Last founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd dead at 71

Gary Rossington, founding member and guitarist of the iconic Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd has died. He was 71.

“It is with our deepest sympathy and sadness that we have to advise, that we lost our brother, friend, family member, songwriter and guitarist, Gary Rossington, today,” the band posted on Facebook.

The band announced his death Sunday and no cause was revealed.

“Gary is now with his Skynyrd brothers and family in heaven and playing it pretty, like he always does,” the band wrote, asking for fans to keep Rossington’s family in their prayers.

He was the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd and leaves behind his wife, Dale Krantz, and two daughters.

Rossington was born on Dec. 4, 1951, in Jacksonville, Fla., and was raised by a single mother after his father died after he was born.

In 1964, Rossington met drummer Bob Burns and bassist Larry Junstorm, and the trio hit it off over their love of music and baseball.

That same year, during a Little League baseball game, singer Ronnie Van Zant hit a line drive into the shoulder of Burns, and the initial spark of the world-renowned band was born, Rolling Stone reported.

Rossington, Burns, Van Zant, and guitarist Allen Collins gathered at Burns’ Jacksonville home that afternoon to jam to the Rolling Stones’ song “Time Is on My Side.”

The boys would go on to adopt the band name Lynrd Skynyrd — as a nod at the name of a coach at Rossington’s high school with a similar name and after a character in the 1963 novelty hit “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp).”

In 1973, the band released their debut album “Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd,” which included the now iconic songs “Simple Man,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” and their most notable song “Free Bird.”

The rocker, whose remarkable guitar slide helped make the band’s song “Free Bird” an all-time fan favorite, had cheated death on more than one occasion, Rolling Stone reported.

In 1976, Rossington survived a devastating car wreck where he drove his Ford Torino into a tree. The crash inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell.” Only a year later, in 1977, he survived the tragic plane crash in Mississippi, which killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines.

Rossington broke his two arms and a leg and punctured his stomach and liver in the infamous plane crash.

“It was a devastating thing,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2006. “You can’t just talk about it real casual and not have feelings about it.”

A decade after the crash, Rossington would rejoin the band after Van Zant’s brother, Johnny Van Zant, had reformed the group.

In 2003, the guitarist underwent quintuple bypass surgery, and in 2015 suffered a heart attack that led to multiple heart surgeries causing him to leave the band in July 2021.

Despite Lynyrd Skynyrd being famously plagued with tragedy in the eyes of many fans, Rossington never considered the band to be the tragic entity many portrayed them as following all the turmoil.

“I don’t think of it as tragedy — I think of it as life,” he told Rolling Stone upon the group’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2006. “I think the good outweighs the bad.”