![]() ![]() How they carved out a reputation as brawlers, badasses and hellraisers, back when being a brawler, a badass and a hellraiser actually meant something. How this sound – which somehow got the name ‘southern rock’ – has echoed down subsequent decades, picked up by 10,000 bands who came after them. How they hit on a brand new sound: one part country music, one part R&B, three parts rock’n’roll. How they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps out of the Florida dirt and went on to become one of the greatest American bands of the 70s. You all know the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The good times will carry on a long while yet, at least for Rickey Medlocke. But you reach a certain point in your life where you look at it and go: ‘It’s gotta change.’” “Johnny and I seen it going on, and we had talked about it on the bus several times,” says Rickey. Rickey and Johnny couldn’t help notice that Gary Rossington wasn’t the man he was. I got too much energy to sit around and go: ‘Am I gonna go fishing today?’ ‘Am I gonna cut the lawn?’ “Retirement is not in my vocabulary,” he says. He’s got a different view of ‘farewell’ to most people. ![]() Rickey is 69, the oldest member of the band, two years older than Gary but with more energy than anyone you’ll ever meet, whatever their age. He rejoined in 1995, nearly a decade after the band got back together. Rickey was a member of Skynyrd when they were still a nothing band from Jacksonville, Florida, but bailed to find his own fortune before it all took off. “Ronnie threw the ball and Johnny caught the ball and took off with it. Johnny always likes to say that Ronnie was the quarterback, and he was the receiver,” says Rickey Medlocke, the third of Skynyrd’s three senior partners. He used to be even more of the life and soul, before he quit drinking six years ago the sort of man who would get drunk, fall down a spiral staircase, break his back, then play a show (which once happened). He’s short and loud and funny, with a tattoo of Jesus on his forearm. Johnny’s sitting in the same hotel room as Gary Rossington, except it’s an hour earlier. I don’t know about you, but most of us have had drink or drug problems. “Look at what this band has been through, look where it came from, look at what the songs are about. “It’s a survival story,” says Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie’s young brother and singer with Lynyrd Skynyrd for the past 32 years. But I’m too old and sick now to tour any more.” We said we need to do a farewell tour, because we wanted to go out with our boots on and still sounding great at night and doing well. “Everybody kind of knew I was getting sick, and we just called it. “Oh, it’s just because of me,” Rossington says. But next year, at some unspecified date, Skynyrd will retire from the road they first stepped out on 50 years, countless miles and countless concerts ago. ![]() They’ll do the same a few days later, and a few days after that. Tomorrow night they’ll play at a nearby icehockey arena, in front of 10,000 Canadians for whom this music has been a soundtrack to their lives. When it comes down to it, Rossington is the reason why this tour – dubbed Last Of The Street Survivors, in reference to the 1977 album that was supposed to be the original band’s crowning glory but ended up their tragic epitaph – will be Skynyrd’s last stand. “Anybody hits me, I’ll be dead,” he says wryly. There’ll be no bloodbath for him today or any other day. He’s had at least one heart attack on stage. He’s got 11 or 12 stents in his body to keep his veins open, including one in his stomach. He underwent major surgery a few years ago: a quintuple bypass, a pacemaker installed. He’s had trouble with his heart for 15 or 16 years now. Serious health issues have left him frail and gaunt. Rossington, 67, is no longer the glowering young buck he once was – Prince Charming with a slide guitar. Twentyone floors above the sub-zero streets of the desolate downtown below. “Sometimes I can feel things,” he says, holding out his hands. Gary Rossington, the man whose hands were cut up by Ronnie Van Zant all those years ago and who is one of only two surviving members of all Skynyrd’s 70s line-ups, can vouch for it. ![]()
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