“I never have, and I never will, because only one man can sing this song on stage, and that’s my older brother Ronnie Van Zant. So you guys sing for us tonight, OK? Can you let him hear you in rock’n’roll Heaven?” Placing Ronnie’s Hi-Roller hat on a spotlit mic-stand, ’s Johnny Van Zant leaves the stage. The band that remains strike up the instantly recognisable opening chords, and rings out.
It’s 1987, and with those chords, and an audience singing Ronnie’s words in full voice, Skynyrd returned...
As resurrections go, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s is one of the more surprising. And successful. A full decade after the crash that decimated them and seemingly confined them to the annals of rock’n’roll history, the South rose, phoenix-like, from the flames.
.. The Starwood Amphitheater, Nashville, Tennessee was jam-packed for Charlie Daniels’ Volunteer Jam, an annual event hosted by the country star to raise funds for muscular dystrophy.
Guitarists and Ed King, pianist Billy Powell, bassist Leon Wilkeson, drummer Artimus Pyle and Ronnie Van Zant’s kid brother Johnny regrouped with the idea of paying tribute to Ronnie and the band he had led. Time has obscured whose idea it actually was, but it was Gary Rossington who galvanised everyone into action. “That was hard, you know?” he admits, a quarter of a century on.
“We didn’t wanna go back out ’cos we didn’t have Ronnie, but I thought Johnny was around singing, and I thought he could sing and sounded like.