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Lynyrd Skynyrd
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8017491/Lynyrd-Skynyrd-teacher-who-inspired-band-name-dies.html
Lynyrd Skynyrd teacher who inspired band name dies
Leonard Skinner, the school basketball coach who inspired the name of Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd after telling its members their hair was too long, has died aged 77.
Mr Skinner died in his sleep at the St. Catherine Laboure Manor in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been living for about a year. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's.
He was a PE teacher at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville in the late 1960s when he sent a group of students to the principal's office because their hair was too long. they were suspended and told to get their hair cut.
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Those students later formed a band under Mr Skinner's name, but with a spelling that gave a nod to Southern pronunciation.
The band became popular in the mid-1970s, with hits such as Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird. Three of the band members, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, were killed in a 1977 plane crash. The band regrouped and continues to perform.
Mr Skinner's surviving children said their father was never completely comfortable with being linked to the band but did grow to embrace it.
"He made a lot of new friends," his daughter, Susie Moore said. "That in itself really brought a lot of wonderful people in our family's lives, simply because they were Lynyrd Skynyrd fans, and they wanted to meet Dad. They loved him. They're part of our extended family now."
In a 1996 interview, Mr Skinner said of the band's backhanded tribute: "I just went along with the flow. There was not a much I could do about it."
He later changed jobs, becoming a property salesman. He gave the band permission to use a photo of his 'Leonard Skinner Realty' sign for the inside of their third album, Nuthin' Fancy, in 1975.
The band played up its image as redneck outsiders, with Mr Skinner depicted as its brutish nemesis but in reality it was only the school's principal who had the power to suspend pupils with long hair.
"I don't like to consider myself an evil guy and I don't think I was," Mr Skinner said.
The band's keyboard player Billy Powell, who was seriously injured in the 1977 plane crash, died in January 2009.
10 FACTS about Lynyrd Skynyrd
1) Previous names for the band included the Noble Five, My Backyard and One Percent.
2) The band finally got their name from the basketball coach at their Jacksonville High School, Forby Leonard Skinner, after he sent them to the Principle's office for having hair that was too long. At first they spelt it, Leonard Skinnerd, which then changed to their more distinctive spelling on their first album.
3) They established their trademark three guitar attack on their first big hit Free Bird which was a tribute to the recently deceased Allman Brothers guitarist Duane Allman.
4) The band's female backup singers were known as the Honkettes.
5) They supported the Who on their 1973 Quadraphenia tour.
6) 1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama was written as a tribute to the celebrated R& B studios Muscle Shoals, but after Neil Young's criticisms of the South in his songs Alabama and Southern Man they rewrote the third verse to rebuke him. But the band and Young were on good terms and the Canadian originally wrote Powderfinger for Lynryrd Skynyrd although they never recorded it.
7) Gimme Back My Bullets was a reference to Rolling Stone magazine's rating system. They had to stop playing it live because fans threw real bullets on stage.
8) Aerosmith had previously rejected the plane that crashed in 1977 and destroyed half the band at its peak for not being safe.
9) The cover of their sixth album, Street Survivors, released three days before the crash, which pictured the band surrounded by flames, had to be pulled.
10) The band reunited in 1987 with Johnny Van Zandt, brother of original singer Ronnie and were made honorary colonels in the Alabama State Militia.
Lynyrd Skynyrd teacher who inspired band name dies
Leonard Skinner, the school basketball coach who inspired the name of Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd after telling its members their hair was too long, has died aged 77.
Mr Skinner died in his sleep at the St. Catherine Laboure Manor in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been living for about a year. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's.
He was a PE teacher at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville in the late 1960s when he sent a group of students to the principal's office because their hair was too long. they were suspended and told to get their hair cut.
*
*
Those students later formed a band under Mr Skinner's name, but with a spelling that gave a nod to Southern pronunciation.
The band became popular in the mid-1970s, with hits such as Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird. Three of the band members, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, were killed in a 1977 plane crash. The band regrouped and continues to perform.
Mr Skinner's surviving children said their father was never completely comfortable with being linked to the band but did grow to embrace it.
"He made a lot of new friends," his daughter, Susie Moore said. "That in itself really brought a lot of wonderful people in our family's lives, simply because they were Lynyrd Skynyrd fans, and they wanted to meet Dad. They loved him. They're part of our extended family now."
In a 1996 interview, Mr Skinner said of the band's backhanded tribute: "I just went along with the flow. There was not a much I could do about it."
He later changed jobs, becoming a property salesman. He gave the band permission to use a photo of his 'Leonard Skinner Realty' sign for the inside of their third album, Nuthin' Fancy, in 1975.
The band played up its image as redneck outsiders, with Mr Skinner depicted as its brutish nemesis but in reality it was only the school's principal who had the power to suspend pupils with long hair.
"I don't like to consider myself an evil guy and I don't think I was," Mr Skinner said.
The band's keyboard player Billy Powell, who was seriously injured in the 1977 plane crash, died in January 2009.
10 FACTS about Lynyrd Skynyrd
1) Previous names for the band included the Noble Five, My Backyard and One Percent.
2) The band finally got their name from the basketball coach at their Jacksonville High School, Forby Leonard Skinner, after he sent them to the Principle's office for having hair that was too long. At first they spelt it, Leonard Skinnerd, which then changed to their more distinctive spelling on their first album.
3) They established their trademark three guitar attack on their first big hit Free Bird which was a tribute to the recently deceased Allman Brothers guitarist Duane Allman.
4) The band's female backup singers were known as the Honkettes.
5) They supported the Who on their 1973 Quadraphenia tour.
6) 1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama was written as a tribute to the celebrated R& B studios Muscle Shoals, but after Neil Young's criticisms of the South in his songs Alabama and Southern Man they rewrote the third verse to rebuke him. But the band and Young were on good terms and the Canadian originally wrote Powderfinger for Lynryrd Skynyrd although they never recorded it.
7) Gimme Back My Bullets was a reference to Rolling Stone magazine's rating system. They had to stop playing it live because fans threw real bullets on stage.
8) Aerosmith had previously rejected the plane that crashed in 1977 and destroyed half the band at its peak for not being safe.
9) The cover of their sixth album, Street Survivors, released three days before the crash, which pictured the band surrounded by flames, had to be pulled.
10) The band reunited in 1987 with Johnny Van Zandt, brother of original singer Ronnie and were made honorary colonels in the Alabama State Militia.
Thanks for posting this, I never knew the facts behind the name. Interesting.
Love 'em!! Saw them at Homecoming at the University of Alabama. Unbelievable.
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