The Lynyrd Skynyrd story, told erroneously for decades, starts not with Ronnie Van Zant but with Bob Burns.

The seed was planted on Feb 9, 1964 with Beatlemania, which would soon sweep the US and the world. It was particularly influential on a generation of budding musicians in Jacksonville Florida. Among those was Burns, a thirteen-year-old aspiring drummer.

Burns, whose father eventually became a well-to-do business executive, was—like many students at Lake Shore Junior High School in Jacksonville’s Westside—downright stoked after seeing the British sensations perform “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show.

In a stroke of serendipity, the Fab Four also performed in Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl in September of that year—one of only two southern appearances, the other being in Dallas—and in doing so set many if not most local teen-age musicians aflame. The group’s Jacksonville appearance would create far-reaching waves in the region. This was more than just a concert: it was a life-changing event, a baptism, for young, aspiring musicians in Northeast Florida.

The Beatles were followed in short order by a wave of British groups who collectively were dubbed the British Invasion. By early ‘65, having been bitten by the music bug, Burns had decided to put his own group together.

There were already at least two other prominent groups that had been formed by Lake Shore students: The Mods and the Squires. Both had been heavily influenced by the British Invasion, but the Mods also included numbers by American groups such as the folk-rock-influenced Night Shadows (“Little Black Egg”) from nearby Daytona Beach, the Los Angeles-based Byrds, and Tacoma-based guitar-instrumental band the Ventures. Steele also loved the Beach Boys, but he doesn’t mention in his memoir whether that group’s material was represented in the Mods’ repertoire. Certainly the name “the Mods” had British connotations.

Larry Steele, who died in 2018, is the author of an excellent history of the Jacksonville music scene titled As I Recall. He was also the bass player for the Mods as well as many other prominent bands, including 38 Special. Steele’s best friend was guitarist Allen Collins, then 12, another Lake Shore JHS student who lived in nearby Hyde Park, across the Cedar River. Collins played rhythm guitar with the Mods. Collins would remain with the Mods through early 1966. Hence—contrary to the official biographies—Collins was not available to work with the future Skynyrd boys until that time.

For that matter neither was singer Ronnie Van Zant.

The Mods soon found they had some serious competition: another British Invasion-inspired group called the Squires, led by guitarist Rick Doeschler, who was from a notably nicer part of town. Someone from the school got the idea to stage a “battle of the bands” at Lake Shore JHS cafeteria.

Another neighborhood group was soon in the works: Burns said in a 2015 documentary-film interview he, like the Squires and the Mods, also had the idea to form a band after being inspired by the British Invasion.

Burns soon enlisted the services of teenaged bassist Larry Junstrom, who also attended Lake Shore JHS. Junstrom happened to live only three blocks or so from the Burns household in the same small cinderblock subdivision north of Park Street in the Hillcrest area, also close to the Vant Zant home. “First it was me and Larry,” Burns said. They needed a guitarist. Burns told Junstrom he knew just the guy: Gary Rossington, who lived about a mile east with his widowed mother on the other side of four-lane Cassat Avenue, in a sedate, wood-frame house inside the old city limits.

Rossington would cart his amplifier west on Yerkes Street, cross busy Cassat, to the Burns carport on Alecia Drive, where the three aspiring musicians rehearsed. Burns christened the trio Me, You and Him. Rossington corroborated this account in a 1998 Billboard interview.

Meanwhile, in April 1965, Squires guitarist Doeschler was approached in science class by a student named Nadine Inscoe, whose parents owned an auto-parts business and lived in stately Old Ortega [locals pronounce it “Orteega”]. Inscoe politely informed Doeschler that her boyfriend, Ronnie Van Zant, had seen the Squires at a house party held in nearby Ortega

Forest—across the tracks, literally, from Old Ortega but still very quiet and nice—and was impressed. Doeschler, flattered, said thanks. He had never heard of Van Zant. Had he known about RVZ’s reputation as a bad-ass, Doeschler likely would have thought twice.

Inscoe then sprung it on him: Van Zant wanted to audition to be the group’s singer. Doeschler said he’d see if that were a possibility and get back to her. He talked it over with the other members, and since none of them liked to sing anyway, he reported back to her that they’d be willing to meet with and subsequently audition Van Zant.

The interested parties met up at Carter’s Pharmacy in Ortega and had sodas together. Van Zant was exceedingly courteous and affable, so the members agreed to hear him sing. “He was soft-spoken and polite,” Doeschler said. Besides, “he was older, so we looked up to him.”

The gathering went over to drummer Steve Rosenbloom’s house in Ortega—rather posh in comparison to the somewhat rough-and-tumble area Van Zant lived in with his trucker dad and donut-shop-waitress mom. There were no streetfights in Ortega.

Van Zant’s audition went off well: everyone in the Squires seemed satisfied, and just like that, he was in. He soon suggested a name change to the hipper moniker “Us.” The name stuck—not because he bulldozed the others but because they saw it as an improvement.

Steele likes to tell the story that there was a second battle—a rematch of sorts—between the Squires and Us with RVZ now on board. However neither Doeschler nor fellow Us guitarist Taylor Corse have any recollection of this purported second battle—which Steele continued to insist Us won.

Doeschler does recall RVZ inviting him to ride with him to see the Rolling Stones perform at the Jacksonville Coliseum on May 8, 1965. Van Zant picked Doeschler up in his new, red Mustang convertible his father, Lacy, had bought him a few months previously for his seventeenth birthday. 

The exact chronology at this point is unclear. Doeschler and the other Squires were set to go on to Lee High School [now Riverside High]. In summer of 1965, the members decided to quit music and focus on tennis and girls. Us abruptly disbanded. Van Zant took a hiatus from the music biz.

Down but not out, Van Zant, like Collins, would nonetheless find a place to land: Bob Burns’ budding band.

In a documentary-film interview, Burns tell the story of RVZ popping by his house one morning in 1966. Burns, who was actually a bit of a bad-ass himself, opened the front door as he was leaving for school, and there stood Van Zant. Burns assumed Van Zant wanted a showdown, for what reason he couldn’t fathom.

Van Zant didn’t always need a reason—or much of one—to clobber someone.

For example, Gene Odom in his 2002 memoir Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock, explains how Van Zant confronted local guitarist Jay Zienta on the street with no explanation nor apparent motive. Van Zant jumped out of a car he was riding in and without a word took a swing at Zienta. Zienta, who had coached the Mods and would later wind up working with members of Blackfoot, turned his face away. Van Zant’s punch landed in the back of Zienta’s head, stunning him but wreaking little if any serious damage. Van Zant got back in the car, and the driver, Odom’s brother, took off.

Burns, seeing Van Zant on his doorstep unannounced, braced himself and took a deep breath. In a 2015 filmed interview, he related the story:

I said, “I don’t wanna fight you, man.” And he [Van Zant] said, “I aint here to fight.” He says, “I’m a singer, man.” I said, “You’re a singer?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “I’ll be dang.” I said, “I got a bass player [Junstrom], and I have a guitar player [Rossington]. Why don’t let’s try to put something together.”

Burns did some quick mental calculations: adding Van Zant to the lineup would be advantageous to his and his group’s career—but of course the name Me, You and Him would no longer make sense. Seemed like a no-brainer.

Even with RVZ on board, Burns had decided the sound was still too thin. Burns said he wanted to recruit a second guitarist. RVZ agreed. Lots of budding pickers owned (mostly cheap) guitars, but few had amplifiers big enough to cut a gig. “I know just the guy,” Burns told RVZ. “Allen Collins.” Collins had recently come a cropper.

Collins had just had a major falling out with Mods bassist Larry Steele: the two had been wrestling in Steele’s yard, and Steele—to his eternal regret—pulverized the tall but emotionally delicate Collins with a pro-wrestling move called a “piledriver.” Collins immediately divorced himself from Steele, which entailed surreptitiously quitting the Mods. He quietly went over to Mods drummer James Rice’s house, let himself in, and removed his amp. The others had no idea Collins was leaving until they arrived and that saw his gear was gone.

Unbeknownst to Collins, he would soon have a place to land: Bob Burns’ new group with its new singer, Ronnie Van Zant.

According to the perhaps-too-colorful official story, Burns and Van Zant went driving around Collins’ neighborhood on the other side of the Cedar River looking for him. Collins, pedaling his bicycle, saw them coming, jumped off and climbed a tree to avoid them. RVZ purportedly had to talk him down, assuring that they only wanted to recruit him for their new, as-yet-unnamed band.

Steele puts the date of the new group’s formation—including Van Zant and Collins—at May 1966.

Some members of the Mods, however, objected to Collins’ rash decision to leave the group with no notice. According to Steele’s account, drummer James Rice got Collins on the telephone and unwisely threatened him with a real ass-whipping—by Steele—if he didn’t return toute suite. This was the exact wrong tactic, since Collins’ feeling of being physically menaced was the very reason he had left the group in the first place.

Ironically, if Collins thought he was escaping physical violence by going over to Bob Burns’ group—which quickly became RVZ’s group—he would have another think coming. “Ronnie never hesitated to keep his boys in line…with his powerful fists….” Gene Odom writes.” [T]hey always took his abuse.”

Van Zant and his riding buddy (later bodyguard and security chief) Odom, who was even tougher than he, went over to Rice’s house, where the remaining members of the Mods were gathered. The meeting resembled a mafia sit-down. It was quickly agreed that Collins would join the new group without any further discussion from his former bandmates.

Like a mafia don, Van Zant could be gently but firmly persuasive when he wanted to be. Odom quotes Van Zant:

Larry, the way I look at it is this: You’ve got a really good guitar player in Donnie Ulsh. You’ve got Allen, and he ain’t that good. Gary ain’t that good either. Now I’ll take Allen and I’ll take Gary, and between the two of ‘em I’ll make [one] good guitar player…. Now, don’t that make sense?

Van Zant wanted to sing a few songs neither Rossington nor Collins knew correctly, especially the Stones’ “The Last Time.;” He rang up Doeschler and asked if he would teach them. Doeschler agreed. Van Zant, with Rossington and Collins in tow, showed up at the Doeschler household and were rehearsing when Mr. Doeschler got home from work. Mr. Doeschler had already known Van Zant—picture Ward Cleaver and Eddie Haskell here—but did not like the look of the other two. Doeschler said his father was a bit leery of these shady-looking longhairs: “Keep an eye on the silverware,” he told Doeschler‘s mother.

The still-unnamed quintet rehearsed furiously for an upcoming gig the group somehow landed at the annual fall festivities held at nearby St Matthew’s Catholic Church on Blanding Boulevard, only a mile north of Lake Shore JHS.

Bassist Larry Junstrom had stopped showing up for reheasals—he had bigger fish to fry, or so he thought. He had apparently joined another group, After Five, who was working more regularly. Determined that the show must go on, the others recruited at the last minute a third guitarist, Billy Skaggs, to fatten up the sound, presumably with something akin to bottom-heavy power chords. This may have been the seeds of the concept of the “three-guitar army” Jacksonville rock groups became famous for.

Steele writes that Jimmy Parker, formerly of Doeschler’s band, Us, was recruited to replace Junstrom on bass later that year, and the group settled on a name, the Pretty Ones, later changed to the Noble Five. Parker too, however, started missing rehearsals—and gigs—whereupon Steele filled in once or twice on bass. Parker was killed in a car crash in 1966, so Junstrom was re-added on bass, and the group became the Noble Five, later changing to One Percent.

I was in the audience at the Forest Inn on Lake Shore Boulevard—only a few blocks from Junstrom’s house—with some hippie friends in May 1969. We would often make the short trek from from Orange Park the Westside to hear live music. That night RVZ announced that he wanted to change the name to “Leonard Skinner” [sic].

In a 2018 documentary, Bob Burns explained: “People were calling us ‘One Percent Talent,’ and it was pissing him off.”

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