This past Saturday night saw rock legends LYNYRD SKYNYRD hit Hammersmith Apollo and Altsounds took advantage of them being in the city and sat down for a coffee with guitarist Rickey Medlocke to talk about life with ‘Skynyrd, his musical heritage and their new album God & Guns (which is in stores now)…

“…on this particular record, there’s a little something in it for everybody to get next to it. We started this record with two guys, and all of a sudden we had to finish this record without those two guys we started it with: Billy, who passed away in January, a year ago, and Ian, who passed away right before we came over to Europe in May. So we lost two members. We were doing the record when Billy passed away and we decided we were going to finish it because it was the right thing to do. Here we are in Nashville working on the record, and across town one of our band mates is just slowly withering away from lung cancer. To be honest with you, it was so important for Gary, Johnny and me to finish that record and to put it out, not only for the fans but for those two guys and the guys that have gone before them, to carry on the tradition and carry on the name. Because no one certain name in the band is bigger than Lynyrd Skynyrd. That’s the biggest name. Nobody is ever going be bigger than that name….”