Remembering 2023’s Music Losses: Gary Rossington

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You know how I like my sn*w…falling somewhere else! We haven’t had much here, just enough to make things terrible on the roads (which is why I’m staying home); however, I’m watching the snow fall in Gatlinburg from the Skybridge cam…and people are riding the chairlift in it! I’m inside, warm, drinking tea, and giving you some music to warm you up. Here’s another musical great that we lost in 2023. Gary Rossington Hey, after two days of bluegrass, you need some rock and roll! Guitarist Gary Rossington’s death closes the book on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s original lineup. There is still one member who survived the plane crash living (drummer Artimus Pyle), but he didn’t join until Skynyrd’s third album. Rossington grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and got to know Ronnie Van Zant and other boys who’d eventually become the nucleus of Lynyrd Skynyrd in high school. They formed a band and got a deal, and…you know the rest: sweet home alafreebird. Then the plane crash. Rossington and Allen Collins formed the Rossington-Collins Band after recovering from their injuries, with Dale Krantz, who was a backup singer in .38 Special early in their incarnation, as lead singer. Rossington and Krantz wed, and theirs was a love story that lasted 41 years until Gary’s death last year. She survives him, as well as their two adult children. Although his cause of death wasn’t disclosed, Rossington had suffered a number of heart attacks and had heart surgery in 2021. Lynyrd Skynyrd is synonymous with southern rock and the 70s’ good-time, hell-raising music. (A little trivia: Rossington was in a drug-and-alcohol-induced car wreck, prompting the song “That Smell.”) The original members are now all free birds. Gary Rossington Born Gary Robert Rossington December 4, 1951 - March 5, 2023 (age 71) The rollicking “You Got That Right” from the original band’s final album Street Survivors, with that eerily prophetic line “You won’t find me in an old folks’ home”: