Lynyrd Skynyrd

The band's final record with uber-producer and Dylan sideman Al Kooper, who discovered them. Now steel-tempered road warriors, Skynyrd developed a heavier, more swaggering rock sound akin to Free in their heyday, but sacrificed some of wit, lyricism and whimsy of their earlier songs. While the playing is top notch, there's a laconic orneriness that wasn't evident before.

With three full-time electric guitarists, a piano player and a fireplug of a lead singer who
looks like Robert Blake's Baretta in a hippie disguise, Georgia's Lynyrd Skynyrd presents an
unusually broad front line. And the band's live grand finale ("Our tribute to Du-ane"), the
relentlessly ascending "Free Bird," is rock & roll at its most classically enveloping -- a must
see. On record, Skynyrd, with the aid of producer Al Kooper, approximates its... More >

On the one hand, two or three cuts here sound like heavy-metal-under-funk--check out "Saturday Night Special," a real killer. But on the other, Ronnie Van Zant has never deployed his limited, husky baritone with such subtlety. Where Gregg Allman (to choose a purely random example) is always straight, shuttling his voice between languor and high emotion, Van Zant feints and dodges, sly one moment and sleepy the next, turning boastful or indignant or admonitory with the barest shifts in timbre. I mean, dumb he ain't. (Grade - A-)