![]() ![]() It’s kind of today’s rock ‘n’ roll – with an old classic band doing it like us, it’s kind of cool. “It’s kind of a cross between an old blues, new blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s just nasty. “I like this one called ‘Mississippi Blood’,” continues Rossington, asked about key tracks on the new record. Whether it’s all the way through or not, I try to that. So most of the songs have some kind of slide on it. So if somebody’s playing a slide, it puts a little bit of color on it. A guitar and a guitar and a guitar… they all can kind of sound the same. I try to play slide on a lot of songs, so they’re different. It’s just a song, you know? And then there’s a lot of guitar playing so I try to add slide. Skynyrd, you know, he’s part of it.”Īnd where does Gary think he fits in the puzzle, besides anchor and even icon to the past? “Well, I have a lot of pride in what we play what I play. ![]() He was around Allen a lot too and saw him play, played with him, and so just all that, just old school, old memories, everything. ![]() And that’s really hard, to do Allen Collins’ parts – especially ‘Freebird’ – and Ricky does them note for note, and knows them really good. He’s a great guy and a great guitar player, and plays all of the leads like Allen Collins used to. Ricky just brings a lot of the old school stuff. And then he went off on his own and did Blackfoot and played guitar and sang. Says Gary of his co-axeman Rickey, in the band since ’96, “You know what? He was back in the original band with us for a while playing drums. Not so much the country versus rock thing, what I’d noticed right away was the variety of textures, from DEEP PURPLE-ish organ to piano, acoustic, banjo, but mainly some nice guitar blends. I’m pretty happy with it, man it’s really good.” I think there’s a lot of gutsy, roots rock ‘n’ roll in this record, as well as some blues stuff. If anybody made a mistake, we’d go back and fix it and continue on. Then when we’d get a good take, we could go back. We got in the studio, all of us at one time, and recorded the songs all at once. So this record, we went back and kind of did it old school. We did some experimenting on the last record, dabbling in almost the country market on three or four songs, and it just, you know, didn’t culminate. The last record has a lot of country influence on it. “I think the biggest thing is that the band went back to more rootsy rock ‘n’ roll on this record. That’s a sentiment curiously seconded by Rickey Medlocke, which had me scurrying back to God & Guns for a comparison confirmed… And instead of southern rock or country rock, it’s more rock ‘n’ roll than country, you know?” This is the way we used to do it, and it’s really fun, like I say more of an old school style. “We all got together on this one and played together everybody knew it was pretty cool to do it like that, instead of piling on the way we used to do, i.e. “I think this one’s more old school style, more the way the original band, the first one, played and recorded,” agrees Gary Rossington, prone to heart problems yet tirelessly touring the Western world in service to the Skynyrd nation. So life rolls on, and the band are back with a tough yet intriguingly swampy new album called Last Of A Dyin’ Breed, a fine addition to the catalogue, textured, hard-hitting, very much in the spirit of the early days. If the crash and more crashes later wasn’t enough, concurrent with the 2009 release of the band’s last album, God & Guns, Skynyrd lost two more brothers, bassist Ean Evans, who had not long ago replaced the deceased Leon Wilkeson, and keyboardist Billy Powell, second to last link to the original band, leaving only Gary Rossington.īut unlike other bands who soldier on ignoring the uproar to pack it in, Skynyrd have managed to stay valid and vital, due to the ties of longtime vocalist Johnny Van Zant to original singer Ronnie Van Zant, and to the writing and performance prowess of guitarist and ex-BLACKFOOT leader Rickey Medlocke, who weirdly drummed for Skynyrd back in the low ‘70s before they ever even recorded. No band to the left side of BADFINGER has seen more tragedy than Jacksonville, Florida’s LYNYRD SKYNYRD, owned by and betrothed to all of America, on tour pretty much forever for 40 years now. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |