It’s troublesome to separate creative triumph from human tragedy with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s fifth studio album Road Survivors. A transatlantic Prime 20 success, the file was a large hit, but additionally launched simply days earlier than the horrific air crash that claimed the lives of frontman Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister, backing singer Cassie Gaines, on October 20, 1977.
Actually, it’s all of the extra poignant when you think about what might need been. The Floridian band was hitting a complete new peak. Recruited to switch the departed Ed King, guitarist/songwriter Steve Gaines injected a brand new power into Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Ronnie Zan Vant even encouraging him to sing lead vocals on one in every of Road Survivors’ highlights: the powerful, street-level blues exercise “Ain’t No Good Life.” “There was a freshness that Steve brought to the sessions,” guitarist Gary Rossington recalled in 2003 interview with Basic Rock. “He was a great [guitar] picker and such a great guy to hang with. His natural enthusiasm rubbed off on all of us.”
Even with Gaines’ presence, the preliminary Road Survivors classes in Miami’s Standards Studios in April 1977 have been fraught. The band fought with producer Tom Dowd, who ducked out of the album’s later classes (and mixing) at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia. The group finally accomplished the file with assist from (uncredited) producer Kevin Elson and Dowd’s engineer Barry Rudolph. “We didn’t like the tones and sounds Tom [Dowd] was getting,” Rossington recalled. “There wasn’t a fight, but there was a big disagreement. Booze and drugs had been creeping in a little bit. But Barry was a tremendous help and when we put him together with Kevin…damn, those tunes started to come out great!”
Rossington wasn’t flawed. Road Survivors comprises a few of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s most enduring and well-executed songs. Hitting the U.S. Prime 20, the potent, brass-enhanced “What’s Your Name?” turned the album’s signature hit, but it surely was simply one in every of many highlights. The menacing “That Smell” cautioned in opposition to the worst excesses of the rock’ n’ roll life-style, whereas Steve Gaines once more proved his value on the nifty blues-rocker “I Know A Little” and the punchy, Rolling Stones-esque “You Got That Right,” whereby he traded verses with Ronnie Van Zant. Elsewhere, the superior, Southern soul-imbued ballads “One More Time” and “I Never Dreamed” proved emphatically that there was way more to Lynyrd Skynyrd than bad-assed boogie.
Certainly, the persistently glorious Road Survivors made it abundantly clear that Lynyrd Skynyrd have been heading proper to the highest if destiny hadn’t so cruelly intervened. “[The crash] was a rude, rude awakening,” keyboardist Billy Powell mentioned in a 2003 Basic Rock interview. “We were starting to realize that our career was heading to a peak and that soon we’d be up there alongside The Rolling Stones and The Who, when the carpet was torn right out from beneath us.”
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