Lynyrd Skynyrd

Van Zant put it plainly to journalist Cameron Crowe for a 1976 Los Angeles Times profile: "we're closer to the classic British rock groups like Free then anything else." Rossington traced that closeness to one night at Skateland, a Jacksonville roller rink that doubled as a concert hall. Free arrived late, dragging out their own Marshall amps, and Paul Kossoff's guitar tone floored the room. "Right after that show," Rossington said, "the three of us went out and spoke for hours about how it was time to buckle down and get tight." They didn't stop thinking about music again.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1970

All Right NowFree

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1973

Free BirdLynyrd Skynyrd

listen forBoth songs spend their back half on one guitarist's tone rather than a barrage of notes: Kossoff bends and holds single notes over Free's stripped-down rhythm section, letting the space between phrases do as much work as the notes themselves. Collins and Rossington chase that same patience through Free Bird's opening verses before the song does what a three-minute single never had room for, guitar line stacked on guitar line, building into an extended peak that keeps climbing long after the singing stops.

Van Zant grew up on Haggard's honky-tonk records over Jacksonville country radio, and when he wrote out the ten most influential songs of his career, he placed Haggard's "If We Make It Through December" alongside "Satisfaction" and "Yesterday." Skynyrd guitarist Ed King put the debt more bluntly: "Ronnie was really a country singer in a rock 'n' roll band." It became literal on 1977's Street Survivors, the band's last album with Van Zant, when Skynyrd cut its own studio version of Haggard's "Honky Tonk Night Time Man," keeping his Bakersfield shuffle nearly intact rather than rocking it up.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1974

Honky Tonk Night Time ManMerle Haggard

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1977

Honky Tonk Night Time ManLynyrd Skynyrd

listen forPlay them back to back and the arrangement barely moves: Haggard's Bakersfield shuffle, brushed drums and a steel-guitar curl around the vocal line, survives almost untouched in Skynyrd's version, a dobro standing in for the pedal steel. Van Zant doesn't roughen the phrasing or push the tempo; he sings it as straight country, the same unhurried, conversational delivery he uses on his own story-songs, proof the country foundation underneath Skynyrd's rock band was never just an affectation.

Van Zant left little to inference: on a handwritten list of the ten most influential songs of his career, later sold at auction, he named the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" second, right after Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" (the list carries its own disclaimer that it isn't ranked by preference). Rossington remembered the whole British-invasion wave hitting all three founders at once, but Van Zant put this exact riff in ink, alongside the Beatles and the Who. It's the six-string chug and coiled tension Skynyrd's early sets kept even after three guitars replaced one, Van Zant's talk-sung phrasing riding just behind the beat.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1965

(I Can't Get No) SatisfactionThe Rolling Stones

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1973

Gimme Three StepsLynyrd Skynyrd

listen forBoth tracks ride an insistent downstroke rhythm-guitar riff that never lets the vocal breathe. Keith Richards' fuzz-toned hook carries the Stones record's tension; Skynyrd swaps fuzz for a cleaner, twangier tone but keeps the same chugging pulse underneath. Van Zant's conversational, half-talked delivery lands just behind the beat the way Mick Jagger's does on the original, less a melody than a story shouted over a groove that refuses to let up until the song does.