Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant would have turned 71 today (January 15th). Here’s a bit of history. Back in the day if you had a hit single and it was moving up the Billboard Hot 100 quickly they put a bullet next to it. That’s where the phrase “Number 1 with a bullet” came from. The band wanted some more hits so they wrote “Gimme Back My Bullets” Some fans had the wrong idea about what kind of bullets they meant. Gary Rossington explains it was about record sales, not guns::
“It was about ‘Gimme Back My Bullets’ in the charts, not about really guns. But I remember doing that in concert when it first came out and people used to throw 22 shells and shotgun shells at us when we did it a lot and we’d get hit all the time with them, so we had to drop the song from the set because we were getting hit by bullets so much. I’m glad they weren’t shooting and they were just throwing them, but, it was kinda funny.”
Photo Credit :Kent Miller / PR Photos
