The nucleus of what would become Lynyrd Skynyrd first met in high school in their hometown, Jacksonville, Florida. Van Zant, Allen Collins, and Gary Rossington formed the band My Backyard in 1965, eventually joined by Leon Wilkeson and Billy Powell. Their later name immortalized a gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who was known to punish students who had long hair.

The band, with original drummer Bob Burns, was playing in Atlanta at a bar called Funocchio’s in 1972, when it was spotted by Al Kooper, who was on a tour with Badfinger and also scouting bands for MCA’s new Sounds of the South label. Kooper signed Skynyrd and produced its 1973 debut, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, adding session guitarist Ed King (late of Strawberry Alarm Clock). The group’s initial hook was its three-guitar attack, topping the Allmans’ trademark two-guitar leads. Skynyrd first got major FM airplay with the lengthy “Freebird.” What had been written as a tribute to Duane Allman eventually became an anthem for Skynyrd fans and - when revived, without lyrics, by the Rossington Collins Band in 1980 - a tribute to Van Zant.

The band hooked up with the Who’s Quadrophenia tour in 1973 and acquired a reputation as a live act. Its 1974 followup LP, the multiplatinum Second Helping, also produced by Kooper, reached #12. It included another instant Southern standard, “Sweet Home Alabama” (#8, 1974), a reply to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man.” But Van Zant often wore a Neil Young T-shirt, and Young later offered the band several songs to record, though they never made it to vinyl.

In December 1974 Artimus Pyle joined as a replacement for Burns; King quit a month later. The band’s third record went to #9, but 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets, produced by Tom Dowd, sold somewhat less. Skynyrd regrouped in October 1976 with the double live One More From the Road (recorded at Atlanta’s Fox Theater), which went to #9, sold triple platinum, and featured new third guitarist Steve Gaines, plus a trio of female backup singers, including Gaines’ sister Cassie. The band became one of the biggest U.S. concert draws.

Street Survivors, its sixth LP, was released three days before the plane crash of October 20, 1977. Skynyrd was traveling in a privately chartered plane between shows in Greenville, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when it crashed just outside Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing three members. The rest escaped with injuries. Fuel shortage was a possible cause of the crash, although by the next year a lawsuit filed against the airplane company faulted the plane’s personnel and its mechanical integrity. Ironically, the cover of the band’s last LP pictures the members standing in flames and included an order form for a “Lynyrd Skynyrd survival kit.” There was also a Van Zant composition about death called “That Smell.” The LP cover was changed shortly after the accident, and the album (#5, 1977) went on to become one of Skynyrd’s biggest sellers. The next year Skynyrd’s First...and Last was released, consisting of previously unavailable early band recordings from 1970 to 1972 (the band had planned on releasing it before the accident). It went platinum, and in 1980 MCA released a best-of called Gold and Platinum.

That same year a new band emerged from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ashes. The Rossington-Collins Band [see entry] featured three of the surviving members plus female lead singer Dale Krantz. Artimus Pyle, meanwhile, began touring with his Artimus Pyle Band in 1982. In 1986 tragedy struck again when Allen Collins crashed his car, killing his girlfriend and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Four years later he died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia at age 37. To mark the 10th anniversary of the fatal plane crash, in 1987 Rossington, Powell, Wilkeson, and King put Lynyrd Skynyrd back together, along with guitarist Randall Hall and Johnny Van-Zant (the only one of the brothers who hyphenates his surname) on lead vocals. The younger brother of Ronnie and Donnie (.38 Special) was a marginally successful solo artist, releasing five albums from 1980 through 1990. Dale Krantz, by then Dale Krantz Rossington, sang backup for a 32-date Skynyrd reunion tour, which was chronicled on the following year’s double live album, Southern by the Grace of God/Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour – 1987.

In 1991 the same group (minus Pyle, and with “Custer” on drums) released a new LP, Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991. Both it and 1993’s The Last Rebel carried on Skynyrd’s musical tradition and were well received. The band signed with Southern-rock stronghold Capricorn Records and released the one-off acoustic Endangered Species in 1994. Guitarist King left the band shortly after, and new guitarists Rickey Medlocke (formerly of Blackfoot) and Hughie Thomasson (formerly of the Outlaws) were hired as full-time members. The 1996 concert documentary Freebird...The Movie captured the original band in its prime, on celluloid and an MCA soundtrack. The group’s next albums were released on North Carolina–based CMC International, a label that established a solid market niche reviving the careers of slumping arena-rock acts. Sure enough, a 1997 Behind the Music special on VH1 aired while the band was in midtour supporting the album Twenty (#97, 1997), which marked the 20th anniversary of the fatal, fateful plane crash. Wilkeson died of natural causes in July 2001.

From The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)