Guitarist Gary Rossington, last survivor of Lynyrd Skynyrd, authors of 'Sweet Home Alabama,' dies

Florida guitarist Gary Rossington, the only surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, passed away this Sunday at the age of 71, leaving the band without its most iconic representative just four months before the southern rock legends embark on a new tour of United States, this time sharing the bill with other adorable dinosaurs of the genre, ZZ Top.

Rossington had been dragging serious health problems for years and his heart had been overcoming a fivefold

(2003), a heart attack in 2015 and an emergency operation less than two years ago.

Despite this delicate medical picture, she had vehemently refused any invitation to retreat.

“It is in my blood, I have dedicated my whole life to this.

If you quit, what would be next?

I like fishing, but how much time can you dedicate to something like that? ”, She had humorously summed up in a 2006 interview for

magazine .

Rossington's goodbye was announced by the band itself, without specifying the specific reason for the death, in a statement that ends like this: "Gary is now in heaven with his Skynyrd brothers playing cool stuff, as he always has."

It is shuddering to think that the musician had already survived two terrible episodes: a car crash in 1976 under the influence of alcohol (he ran his Ford Torino into a tree and a house, but managed to escape almost unscathed) and the traumatic plane crash on October 1977, when the gang's Convair 240 ran out of fuel and crashed into a Mississippi forest.

Three of the Skynyrds, his manager and the two pilots of the plane, died, but Rossington made it out alive despite his appalling share of injuries, which included broken arms, legs,

This long string of calamities was not enough for the musician from the city of Jacksonville to consider himself an unhappy man.

“The story of the Skynyrds is not tragic, but the reflection of life itself.

And the good things that have happened to us outweigh the bad ones”, he summarized in 2006 when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the most relevant honorary distinction granted in the United States to contemporary musicians.

The guild thus blessed for posterity a formation whose first album will reach its fiftieth anniversary in September and which has remained since then the epitome of southern rock, perhaps above its main competitors in geographical terms, the Allman Brothers.

, the devilish title of that debut, was produced by Al Kooper and closed with nine minutes of the prodigious

, the guitarist peak of a Rossington who at times made his Gibson whimper as if it were a seagull.

The

's initial admirers did not include Leonard Skinner, the stern high school teacher in Jacksonville who banned Gary from wearing long hair, ended up expelling him from school, and would eventually inspire the name Skynyrd.

The episode fits well with Rossington's penchant for inspirational baptisms of prominent figures.

Fatherless from an early age, Gary Robert named his first guitar after his mother, Berniece.

Under Gary's guidance, the band had started in the mid-1960s as a trio called Me, You and Him, but it wasn't until the addition of Ronnie Van Zant, a member of a rival baseball team, as singer, that the machine began to carburize.

After moving to Atlanta, that magical intersection between blues, rock, country and southern soul would be consolidated, which in 1974 enlarged the legend with a second album,

, which opened with the world anthem

, co-written by Rossington and still more famous in Spain since a decade later the Total Sinister from Vigo transfigured it into

.

Rossington's excesses with drink and other drugs led his own teammates to fine him $5,000 and remove bottles and toxic substances from the dressing rooms.

The Ford Torino accident inspired Ronnie Van Zant's somber

, a song with numerous allusions to death that featured prominently on the band's fifth studio album,

.

The fact that this work -with a cover in which the members of the group appeared between flames- saw the light only a few days before the plane crash accelerated the provisional end of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

After years of painful recovery from his injuries, Gary was able to return to the stage with fellow guitarist Allen Collins as the Rossington-Collins Band, a formulation with which they recorded two LPs.

The Skynyrds returned in 1987 with Johnny Van Zant, brother of the late Ronnie, taking over lead vocals.

Since then they had chained countless changes, but with their long-haired founder always in the starting lineup.

"A Lynyrd Skynyrd without Gary seems unthinkable to me," Johnny said on one occasion.

For now, everything suggests that the great historical brand of southern rock will continue to shine, although not a single one of its creators is left among us.

The first date shared with ZZ Top is set for July 21 in West Palm Beach (Florida).