r/LynyrdSkynyrd

I still get amazed that such emotionally intelligent, fun, honest songs could be written by someone before their 30th birthday. Not that one or two could be done, but so many more.

https://testset.media/article/skynyrd-wrote-anti-gun-anti-war-anti-capitalist-songs-then-the-rebel-flag-ate-the-bands-legacy

Omar Afra

By

There are bands that get overpraised because they look cool in hindsight ( Talking Heads, The Replacements ), and bands that get punished because their audience eventually became unbearable ( TOOL, Bob Marley ). Lynyrd Skynyrd belongs to the second category.

Not because the criticism is unwarranted. The Confederate flag was not some harmless symbol they hoisted behind the stage every night. It was a poisonous choice, and Skynyrd dragged that shit it around long enough for the symbol to become welded to the band’s public identity. Guitarist Gary Rossington told CNN in 2012 that the band would stop using the flag because it had become associated with hate groups, then walked that back after fans complained. The still-touring band regularly used the repugnant battle flag in live shows for decades. That is not some benign footnote. That is a self-inflicted branding wound with a tetanus infection.

Then there is the other problem: the “Lynyrd Skynyrd” that kept touring long after the original band had ceased to exist as an actual creative organism. The original run was basically 1973 to 1977: five studio albums, one live album, then the plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines. The post-1987 version, fronted by lil’ brother Johnny Van Zant, has now toured far longer than the original band ever existed, and after Rossington’s death in 2023 there were no founding members left. The official band bio now lists a current lineup without any original members. It is basically a glorified tribute band Larping as the real deal.

So yes, the skepticism is earned. The flag shit mattered. Three decades of a bad approximation touring amphitheaters yearly did not help either. The uber macho-southern culture that followed those amphitheater tours underscored just how horribly homogeneous their crowds had become . Therein lies the problem: the worst motherfuckers in the room became the interpretive key for the music. A band with one of the great American rock catalogs became culturally filed under “MAGA uncle with wraparound sunglasses yelling about the ‘Trans-Agenda’.”