Yeah. Well, I got to a certain age where, you know, in the early years, when I was 11, 12, maybe up to 18, I grew tired of the music that you hear all the time. I remember back then thinking, “I don’t care if I never hear a song off Dark Side of the Moon again - because it was played so much on rock radio. Then after a while when you get older you start to hear with different ears.
Exactly. I remember I was about 19 maybe and I was playing in a cover band and we were going to learn “Workin’ For MCA,” and I’d never played that on the guitar before. I sat down with it and was like, “Wow!” I’m hearing this again for the first time! All the parts…
Right. Kind of complex. Yeah, the way that Skynyrd put them together -
just beautiful. Like the three guitar players all playing something pretty much completely dif- ferent from one another and not stepping on the other’s toes.
Yeah. The bass and drums were perfectly put to- gether. I think for a time, back at that point, I really could say I loved Skynyrd more than I did the Brothers. Because I felt like these songs are crafted in a way that the Brothers didn’t do as much. They were more about the free-form, open kind of jam, you know. Their songs were looser and Skynyrd’s were not. I mean, there’s beauty in it all. I love ‘em all for different rea- sons.
Yeah, and one thing you said ‘while ago made me think too, man. It’s like, as we get to a certain age - I mean I was a vora- cious reader growing up, especially of music biographies and music magazines and all that - but once you learn about the old blues players and also the old hillbilly and country players and how that all blended to make rock & roll- once you know that, and you go back and you listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd or some-
Smokin in Asheville, NC. (Photo by Tony Mullins)
thing like that, you can see the influence of the old blues men. You can see the in- fluence of the old country artists, even way back before Hank Williams, all the old time music people. That’s what makes it exciting for me, Charlie. I don’t know about you but it does for me. Once you start learning and, like you said, hearing it with new ears. That’s a great way of putting it, by the way. Connecting the dots excites me. Well, I had a couple of good friends that were a lot older than me. When I was in my teens, they turned me on to a lot of music. I had a good friend in LaGrange, Georgia, he would make me mix tapes of stuff.I didn’t have the in- ternet so I couldn’t readily just go on a website and buy a Skynyrd bootleg. He was a guy that had all that stuff. Another guy named Wildman Steve down in Auburn, Alabama…
Oh, I know him. I love his internet radio
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