In the wake of the accident, guitarists Allen Collins and Rossington - who as co-founders with Ronnie also had rights to the band's name - amicably signed an agreement with Jenness that effectively dissolved Skynyrd. Other band members were seriously injured. The crash killed Ronnie - the group's unquestioned leader - along with guitarist Steve Gaines, Gaines' sister and backup singer Cassie Gaines, and road manager Dean Kilpatrick. The band had just released the critically and commercially successful "Street Survivors" album and was en route to a gig in Baton Rouge, La., when its chartered plane ran out of fuel and slammed into a Mississippi swamp on Oct. Lee High School in Jacksonville who suspended the long-haired rockers - was riding high in the fall of 1977. Lynyrd Skynyrd - the band was named after Leonard Skinner, a gym teacher at Robert E. "The new management doesn't promote the old band." Jenness makes no bones about it: "I feel an obligation to protect Ronnie's name because of what the new band is doing," she says. Rossington also reportedly believes Jenness' influence helps keep the group locked into an identity as an oldies act. Guitarist Gary Rossington, a co-founder of the group, has feuded with her openly over her financial stake in the band. That self-interest, however, has made her advocacy a source of animosity among some of the band's members. She feels she's earned it: For the past decade she has worked, often doggedly, to promote Skynyrd, producing a concert film on the band, hawking memorabilia and coordinating fan club activities. Jenness, 51, has a vested interest in boosting the value of the band and its music: As the executor of her husband's estate she gets more than 3% of Skynyrd's gross ticket sales in addition to a portion of publishing royalties on the group's record sales - which combined bring in about $1 million a year. Back in Jacksonville, where the band's original members grew up on the city's blue-collar westside, Judy Van Zant Jenness, Ronnie's widow, has emerged as a behind-the-scenes force in shaping Skynyrd's business success - even as her activities have strained her relationship with her late husband's old bandmates. This year, the Skynyrd industry will take in about $40 million from sales of recorded music and merchandise, publishing residuals and live performances.īut the Skynyrd musicians aren't the only ones profiting from the band's resurgence. At venues from Buffalo Chip Campground in Sturgis, S.D., to the Country Stampede in Manhattan, Kan., thousands of fans 20 years younger than any of the band members are trooping in to hoot and wave Confederate flags as Ronnie's younger brother, Johnny, sings Ronnie's lyrics. Twenty-two years after the death of Ronnie Van Zant and three others in an airplane crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd has joined the ranks of rock 'n' roll legends for whom death wasn't the finale - at least business-wise. Paunchy, their long hair thinning, the band members mount their grinding, three-guitar assault one more time as they rock through the hits that first made the band famous in the 1970s: "Sweet Home Alabama," "Give Me Three Steps," and their signature anthem, "Free Bird," which opens with a prophetic question from Ronnie Van Zant, the band's late songwriter and lead singer: "If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?"Īpparently so. In late June, as the sun sets on the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the seven members of the Southern-rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd lumber onto the stage at the Country Music Festival in Springfield, Mo.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |