Tom Petty discussing the only “monster band” of the 1970s
Towards the midpoint of the 1970s, rock and roll still had a firm grip on all things mainstream. The pop charts may have still been clogged with a few bubblegum acts, but since disco had not reared its head just yet, the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were still massive draws on the stadium circuit. While many groups were losing touch at that point, Tom Petty considered Lynyrd Skynyrd to be one of the last major rock acts that the decade ever spat out.
Because, for all of the great moments happening in rock music, it had all started to get a bit out of hand as well. A lot of these artists were still selling millions of records and playing all around the world, but it was almost like they were being kept at a distance from their fanbase since they had more money than they knew what to do with.
So once the punk revolution came into view, it was almost like a saving grace for the genre. Ramones and Sex Pistols were the direct opposite of what everyone expected by bringing rock and roll back down to street level, but for Petty, who was in the thick of it, something got lost along the way.
He was still more than happy to be a student of the genre half the time, usually drawing on everyone from The Beatles to The Rolling Stones to The Byrds. While John Lydon was busy rebelling against mainstream rock, though, Lynyrd Skynyrd seemed to be the Southern-fried version of The Yardbirds, complete with bluesy guitar leads and rock and roll swagger no one could touch.
The Allman Brothers Band may have received more accolades for putting Southern rock on the map, but Lynyrd Skynyrd was more indicative of what it was like to be a regular rock and roll outfit. For all of the great solos the Allmans played, Ronnie Van Zant was more focused on writing complete songs that had a beginning, middle and end, and even if he got into a few scraps along the way, you couldn’t deny that he had a fantastic vision for where the group would take Southern rock.
Even though Petty grew up in Florida before moving to California, he admitted that Skynyrd was probably one of the last major bands to come out of that era of rock and roll, saying, “I even think that Lynyrd Skynyrd, who I consider one of the only absolute real monster rock ‘n’ roll bands of the decade, never got their due, because they were kinda lumped behind the Allman Brothers a lotta the time. They were amazing. We knew then about Van Zant. A great writer and a very … honest guy. I really respected him, and I think he should have gotten more.”
But the only reason why Skynyrd never made it came from the worst luck any band could face. After coming off of Street Survivors, Van Zant’s tragic end in a plane crash meant that whatever the group would do next would always be in the shadow of their former frontman, especially when they got his little brother, Johnny, to sub in for him for the foreseeable future.
Still, that can’t take away from the music that they made in their prime. ‘Free Bird’ is still the bane of every up-and-coming artist’s existence for a reason, and even though Petty had ventured West, Lynyrd Skynyrd were still the reason why the American South became one of the bedrocks of rock and roll.
