Chords for Lynyrd Skynyrd bandmates talk about Ronnie VanZant and life on the road as the real Lynyrd Skynyrd

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ The first tune that _ I really can remember actually being there,
you know, how you can picture yourself 25 years later,
was Sweet Home Alabama.
That was the first day at rehearsal with Leon back on bass,
my first day on guitar.
And no sooner, I guess Gary had gotten there before I did,
and I no sooner walked into Hell House,
and Gary was playing this guitar riff,
_ _ and I picked up my Stratocaster,
and I just started bouncing _ _ my_
[A] _ [G]
right off of him, you know.
_ [D] And then Ronnie said, Don't stop that, keep [G] that going.
And within 10 minutes,
Ronnie had the first and second verse [D] of Alabama written.
_ [G] And after I heard the first and second verse,
I just, [E]
man, I rolled with the ball.
I wrote the chorus going into that whole thing,
and then he immediately came up with the [Dm] chorus.
Sweet [C] home Alabama.
Yeah, I remember very clearly.
[D] And after it was done that day,
Ronnie [G] looked at me, he goes,
Well, [D] there's our rambling man.
_ _ [N] The Allman Brothers had Ramblin' Man,
it's their big hit, and that was our rambling man.
We just knew it was a hit record.
It was funny, MCA didn't release that first.
I guess here it is a hit.
They released, I guess, Don't Ask Me No Questions
off the second Helping album first.
_ Of course, Alabama was a clear-cut hit off that record.
Now in Alabama, _ Alabama was an exception,
because there you had Gary,
who just had this riff, and I walked in,
and then of course if it wasn't for that riff,
I wouldn't have bounced off my Dandana riff,
and then Ronnie put the lyrics on top of that.
But basically after I heard Gary's riff,
I wrote the rest of it and just rolled with it. _ _
You know, you gotta give credit where credit's due.
_ If Gary hadn't started off with that riff,
the song never would have been written.
_ If we were, we'd be working on a song there in the house,
and let's say after a song was written,
_ _ _ well, if I was playing bass, it would be me,
maybe Alan would stay behind, and the drummer,
and we'd just work up our parts, three-piece,
to get ourselves tight, and Ronnie and Gary,
and at that time Billy, I guess, would go down to the water
and _ just either fish or kind of wait for us
to get our stuff together, and then of course
they'd be able to hear us real well from down in the water.
By the way, music and water go real well together.
I don't know if you noticed, but it's like this venue
out of Jones Beach, New York, how all this water
is right by the stage, and water and music just go real well.
So anyway, they'd be listening to us play,
and Ronnie would have a suggestion, he'd run up to the house
and go, hey, why don't you put this in there?
And when we finally get tight, then one by one
they'd filter back in and _ sing and play their parts.
I can remember being the first one ever to hear
the lyrics to Saturday Night Special.
We were _ playing it all together in this room,
and Ronnie's kind of huddled over on a couch
over in the corner with his head down,
and he never wrote anything down, it was always in his head.
After about 20 minutes, he gets up and walks over to me
and he says, keep playing, don't stop.
And everybody's playing, and he gets right in my ear
and cups _ his mouth to my ear and sings me the first verse
to Saturday Night Special, I could have died.
I went, man.
I said to myself, how does he come up with stuff
that's so cool like that?
I think some of his best lyrics were like, needle and spoon. _ _ _ _
How he came up with the subject matter he did,
or his angle on the subject matter, he was just a raw genius.
That's all there is to it.
Ronnie always knew what he wanted.
When he came in, he knew what he wanted.
It was mostly first, thirds, fifths, simple harmonies.
_ _ There were a few songs that were a little more complicated,
more gospely, but we all just did that naturally anyway. _ _
We'd throw out a part, and if it wasn't, see if it clicked.
_ Maybe do a couple of adjustments here and there,
but usually everything was pretty simple.
_ _ I worked with Steve on some of his stuff.
Some of his songs were a little more [G#] _ _ _ complicated, bluesier,
and that was a lot of fun.
So Cass and Steve and I worked out the parts
for a couple of his songs.
_ Ronnie just generally knew what he wanted.
Keep it simple and strong.
Of course, Sweet Home Alabama _ had already been done.
_ Mary Clayton, Clyde E.
King, and Bonetta Fields
had recorded that.
So some of the songs were already done when we came in.
We may have thrown in a few things here or there.
I actually threw in one part on that smell, the _ carryover part.
There were a few little things that would come out
as ad-libs or whatever, but in general,
he always had a clear picture.
I think that's why the music's so _ _ _ _ consistent.
It's why it works so well, because he always had
such a clear focus on what he wanted. _ _
Everybody kind of did their part,
_ but he kept it in the parameters.
It was like he kept it right here.
_ Occasionally he'd have to say,
okay, now somebody do this, do that.
It's not quite what I'm hearing.
But he always had, I think he always heard
everything in his head.
It was pretty much finished when he came into the studio
as far as the way he was hearing it. _
Usually the way it ended up, Leslie would sing the top part,
_ and Cassie would sing the middle,
and I'd sing the low part,
because it's just the way it ended up.
_ _ Only one time I got to sing what I wanted to sing.
I had to sing what nobody else wanted, which was the low part.
But then it worked out pretty good for me too,
because I got to sing harmony with Ronnie on a lot of things.
And they did backups, and I sang with him.
It still worked out pretty good for me.
I love singing with Ronnie.
_ I'd do some ad-libs.
He let me do some ad-libs and stuff like that.
Leon and Ronnie and I sang together.
And then they would do the backups.
And then the three of us would do the backups together.
I'd always play the maracas,
Cassie would always play the cabasa,
and Leslie would always play the tambourine.
And we always had the same stage set up.
It was Leslie, and then Cassie, and then me.
I was always on the right, always.
_ So it just worked out that way.
We did many a show, we couldn't hear the monitors at all.
We'd just kind of be up there guessing at it.
_ Then they got us up on a riser,
and the guys would try to stand up there and look up our dress.
_ _ _ They were wild.
Craig Reed especially had his camera, you know, to be rolling. _ _
I'd be interested in some of [B] the footage that he had. _ _
_ On the Hunt [C#] is really a good song.
It's Ronnie calling a spade a spade.
[F#] He's saying, girl, I know what you're [D] about, but that don't bother [A] me.
Come and spend a few [Bm] hours with me.
_ [B] I'm lonely, you're lonely, I don't care [Bm] what your background is.
I'm on the hunt and so are [E] you.
You want what I got and I want what you got.
That's what Ronnie was saying.
All of his songs, you look at every song.
Sweet Home Alabama was basically, Ronnie explained it to me,
he's telling the southern man
that the southern man is not to be blamed for something that happened 400 years ago
or 300 or 200 years ago.
_ He's saying, Neil Young, you know,
I don't have anything against African-American people.
And Ronnie didn't.
Ronnie would give the shirt off his back to anybody, black or white.
Ronnie was not a racist.
And it's like _ Ronnie's vocals and his stuff was from the heart.
His words were from the heart.
And that's what has lasted 20 years.
Not guitar players or drummers, you know, _
but Ronnie Van Zandt's heart and soul.
And that's the writing.
That's what I love about.
And Ronnie, you know, you see a lot of singers will jump around stage
and they'll shake their body to the beat of every beat of every tune.
And they look like basically clowns.
Ronnie would stand there and he would sing.
_ _ You know, he didn't need anything else.
He had _ who he was from his heart on that microphone.
And you look at some people's stage presence.
Ronnie had an incredible stage presence.
And that came from his ability to write songs.
The ability to write songs for Ronnie.
I'll write songs down a lot and then I'll wad them up and throw them away
because I'm afraid for people to know how I feel.
Ronnie, right or wrong, _ he put his feelings on his sleeve.
He wore his heart on his sleeve.
That's what I really dig about Ronnie's writing.
_ [C] I miss Ronnie, man, I really do.
[G] I wish he were here now.
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [Em] _
[Am] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [Em] _
[Am] _ _ _ [Em] _ [A] _ _ _ _