It was not going to be an era of peace and love this time around, that was immediately clear clear. VanZant sang songs like "Gimme Three Steps," "I Ain't The One," "Things Goin' On" and "Poison Whiskey" with an innate familiarity with treachery and horror, the venomous warning and knife-twisting furry of Howlin' Wolf's scariest recordings.The depression at seeing the end of an era at Watkins Glen was washed away by the certainty that Lynyrd Skynyrd represented a whole new era. Though these guys clearly tokk their immediate inspiration from the British blues bands of the 1960s, lead singer Ronnie VanZant's delivery had none of the formalized, classicist distance from the material that characterized the British blues process. Not two guitarists, but three - Gary Rossinton, the anchor, was definitely out of the Keith Richards mode the electric-haired Allen Collins ripped out one Cream-era Eric Clapton solo after another Ed King, the most technically polished of the three, tossed in deft fills and soloed in some impossible cross between flat picking and psychedelia.ĭespite the roaring guitars, all eyes were riveted on the short, sandy-haired vocalist who whipped the crowd into a frenzy without moving from the center-stage spot from which he hurled his astonishingly menacing words. The Stones were an interesting analogy, but there was something else about this band. The set opened with "Workin' For MCA," which sounded more like a threat than a celebration. Guitar lines hung in the air like massive steel Calder mobiles propelled by the flailing rhythms. Lynyrd Skynyrd music roared through the room, riveting listeners with blood-curdling intensity. No amount of hype on Kooper's part could have prepared the audience for what they heard next. Lynyrd Skynyrd, though, was about to put the down payment on a legend. Elijah, and dimmed only slightly during Mose Jones' set. The buzz of conversation fairly drowned out the first band. The party was at one of Atlanta's hottest clubs at the time, a place called Richard's that was sardine-deep with 500 plus chili and fried chicken-eating, beer and whiskey-drinking music buisness people. So when Kooper boasted that he was sitting on a band that was going to be the next Rolling Stones, it was not hard to build up at least some curiosity to see what he was talking about. Kooper had been at several crossroads in rock and roll history already, playing with Bob Dylan's first electric band on Bringing It All Back Home, as keyboardist and frontman for the groundbreaking New York band the Blues Project, then as the conceptualist who coined a commercial formula by meshing jazz and R&B horn charts with a rock band in Blood Sweat and Tears. The uninspired performances at the Glen, particularly by an Allman Brothers band left emotionally shattered by the deaths of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, left no doubt that the event marked the end of an era. The Watkins Glen gathering was one of the few to come off relatively smoothly in the wake of Woodstock, but the ensuing years had turned the innocence of Woodstock Nation into a hackneyed set of rituals. It was a myth whose power was shaken almost immediately by the decable at Altamont, and taken apart piece by piece in the ensuing years of political repression. The people were drawn there by the glittering promise that had been glimpsed for years earlier at the Woodstock festival, the promise of a world guided by the rock and roll spirit into a better future. It was mid-July, 1973 and rain soaked the half-million people assembled in the rolling hills of upstate New York to hear the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead and the Band perform at Watkins Glen.
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