legendary tones

Gary Rossington gets his wings onstage at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York, in 2013.

Photo by Frank White

The guitarist’s brawny Les Paul tones helped create the Lynyrd Skynyrd legacy on hits like “Free Bird” and “That Smell,” and made him a 6-string hero in his own right.

Gary Rossington—the guitarist who inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell” and then played the hell out of it, with sailing, melodramatic feedback and a corpulent, grizzly-bear tone decorated by squealing pinch harmonics—died on Sunday, March 5, after at least a decade of coronary issues, including bypass surgeries and a reported heart attack in 2015. Rossington, who held the reins of Skynyrd ’til the end, was the band’s last surviving original member.

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