When Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s co-founders began playing together in 1964, Southern rock was still in its infancy. The musicians were young, too—so young that when it came time to choose a name for the band, they turned to their own high school for inspiration, ultimately naming Lynyrd Skynyrd after the school’s gym teacher and strict rule enforcer, Leonard Skinner.
Videos by American Songwriter
As the musicians became men, Southern rock became one of the dominant sounds of the 1970s. Lynyrd Skynyrd joined groups like Charlie Daniels Band, The Allman Brothers Band, and The Marshall Tucker Band in broadcasting that sound to an audience that existed far outside the actual South itself. “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” became radio staples that introduced listeners to a genre rooted in grit, guitars, and geography.
Meanwhile, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s albums—all of which featured the bandmates on the cover—introduced fans to the musicians themselves. For Skynyrd’s audience, the appeal wasn’t just the music. It was the people, the community, and the spirit of big, boozy blues-rock, too.
We’ve ranked the band’s most memorable album covers below.
5. Gimme Back My Bullets (1976)
Arriving on the heels of three platinum-certified records, Gimme Back My Bullets was the band’s first release not to feature a Top 40 hit. Even so, it showcased a band that had spent most of the 1970s on tour, perfecting its three-guitar attack. Those guitars took centerstage on Gimme Back My Bullets, an album that was more about fretwork firepower than gun ownership. (In fact, the band’s previous release, Nuthin’ Fancy, featured the anti-gun song “Saturday Night Special,” whose lyrics addressed the dangers of firearms.)
A relatively simple album by Skynyrd standards, Gimme Back My Bullets also features a relatively simple cover. In the photograph, we see the band’s slimmed-down lineup of six members standing together, staring down the camera, with the only smile coming from keyboardist Billy Powell.
4. Nuthin’ Fancy (1975)
Nuthin’ Fancy was the final record to feature guitarist Ed King, who left the band during the Torture Tour—a 90-day, 61-show slog that was infamous for its backstage hedonism—as well as the first to feature Artimus Pyle, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marines who replaced the band’s original drummer, Bob Burns.
[RELATED: A Look Behind the Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant]
Those personnel changes are reflected on the album’s cover. Also reflected is the album’s rushed creation. With the Torture Tour looming on the horizon, Lynyrd Skynyrd only had 17 days to record Nuthin’ Fancy. The album was still being mixed by the time the band hit the road. The cover image itself—a somewhat unflattering pose of the seven bandmates, shot from below and featuring mostly sky—seems a little rushed, too, as though the photographer ran out of time to snap a better shot. Even so, it earns a fourth-place spot here for spotlighting just how busy these musicians really were during their peak.
3. Second Helping (1974)
Lynyrd Skynyrd toured with The Who in 1973, serving as the opening act on the band’s Quadrophenia tour. The experience strengthened the bonds between Skynyrd’s seven members, and when the bandmates returned to the studio in early 1974 to record the majority of Second Helping, they sounded tighter and more tenacious.
For Second Helping‘s cover art, they commissioned visual artist Jan Salerno to draw a psychedelic mosaic featuring illustrations of the band members, as well as marijuana leaves and a whole lot of geometric shapes. This was a stoner’s otherworldly landscape, and although the inclusion of “Sweet Home Alabama” was surely responsible for the album’s double-platinum sales, the trippy cover art didn’t hurt.
2. (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd) (1973)
After recording their debut album in Doraville, Georgia, the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd drove to the nearby town of Jonesboro for an all-day photo shoot. The image that became the album’s iconic cover was the final one taken that afternoon. In the shot, bandmates Leon Wilkeson, Billy Powell, Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Bob Burns, Allen Collins, and Ed King pose against a brick building on Jonesboro’s Main Street in all their bell-bottomed, long-haired glory. It’s a straightforward shot that basically introduces the bandmates, making it an appropriate cover for an album whose very title—a phonetic spelling of the band’s name—was quite introductory, too. (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd) soon became a staple of southern rock, thanks to hits like “Simple Man,” “Free Bird,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” and “Gimme Three Steps.”
1. Street Survivors (1977)
When Street Survivors first hit stores on October 17, 1977, the album’s fiery cover image—which featured all seven bandmates surrounded (or, in Steve Gaines’ case, nearly engulfed) by flames—wasn’t controversial. In fact, the most startling thing might’ve been Ronnie Van Zant’s t-shirt, which featured the cover art of a different album: Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. Skynyrd had released “Sweet Home Alabama” three years earlier as a response to “Southern Man” and “Alabama,” two Neil Young songs that appeared to accuse the modern American South of perpetuating racism. Skynyrd responded by name-checking and criticizing Young in “Sweet Home Alabama,” although the two acts maintained respect for one another during the years that followed.
Three days after Street Survivors‘ release, though, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crashed in a swamp outside Gillsburg, Mississippi. The band was flying to Baton Rouge for the fifth date of the Street Survivors promotional tour, which was ironically, sadly, titled Tour of the Survivors. Van Zant, Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines were killed in the accident, along with both pilots and the band’s assistant road manager.
This fatal crash turned the Street Survivors cover into a hauntingly ironic image that reminded many viewers—including Steve Gaines’ widow, Teresa, who lobbied MCA to reissue the album with a different image—of the musicians’ deaths. MCA acquiesced, releasing a new version of Street Survivors with a photograph of the band standing against a black background instead.
Photo by Jim McCrary/Redferns
