{"id":709946,"date":"2026-07-25T03:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T03:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709946\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T03:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T03:56:10","slug":"lynyrd-skynyrds-gimme-back-my-bullets-the-story-behind-the-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709946\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynyrd Skynyrd\u2019s Gimme Back My Bullets:: the story behind the album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the albums that Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/a> made in the 1970s, Gimme Back My Bullets is their most underrated. And its harshest critic was Ronnie Van Zant himself.<\/p>\n

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After the album failed to match the success of 1975\u2019s Nuthin\u2019 Fancy, Van Zant complained: \u201cWe were going for a completely different sound, and it didn\u2019t work. We had always been so heavy and muddy, we decided to make a clean Lynyrd Skynyrd album. The material was good. It was just too\u2026 refined.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if Gimme Back My Bullets sounded a little slicker than the band\u2019s previous albums, it was still a great rock\u2019n\u2019roll record. And even if Van Zant was unhappy about the way the album turned out, it was telling that his comments attributed no blame to producer Tom Dowd. As guitarist Gary Rossington<\/a> said: \u201cWe loved Tom! He was like a father to us, and he really inspired us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Like Al Kooper<\/a>, the band\u2019s mentor and producer of their first three albums, Dowd was a perfect fit for Lynyrd Skynyrd. A veteran of the music business since the 1940s, Dowd had recorded legendary soul and jazz artists such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.<\/p>\n

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\"Lynyrd\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Michael Putland\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In the rock era, he\u2019d worked on some of Skynyrd\u2019s favourite albums, including Cream\u2019s Wheels Of Fire, Derek And The Dominos\u2019 Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, and The Allman Brothers\u2019 At Fillmore East.<\/p>\n

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And when he was hired by Skynyrd in 1975, Dowd\u2019s reputation as a hit producer had been confirmed by the multi-platinum successes of Eric Clapton\u2019s 461 Ocean Boulevard and Rod Stewart\u2019s Atlantic Crossing.<\/p>\n

Featuring a slimmed-down Skynyrd line-up with only Rossington and Allen Collins on guitars (following the departure of Ed King), Gimme Back My Bullets was recorded at The Record Plant in Los Angeles in September 1975, and at Capricorn Studios in Macon, Georgia in November.<\/p>\n

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And such was the bond between Skynyrd and their highly respected producer was so tight that Rossington recalls, \u201cWe joked about calling the album Ain\u2019t No Dowd About It.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s Southern soul influences and Dowd\u2019s feel for black music dovetailed beautifully on Double Trouble, the best song on the album and the funkiest that Skynyrd ever recorded, with Ronnie recalling the 11 times he\u2019d been jailed for various offences, most of them involving public intoxication.<\/p>\n

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Double Trouble (The Old Grey Whistle Test 1975) (4K 60fps) – YouTube
\n\"Lynyrd<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere, there\u2019s an echo of New Orleans funk titans The Meters on I Got The Same Old Blues, Skynyrd\u2019s second brilliant cover of a JJ Cale song (after Call Me The Breeze on Second Helping). There are flavours of country and blues in All I Can Do Is Write About It and Roll Gypsy Roll: the former was an eco-protest song; the latter, more characteristically, including an admission from Ronnie that \u2018most of the money I done stuck up my nose\u2019. And contrary to the singer\u2019s view of this album as \u201ctoo refined\u201d, there are some crunching hard rock songs here, including the menacing title track and the creeping, Free-inspired Cry For The Bad Man.<\/p>\n

Few people ever told Ronnie Van Zant to his face that he\u2019d got something wrong. But he misjudged this record. Like Deep Purple\u2019s Come Taste The Band or Aerosmith\u2019s Night In The Ruts, Gimme Back My Bullets is Lynyrd Skynyrd\u2019s lost classic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of all the albums that Lynyrd Skynyrd made in the 1970s, Gimme Back My Bullets is their most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-709946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}