Episode #120 | 3.7.23
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Busted Teeth, Saturday Night Specials, and the Smell of Death
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In this episode
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant, was a violent bully from the mean streets of Jacksonville, Florida. He tried to maim one of his guitar player’s hands with a broken bottle. He knocked out his piano player’s teeth not once…but twice. He held a gun to his drummer’s head during rehearsal. And when his bandmates followed suit with their own debauched antics, Ronnie turned their drug-and-alcohol flirtations with death into hit songs. Lynyrd Skynyrd even wrote their own eulogy.
Sources
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock, by Gene Odom with Frank Dorman
Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Survivor, by Al Kooper
Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera (33 ⅓), by Rien Fertel
The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing, ed. Marc Smirnoff
If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film about Lynyrd Skynyrd (2018, dir. Steve Kijack)
Gone with the Wind: The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd (2015, dir. Tom O’Dell)
The Band That Fell to Earth (Washington City Paper)
Lynyrd Skynyrd interview: The Last Stand (Louder)
Remembering Lynyrd Skynyrd's Deadly 1977 Plane Crash (Rolling Stone)
Bulldozers can’t wipe away the musical history of Hell House (Clay Today)
An Oral History of “Free Bird” (Garden & Gun)
Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story, by Marley Brant
Memories Of Lynyrd Skynyrd And Peter Rudge (Classic Rock Review)
When Lynyrd Skynyrd's Allen Collins Was Paralyzed in a Car Crash (Ultimate Classic Rock)
Vandals Smash Open Tombs Containing Lynyrd Skynyrd Members (MTV)
Lynyrd Skynyrd graves vandalized (Florida Times-Union)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Credits
Hosted by Jake Brennan.
Written by Zeth Lundy.
Copy editing by James Sullivan.
This episode was mixed by Matt Beaudoin.
Score by Jake Brennan.
Mixed and Engineered by Sean Cahalin.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.
Additional music services by Bryce Kanzer.
Ad music composed by the late, great Ian Kennedy.
Disgraceland theme song, "Crenshaw Space Boogie" written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.Score by Jake Brennan.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak