Trouble, Gold, Lust, & Living Fast — Follow Your Heart For This Rate-A-Record
It’s never as simple as you think
Lynyrd Skynyrd started their life the same year as me, and by the time we were both teenagers, they were a big deal.
I mean, like, a really big deal.
Skynyrd was omnipresent in the 70s. You couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing “Freebird,” “Gimme Three Steps,” or “Simple Man” back in the day.
If you listen to classic rock, you’d be lucky to escape those tunes today.
Ronnie Van Zant wrote and sang songs about individualism, freedom, and spiritual destination, concepts he and his brothers only dared to dream of while growing up impoverished in Jacksonville, Florida. His songs eventually lifted the boys and their friends out of poverty and into stardom, though not without a fair amount of controversy, then and now.
I was thirteen when I realized there was more to music than Conway Twitty and George Jones, and that’s also when everyone thought Lynyrd Skynyrd was dead and done. A tragic plane crash on October 20, 1977, ended the life of Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steven Gaines, Gaines’ older sister, vocalist Cassie Gaines, and their assistant road manager, Dean Kilpatrick.
