Lynyrd Skynyrd The Last Stand
Hamburg, Germany, mid-October 1975
A bloodbath is coming. Lynyrd Skynyrd have been drinking – and hard – at the hotel bar: peppermint schnapps, ice-cold in frozen glasses. These good ol’ boys have never tried schnapps before; whisky and bourbon are their poisons, Scotch and Jack Daniel’s all the way, every day, every night. Next to those, peppermint schnapps tastes sweet as iced tea. It’s easy to knock back. Too easy. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t have a gig to play tonight.
Ronnie Van Zant, their firework of a singer, is steaming drunk on the stuff. When Ronnie gets drunk he starts trouble, usually with his fists. Tonight is no exception.
Back in the band’s room, it kicks off. Ronnie starts getting mad at someone nobody can remember for something no one is quite sure of, swinging his fists at the nearest person – Skynyrd’s road manager. Someone tries to pull him away. Then someone else tries. Then everyone tries. Doesn’t work. Only makes him madder, meaner, nastier, a sawed-off Hulk in a Stetson.
Ronnie takes a bottle and – smash! – busts it over the road manager’s head (and you’ve got to hit somebody hard to break a bottle). He looks around, spots Gary Rossington, one of the band’s guitarists. “I’m gonna cut your hands,” Ronnie hisses/yells. “You’re not gonna play guitar ever again.”
He comes in slashing the broken bottle like a dagger and does what he promised: cuts Rossington’s hands once, twice… nine, ten, 11 times. Blood everywhere. (Rossington will end up in hospital, having his hands stitched and his career saved by German nurses.)
Back in the hotel room there’s glass and gore on the carpet, venom in the air. It takes Artimus Pyle, drummer and ex-marine, with a wild streak as wide as the St John’s River, to stop it getting worse.
Artimus is mad. He starts throwing Ronnie around. First time in Ronnie’s life that this has happened; or at least the first time anyone’s seen it. He ends up pinned to the bed, being cussed out by 180lbs of raging ex-serviceman while everyone else wonders what to do about the mess.
Like we said: a bloodbath. The Bloodbath In Hamburg. Thing is, Lynyrd Skynyrd still play their show, sliced hands and all. Welcome to the good times.
Winnipeg, Canada, late March 2019
That all happened. Gary Rossington, the man whose hands were cut up by Ronnie Van Zant all those years ago and who is one of only two surviving members of all Skynyrd’s 70s line-ups, can vouch for it. “Sometimes I can feel things,” he says, holding out his hands. “Feel it in the nerves. But I played the gig. I had to.”
We’re a long way from Hamburg today. Twentyone floors above the sub-zero streets of