Gary Rossington, Last Original Member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dies at 71

Gary Rossington, the guitarist who became the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, died on Sunday. He was 71.

“It is with our deepest sympathy and sadness that we have to advise, that we lost our brother, friend, family member, songwriter and guitarist, Gary Rossington, today,” the band wrote on Facebook. “Gary is now with his Skynyrd brothers and family in heaven and playing it pretty, like he always does.”

A cause of death was not immediately given, though Rossington had been hospitalized multiple times in recent years over heart problems and took his leave from the band in 2021, citing the strenuous impact of touring on his blood oxygen levels. He had emergency heart surgery the same year, but then recovered and rejoined the band.

“The last of the Free Birds has flown home,” the Twitter account run by the estate of Charlie Daniels, the country singer and Rossington’s late friend, tweeted.

A long-haired cat from Jacksonville, Florida, Rossington was undoubtedly living out his ninth life in his final years. Tragedy dogged Lynyrd Skynyrd, most notably in the form of the 1977 plane crash that killed six people, including three of the band’s members—frontman Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines—and devastated the 20 survivors.

Rossington was left with two broken arms, a broken leg, a punctured stomach and liver, injuries grave enough that the news of his bandmates’ deaths was initially kept from him. “When I woke up after a few days, there was just a priest and my mama standing there,” he told music journalist Lee Ballinger for his oral history of the band. “I went ‘What happened?’ I was in shock and they said, ‘Don’t tell him anything, it’ll freak him out.’ And I went ‘Mama?’ And she told me.”

Three days before the crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd had released Street Survivors, their fifth studio album. On it was the single “That Smell,” a darkly finger-wagging song that Van Zant had been inspired to write after Rossington had narrowly escaped death the year prior, drunkenly crashing his Ford Torino into an oak tree. “I had a creepy feeling things were going against us, so I thought I’d blow lines, slam some H and write a morbid song,” Van Zant said, according to author Tim Morse.

The band was able to reform for a reunion tour in 1987 with Van Zant’s brother Johnny leading them (and Rossington playing with steel rods in his arm and leg). Skynyrd would soldier on in the years to come, eventually chewing through more than 25 members. During “Free Bird,” the band’s iconic nine-minute opus defined by Rossington’s slide guitar solo, a screen overhead would flash through the names of all its deceased members.

At the time of Rossington’s death, the band was gearing up for a 22-city summer tour with ZZ Top. “It’s a tribute band right now, and everybody knows it’s not the original,” he told Rolling Stone last year. “Everybody who comes to see us is told that during the show, and probably knows before they even get there. But people still come to hear it live.”

The band’s original lineup was Rossington, Van Zant, drummer Bob Burns, guitarist Allen Collins, and bassist Larry Junstrom. Growing up playing baseball together in Jacksonville, Rossington, Van Zant, and Burns decided to try jamming together after Burns was smacked in the shoulder by a ball hit by Van Zant. It was 1964; they began calling themselves My Backyard, and spent the next five years gigging around the area. They switched the name of the group to The Noble Five, then to The One Percent, then finally to Lynyrd Skynyrd, paying “tongue-in-cheek homage” to a gym teacher who had tortured Rossington for his shaggy hair.

As the real Leonard Skinner would later observe to The Times-Union of Jacksonville, “They were good, talented, hard-working boys. They worked hard, lived hard and boozed hard.” Their self-titled 1973 debut LP, subtitled Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd, went double platinum and hit No. 27 on the Billboard 200. Four more studio albums and a live album would follow before the plane crash brought it all to a screeching halt.

“I’ve talked about it here and there, but I don’t like to,” Rossington told Rolling Stone of the crash in 2006, the same year the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “It was a devastating thing. You can’t just talk about it real casual and not have feelings about it.”

Still, Rossington, who’d grown up imitating Elvis in front of the mirror and was inspired to buy his first guitar at 13 after seeing The Rolling Stones perform on television, remained grateful for it all. “I thank God every day and night that I can keep playing and spreading the name of Skynyrd and our brand…” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2014.

“We had a dream back in the day to be in a big band and make it and then it was taken away from them real quick,” he continued. “They didn’t get a chance to see how Skynyrd developed, how ‘Free Bird’ became an anthem. So I get to tell their story.”

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