Rather than change his sound, Van Zant left the business and spent the next few years making a living driving a truck.
His career was going strong into the middle of the decade, playing with the same band he'd started with a decade earlier, but later on in the '80s, he found his brand of high-energy Southern rock falling out of favor. Van Zant recorded two more albums for Polydor, Round Two and Last of the Wild Ones, in 19, before moving on to Geffen Records, where he recorded Van Zant in 1985. That debut record concluded with his tribute to Ronnie, "Standing in the Darkness." Under the name Johnny Van Zant, he cut his first album, No More Dirty Deals, with the band - by now including Eric Lundgren on guitar and Ronnie Clausman on bass - in 1980. After Ronnie's death in 1977, Donnie Van Zant helped advise the group, but they didn't record their first album until 1980. His first group, the Austin Nickels Band, featuring Robbie Gay on guitar and Ribbue Morris on drums, played the local bar circuit, with Ronnie as mentor to the band. His original inclination was to be a drummer, but he ultimately chose singing as his profession - his brother Ronnie used to say that Johnny had the best voice in the family. The death of Ronnie Van Zant and other key members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd lineup in a plane crash on Octoeventually put Johnny in the position of being one holder of the Lynyrd Skynyrd legacy, but he started performing long before he became a part of the re-formed '80s/'90s version of the band.
38 Special's Donnie Van Zant, Johnny Van Zant grew up in the shadow of his older siblings, who emerged as major figures in rock & roll during the early and mid-'70s. The youngest brother of Lynyrd Skynyrd founder Ronnie Van Zant and.
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