SKYNYRD HISTORY LESSONS
Name Changes and Ten Dollar Gigs
Dreams of music and baseball collided in Jacksonville, Florida
during the summer of 1964. Although Ronnie VanZant, Bob Burns,
Allen Collins, Gary Rossington and Larry Junstrom developed an
early forerunner of Lynyrd Skynrd that summer, for most of the
players, baseball remained the star attraction.
Gary Rossington dreamed of eventually playing for the New York
Yankees. His mother, Berniece Rossington, remembered, "He wanted
to be a Yankee". He was a Yankee fan and he was going to play on
the Yankee team when he grew up. He would be a baseball player."
Gary reflected on his baseball career, "I was a fat little kid -
second baseman. I was a real good ball player..."
Ronnie VanZant, in particular, hoped for a sports career. He
recalled in 1975, "I went as far as playing American Legion ball.
The next stop would have been AA (minor league baseball). I played
centerfield. I had the highest batting average in the league one
year and a good arm - you've got to have a good arm to play
outfield. Gary was good too, but he gave it all up when he got to
like the Rolling Stones."
Initially, the young teenagers found their new band and rock music
just one interest among many. Allen Collins, however, had no
illusions of a sports career. He wanted to be a rock star, but
didn't know if he wanted to be a star with Ronnie and Gary.
Allen got his musical start playing the guitar when he was twelve
years old. His step-mother, Leila Collins, played country and
western guitar. Allen's father, Larkin collins, remebered Allen's
first experience with the guitar. "My wife, Leila sat down and
taught Allen three or four notes at one sitting, and he liked it.
He picked it up from there and, well, she taught him some more,
but he never had a lesson in his life. She sort of, you might say,
was his only lesson. No doubt about it at all."
Shortly after first picking up the guitar, Allen had a falling out
with his father and returned to live with his mother. His father
then bought him his first guitar and amplifier and only a few
weeks later Ronnie, Bob, and Gary waylayed Allen into playing
music with them.
Ronnie VanZant began his musical career in a common venue -
singing in the bathtub. Ronnie's mother, Marion VanZant, recalled
her son's early singing, "They'd play on the piano and guitar, but
singing in the bathtub, that was their real thing. The first day
Ronnie went to school he sat in the corner with a dunce cap on his
head for singing `Ricochet Romance' and `Beer Drinkin' Daddy' in
the classroom. So, I had to go down to the school house and take
Ronnie outside and tend to him a little bit."
After seeing the Rolling Stones play on the Ed Sullivan Show on
television, Gary began shifting his emphasis from baseball to rock
and roll, but later admitted the process was difficult, "It
happened slow at first. It took a long time to learn how. We were
trying to learn from people, no lessons or anything, just
watching."
The band, first called My Backyard, but quickly changed to the
Noble Five, learned their music by watching others perform and
picking apart the songs they heard on the radio. Early influences
ranged from the Southern blues common in north Florida to the
country standards Ronnie heard on runs up the Atlantic seaboard in
his father's eighteen-wheeler. Ronnie always claimed though, that
the band really modeled themselves after the first waves of the
British rock invasion, "If you ask me, we're closer to the classic
British rock groups like Free than anything else."
"You know, we came from English music," Gary agreed, "We'd listen
to the Yardbirds and Clapton, you know and Jeff Beck, the Beatles
and the Stones, the Animals, all those groups. They were our idols
and gods at the time. As a matter of fact, that's when I really did
think the Beatles were like gods. I had this thing when Iwas going
to school. I'd listen to the radio - couldn't afford a record
player then - I had a little radio then. If they ever came on,I
would never turn them off and if I was late for school, had to
miss scholl or miss church and get my butt beat by my momma
because I'd miss a chore. It was like against my religion to turn
them off."
The Noble Five's earliest practice sessions occured in the carport
of drummer Bob Burns' parents. The band practiced where ever and
whenever one of their mother would turn a deaf ear and agree to
their requests. Gary reminisced, 'See, it was who's mother would
let them play at their house. It wasn't where you were going to
rehearse, it was who's mom... Bob went, `I can talk my mother
into it.' So..." Often their Jacksonville neighbors were not as
tolerant as Bob Burns' mother. "We used to practice after school
until the cops would run us off every night, then on weekends, all
day,all night."
The constant practice soon turned into a "learn as you earn"
policy that resulted in the Noble Five's first gig that December.
Ronnie's brother-in-law owned Morris Auto Supply, the auto parts
store where Ronnie worked. His brother-in-law wanted a cheap band
for his annual Christmas party at a big barbecue restaurant. Gary
explained, "It wasn't the Green Pig, but it had a little dance
floor and stage and they used to have country combos so people
could dance after they ate. It was kind of a juke joint/babecue
joint. He invited all his employees, freinds and gas station
people that worked and bought parts from him and he wanted a band
- cheap. We got ten bucks.
"That was big time money. We thought we were rich. That was two
bucks apiece and we all chipped in a quarter apiece for gas. We
came home with $1.75.
"At that time we were still playing through Allen's Super Reverb
and Bob had drums and Larry had a little Ampeg bass amp you could
barely hear.It was one of those little R2-D2 robot-looking things.
We played `Gloria' and a few Rolling Stones songs. We only knew
about five, six or seven songs. We kept doing those all night and
he paid us and we got out of there."
Shortly after that first gig, Allen bought the Beatles '65 album
that had just come out. Gary recalled, "I remember when Beatles
'65 came out. We were together then and we were trying to learn
their songs. they were too hard to learn, but we were trying."
Slowly, they developed their musical talents and the gigs
increased. At the very beginning, only Ronnie had reached the
legal driving age and for quite awhile he was the only one with a
car. Gary explained setting up for a gig, "Actually, it was always
the same band - we just kept changing the name." Some said the
band changed names more times than they ever changed their socks.
In any event, they ran through such names as the Wildcats, the
Sons of Satan, Conqueror Worm, the Pretty Ones. " We used to play
teen dens, church socials and stuff so the band's name didn't
matter. We used to change our name every day, just for the heck of
it, because we weren't known at all." The longest lasting pre-
Lynyrd Skynyrd name was also the last, the One percent.
In early 1968, the group saw a movie in Gainesville about the
Hell's Angels and saw a slogan that appealed to them. Gary
recalled, "A couple of bikers came up, Hell's Angels, and we saw
they had tattoos or patches saying `One Percent'.That was their
little logo - one percent of the world is bikers you know. We
thought that was cool, so we changed to the One Percent like we
were bad-ass biker dudes or something." The One Percent lasted for
more than a year.
"We'd play anything on the radio, `Satisfaction', `Day Tripper' -
we were into Yardbirds, Blues Magoos. We used to play at clubs at
night and go to school during the day.They called us a psychedelic
band and it was hard for us to get work at dances because people
wanted Top-40. After about four years playing at parties, playing
anywhere we could, we were making about twenty dollars a week."
While frustrating, the increasingly frequent playing about
Jacksonville resulted in building the band's endurance and musical
talent. Ronnie recalled, "In the beginning, we used to play one
joint until midnight for kids, then they turned it into a bottle
club and we'd go until 6 am. It really tightened us up as a band.
When you're from the South, you learn to work your ass off, and we
did.It was hellatious. Hellatious and and the best years of our
lives."
The group also became introduced to many that would later play
important roles in the success of Lynyrd Skynyrd and beyond -
friends like Kevin Elson and Gene Odom, players like Randall Hall,
Billy Powell, Barry Harwood. And, for Ronnie, a very special lady.
Judy VanZant related her introduction to the band, "I first met
Gary Rossington in 1969. Then he introduced me to Ronnie. They
were still called the One Percent then.They were playing at a club
on Forsyth Street in downtown Jacksonville called the Comic Book
Club in 1969. They played there quite a bit." Judy and Ronnie were
married in 1971 and had a daughter, Melody, in 1976.
As the gigs increased, the band began taking on the persona of
rock and rollers. "We were playing the church dances and clubs
around town. And we had to be cool, man, and look ike an English
group," Gary explained, "The Beatles, the Stones and the Yardbirds
were where we got our influences, learning from the British
people. We grew our hair long, which back then was not even
touching our eyebrows hardly and barely our ears, but the dress
code at school said you couldn't have that."
Allen attened Forrest High School in Jacksonville, a school with a
very strict dress code that forbade long hair on males. His father
remembered, "The first time, the school called me. All I did was
pick Allen up and take him to the barbershop to get a normal
haircut, which he resented. I thought, at that time, his education
was more important and I done what I thought was right. He always
hated it. I didn't hear from him for two or three years because of
it. I only found out later, after he and I kind of made up, that
he resented it, because all of them laughed at him."
However, it was the dress code at cross-town rival Robert E Lee
High School that would go down in rock and roll history, largely
because of a tough gym teacher named Leonard Skinner. In 1978,
Skinner recalled, "I was a gym coach in high school for Ronnie
VanZant and of the others in the band. Back in those days we had a
dress code. The dress code involved sideburns not coming below the
ears; hair not touching the back of the collar; belts had to be
worn; shirt tails had to be in; and socks had to be worn at all
times. It was among the duties of the coach to help enforce these
rules and apparently one of the people, or one or more of the
people, that I may have sent down were members of this band."
Trying to get around the dress code's ban on long hair, Gary and
the others would use Vasoline before school to slick back their
hair and keep it out of their eyes and off their shoulders. Gary
remembered thinking they looked like rednecks, but all the
teachers thought they had short hair. All except coach Skinner,
that was.
Gary recalled, "All the teachers thought we had short hair, but
then at gym you had to take a shower - it was mandatory."
Remembering the results of those showers, Gary related, "Leonard
Skinner would come through the showers while you were doing it,
and if he caught you with your hair down touching your ears or
something he'd kick you out or send you to the principal. After
about 20 or 30 times of doing that to me, and kicking me out for
two weeks of suspension, I just quit school. He kicked me out and
I said,`____ you, I'm gone!'
"We played at the Forrest Inn a night or two later and as a joke,
because Ronie was goofing on me leaving and what happened when
Skinner kicked me out, he said `Hey, we're One Percent. We're
gonna play for y'all tonight, but we're gonna change our name
though. Everybody who wants to change it to Leonard Skinner
applaud, Everybody who don't, don't.' Everybody knew Leonard
Skinner because he was everybody else's coach too. So everybody
roared and cheered and they thought it was a big joke and funny,
but we kept it. And later we changed the Y's and stuff so we
wouldn't get in trouble and it kind of caught on from that little
joke."
After the Forrest Inn date, Bob Burns reinforced the name change
by joking that Skinner would come for Gary. Whenever a phone would
ring and no one would be on the line or they thought they heard a
knock on the door, it was always "Leonard" out to get Gary.
Leonard Skinner grew into Lynard Skynard, and then finally, the
band settled on Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The Lynyrd Skynyrd History Website Is Owned By Judy VanZant Jenness
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