LYNYRD SKYNYRD PLAYS VICTORIA ON SATURDAY
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When you’ve stuck around as long as Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, you end up with several generations of fans, and the band knows how to keep them happy. Skynyrd hits Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Saturday.
What: Lynyrd Skynyrd with Whiskey Myers When: Saturday, 8 p.m. Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre Tickets: $39-$79 (plus service charges) at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre box office (1925 Blanshard St.), by phone at 250-220-7777, or online at selectyourtickets.com
When the sun sets on a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, guitarist Rickey Medlocke is certain fans of the legendary southern rock band got exactly what they paid for
Lynyrd Skynyrd will have played their hits, to the best of their abilities. They will have given the audience a multitude of chances to sing along, if not pull out a Bic lighter, and they will have furthered their reputation as one of the most enduring rock ’n’ roll bands in history.
“The audience leaves very taken care of,” Medlocke said Wednesday from a Calgary tour stop. “As a band, it’s important that at the end of the night, the fans’ hard-earned money was well-spent. We’ve always been that way. If you’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life, make sure you give the people back what they gave you.”
Lynyrd Skynyrd is still fighting for its place in the history books, long after critics counted them out. The group was derailed at the height of its popularity, in 1977, by a plane crash that hospitalized 19 people and killed six, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and other bandmates. After a well-deserved hiatus, Lynyrd Skynyrd returned to the studio in 1991, but the group never made it back to the heights of its previous incarnation.
Though just one original member remains, guitarist Garry Rossington, two more long-standing members are in play at the moment: Medlocke, who spent a year with the band in 1971, before returning for good in 1996, and singer Johnny Van Zant, who took over vocal duties in place of his late older brother in 1989. The group is as good now as it has ever been, Medlocke said.
“The band is thumping,” he said of the current lineup, which also includes drummer Michael Cartellone, guitarist Mark Matejka, keyboardist Peter Keys and bassist Johnny Colt. “Very high energy, a lot of movement. It’s like AC/DC or the Rolling Stones or Aerosmith. You have to come out kicking, with everything you’ve got. It’s called entertainment.”
Lynyrd Skynyrd has never stopped making new material, despite the fact the classics are what fans want to hear in concert.
That said, there’s nothing disposable about recent studio albums God & Guns (2009) and Last of a Dyin’ Breed (2012). Both recordings cracked the top 20 on the sales charts in the U.S., giving Lynyrd Skynyrd its bestselling releases since 1977.
If anything, that type of response proves Lynyrd Skynyrd is alive and well, according to Medlocke.
On the recent song Skynyrd Nation, the band wrote about having three generations of fans, something that comes from both longevity and talent.
There’s no point sticking around if you can’t get the job done, Medlocke said. Nobody wants to see a cadaver cranking out the chords to Sweet Home Alabama, he added.
The breadth of the audience has become a recurring theme during the band’s in-progress Canadian tour, which stops Saturday in Victoria for its first Vancouver Island performance.
“Since we’ve been here, we’ve noticed at least 60 per cent of the audience is that second and third generation. Which leads you to say that probably some of this is about curiosity. But I think the major part of it is the songs themselves. People have heard these songs for so long. They’ve been in movies, they’ve been on television, and bar bands have played them time and time again.”
Free Bird, one of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s most popular and enduring hits, has become a cultural rallying cry at concerts everywhere, signifying the point in any show — be it a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert or not — that rock ’n’ roll excess has arrived. The nine-minute classic, which created the power ballad template, would be more of a wink-wink guilty pleasure were it not such an eminently enjoyable song.
To wit: Rolling Stone magazine put Free Bird at No. 193 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2009, evidence of its longstanding appeal.
The studio version of the song closes with one of the most spectacular guitar solos in history, written by original guitarist Allen Collins.
The famous outro is played in concert these days by Medlocke, who relishes the role. The opportunity exists to switch things up, he said, but the band favours an organized approach that plays to its strengths.
And where the guitarists are concerned, that means letting the right players play.
“When it comes to [playing] leads, you’ve got to look at the song. One will fit Gary’s style, and one will fit my style, and one will fit Mark’s style. That’s what it really comes down to. Each individual guy has his own particular style and sound. Skynyrd was noted for having three guitars and three individual sounds.”
The character traits of each guitarist can be traced back to their respective instruments.
Rossington primarily plays a Gibson Les Paul and Medlocke plays either a Gibson Explorer or a Gibson Firebird, while Matejka is almost always on a Fender Stratocaster. The total value of the Skynyrd guitar stable is limitless, considering that the history of each comes into play when determining the value. And given that some of Rossington’s prized possessions have been used on recordings for tracks such as Sweet Home Alabama, Simple Man, Free Bird and Tuesday’s Gone, they are virtually priceless.
The manufacturers at Gibson have begged Medlocke to stop using his vintage guitars on the road, for fear of damaging them. But he won’t relent.
He found a way to circumvent damage or theft, with assistance from his guitar technician, who helped build a special vault to house his guitars on the road.
“It is non-penetrable,” Medlocke said with a laugh. “I have a sign on the vault that has the silhouette of a man on a target with bullet holes in it, that says: ‘Nothing inside is worth dying for.’ My guitar tech is like a bulldog. You get close to that vault, and he’s all over you.”