I was in the 10th grade when I first heard Lynyrd Skynyrd on WJLN out of Birmingham Alabama. It was immediate and I was interested. There was no internet let alone personal computers and my education was just listening. Fortunately one of my good friends ordered that first album which really hadn't broke yet. Listening to the entire album only further made a big impression. In less than a year I got to see them open for Wet Willie at Birmingham's Boutwell Auditorium. I was already a Wet Willie fan but this band was something else with three guitarists. Their second album came out and I still wasn't old enough for a driver's license but I'll never forget hearing them in my dad's pickup as he drove me home from school. It was Sweet Home Alabama and if it was on AM then Lynyrd Skynyrd was out of the closet in the mainstream. They did it without selling out or changing their style which I respected. I say all of this because I really was a faIn at the beginning. By the time of the live album I had lapsed because all of the drug addled red necks (which I wasn't) had chosen Skynyrd as their poster band. Still the music was calling. I couldn't really turn my back on the band. I had sat the records after Second Helping for the most part though. In this I heard the first cuts from Street Survivors and once more I was back. I quickly purchased the album. It would be a few weeks until the crash and I was fully back into Lynyrd Skynyrd. The crash was almost too poignant. I saved the front page of The Birmingham News the day after which sadly confirmed what we already knew. Could it be? Another of those days when the music died? Well that's a misnomer because the music lives on as we all have seen. That makes another Skynyrd documentary welcome as in this musical wasteland of today this stuff still is loved and listened to around the world.
With the above out of the way I'm going to actually do what this site intends and that is to give a personal critique of this particular documentary, and what a great addition it is. This really tells the best linear story of the band and does so with generous amounts of footage never before seen. It isn't at all about the concerts and the sound quality isn't that good of those clips. It doesn't matter because this is the real inside history of the band. There is much gold here such as Al Kooper saying he was in fear of Ronnie in a very respectful, but honestly felt, way. There is the arc of a band clawing it's way up not for money but because they loved doing it. There is the craziness that took them out of their beloved "Hell House" practice shack where they probably had more fun and creative juices without so many distractions. The final album was so aptly named in that they had suffered the unforgiving road with all of the nasty habits to re-focus on the music in a serious way. It's all here and with the excellent interviews of the actual members it is a fitting addition to past documentaries actually rising above all of them. In closing I want to say Jo Jo Billingsley was often a customer of mine. I run a shoe store and a shoe repair shop in Cullman, Alabama. Ms. Billingsley (her stage name) was actually Deborah Jo White and she is greatly missed as she was a joy whenever she came in and we got to talk. She related to me she had left the band but with Street Survivors she was back again only she was not going to be on stage for the first shows of the supporting tour as she was attending to her mother who was not well at the time. It was one of those serendipitous absences that may have saved her life. Though she loved her time in the music business she had found joy in being a born again Christian which she radiated. She even returned one day with a Christian based magazine who had did an article about her and her life's journey. I still have that magazine. RIP members of Skynyrd. This documentary tells the story well indeed.
