CityLife

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd
The Apollo
March 8, 2010

In front of a swamp backdrop, with Confederate flags flying, Lynyrd Skynyrd piledrive through their back catalogue in a valiant attempt to turn a Monday night in Ardwick into a scene from The Dukes of Hazard.

It’s a long way from the southern states of America to the north west counties of England. It’s an extremely short distance, however, between a journalist’s fingers, a keyboard, and a limp review of a rock and roll band with one original member. 

That would do Lynyrd Skynyrd a disservice. Formed in Alabama in the mid-1960s and named after a particularly visceral High School gym coach, Leonard Skinner (they thought so little of him they even eviscerated the vowels from his name), it’s now impossible for a more complete reunion, since three of the original band members died in a plane crash in 1977.

But then we do have Rickey Medlocke - a kind of rock and roll Beetlejuice with a Flying V – a fabulous addition to any band. And sure, the vocalist is not original singer Ronnie Van Zant but it is his kid brother Johnny, who himself has been fronting the band for more than 20 years. 

There are a lot of heart slaps and fingers pointed to the heavens as the band thunder through tracks like Still Unbroken from last year’s Gods And Guns album like a 16-wheeler down an Alabama highway, pulling up at the riotous end to the evening - Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird.  If you ever needed to know why a band needs two lead guitars, plus rhythm and bass, the answer can be found entirely within the Freebird solo.

Personally I don’t do God, or guns. But I can do a night of accents slow as a double Jack supped on the back porch at sundown; of 10-gallon hats cranked up to 11.

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