Leslie: Hi! welcome to Fun Facts with Leslie. This week we are going to be talking about the classic music group, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now, you are probably asking yourself, 'did she pronounce that properly?' I don't know, but what I can tell you is this; the band got its name from their high school gym teacher. He was a man named Leonard Skinner. He was also apparently a very pompous man, who didn't like their hair and who hated any forum of Rock and Roll or music.
This man who was their teacher really was the band's idea of the establishment. So when they joined truncheon together for the first time, they knew there was no way to get under their teacher skin, other than to use his name as the name of their band. And it's stuck, I would assum in order to avoid the wrath of this teacher, they later change the spelling. So they are no longer called Leonard Skinner, they called Lynyrd Skynyrd ;-- however, you want to pronounce it, we'll go with it.
Now, some other interesting facts about this band are that, before their induction into the "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" in March of 2006, they were nominated seven times. Frankly, it can be speculated that they only finally got in because people just got tired of seeing their names on the ballot.
This is a little bit mean but personally, I have a little bit of an issue with this band. When a member of a band passes away, personally, I think the classy thing to do is to hang up the bands, guitars, their boots as it were and move on, start a new project. In the case, for example of the Mamas & the Papas when Cass Elliot passed away, they did not replace her with her daughter Olly.
In the case of Led Zeppelin, when Jon Bonham passed away, they didn't take his younger brother and put him on the drumkit. They just decided that they couldn't go on being Zeppelin without Bonzo.
Now unfortunately, Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't really think the same way after a plane crash in 1977 took most of their, the members of their band including Ronnie Van Zant, their lead singer. They decided that may be no one would notice if they just replaced him in the line up with his younger brother. Same band, right? Not really to this listener and to be honest I think that the band probably should have just ended in 1977.
Having said that, I do believe that they produced some good music. It's often said that "they are Sweet Home Alabama" with a direct rebut of the Neil Young's Alabama because Neil Young used to write about how the South was very down trodden and about all the problems in the South. And being Southern themselves, this band really wanted to focus on the positives of the Southern people and really wanted to have sort of empathy for the South. And in that way, they really stood the testing time. As recently as Georges Bush's last Republican National Convention, the songs of Lynyrd Skynyrd were being played. Although, perhaps that's what kept them out of "The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" for so long their association with the Republican party, just kidding.
Anyway, that has been this week Fun Facts with Leslie, check back for more and have a good day, bye.
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