Chords for Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King and the genius of Ronnie Van Zant

All right now we're now joined [D] by Ed King _ _
[Ab] Of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band and recently this past month
In fact the beginning of April the original drummer Bob Burns died [N] in a car crash
You know, it's a long line of very sad, but you know not unexpected endings for a member of this band and
So Ed's now in Nashville, Tennessee, and he was a guitarist in the beginning from 1972 until about 1975
Pretty sure and he co-wrote this song Sweet Home Alabama in 1972
so the royalty checks keep on coming in and
And he wrote Saturday Night Special and he wrote I Need You and Railroad Song songs songs like that and
He went through it all
With these guys before he left in 1975.
So he wasn't on the plane crash in _
1977 when that plane ran out [Gb] of fuel and
Mississippi and killed three [Dm] members of the band which was just devastating to Lynyrd Skynyrd fans everywhere and the band was even [E] more [C] devastating
Obviously the band but so he joined on with Skynyrd after [G] starting up Strawberry Alarm Clock
If you remember the band and that's even way beyond my time
That's 1968 but but what I did love about the late 60s is the way those cats [Ab] dressed in the late 60s
They had that Indian thing going on, you know
and you know in the high necks and then [E] they played sitars and [Eb] they wore smocks and gowns and
[E] beads on television [G] and it was pretty
Tunics there you go.
That's what I'm trying to think of tunics.
That's a good word
To me they look like pajamas and I didn't really care for them that much and then they wanted to go barefoot and
wear these things and
There's quite a few pictures of me barefoot in this thing, but I'm probably never smiling [D] in those pictures
I just didn't really care for him, but then eventually we they [B] stick kept wearing but then I eventually [A] found some
Decent pants and like a shirt
It was sort of East Indian shirt [Bm] that I could wear shoes with [G] and then I got into my own thing
Okay, now yeah when you know when you when you look back, do you like them now?
[Bb] Oh, yeah, I do
I wouldn't want to wear one now, but I mean I tell you what man.
I'm like, [A] uh, I'm like a short stocky guy
They don't look good on me.
They look good on somebody taller and everybody in the band is taller and they look good on them
_ Actually, I think there's a gold one
There's a [D] gold one that I wore on the Jonathan winter [Gb] show.
There's a picture of it on my Facebook page
I look good in that one.
That was pretty good.
That's the one that I saw
I think that's the one I was referencing but you know, was there ever was there ever a better dresser than [G] Jimi Hendrix?
No, no, Jimmy.
Well, [Dm] Jimmy Hendrix was good.
Actually Jimmy Page is pretty good, too
_ _ [E] About Bob Burns and the drummer that passed away recently in a car wreck.
How did that affect you?
Yeah _
I like Bob a lot, you know Bob has had a lot of problems over the years
_ [Bb] He had kind of beaten a cancer scare
[E] About five years ago and he had a couple of surgeries.
He was getting [Dm] out of it pretty good
[A] But yeah, he still kind of [Eb] drinks and he's still kind of smokes and didn't really take care of himself too.
Well
_ [D] _ His hitting [Am] that tree [A] and dying in that in that car wreck was was kind of strange because first of all
The tree is right down the street from his house
I'm sure he's negotiated that curve a bunch of times
_ but the
General feeling is that he had a massive stroke and might have died before even hit the tree
mm-hmm, so I feel bad for Bob because
_ [Gb] He was uh, he's just a real humble guy [Dm] and I'd say I felt the worst for him though when back last November wouldn't
[N] Gary and the guys did a Skinner tribute show in Atlanta
They [G] didn't invite Bob [D] and I really felt bad about that and I [N] know he felt bad about it, too _
He I just read what his dad said
He said he had the manners that would suit the king of England very soft-spoken and extremely well-mannered person
And then he put his father said that's what his father said.
I don't think his father knew him very well I
_ _ Wasn't maybe the manners maybe the manners of the [A] king of England have changed a little bit Bob Bob Bob was Bob was pretty rough hewn _
rough around the edges
_ _ _ [F] Real sweet guy
Whatever happened to the I wanted to ask you this whatever happened to the Southern Rock country rock of the 70s thing in the early
Ages, I guess seems like nobody makes that kind of music [Dbm] anymore, you [Dm] know, but oh well, right?
_ _ _ [B] Well, I think country music tried to emulate it _ and I think that's where it's kind of headed I mean there are some some decent
_ [N] There's a decent country music out there that kind of sounds like it not quite though
But as far as them in rock and roll, I think that's pretty much gone.
I think now the country rock
How do you know?
I don't think Skinner was really country rock.
Although we had a great country singer fronting our [G] band
I'll always believe that [Em] he was a country singer [D] in front of a rock and roll band
But that usually that [N] kind of music today is really gone the way of Americana
You really see it mainstream rock anymore.
What happened?
I don't know
I think they ran out of real original people to do it.
I mean Ronnie was an American original
There'll never be another like and he was he was a raw genius
They told me that they you know
He'd probably like the rest of them and that they'd have to be give him napkins
He'd come up with these great ideas for songs.
Here's a napkin write it down write it down
So we don't forget it the next day.
He never wrote anything down
_ _ _ Never wrote a lyric that was my job to do for the liner notes of the records
He never wrote a lyric down as long as the band remembered the feel of the song
He'd come back and he'd sing it the same way one time the band did not remember the song
They remembered the course they didn't have the field on the rocks forgot the whole thing
He just he just he wrote my feel whatever felt good
Wherever felt coming out of his mouth to the groove we had that's what he wrote in his head.
Just a genius
Yeah, I'll tell you one story right now.
We were I had a song idea.
I brought to rehearsal one day
Running this groove down to the band playing the chords kind of showing him how I [A] wanted it
_ [D] And Ronnie sitting on the couch with his head in his hands [A] like he always did
_ [N] Meaning he was thinking at about 15 minutes later
He comes up to me and he cups my ear with his hand and he sings to me only
I was the first one to hear it.
He goes
two feet they come
creeping
[Dm] _ _ Like a black cat do and I liked it lost it.
You know, I thought that was oh man
He sang me the whole verse and immediately I went in to wrote the course
We wrote that and as soon as we had one verse in one course, he went down to the pier one fish
He said you all finished writing the music I'll write the lyrics he always went down to the pier and
Wrote the lyrics down there because you hear the band playing the music carried down the water very very cool
_ Vibe and scenery and I can words can't even describe it
But we just couldn't [A] wait to get out to rehearsal every day [E] to see what we were gonna write that day
[Eb] It's a blade radio show on music star worldwide part of the star [B] networks, and I believe that's Ed doing one two, three
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