Lynyrd Skynyrd in the studio with Al Kooper.
seen a better bandleader in my whole life. No one was trying to lead that band if he was the leader. You know how there are fights in bands, well they didn’t have anything like that because he would have whooped ‘em. He was a tough little mother fucker and he was a nice guy too. He was not just tough, but he was bright. He knew how to run a band. He did a great job. I have never seen anyone run a bet- ter band in my whole career. The thing he did that was different from other bands was that he wanted that band to sound the same every night. He was not interested in improvisation at all. There was no improvisation in that band at all, except when they were first re- hearsing that song. They had a place out near the swamp where they would rehearse and there was no air conditioning or anything.
Hell House. Yeah, well they would go out there and just
get it all together. They wouldn’t even jam, like when you are working with a band and there is a guitar solo on the song, the guy comes in and tries to play a solo. They wrote all the guitar solos out, including "Free Bird." Every bit of that was planned out before I came into the picture. Every guitar solo was played exactly the same. I have never met a band that did that nor have I met a band since, and it was pretty amazing. He was a great leader and you know we banged heads many times during the making of the three records I did with them. It was always in an okay way. I would say something, then Allen or Gary would say, “Oh, man I don’t want to do that, it sucks. Al, just let us do what we do.” Ronnie would say “Gary, I don’t like that idea that Al is suggesting either, but I don’t want to stop him from speaking his mind. Even if we just use 10% of that idea, it’s some- thing we wouldn’t think of ourselves, so I will
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