The early years of AC/DC are known more for the rucks and fistfights they had with other bands than any sense of camaraderie. There was one band they saw as kindred spirits, though, to the extent that they ended up jamming with Lynyrd Skynyrd on a day off in Jacksonville, Florida during a US tour.
“With all bands there’s a rivalry but when we met those guys we really hit it off,” late Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington once told Classic Rock. “We were kind of alike – ratty little guys with attitude.”
After going to their show and having a few post-match drinks with the band, they all decamped to Rossington’s house on the river, drinking until the early hours on the long dock, chatting until the sun came up. “We talked and talked till daylight,” remembered Rossington. “We had a blast with them. We just partied down.”
The next day, perhaps in an effort to shake off the cobwebs, all members of both bands crammed into the little studio that Skynyrd had just built. “It was a practice room about the size of a two-car garage. We ended up jamming with them and Kevin Elson, our mixing guy, recorded it,” said Rossington. “We might have jammed on Sweet Home Alabama, I think. Jamming with them was so cool. Both bands had really just made it and we were celebrating all that hard work.”
The tapes from that day’s session, though, have been lost to time – either that or someone has some gold sitting on a shelf somewhere, but Rossington remarked the main thing he took from that time was how the groups saw bits of themselves in each other. “We were the same kind of band – they were cocky Australians, we were cocky southern rebels. Those were some good times.”
