The Real Leonard Skinner
If you remember from the beginning of this article, the young budding rock band chose to name their band after their P.E. teacher, Leonard Skinner. The gym teacher and high-school coach came down on Ronnie Van Zant and his friends for keeping their hair way too long. At the time, it was considered to be anarchistic in a way.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
But Skinner later admitted that his strictness was exaggerated: “They were good, talented, hard-working boys… worked hard, lived hard, and boozed hard.” Skinner wasn’t a fan of their music if you must know. His son (a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan) remembers his father asking him, “What the hell kind of noise are you listening to?” The muse passed away in 2010, at the age of 77.