For those who don’t know, Lynyrd Skynyrd died in 1977

Friday night I spent a little more than an hour listening to the new Lynyrd Skynyrd band at the Marion Music Festival. I’ve listened to “Freebird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” ever since I can remember my mom plugging cassette tapes into the car’s radio and driving my brother and me to school. Skynyrd was always my favorite band and I owned every album they ever made from “Pronounced,” released in 1973 to “Street Survivors,” released less than a week before the band’s plane crashed in 1977.

My closest Hartsville High school friend, Owens Haire, and I spent many, many weekends taking road trips listening to Skynyrd CDs and learning every word to every song that band ever put on an album. We could name every band member and knew every stop along their tours that carried them through South Carolina. We knew exactly who died in the crash and where the band’s lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant, was laid to rest. We were almost as crazy about this band as people are about Elvis, but we weren’t that strange!

We would always wonder to one another what watching a Skynyrd concert would be like. It was always a sad thing to us to know we’d never get that chance, an experience that our parents had a chance to experience, and an experience they took advantage of. Owens’ mom would tell us stories about the night she watched Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert in Columbia. Man, we spent hours listening to those stories.

I can remember when the movie, “Freebird” came out and the VH1 “Behind the Music,” which featured the Lynyrd Skynyrd band. We watched both and were impressed with a band that many people started to love and we appreciated the original sound this band produced; a sound that no other band has been able to capture. The VH1 program featured original band members telling the stories of the night the plane crashed. Drummer, Artimus Pyle told of climbing from the wreckage with his broken ribs to walk through the swamp to find someone to call for help. In that crash, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines, all died in the crash, among other band and crew members. It was that night that, in my opinion, Lynyrd Skynyrd died.

In the program, some surviving band members talked of getting what was left of the band together to tour and sell music. Pyle refused and said that Lynyrd Skynyrd was dead and that the band was nothing without Van Zant. Pyle took an honorable and respectable bow out and made a decision to let the Skynyrd band rest in peace.

That gets me back to Friday night and watching, what I refer to as the “new” Skynyrd. I can understand and appreciate what Johnny Van Zant is trying to do in keeping his brother’s memory alive by keeping the band touring and selling music. I just think they should have changed the name and it’s offensive to see Gary Rossington continuing to tour with these guys. Rossington was an original member of the band and helped the group climb the charts and was part of the double-platinum albums the band enjoyed until the plane crash that ended it all. To see Rossington playing the classic Skynyrd songs with a group who look and sound nothing like the original, was a sad sight for someone who grew up singing the songs that the real Skynyrd made great.

Even after watching Skynyrd Friday night, I’m still not a fan. The show was great, but it just didn’t fill that viod of wondering what watching the real thing would be like. I saw hundreds around me singing along and seeming to enjoy the music. I wonder if they know they story. I wonder if they know there’s another story to Lynyrd Skynyrd. I wonder if they know there was a real Lynyrd Skynyrd, an original no tribute band will ever replace.

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