Lynyrd Skynyrd: Nuthin' Fancy

WITH THREE full-time electric guitarists, a piano player and a fireplug of a lead singer who looks like Robert Blake's Baretta in a hippie disguise, Georgia's Lynyrd Skynyrd presents an unusually broad front line. And the band's live grand finale ("Our tribute to Du-ane"), the relentlessly ascending 'Free Bird', is rock & roll at its most classically enveloping – a must see. On record, Skynyrd, with the aid of producer Al Kooper, approximates its hot live sound by limiting overdubbed extras (with three guitars and a keyboard, overdubbed parts are hardly necessary) and – partly through extensive room miking – by enclosing the band in a natural ambience.