![]() ![]() Rossington says everyone took speed and Allen Collins was apparently fond of sniffing glue. But mushrooms weren’t the only drug of choice for Skynyrd. The keyboard would be floating or I’d watch the notes coming out of my amp,” he says. “You take a few sips and you be tripping. Rossington says they’d find psilocybin mushrooms growing in the “cow patties” and make a pot of mushroom tea. Rehearsing at the infamous “Hell House,” a cabin on a creek in the swamps of Florida, the band would forage hallucinogenic mushrooms from a nearby pasture. The group dubbed him a “Yankee slicker” when he said he didn’t like the ballad they were recording, “Simple Man.” According to Rossington, Ronnie took Kooper outside and said, “When we’re done, we’ll call you.” “He was the boss,” says Kooper. Upon seeing the band for the first time at an Atlanta bar, the producer says, “I hated Ronnie and I liked him at the same time … He was a very weird frontman.” His feelings for the singer didn’t change much after signing Skynyrd to his Sounds of the South label under MCA Records. Producer Al Kooper had a tense relationship with Ronnie. The drummer says he suggested the moniker to the group after hearing a variant of it in the lyrics to the 1963 novelty hit “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.” The group also used the name as shorthand to describe unexplained noises: “Oh, that’s Lynyrd Skynyrd!” says Burns. The film opens with a news report about the plane crash, with a reporter intoning, “There’s not a person by the name of Lynyrd Skynyrd … and therefore that person could not have died.” But in fact, there was a man named Leonard Skinner, a coach at Rossington’s high school, whose name elicited delight from Burns. The definitive story about the band’s name… “It took their breath away to see how well we went over and how we broke their only rule: don’t go out on the tongue.” At the climax of a rousing set, Ronnie encouraged his guitarists to solo on the stage’s extending ramp – in the shape of the Stones’ famous tongue logo. Years later, Ronnie pissed off Mick Jagger when Lynyrd Skynrd opened for the Rolling Stones in 1976.Īfter smoking pot with Jack Nicholson, according to Gary Rossington, the band was especially loose for their opening slot with the Stones at Knebworth Park in the U.K. Newly introduced to Burns, Van Zant, with guitarists Gary Rossington and Allen Collins, assembled that afternoon at Burns’ carport and jammed to the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is on My Side.” “It caught me behind the shoulder blades and took out every breath I ever had my whole life,” says Burns, who died in 2015, in archival footage. ![]() The band owes its formation to an errant line drive hit by Ronnie Van Zant.Īs a member of the Green Pigs baseball team in Jacksonville, Florida, Van Zant nearly killed drummer Bob Burns with a hard hit baseball to the temple or the back, depending on who’s telling the story. While the film awaits a wider release – it’s currently screening at film festivals – here’s 10 things we learned from If I Leave Here Tomorrow. “But Ronnie was the one who said when it’s our time to go, you can kiss my ass good bye.” “Things were going wrong with the plane a little bit,” says Rossington about the apparent shoddiness of the aircraft. That now legendary and near mythical crash – which killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, Honkettes backup singer Cassie Gaines, assistant tour manager Dean Kilpatrick and the pilot and co-pilot of the Convair 420 – frames If I Leave Here Tomorrow. But the film does break new ground, especially via fresh interviews with guitarist Gary Rossington – the sole original member of the current Skynyrd incarnation – who opens up like never before on the persona of singer Ronnie Van Zant, the band’s hardscrabble beginnings and the fatal 1977 plane crash. The movie steers clear of the rebirth of the group, currently on its farewell tour, and Kijak said at a recent screening at the Nashville Film Festival that he wants to make a second part. Director Stephen Kijak’s excellent documentary If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive history of the Southern rock band. ![]()
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