I don't know why, ♪

♪ I let that mean woman make me a fool ♪

♪ She took all my money ♪

♪ Wrecks my new car ♪

♪ Now she's with one of my good time buddies ♪

♪ They're drinkin' in some cross town bar ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel ♪

♪ Like I've been tied ♪

♪ To the whipping post ♪

♪ Tied to the whipping post ♪

- It was very inspirational.

It was the first inkling that we had that it could

actually be done.

It was Ronnie in fact that turned me onto Greg

and Dwayne Allman and we had known for years

that they were the best around.

If they didn't make it we better start thinking

about something else.

Once they finally did, once Capricorn signed

The Allman Brothers, we knew then, we can do this, too.

♪ In Memory of Elizabeth Reed ♪ by The Allman Brothers ♪

- The Allman brothers opened the door for all of us.

They were the ones that went out there

and paid the dues, first.

Little Richard had done a lot.

Otis Redding had done a lot.

Ray Charles had done a lot.

James Brown had done a lot,

but for a white band

they were the pioneers.

They were the first ones out there

that really meant something, that played the Fillmores

and really played original music.

That was one thing, they set the example for,

was playing original music.

- [Voiceover] The Allman Brothers immediately made an impact

on the One Percent.

Their distinctive, sonic approach quickly absorbed

into the young Jacksonville band sound.

Yet, it was a British group traveling to Florida,

on a US tour that would prove and even greater

inspiration musically for the One Percent.

- We followed the brothers a lot,

the double leads kind of came in you know.

Ronnie liked the way Greg sang.

Hell, who didn't?

Then we heard a band called Free that was

supposed to be coming to town

an English band.

We heard them at a skating rink

and I'm telling you what, right there

I think Free changed our band more

than any band in this world.

♪ Every single day ♪

♪ I got a heartache coming my way ♪

♪ I don't want to say goodbye, baby ♪

♪ But look at the tears in my eyes ♪

♪ I don't want to say goodbye, baby ♪

♪ But look at the way you made me cry ♪

♪ In every way that's nice ♪

♪ You show you got a heart that's made of ice ♪

♪ And I know Fire and water ♪

Paul Kossoff, Gary Rossington, it's identical

to what Gary does.

That was really beautiful, man.

Beautiful , Simon Kirke on drums

and Andy Frasier, that little hat, you know?

- [Voiceover] For Ronnie Van Zant the emergence of Free

was almost as influential as his initial exposure

to The Stones five years before him.

♪ Took her home to my place ♪

♪ Watching every move on her face ♪

♪ She said, Look man ,what's your game ♪

♪ Are you trying to put me in shame ♪

♪ I said slow baby, don't go so fast ♪

♪ Don't you think that love can last ♪

♪ She said Love, Lord above ♪

♪ Now you're trying to trick me in love ♪

♪ All right now, baby ♪

♪ It's all right now ♪

♪ All right now, baby♪

- The Stones may have ignited something,

but it was really Paul Rogers who was his great hero.

He wanted to sing like Paul Rogers.

The inside joke with people like Al Cooper

who produced the Skynyrd albums was that

on each one of those there had to be Free song

a song in which Ronnie would try to sound like Paul Rogers.

That was his (mumbles) ideal of what a rock-n-roll star

would be.

Here's a guy in the deep South and his hero is you know,

across the pond.

His sights were very broad even then.

And it was very canny because that wasn't being done

back then in Jacksonville.

Even The Allman Brothers didn't sing that kind.

They were a great blues band but they didn't emulate

Paul Rogers or Mick Jagger.

So this is a whole new thing that's coming with Skynyrd.

It's taken a little time, but it's on the way.

- [Voiceover] Quickly assimilating these influences

hold up in the backwater isolation of Hell House

Van Zant and the band began developing their own material.

- Let's say Gary Rossington and Allen went home

and were just picking around on their guitars.

We practice all day, they go home and clean up

and play guitar and practicing.

Well, they get into a groove, something really cool,

you know, it's a whole measure, you know.

And a whole measure, so it could be a song

even with a cord some of them sometimes,

a whole song right there and if the band liked it

and Ronnie could dig it and put some words to it

we'd keep it.

Ronnie never wrote down one word to any song.

If that don't freak y'all out, I don't know.

Nobody's ever done that.

Intricate songs and they'd ask him,

"Ronnie, why don't you write it down?"

And he'd say, "Look, if it ain't worth remembering

"it ain't no good."

- [Voiceover] With a clutch of self-penned tracks

now in their arsenal in May 1969 the One Percent

were offered their first stab at recording.

Local manager, David Griffin seemed to capture the best

of the up and coming Jacksonville acts on vinyl booked

both Van Zants band and Larry Steele's

new ensemble Black Bear Angel

into Norm Vincent's studios to produce two promotional

singles for Shade Tree Records.

- David Griffin was the one that set up the studio time

for One Percent and Black Bear Angel.

My band wasted time, Ronnie's did not.

Ronnie went in there he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

He took advantage of the situation.

They put down two songs and the next thing you know

he had TV exposure, a lot of air play and stuff like that.

That was a big thing to their career.

♪ It's been so long since I been gone ♪

♪ Lord I'm tired and want to go home ♪

♪ I going strong but I'm singing the blues ♪

♪ Need all my friends to talk to ♪

♪ Now yes I do ♪

♪ Need all my friends to talk to ♪

- Those were the days I enjoyed the most.

These All My Friends, that was the first really

professional one we just really grooved on.

Everybody liked it, the crowd, my friends,

and we like it, yeah, that was a pretty good time.

The songs brought us joy, you know?

♪ Michelle, little girl I need you baby ♪

♪ More than the air I breathe ♪

♪ My love for you grows stronger, babe ♪

♪ My words you must believe ♪

♪ Well I need to see you laugh again ♪

♪ And I want to see you smile ♪

♪ Michelle, little girl I love you baby ♪

♪ You're my only child ♪

- To me I don't think they have a distinctive, original

sound on this first single.

They sound like the typical rock band of the day.

Ronnie's voice is kind of Gregish.

I'm sure that they were all well aware of Greg and Dwayne

from Daytona Beach and Gary told me

that when he was 15 he was a massive

Dickie Betts fan from Second Coming

from before The Allman Brothers.

They had been steeped in that Florida thing already,

but in Allen Collins solo in Michelle I hear there's

a little bit of that Free Bird thing already.

Michelle is a lot like While My Guitar Gently Weeps,

but a little more sped up.

Allen Collins was a huge Johnny Winter fan.

You really hear the Johnny Winter influence

in his writing and his playing.

(guitar music)

Meet All My Friends and Michelle, I don't think they

sound all that original.

They sound fairly derivative.

Based on those tracks you wouldn't really say

this is a band that's going somewhere.

I don't hear a lot of really original music.

I hear a little bit of the Yardbirds.

I hear impact of Cream.

Other really British bands, but Ronnie Van Zant

has a very distinctly Southern, American, country

tinged voice and you can look back in retrospect

and hear the budding of something, but I don't think

taken on their own those cuts sound like a band

on the cusp of great originality.

- [Voiceover] Yet, week by week the band

were adding new songs to their set list and before

the limited release of this single they changed their

name once again.

This time it would be permanent.

In a bastardization of the name of their

high school gym teacher, they became

Lynyrd Skynyrd stepping out onto the Jacksonville Circuit

with a fresh moniker and an ever expanding catalogue.

By the end of 1969 they had their first break.

An audition for Alan Walden, the brother of Capricorn

Records founder, Phil who was looking to sign fresh talent.

- My brother and I had seperated.

I had gone out and auditioned 187 bands

in one year.

You know how many bands that is a week?

Some of them I'd tape.

Some of them I'd video.

Some of them in person, you know?

But I was invited to come down to Jacksonville, Florida,

and audition bands in a warehouse

and a guy named Pat Armstrong, he had 13 bands lined up.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was the last band that played that day.

Allen Collins got down and flipped all over the floor

and did all sort of stunts with the guitar.

Played behind his head and everything.

They were doing it, but they didn't stop.

They kept going and driving.

By the time they finished with Free Bird, I was blown away.

I assigned them to management, production, publishing,

recording, all of it.

- Alan Walden is probably one of the coolest people

I have ever met.

He used to ask, "Would you like for me to mange you."

He says, "I'll take a shot with you."

And I said, "Yes, yeah, let's try."

Both parties had something to gain, nothing to lose.

- [Voiceover] With a manager now looking

after their interests the bands live schedule

intensified over the following year.

While Walden himself tried to secure Lynyrd Skynyrd

recording time at Muscle Shoals Sound.

This studio set up in Sheffield, Alabama, by the

session musicians who had played along side

Dwayne Allman at famed studios in the late 1960's

was an emblem of the growing strength of the music

industry in the South.

As Phil Walden was building Capricorn

and the Allman Brothers first album was being released

these session musicians were recording The Rolling Stones

in their isolated studio in rural Alabama.

First trying to secure sessions for the close of 1970

Walden finally managed to lock down a studio time

in late June 1971 with guitarist turned producer

Jimmy Johnson.

Although for Ronnie Van Zant and his band mates

it was an invaluable opportunity to prove their talents

the sessions coincided with another unplanned

personnel changes.

Drummer Bob Burns left the band shortly before

the recordings while days in bassist Larry Youngstrom

was ejected from Skynyrd by manager Walden

and they were replaced temporarily by two musicians

from fellow Florida band Blackfoot, Ricky Medlock

and Gary T. Walker.

They were also joined in the studio by their roadie

Billy Powell who Ronnie had only recently discovered

was a pianist of some talent.

Despite these unexpected set backs and new editions

the young Jacksonville musicians took to the studio

remarkably well.

- Lynyrd Skynyrd, I didn't call them a natural talent band.

They were a rehearsed talent band.

Without rehearsals they would have been a weak band,

but these guys went to, every Monday through Friday

they went to Hidden Hills every day, so they were

well rehearsed when the came to Muscle Shoals

all Jim and them had to do was get the balances

and the tones and let these guys go to work, you know?

And maybe suggest something about the arrangement

but very little.

Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins

and those guys, Barry Baker all of them

they taught Lynyrd Skynyrd how to record,

how to really record, you know?

Did I think their recordings were good?

I do.

I think they were excellent recordings.

- [Voiceover] With the recordings in place

Skynyrd hit the road hard

for the remainder of 1971.

Playing further afield venues in Georgia and South Carolina,

alongside their regular shows in their home town.

In the new year drummer, Bob Burns returned to the band.

Shortly afterwards they brought in a new bassist,

Leon Wilkeson who years before played alongside

another Van Zant, Ronnie's younger brother Donny

In high school band The Collegiates.

After grueling rehearsals with this lineup

at Hell House in September 1972 Skynyrd returned

to the studio in Alabama, to record six new compositions.

Although the final collection of Muscle Shoals tracks

was passed around record companies following the completion

of these sessions, they would not be heard by the public

until 1978 when they were issued as the LP,

Skynyrd's First And Last.

- You're hearing the pieces in place

and they're getting there.

Most of the picture's there.

I think it's impressive.

I think in a very short amount of time they did

develop their own sound and the song,

Down South Jukin turned this country

honkey-tonk, but rocked up thing.

You don't really hear that in any of The Allman Brothers

music at all, but Skynyrd is kind of defined

by shit-kicking music, you know,

for lack of another term.

I think you hear it right away.

♪ Well Billy Joe told me, said every thing's lookin' fine ♪

♪ He got the place all secured, got the icebox full of wine ♪

♪ He said, "Hurry on over and don't be late" ♪

♪ He got three lovely ladies who just won't wait ♪

♪ Do some down south jukin' ♪

♪ And lookin' for a peace of mind ♪

♪ Now put your Sunday pants on ♪

- They were great recordings.

They were a juking band, right up my alley.

I mean this was right up my alley, man.

I been jukin with Johnny Taylor,

who''s making love to you're old lady,

all that, for years.

Here's this white rock-n-roll band

just jamming.

They're getting it on, and an original song.

♪ Wino on the street. ♪

♪ Drinkin' a bottle of booze ♪

♪ Ain't got nothing to say, yeah ♪

♪ And he don't got much to lose ♪

♪ Times are on his face. ♪

♪ Blisters on his brain ♪

♪ Wonders who's at fault. ♪

♪ Knows that he's to blame ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

- Muscle Shoals was a great studio,

but whoever recorded at Muscle Shoals needed

a producer.

The studio was fantastic, the acoustics unbelievable,

but they have to rely on Jimmy Johnson as the producer

and he's a great musician, a great, you know, owner

of a studio, but he's not a great producer.

He just gets it on tape, so again

if you know Skynyrd's music

from later on you can go back and listen

to those Muscle Shoals tapes and hear all the great stuff

that would be, that would come out of it,

but at the time it just sounded like demos.

- [Voiceover] Whatever the quality of the recordings

it was the band and their songs themselves

that Alan Walden struggled to push.

Armed with the Muscle Shoals album he traveled

to Los Angeles with Jimmy Johnson and arranged

several meetings with record company executives.

Yet, the reaction was in most cases was overwhelmingly

negative, and after two years as their manager

Walden was running out of both money and options

in his attempts to break the band.

- Those first three years were hard, hard, hard work.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was turned down by nine different

major record companies.

Turned down, not we like you guys but the songs are weak.

I'm talking about, we are not interested. (laughs)

It's like don't send us any more tapes.

We don't want you, you know.

That just broke my heart.

I'm sitting there listening to Gimme Three Steps,

Simple Man, Free Bird, you know.

These are great songs and we were being turned down.

My own brother turned Lynyrd Skynyrd down, you know.

At Grand Slammers, he heard them there

and I asked him afterwards what he thought he said,

"You're lead singer's too cocky.

"He can't sing and the songs are weak.

"And they sound too much like The Allman Brothers."

I'm standing there listening to him and he walks away

and I'm walking this way and Ronnie stops me and said,

"What'd he say, man?"

And i said, "Nothing important."

All of the major record companies said they sounded

too much like The Allman Brothers.

You take a Lynyrd Skynyrd record and play it back-to-back

to an Allman Brothers record and tell me what are they

similar, they're Southern bands, you know.

They've got a massive guitar line-up.

Great guitar work, you know,

but what else to they have really in common?

- [Voiceover] By late 1972 when Walden was

attempting to attract major label interest

The Allman Brothers were no longer simply

a Southern phenomenon.

Despite the tragic death of their driving force,

Dwayne Allman, with the release of their third album,

Live at the Fillmore East in 1971 and Eat A Peach

the following year, they had been propelled into

the top flight both critically and commercially.

The negative comparisons to the band were

damaging for Skynyrd and Alan Walden

began to actively distance himself and his group

from both the Allmans and Capricorn.

Yet, although his brother Phil was uninterested

in the Jacksonville act, his colleague and promoter

Alex Hodges was far more intrigued by them.

- I call up Alan and say, "I want to know about your band."

He said, "Well, they're probably not going to sign with you

"as a booking agent for two or three reasons.

"One, you represent The Allman Brothers Band.

"Two, you're in partnership with my brother.

"and your best friends with my brother,

"and I'll think of a third reason

"and we're just not going to sign with you."

I said, "Alan, who's the best agent you know?"

He said, "You are."

I said, "So we've got to talk." (laughs)

I went to see them in Atlanta.

Alan introduced me.

Saw their whole show.

It was fantastic.

I met them in a hotel and I think Allen Collins

probably said, "So we might sign with you.

"We want two shows with The Allman Brothers Band,

"but we don't want you to be putting us on tour

"with The Allman Brothers Band.

"They do their thing.

"We do our thing.

"They're obviously enormously successful,

"and we just want to be sure though,

"that we play with them a few times,

"but you've got to figure out how to break us

"on the road.

"Give us our sense of independence

"on the road."

It was an independent nature,

probably of most great bands.

I felt I saw that and it was expressed

in their words when I first met them.

But we hit it off, and it was great.

- [Voiceover] Hodges respected Skynyrd's wish

to only play on the same bill as The Allman Brothers

on occasion.

Although towards the end of 1972 he did arrange

the first of these shows in Macon, Georgia,

in which the Jacksonville ensemble held their own

supporting the Capricorn Headliners on their home turf.

Van Zant and his band mates had been gaining

the most traction as a live tour in Atlanta, however,

where they had been booked to support Bob Seger

and his band at the club The Head Rest, but also managed

to secure a residency at a more run down venue

called Funocchio's.

It was here that they finally caught a break.

- When we got into Atlanta there was a club

called Funocchio's.

Fruit and nut bar all the way.

More drug addicts than any other club

in the whole city.

I told the Skynyrd guys, "If you can entertain,

"these drug heads and these junkies, then you can

"entertain the world, cos some of these guys are coming

"in there and they need something and they don't want

"to hear nothing and if you can entertain them,

"you can entertain the world."

And we stayed right there in Funocchio's.

We played there probably seven or eight times.

- The first time we came down and played for a week

we got laughed at, we got laughed at.

And they said, "Who in the hell are these hillbillies?

"What in the hell is this hillbilly stuff?"

But then they give us another chance.

It started catching on, catching on,

catching on, you know.

Before we knew it every time we packed

Funocchio's which would hold 400, 500 people

we'd pack it out.

Ain't nobody dancing, ain't nobody up there

at the bar getting drinks, all around the stage.

- They worked, and they worked, and they worked,

and they always were better every time you heard them

they got better.

You knew there was something there, something was

going to happen and you could just see it.

The first time I knew they were gonna make it big

I was with them in Atlanta, Georgia.

There's a place called The Head Rest.

There were stages at each end of the dance floor.

The other band played, they played a lot of Top-40

stuff and everything and all the kids were packing

the dance floor and dancing and everything.

When they finished their sets Skynyrd played.

Well, one night, Skynyrd started the set with Simple Man

and all the people were still on the dance floor

from the other band playing and nobody left the dance floor.

Nobody danced.

They just stood there motionless and stared at them

and everybody in the club, when you looked around the club

was staring at them and you could've if not for the band

you could've heard a pin drop because everybody

was tuned into Lynyrd Skynyrd and that was the first time

I knew, yeah these guys have got it.

They're gonna make it.

- [Voiceover] The crucial figure would recognize Skynyrd's

potential and take them into the next level witnessed the

band playing at Funocchio's during their second residency

at the club in January 1973.

Al Kooper had been involved in the music industry

since his early teens as first a musician and then

song writer and in the mid to late '60s was a key figure

on the East Coast scene playing in multiple sessions

with Bob Dylan, Steven Stills, The Rolling Stones

and The Who and forming the band, Blood, Sweat and Tears.

In 1972 he had temporarily relocated to Georgia to work

with The Atlanta Rhythm Section at their newly opened

studio in Doraville, Studio one.

During his time off in Atlanta he had by chance begun

frequenting Funniccio's at the turn of 1973

and was there to witness Lynyrd Skynyrd

in all their glory during their week long residency.

By the third night he was joining them on stage

and was eager to develop a working relationship

with Van Zant and his band mates.

- Just sounded great, just had a great sound.

The thing that we had in common was we were

both gigantic fans of the band Free

and that's what really made it work

because they understood what was great

about Free and I understood that and I heard

the Free in them.

Ronnie was not as great a singer as Paul Rogers,

but he wrote those songs and he had a sound.

Paul Rogers was influenced by a lot of soul singers.

and Ronnie didn't have that voice,

so he just did his thing.

And he sounded like Ronnie.

- [Voiceover] Kooper's response to this explosion

to Skynyrd was incredibly committed.

Within days he decided to introduce their music

to MCA Records who allowed him to set up his own label,

Sound Of The South in order to represent Skynyrd

and any other Southern acts he could discover.

Although the terms of the contract that Kooper

presented them with were poor, offering only

a $9000 advance, both Skynyrd and Alan Walden knew

that as Capricorn had shown no interest

this was the only other horse in town.

- If Capricorn turned you down

you were through down there

because there was nothing like it.

I mean it was South

for white bands.

Alan Walden really didn't have to do anything

because there was really no choice.

They'd been to Muscle Shoals and nothing happened

with that.

I already had the makings of a deal with MCA.

- Al Kooper was a last resort.

When I knew that Lynyrd Skynyrd could not take

another year of starving to death.

When I knew that I was ready to sign a deal

with almost anybody at that point

because it was gonna mean

the salvation of the band.

If I'd told them they were going to play bars

for another year and a 1/2, two years

the band probably would've broke up.

- We were getting nowhere and Ronnie called me one night

and said, "Someone broke into our van and took a lot

"of our stuff.

"We can't work.

"We can't put food on the table.

"We need an advance of $5000."

I said, "You want me to mail it or you want

"to come up and get it?"

And he said, "You can mail it

"and you just bought yourself a band."

- When they got ready to sign their record deal

with Sounds Of The South which was Al Kooper's label

had the recording contract laid out on the hood

of my Ford pick-up truck in the parking lot

of the Macon Coliseum, okay.

I laid out all the contracts for them to sign

and Ronnie picks up the pen and he looks at me

and he said, "Alan, what do you think of our record deal?"

My reply was, "This is the worst piece of shit

"I've ever seen in my life.

"It's worse than R&B contracts that we have."

He said, "What else we got?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Give me that God damn pen."

And he signed it.

- [Voiceover] Having finally landing a recording contract

no matter the compromises involved, the band set

about preparing to record their debut album.

Yet, unexpectedly this opportunity caused bassist

Leon Wilkeson to question his commitment to Skynyrd

and he quit the band.

With the recording sessions due to begin

in March, rather than enlist a player from the Jacksonville

pool Ronnie Van Zant turned to an experienced musician

who they had toured with three years before hand

as a support act, Californian guitarist, Ed King.

- I think it was back in 1970 I was with a band called

The Strawberry Alarm Clock.

We had a number one record in 1967.

In 1970 our old manager put together a bogus

Strawberry Alarm Clock and started booking

tours in the South, all these Souther colleges and stuff.

We found out.

We filed an injunction him to stop him

and then we decided well, were bankrupt, let's go ahead

and do the tour our self, so our first gig,

I think we met down in Jacksonville, Florida,

and the guys in Skynyrd were our opening band.

The band was good and Ronnie was spectacular.

He just had a charisma all of his own

and I told Ronnie later I said, "If you ever need

"another guitar player or bass player, you know,

"don't forget about about me.

"I'd love to play with you."

- Leon got kind of scared of a record deal

and didn't really know if he wanted to be

go through all that being famous routine

or whatever it was the work that followed the commitment,

so he quit and went to work at an ice cream factory

and then I joined the band on bass.

It was a real shock to me.

I had to really try and get used to it.

I didn't really hear my bass playing

with this band.

For some reason it was a different style

than I was used to, so I had an awkward time.

- [Voiceover] In preparation for the upcoming

studio sessions, King was thrust into Skynyrd's world

beginning with intensive rehearsals at Hell House

in which he was initiated into the band.

- Long before I joined the band somebody came up

in a boat late at night and stole a couple of amps,

so every night somebody had to stay there,

but my initiation for the first week was to spend

every night there for the first week.

So here I am the first night there, they all leave.

I'm out with a bag of potato chips and a couple of Cokes,

you know, and I have two at least maybe 150 watt

light bulbs hanging from the ceiling and they stay on

all night long because the sounds outside are unbelievable.

I mean, one time an alligator came up on shore.

The guy who owned the house way up front

had to come up with a rifle and shoot it in the head.

That week was absolutely terrifying.

- [Voiceover] Outside of this initiation, King also had

more significant hurdles to overcome.

Having already enjoyed chart success in the late 1960s

he had to adapt himself to Ronnie Van Zant's often

oppressive leadership of the ensemble while also

ingratiating himself with the rest of the band

in which he was the first non-Southerner.

Ronnie and I had a disagreement where he told me

he was the leader of the band.

I said something that everybody around

that I disagreed with and he pulled me aside

and made it extremely clear (laughs)

that it was his band and if I didn't like it

there was the door and it was gonna be done his way.

And I said, "That's fine."

I said, "As long as I can just throw in my two cents."

He said, "That's okay, I just want you to understand,

"this is going to be my way."

No problem, I never had a problem with that.

If you want to get a glimpse of me integrating

with the band, here it is.

In the box set there's a picture of us standing

in front of Hell House.

You've got six guys on one side of the door

and me on the other and that says it all.

It was difficult and I was invited there by Ronnie,

but the other guys really didn't want me there.

- [Voiceover] On March 27, 1973 the band entered Studio one

in Doraville to begin recording their debut album

with Ed Kind on board and ex-roadie, Billy Powell

now a permanent member of the group on piano.

Al Kooper himself decided to produce the record

and the peculiarities of the band he had only seen

perform live were immediately revealed to him.

- When started working with them I discovered

what really made the unique.

There was no, not one moment of improvisation

in their whole show.

When we recorded every guitar solo they played was

pre-written and memorized and never differed.

The whole solo in Free Bird he could play in exactly

the same every time he played it

and I'd never worked with anyone

that pre-wrote guitar solos.

It was phenomenal.

- [Voiceover] And although Ronnie Van Zant had a

domineering approach to his fellow band mates

with Al Kooper he relented recognizing the producer's

previous track record and experience although

others were less certain of his creative vision

for the album.

- If I wanted to change something, they would fight me

tooth and nail to the point where

I was discussing something with Allen Collins

and he said, "Why don't you just leave us alone."

And Ronnie came over and said, "No, no, no, no.

"If he suggests 20 things over the course of this album

"and we use one of those, then that's one thing

"that made us better and I'll suffer the other 19

"to get that one thing."

- Al Kooper, you know, he's a dominating guy in the studio.

He was very difficult.

We had two different personalities and we clashed

from the beginning to the end.

And I finally told him after I saw him at the 20th reunion

after I saw him at the 20th reunion

I said, "Al Kooper, I have to say one thing,

""You certainly sweetened the Skynyrd sound.""

And that was the highest compliment I ever paid him

and he did.

That was exactly what he did to their sound.

- Al had a vision for the band, and it was good.

Nobody else did and he mixed the band a certain way,

how he heard it.

I could tell it was fit for radio.

But there was one special time when there was a real

big clash and that was when we thought the album was fully

recorded and Kooper called up and said, "We need one

"more song."

That was the time when Leon showed up

and showed us Simple Man, showed me Simple Man.

We worked it up.

Within a couple of days we went to Atlanta to record it.

We set up in the studio for Al and we played it

for him, live.

And he said, "I'm really sorry you guys, we can't cut that

"we're looking for something else."

♪ Mama told me ♪

♪ When I was young ♪

♪ Come sit beside me ♪

♪ My only son ♪

♪ And listen closely ♪

♪ To what I say ♪

♪ And if you do this it'll help you ♪

♪ Some sunny day ♪

Ronnie asked Al to step outside and Al drove

a I think it was an old Bele, and Ronnie opened the door

to the Bele and told Al to get in the car.

Al gets in Ronnie rolls down the window, shuts the dorr

and he sticks his head through the window

and he said, "Al, when we're done cutting it,

"we'll call you."

So he sent Al on his way and the rest of us were really

kind of surprised.

You don't hear very many times in history

when a first album band tells the producer

to get lost.

Usually they get fired or something, but you want

to talk about Al Kooper's passion, he put up with that

you know, where many others wouldn't.

They'd say, "Like, you're gone, you know."

- [Voiceover] With the album completed Kooper's mind

now turned to selling Lynyrd Skynyrd to as wide

an audience as possible and the first obstacle

for the general public that he envisaged was the band's

name itself.

- They were the second band to come into the club

when we were residents in Atlanta.

Up on the marquee it said, "Linerd Skinerd."

I went, "What the hell is this?

"What is that?

"Linderd Skinerd, what is that?"

And then they introduced them and said,

"Oh, it's Lynyrd Skynyrd, I see, yeah, I get it."

They said, "What a dumb way to do that."

So I was saddled with that.

It was the first thing that came to me was let's

put it to our advantage.

It's like, what is who is Linerd Skinerd and I thought

everyone would mispronounce it, so I thought the best

thing to do was to name the album, Pronounced

and put that dictionary thing 'Lĕh-'nérd

'Skin-'nérd like that.

- [Voiceover] One, two, three.

- [Voiceover] Released on August 13, 1973,

Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd was an album

that may never have existed given the struggles

the band had gone through to get it made.

In the press Kooper was declaring the band

America's Rolling Stones and while not an overnight

success the LP's reputation steadily grew

with Skynyrd slowly seeping into the heart

of American culture across the following year.

- Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd is a very, very

strong debut.

It announces them from the very first notes

of I Ain't The One as a unique entity, as a self-confident

entity and it has a handful of songs on it

that are rock-n-roll classics, that stand up to this day.

It has Tuesday's Gone, Gimme Three Steps, Free Bird,

that was all there on their first record

and they had a very distinct sound, a very distinct

vision and it's a very, very impressive debut.

♪ Train roll on ♪

♪ On down the line ♪

♪ Won't you please take me far ♪

♪ Away ♪

♪ Well I feel the wind blow ♪

♪ Outside my door ♪

♪ Because I'm leaving my woman ♪

♪ at home ♪

♪ Lord and ♪

♪ Tuesday's gone ♪

♪ With the wind ♪

♪ My baby's gone ♪

- They had been working hard for a long time

by that point, and you can hear it.

To me it's a phenomenally strong debut

because they sound, they are a fully formed entity

at this point and you've got

Gimme Three Steps,

You've got Tuesday's Gone which is a great pop song

like fantastic pop song

and then I mean Free Bird, you know.

It's their first real album, it has their

the biggest song they every wrote on it.

If you had to boil Lynyrd Skynyrd down to one song

it would have to be to me it would have

to be Free Bird.

♪ Free Bird ♪

(piano)

(guitar)

- Free Bird had developed quite a bit

from the time they had first recorded it

as a demo until their first album.

One of the things that had happened I think

was a result of all these gigs they had played

and gaining their confidence on the stage

and as a live band.

It was also the addition of keyboard player, Billy Powell

and the elegant piano playing he brought to that song

and to the band in general.

iIthink that in many ways Billy Powell was sort

of the underrated secret weapon that Skynyrd had

because as much as they could be a hard-hitting

rock ban,d as much as people think of them

right off the bat as a two or even three at various stages

a guitar band which they certainly were

they also had this sort of elegant swinging piano playing

of Billy Powell and that can really be heard

on Free Bird.

He added a tremendous amount by having this

beautiful piano intro rather than it being just a finger-

picked guitar and that's something else

that set them apart.

♪ If I leave here tomorrow ♪

♪ Would you still remember me ♪

♪ For I must be traveling on now ♪

- You have this terrain and you start

on this journey with this song.

It really draws you in with the slide-guitar playing

the sort of haunting melody and it's kind of hypnotic

you know, it's kind of slow mournful.

It's like a ballad

and then a lot like Stairway To Heaven

which is the same thing.

The song builds in intensity very gradually, you know

and it's that shift where you're going from this sort

of gentle thing and then the power starts to come

behind it and the tempo's picking up a little bit.

It's true for both songs.

You know, that's it's there's a payoff there

for the listener, everytime.

♪ Oh, I can't change ♪

♪ Won't you fly ♪

♪ Oh, Free Bird, yeah ♪

(guitar music)

- When I heard Free Bird for the first time

I thought I would like to see

any kid

between the ages of 12 and 21

when they hear this they will just put their heads down

and run into the nearest wall.

I thought it was irresistible.

I thought it was much more primiative

than Whipping Post which is the Allman's big song

at the time.

This is very simple, other than it starts slow

and then it gets fast, but that's very simple, too.

And it was phenomenal.

- [Voiceover] Initial reactions to the LP in the music press

saw lazy comparisons to The Allman Brothers mirroring

the record company's initial reception

to the Muscle Shoals demos.

And although these weren't necessarily negative

they continued to baffle the band themselves

along with the more perceptive critics who found

no in distinguishing the two bands.

- They were a blues band and later on kind

of a what? A fusion band.

I mean but in their own way they were virtuoso's.

We were not virtuoso's because Ronnie liked

the same thing every night.

He wanted to make sure the band sounded

like the record.

He's very scripted.

There was no improvisation.

We couldn't really.

We were lousy improvisers and that's okay.

We're still in the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame, you know?

- The Allman Brothers were a jam band

and Lynyrd Skynyrd is a song band.

That's the difference.

Ronnie Van Zant was a great song writer.

Dwayne Allman was not a great song writer.

He wasn't, great player? Sure.

Knew a great song when he heard it?

Damn right, but he wasn't a great song writer.

The good song writer in that band was Dickey Betts,

for better or worse and he wasn't so great either.

Ronnie Van Zant on the other hand, I mean what?

They put out six albums, 80, 90 percent of those songs

were absolutely top grade.

It's amazing, it's amazing,

and so you know, when I heard the first album

I just knew something different was going on there.

First I noticed that Al Kooper was involved,

not exactly a Southerner, New York, Jew

from Queens, my stomping ground.

And he understands that this band is something special.

I liked the record when it came out,

but I'd say it was a little hard for me to hear

from my own prejudices about Southerners,

exactly how good Van Zant was.

But it didn't take long.

- [Voiceover] Comparisons to The Allmans quickly

diminished however, once Van Zant and his band

began doing the rounds for the Music Press.

Unlike the Capricorn act these were clearly

not Southern hippies and the simmering aggression

and redneck swagger of Lynyrd Skynyrd quickly

mobbed them out as something totally distinct

from any their contemporaries.

- That was the beauty of late '60s early '70s,

the beginning of rock, the first good 10 years of rock

was be different, you know?

Do everything you can to sound like yourselves.

They had a band personality.

It was a very strong personality

and it was distinct.

- They were bringing something that had never been heard

before, it was redneck rock.

They made redneck rock into an art.

They made it into an idiom itself

not just an offshoot rock-a-billy or country

or something like that.

It was totally indescribable which was the reason

they had such a hard time at the beginning

getting that contract, but in the end, you really have

to admire people like Al Kooper and the MCA people

for recognizing that.

At the time there was nothing like it.

There'd never been anything like it.

- All of those guys except Ed King were rough and tough.

But they portrayed that on stage.

I can remember getting to New York

one of the early trade magazines came in to interview us

and they said, "Well, we heard y'all are from deep South

"and might be referred to as rednecks."

And Ronnie's answer was, "Hell yes, damn right,

"where's your daughter?" (laughs)

He took the poor white trash image

and turned it into something glamorous.

He made people feel proud that they were rednecks

and that The Allman's hadn't done that.

- [Voiceover] The white, Southern, working-class mentality

and outlook was not only expressed through the band's

image but also in the lyrics and Ronnie Van Zant himself.

The album introduced a very singular if under appreciated

writer into the rock world.

- I gotta say that working-class was never something

that I as a very class-conscious person actually thought of.

I never thought of them as a proletarian band.

iIwas wrong.

It's a very good way to think about them.

When you say Ronnie Van Zant is a great song writer,

well, why is that?

Well, one of the reasons is that they were narrative

details in his songs that he observed life

and wrote about it.

Gimme two steps is a great song

about being in a bar fight, or not.

Great, great song.

There are a lot of songs

about Saturday night's alright for fighting

as Elton John did it, but very few good songs

about how he doesn't actually want to fight

and he's gonna get the fuck out of there, you know.

I always thought that was, I loved it because he had the

guts to paint himself in that way.

♪ Well the crowd cleared away ♪

♪ And I began to pray ♪

♪ And the water fell on the floor ♪

♪ And I'm telling you, son ♪

♪ Well, it ain't no fun ♪

♪ Staring straight down a forty-four ♪

♪ Well, he turned and screamed at Linda Lou ♪

♪ And that's the break I was looking for ♪

♪ Well, you could hear me screaming a mile away ♪

♪ I was headed out toward the door ♪

♪ Look at here big man ♪

♪ Oh, won't you ♪

♪ Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister ♪

♪ Gimme three steps toward the door ♪

♪ Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister ♪

♪ And you'll never see me no more ♪

♪ Whoo ♪

- Ronnie Van Zant was the son of a truck driver.

And that's what he knew.

His experiences with women

were lyrically in some songs

hilarious to me.

I'm trying to tell you I love you

in each and every way.

I'm trying to tell you I need you

much more than just a piece of leg.

I couldn't write that.

A, it was from the heart

and B, it was realer

than most people

have the nerve to write.

- [Voiceover] Shortly after the recording of the album

the band's lineup shifted once again

with Leon Wilkeson coming back into the ensemble

and Ed King moving from bass to guitar.

Although apparently only a small change

it made an instant impact on the Skynyrd sound.

- Ed was my favorite guitar player

and in the beginning I didn't even know he played guitar.

First of all he played

Fender guitar, so there was that

and B, he was a phenomenal guitar player.

(guitar music)

Now, he had the opportunity to bring

his knowledge into the band and he was,

you know, he wasn't a Southern guy.

He was from California, so now

they had this added to their pool of thought.

- Once I became the third guitarist in the band

integrating myself was so much easier

than being a bass player.

Pretty much I stayed out of the other guy's way.

I found myself a third part.

I try not to play too much which I realize now,

I still overplayed some, but I thought we integrated

very well and the crowd loved it, but I think my really

clean Stratocaster sounded against their dirty Gibsons

was a beautiful contrast.

I didn't have to explain it to them.

They just excepted it.

- [Voiceover] Now, playing his favorite instrument,

King immediately contributed to Skynyrd's material

in a crucial manner.

Before the first album had even been released

bring his compositional skills into the band's

daily Hell House rehearsals.

- How a typical day at rehearsal would go,

we'd all show up at pretty much the same time

and Ronnie would say to any of the guitar players

or whoever, "What do you got?"

And of course ideas were always flowing.

You made sure you showed up at rehearsal

with something to work on and somebody had

something good, you know, Ronnie would be sitting

in his corner on this long sofa we had

and if he liked it he'd have his head in his hands

and he'd go like this.

Keep going, keep going and after a few minutes or so

20 minutes he might come up and sing a verse.

I mean Sweet Home Alabama didn't take longer than

20 minutes to write.

I walked into rehearsal and Gary Rossington was playing

this figure on the guitar and I picked up this Strat

that I had just bought, I don't know, maybe a couple

months before and immediately bounced mine off of his

a totally different lick.

Mine went dum, dum, da, da,

dadunen do dun na and Ronnie heard that

and just locked into it.

iIcould just see him

and you could tell when he locked into it.

20 minutes later he sang it, he grabbed the mic

and sang us the first verse.

Once he started singing I came up with the rest of it.

(guitar music)

♪ Big wheels keep on turning ♪

♪ Carry me home to see my kin ♪

♪ Singing songs about the Southland ♪

♪ I miss my family once again ♪

♪ And I think it's a sin ♪

- Ronnie called me up and said, "I need a favor."

I said, "How much?"

He said, "No, no, no."

He said, "We wrote a new song and I love the way

"it sounds now, and I think maybe it'll change in tempo

"or this and that and I want to record it right now."

I said, "I don't have a problem with that."

I said, "The only thing I would like to do

"is the night before we record, I'd like to go

"into the rehearsal studio and just listen to it

"and see if I have anything I want to change in it

"before we record it."

So he came down and they played Sweet Home Alabama

and I thought the same thing.

I thought this is a number one record.

- [Voiceover] Both Kooper and the band

decided to hold Sweet Home Alabama

in the reserves and after their debut was released

Skynyrd headed straight out on the road

playing shows across the South.

These dates in modest venues help spread

their name it had little wider impact.

In November however, they began a second date

that would propel them into the spotlight

as they embarked on a 13 show run opening

for The Who on their 1973 Quadrophenia Tour.

Although Alan Walden and Alex Hodges handled the logistics

of these shows, the opportunity itself occurred by chance

after Al Kooper had been meeting executives at MCA's

offices shortly before the release of Pronounced.

- I came out of the meeting and I bumped

into Pete Townsend, who I knew, and hey, how ya doing,

blah, blah, blah.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He says, "Well."

He says, "We're gonna tour the Quadrophenia album.

I said, "Wow, that's great."

He says, "As a matter of fact we're looking for

"an opening act, do you know anyone

"that would be good?"

I had just gotten a pressing or two of the first album.

I had three of them with me, so I said, "Take this home

"and play it.

"This band would be phenomenal to open for you."

I wrote my phone number on the label

because it's just a white label.

So he called me the next day and said,

"You're right, this is great.

"This would be great.

"Let's do this."

- When we opened for The Who, we only had 30 minutes.

We had eight inputs into the sound board in 30 minutes,

plus we had to play Free Bird which is nine minutes,

so we only got about maybe five songs maybe six songs in,

but made quite an impact.

- I said, "Look, this is the way we gotta do it.

"Don't give them a chance to boo you.

"Don't give them a chance to applaud you.

"No more than a three second delay between songs.

"I want it, like that ,(clapping) all the way."

And buddy, Ronnie Van Zant delivered.

- We were more used to almost

like a nightclub deal.

You know where you just get tight

with everybody sitting all around, you know,

but you look down and there's 15,000 feet

and there's the first person.

Leon way over there.

Ronnie way up there and I'm looking down at him.

I hated it.

I was nervous, but I overcame it, see.

I overcame it and I actually enjoyed turning them on

because if I turn them on,

here it come back,

and I turn it on some more,

here it come back.

- They were really, really, nervous,

but they were incredibly professional.

They got worried because they're gonna play

20,000 seaters every night.

And you know we played like Madison Square Garden,

Cobo Hall in Detroit.

And what must've that been like

for them?

Hanging out with The Who, you know who are

very generous with their time and drugs

to the lads, so it was a wonderful experience

and it broke them as an act.

- [Voiceover] Riding high on the back

of The Who shows in the new year the band

returned to the studio to begin work on a second album.

Now, partly established the financial necessities

of staying in the South no longer applied

and for this LP Al Kooper decided to bring

the Jacksonville boys into the heart

of the entertainment world, booking sessions

at the Record Plant in Los Angeles in January 1974.

For the rising stars what was becoming know

as Southern Rock it was a far cry from Doraville, Georgia.

- They were out recording a track together

and John Lennon came into the control room

to ask me a question.

I think he was in there for maybe 30 seconds.

He went back out and the stopped playing and they said,

"Was that John Lennon that just came in the booth?"

I said, "Yeah."

Ronnie said, "We have to take a break for a few minutes."

- [Voiceover] Yet, despite the prestigious, newly built

studio Kooper had chosen to record the album in

some band members weren't entirely convinced

with the Record Plant or the material itself.

- To me it was not as much fun as playing albums.

It seemed like it was a whole lot harder work

cause those songs weren't to me

as close to me as the songs on Pronounced.

- The Second Helping was not as pleasant

because of the environment.

Really, Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, is a great place

to record.

I don't even know if it's there anymore,

but the ambient sound, the familiarity we had

with the board, the guys, we missed it, missed it a lot.

The difference between playing in a room

where the floor is tiled or wood versus

playing in a room where the whole floor is carpeted

and at Record Plant, the whole floor was carpeted

and it was just dead in there.

To me Second Helping, except for Sweet Home Alabama

which was recorded in Doraville, Second Helping has

that dead sound to it.