The late Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant would have turned 72 years old today (January 15th). By all accounts (including his mother) he was a mean drunk but he could sing and write songs. He wrote about real life incidents like the time how Ronnie Van Zant once avoided getting his ass kicked…or worse with the song “Gimme Three Steps”. Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington was with the late Ronnie Van Zant the night of the events that led Ronnie to write “Gimme Three Steps.” He says it’s all true, though some small changes were made for dramatic effect.
“The bar that we were at was called WD West Tavern. It was in the west side of Jacksonville. That actually happened to Ronnie. The words say it all. He was dancing with this girl, and this guy comes in that wanted to fight him. He wasn’t gonna shoot him, just fight. But they did fight over her, and Ronnie won, actually, but we just made the story up from there. The guy had a knife, not a gun, but it was all really true. It’s just taken from a real story and we just kinda did a song from it.”
