Gary Rossington, founding member and guitarist with Lynyrd Skynyrd, dies at 71

Gary Rossington was the last living original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He survived a 1977 plane crash that killed 3 members of the band and played slide on ‘Freebird.’

SHARE Gary Rossington, founding member and guitarist with Lynyrd Skynyrd, dies at 71
Obit_Gary_Rossington.jpg

Gary Rossington and future bandmates. Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins and Bob Burns met at a Little League game in Jacksonville, Florida, and jammed later that day. Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines died in a 1977 plane crash. Rossington survived but had two broken arms, a broken leg and a punctured stomach and liver.

AP Photos

Gary Rossington, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s last surviving original member who also helped to found the group, died Sunday at the age of 71. No cause of death was given.

“It is with our deepest sympathy and sadness that we have to advise, that we lost our brother, friend, family member, songwriter and guitarist, Gary Rossington, today,” the band wrote on Facebook. “Gary is now with his Skynyrd brothers and family in heaven and playing it pretty, like he always does. Please keep Dale, Mary, Annie and the entire Rossington family in your prayers and respect the family’s privacy at this difficult time.”

Rossington cheated death more than once, Rolling Stone reported. He survived a car accident in 1976 in which he drove his Ford Torino into a tree, inspiring the band’s cautionary song “That Smell.” A year later, he emerged from the 1977 plane crash that killed singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and a punctured stomach and liver.

“It was a devastating thing,” he told Rolling Stone in 2006. “You can’t just talk about it real casual and not have feelings about it.”

In later years, Rossington underwent quintuple bypass surgery in 2003, suffered a heart attack in 2015, and had numerous subsequent heart surgeries, most recently leaving Lynyrd Skynyrd in July 2021 to recover from another procedure. At recent shows, Rossington would perform portions of the concert and sometimes sat out full gigs.

Rossington was born Dec. 4, 1951, in Jacksonville, Florida, and raised by his mother after his father died. Upon meeting drummer Bob Burns and bassist Larry Junstrom, Rossington and his new friends formed a band, which they tried to juggle amid their love of baseball.

According to Rolling Stone, it was during a fateful Little League game that Ronnie Van Zant hit a line drive into the shoulder blades of opposing player Burns and met his future bandmates. Rossington, Burns, Van Zant, and guitarist Allen Collins gathered that afternoon at Burns’ Jacksonville home to jam the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is On My Side.”

Adopting Lynyrd Skynyrd as the group’s name — both a reference to a similarly named sports coach at Rossington’s high school and to a character in the 1963 novelty hit “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” — the band released their debut album (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-’nérd) in 1973. A collection of country-tinged blues-rock and Southern soul, the album included now-classics like “Tuesday’s Gone,” “Simple Man” and “Gimme Three Steps,” but it was the closing track, the nearly 10-minute “Free Bird,” that became the group’s calling card, due in no small part to Rossington’s evocative slide playing on his Gibson SG.

Rossington told Rolling Stone that he never considered Skynyrd to be a tragic band, despite all the band’s drama and death. “I don’t think of it as tragedy — I think of it as life,” he said upon the group’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2006. “I think the good outweighs the bad.”

The Latest
He seems content to hand control over football operations and the Arlington Park stadium project to incoming president Kevin Warren, and as far as the likelihood of the Bears leaving Chicago, he says, “Change is necessary at times.”
Only 3% of ballots cast on Feb. 28 came from youth voters. So what’s the deal? “It’s obvious to me that young people in that city don’t feel empowered by their governance,” said Della Volpe, author of “Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America.”
The Bears closed on the 326-acre former Arlington International Racecourse property last month and will decide in the coming months whether to pursue building stadium — in addition to hotels, shops and restaurants — on the property.
The feds’ key witness, former ComEd Vice President Fidel Marquez, spent hours testifying Tuesday about how he and other ComEd executives fielded constant requests to find jobs for people he said were pushed for employment by Madigan, even when evaluations found their qualifications lacking.
He will have to address the growing notion that investing in long-neglected South and West side neighborhoods comes at the expense of downtown and the North Side.