(Credits: Far Out / MCA Records)
Sun 14 December 2025 19:42, UK
Florida’s finest non-mouse-related export, Lynyrd Skynyrd, was first formed in 1964. Reaching the peak of their fame in the 1970s, with the release of tracks like ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, popularising the southern rock genre, Skynyrd boasts an enduring legacy and remains one of the most popular bands to grace the airwaves.
As the 1970s rock scene was dawning, Lynyrd Skynyrd was responsible for putting southern rock on the map. Even if the listener wasn’t from the southern part of the United States, everyone was an honorary member of the family when singing along to songs like ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ or ‘Freebird’. The southern rockers could get nasty when they wanted to, though, and ‘Gimme Three Steps’ was a look at the dark side of the good ol’ boys.
Coming midway through their debut release, ‘Three Steps’ feels like the typical upbeat rocking song, as Ronnie Van Zant tells the story about a reckless night at a dive bar that gets a little bit out of hand. While he may have been a master storyteller, there wasn’t much fiction that went into the original draft of the tune.
When discussing the song’s origins, guitarist Gary Rossington said that the line about someone trying to tear Van Zant apart, telling Guitar World: “Ronnie went into a bar to look for someone and me and Allen were too young to get in so were waiting for him outside, and we were waiting and waiting, then he came running out with a big ol’ guy chasing him, yelling”.
This wasn’t exactly the first time that Van Zant found himself on the wrong side of a fight, though. In the Behind the Music episode on the band, pianist Billy Powell said that no one wanted to mess with the singer, saying, “Everyone knew they didn’t want to fight with them, because they knew they were going to get really really hurt”.
Despite the fun energy of the song, Van Zant is singing about admitting he was wrong, asking if this aggressor would just give him a minute to reach the door before he’s out of there. Though the song ends nicely, Van Zant almost wasn’t so lucky, with Rossington going on to say, “The guy had a gun and he was a redneck and he was drunk – a nasty combination of things – and Ronnie said, ‘If you’re going to shoot me, it’s going to be in the ass or in the elbow.’ And he took off like a bat out of hell”.
That one wild night for Van Zant was just a pit stop in the reckless behaviour of the band. Throughout their tenure, Rossington and guitarist Allen Collins would be involved in several auto accidents, one of which inspired the song ‘That Smell’. While they seemed indestructible at the time, it all came crashing down when the band’s plane crash landed during their Street Survivors tour, leaving Van Zant dead.
While Rossington certainly doesn’t defend some of their action at the time, he was proud of the details they put in the songs until the day he died, explaining, “We always just considered ourselves a working-man’s band and thought every song should tell a story that people could relate to. When we finish a song, you know what it’s about”.
The scene at the end of ‘Gimme Three Steps’ could have ended pretty grizzly, but for those few minutes that the guitars are playing, it’s just a rip-roaring good time.
Related Topics