![]() “Ronnie threw the ball and Johnny caught the ball and took off with it. Johnny always likes to say that Ronnie was the quarterback, and he was the receiver,” says Rickey Medlocke, the third of Skynyrd’s three senior partners. He used to be even more of the life and soul, before he quit drinking six years ago the sort of man who would get drunk, fall down a spiral staircase, break his back, then play a show (which once happened). He’s short and loud and funny, with a tattoo of Jesus on his forearm. Johnny’s sitting in the same hotel room as Gary Rossington, except it’s an hour earlier. I don’t know about you, but most of us have had drink or drug problems. “Look at what this band has been through, look where it came from, look at what the songs are about. “It’s a survival story,” says Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie’s young brother and singer with Lynyrd Skynyrd for the past 32 years. But I’m too old and sick now to tour any more.” We said we need to do a farewell tour, because we wanted to go out with our boots on and still sounding great at night and doing well. “Everybody kind of knew I was getting sick, and we just called it. ![]() “Oh, it’s just because of me,” Rossington says. But next year, at some unspecified date, Skynyrd will retire from the road they first stepped out on 50 years, countless miles and countless concerts ago. They’ll do the same a few days later, and a few days after that. Tomorrow night they’ll play at a nearby icehockey arena, in front of 10,000 Canadians for whom this music has been a soundtrack to their lives. When it comes down to it, Rossington is the reason why this tour – dubbed Last Of The Street Survivors, in reference to the 1977 album that was supposed to be the original band’s crowning glory but ended up their tragic epitaph – will be Skynyrd’s last stand. “Anybody hits me, I’ll be dead,” he says wryly. There’ll be no bloodbath for him today or any other day. He’s had at least one heart attack on stage. He’s got 11 or 12 stents in his body to keep his veins open, including one in his stomach. He underwent major surgery a few years ago: a quintuple bypass, a pacemaker installed. He’s had trouble with his heart for 15 or 16 years now. Serious health issues have left him frail and gaunt. Rossington, 67, is no longer the glowering young buck he once was – Prince Charming with a slide guitar. ![]() Twentyone floors above the sub-zero streets of the desolate downtown below. “Sometimes I can feel things,” he says, holding out his hands. Gary Rossington, the man whose hands were cut up by Ronnie Van Zant all those years ago and who is one of only two surviving members of all Skynyrd’s 70s line-ups, can vouch for it.
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