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Lynyrd Skynyrd review, Hydro, Glasgow: a mix of misty-eyed nostalgia and all-out rock

Lead singer Johnny Van Zant - REX
Lead singer Johnny Van Zant - REX

“So you’re die-hards, right?” asked singer Johnny Van Zant, raising a paper cup in a toast of thanks to the near-capacity crowd. There was little doubt the vast majority of those in the hall had been around the block once or twice in their relationship with Lynyrd Skynyrd. But, really, it should have been the audience raising a toast to the men onstage.

Southern rock pioneers out of Jacksonville, Florida, Lynyrd Skynyrd powered through the 1970s as a good-time fusion of blues, country and rock. Their apparent oak-like sturdiness as a unit was tested to extremes by the 1977 plane crash which killed the band’s original singer Ronnie Van Zant (Johnny’s elder brother), guitarist Steve Gaines and backing singer Cassie Gaines; their subsequent and unlikely comeback in 1987 with Johnny taking his brother’s role was the stuff of rock legend.

With such a history behind them, this Last of the Street Survivors farewell tour is appropriately named, particularly as powerhouse guitarist and only remaining founder member Gary Rossington has recently had a pacemaker fitted. That they were here to perform for us at all was an unlikely turn of events; that they were able to turn in such a fierce hour-and-three-quarters of hits and fan favourites as part of a 17-month international tour was nothing short of a miracle.

Van Zant’s voice is raw and weathered, and as such perfectly attuned to the sense of seen-it-all loss needed for anti-heroin songs That Smell and The Needle and the Spoon; guitarist Rickey Medlocke and pianist Peter Keys, his dazzling white suit matching the similarly-hued piano, hammered out a raw barroom funk on I Know a Little; and Don’t Ask Me No Questions was an entirely old-school riff on life on the road.

In these times, the defiance of Gimme Back My Bullets (although it’s unclear in the lyric whether the narrator intends them for himself alone) feels less carefree than it once might have, although the sense of pining reflection in the open-hearted Simple Man is testament to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ability to create a sense of yearning. In fact, the tone of most of the set was that of misty-eyed nostalgia.

Only with the step-change into barreling rock for closing trio - Gimme Three Steps, JJ Cale’s Call Me the Breeze and the signature Sweet Home Alabama - did the concert burst fully into urgent life. And when they performed Free Bird as the encore - with Van  Zant pointing at an image of his brother onscreen and intoning “Yes sir!” after the line “…would you still remember me?” - it was obvious Lynyrd Skynyrd intend to party all the way to the end.  They had saved the best until last.