Allen Collins

Biography

Allen Collins was the lanky, wild-eyed guitarist who played the most famous outro solo in Southern rock. A founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, he co-wrote "Free Bird," "Gimme Three Steps" and "That Smell" with Ronnie Van Zant, and on the studio version of "Free Bird" he played every lead in that blazing, minutes-long jam himself, doubling his own parts. He was born Larkin Allen Collins Jr. on July 19, 1952, in Jacksonville, Florida, started playing at twelve with a few lessons from his stepmother, a country guitarist, and got his first guitar and amp from his mother. Seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 sent him straight into his first band, the Mods.

Here is the gem. When Van Zant and drummer Bob Burns pulled into his driveway in 1964 to recruit him, Collins saw two guys with tough reputations and assumed they had come to beat him up. He jumped on his bicycle, rode off and hid up a tree. Once they talked him down, he joined the band two weeks after Van Zant and Gary Rossington had formed it, partly because he owned his own gear. Years later, at his 1970 wedding, the whole band served in the wedding party wearing wigs over their long hair so the bride's parents would not be shocked, and the reception became one of the first public performances of "Free Bird," jam and all.

The band, later named Lynyrd Skynyrd as a jab at a high school gym teacher who hated long hair, broke through in 1973 opening for the Who on the Quadrophenia tour. Collins, Rossington and Ed King (later Steve Gaines) formed the famous three-guitar army, and Collins was the fiery one, playing hard, fast and loud with a stage presence all arms and legs. Rossington put it plainly: the whole long "Free Bird" jam was Allen by himself, and he was bad to the bone. Collins survived the October 20, 1977, plane crash in Mississippi that killed Van Zant, Gaines and Cassie Gaines, recovering from serious neck and arm injuries.

He came back with the Rossington Collins Band, which released Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere (1980) and This Is the Way (1981) and scored a hit with "Don't Misunderstand Me," then led the Allen Collins Band on Here, There & Back (1983). Injuries from a 1986 car accident ended his playing career, and he served as musical director when Skynyrd reunited in 1987, also founding Roll For Rock to support people with spinal cord injuries. He died on January 23, 1990, at 37, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2006. Every bar band that ever got the "play Free Bird!" shout owes him a debt.

Legendary Performance

"Free Bird", Knebworth Fair

August 21, 1976 · Knebworth Park, Hertfordshire, England

On August 21, 1976, Lynyrd Skynyrd played the Knebworth Fair in Hertfordshire, England, in front of a crowd estimated at well over 100,000, on a bill topped by the Rolling Stones. The Stones' stage had a huge tongue-shaped ramp stretching into the crowd, and Ronnie Van Zant led his band out onto it as if they owned the place. Allen Collins, Gary Rossington and newly arrived third guitarist Steve Gaines, backed by the Honkettes on vocals, played like they had something to prove.

The set peaked with "Free Bird." Collins, playing his natural-finish 1958 Gibson Explorer, stalked the tongue and tore through the outro jam, trading lines with Rossington and stretching the solo out with stinging bends and rapid-fire runs while the field roared. Many fans and critics who were there felt the openers outplayed the headliners that day, and the filmed footage remains one of the most watched clips of Southern rock guitar ever captured.

Knebworth was Skynyrd's biggest stage and their high-water mark as a live band, coming just weeks after the Atlanta shows that became One More from the Road. Little more than a year later the plane crash would end the original lineup, which makes this performance, with Collins at full throttle, a defining document of what the band was.

Gear

1958 Gibson Explorer (korina) and modified 1964 Gibson Firebird I (1958)

Known for: the live "Free Bird" outro on One More from the Road and at Knebworth

In Lynyrd Skynyrd's early years Allen Collins's main guitar was a 1964 Gibson Firebird I, a reverse-body model he modified with different pickups and a new neck, including a chrome-covered P-90 in the bridge and a Gibson vibrato arm. It is the guitar on most of the debut album, including the original "Free Bird" outro, and its bright, cutting bite helped his leads slice through a three-guitar band.

In 1976 he switched to the guitar most fans picture him with, a natural-finish 1958 Gibson Explorer made of korina, bought for about $3,000. The Explorer's angular body suited his gangly, high-energy stage style, and its thick, sustaining tone powered the live "Free Bird" on One More from the Road and at Knebworth. He kept playing it through the Allen Collins Band years. He also used a Fender Stratocaster after Ed King left and, from late 1977, a double-cutaway Gibson Les Paul Special with P-90s.

Peavey Mace (modified, with JBL-loaded 4x12s); earlier Fender Twin Reverb and Marshall

Known for: loud, punchy crunch for the three-guitar attack

Collins started out with Fender amps, including a Super Reverb shared on early gigs and a Silverface Twin Reverb in the early 1970s, and also used Marshalls. Around 1976 Skynyrd moved to Peavey, and Collins ran Peavey Mace heads modified to sound more like a Marshall, covered in tweed and driving 4×12 cabinets loaded with JBL speakers. Loud, clean-ish amps pushed hard gave him a punchy, articulate crunch where every note in a fast run still came through.

Vox wah pedal

Collins kept his signal chain simple. A vintage Vox wah pedal was his main effect, used for color and vocal-like sweeps, while most of his tone came straight from the guitar, the amp and his aggressive picking hand. The thrill of his solos came from speed, attack and volume rather than processing.

Signature Technique

Machine-Gun Pentatonics and the Free Bird Outro

Allen Collins played with an intensity that made him the firecracker of Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitar army. His style mixed blues licks with rock aggression and a dose of country twang, and he favored fast, repeated pentatonic patterns, bursting triplets and long strings of pull-offs that built tension until the band exploded around him.

The "Free Bird" outro is the textbook example. Over a driving G, B-flat and C progression, he starts with melodic phrases, then speeds up into machine-gun repetitions, hard unison bends and climbing runs, building in waves rather than playing one long flurry. In the studio he doubled his own lines to create a thick, layered sound, and live he traded and harmonized with Gary Rossington, a call-and-response that defined Southern rock guitar.

He was also a strong songwriter's guitarist. His riffs and chord work on "Gimme Three Steps," "That Smell" and "Saturday Night Special" show how well he could build a hook, and his partnership with Van Zant produced some of the band's most enduring songs. In the three-guitar lineup he understood space, locking in on rhythm and then stepping up for leads that cut through.

His influence runs deep in Southern rock, country rock and hard rock. "Free Bird" became a rite of passage for guitarists everywhere, and players from the Allman-inspired jam scene to modern country and metal guitarists have cited the solo as the moment they wanted to play loud, fast and with feeling.