Last waltz for Lynyrd Skynyrd in Edmonton
At so many shows over so many years one has heard the random lusty shout “PLAY SOME SKYNYRD!” – so many times that it’s become a running joke.
But there is no joke when the real Lynyrd Skynyrd returns to play Edmonton one last time. They’re at Rogers Place on Tuesday, March 12, 2019. Tickets for the “Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour” will go on sale Nov. 2. Randy Bachman will open the show.
This band practically invented “Southern Rock” when they started making music in 1964. Sweet Home Alabama came out 10 years later and made them into legends. Fun fact that everybody knows: The song was actually written as a protest against Neil Young songs that talked about racism in the South. The Skynyrd lyric is familiar: “Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her, I heard old Neil put her down. I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.” Young did not respond with another tune, and Sweet Home Alabama remains one of the biggest, if not best-loved, classic rock songs of all time.
Tragically, original members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines were killed in a plane crash in 1977. Most fans thought that was the end of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but 10 years later founding member Gary Rossington put a new version of the band together, with Ronnie’s younger brother Johnny Van Zant on lead vocals. They’ve been touring, with a certain number of member changes here and there, ever since.
Of course it’s not Sweet Home Alabama that fans scream when they want a band to “play some Skynyrd,” but 1973’s Free Bird – one of the first examples of the “power ballad” megahit, the epitome of the Southern rock sound and attitude, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s signature anthem they usually save to the end.
“If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”
You can bet on it.
