Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars

February 1, 2015
Straightforward biography of the Southern rock band.Though staples such as "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird" have kept Lynyrd Skynyrd's brand alive through recordings and reunion tours for almost three decades, Ribowsky (The Last Cowboy: A Life of Tom Landry, 2013, etc.) makes a convincing case that the band died with the plane crash that took frontman Ronnie Van Zant and other passengers. However, the author overstates most of what he claims for Van Zant and the hard-drinking, rabble-rousing band, who "unwittingly but inexorably...found a place among the artistic giants of the American South, their thematic content deceptively simple but as soul deep as any Faulkner novel or Tennessee Williams play." Of Southern rock in general, Ribowsky asserts that the "songwriters had become the modern southern literati, and in their pens lay the definitions of a new reconstruction of the South and southern manhood." Perhaps such writing is an attempt to compensate for lack of access and primary sources, as most of the quotes are from other books and articles, while those few who agreed to talk to the author-former manager Alan Walden, booking agent Alex Hodges and guitarist Ed King-come across much better than the many who didn't (Van Zant's widow, the remaining, surviving band members, original producer Al Kooper). Ultimately, it's surprising that the band lasted as long as it did, even before the tragic crash, for the musicians seemed bent on destruction, fighting and drinking and drugging beyond any bounds of self-restraint. Praised for the sensitivity of his songwriting, Van Zant would throw punches without provocation (beating at least one woman in these pages) and once tried to toss a roadie from a plane-at 30,000 feet. Serviceable but often floridly overwritten. Though Ribowsky accuses the band's current incarnation and those who market the legacy of "mercenary profit motive," the same charge could be leveled at the book.

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March 1, 2015
Lynyrd Skynyrd, the southern-rock band whose biggest hit was the classic Sweet Home Alabama, had a career that spanned not quite a decade, from the late 1960s to October 20, 1977, when a small plane crashed, killing the band's lead vocalist, Ronnie Van Zant; its guitarist/singer, Steve Gaines; and its backup singer, Cassie Gaines, and injuring six other members of the group. Ribowsky's account addresses not only the band's music but also the members' musical inspirations, their politics, and the rise of southern rock. For readers who aren't well versed in Skynyrd's history, the book is full of small surprises: Sweet Home Alabama was their only Top 10 hit; the band wasn't from Alabama but from Jacksonville, Florida; Saturday Night Special, another of the band's popular songs, was written for the 1974 movie The Longest Yard; and the unique spelling of the band's name was to avoid any legal issues in using the name they preferred, Leonard Skinner, the name of Van Zant's high-school gym teacher. An excellent look at a band whose creative evolution was tragically cut short.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)