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he knocked on the door announcing "Room service." He strode in confidently, his long hair past his shoulders, shoeless and precariously carrying a huge tray of food playfully borrowed from a bellboy. "Willthat be all?,' he asked, before cracking intd a smile. It made one believe that musicians as well as politicians can be reborn. As he hunched over the wheel of his pickup truck driving to his lakeside home 30 rninutes from Jacksonville, Ronnie was a vision of self-renewal. He pointed out the track where he was jogging two miles daily to get in shape for the tour, and he detailed the high-protein diet his wife was holding him to. Then he gave in and stopped lor a six-pack, apologizing, "This is the most l'll have drunk in the past six weeks." As the guided tour continued,

he drove by a prison farm. .,Hey,,,he said, "if prisons, freight trains, swamps and gators don't get ya to write songs, man, y'ain't got no business writin' songs." Once at his home, the serenity he enjoyed around his wife of five years, Judy, and daughter Melody was clear. (He also had a daughter, now 10, by a failed previous marriage.) Van Zant crawled around on the living room rug, circling an armchair with his delighted daughter on it, playing ',gonna GETCHA." "The baby's had a lot to do with my maturing," he believed. Ronnie showed off his own superstar toy, a '54 white Mercedes "that I found settin' up on blocks in a junk shop. Found out there was only nine in the world," he explained, "and I put $11,000 into it already." Then Van Zant decided to try some fishing. He carried three poles and a long sleek gun "to blow away any gators that might come up on my land." While casually fly-casting and sipping beer, he talked about his tumultuous past. "l was abusin' myself on the road, because after all, man, if it ain't f un, it ain't worth it." But he didn,t

standable, as his narrative of the bad old nights continued. "We were doing bottles of Dom P6rignon, fifths of whiskey, wine and beer, and we'd all have to puke once each before goin' onstage. We couldn't even remember the order of the songs. Some guy crouched behind an amp and shouted them to us. We once looked at tapes of shows-man, we was sloppy drunk,', he f lushed. "l couldn't b elieve kids applauded for that shit." Other audiences-around his hometown, oddly-were less accepting, and he hadn't played there in six years. Ronnie claimed he was once so zonked ,.1 spit up one of my tonsils onstage and walked off. The people demolished our equipment, threw botfles, and four cops were hurt." Later that October evening, which was

It was hls year-old daughter, Metodyr, who gave Van Zant both lneentive to sober down and his most ioyful finat days.

condone the "fool things" like pouring Jack Daniel's into the TV set until it exploded. "lf you're into drinkin' and tearin'up hotels and blowin' gigs, that,s fine. But it'll take years off your life too. lain't as old as I look," he added, "and there are plenty of false teeth in our group. There's been treatment by doctors and hospitalizations for our

drinkin'."

The extent of treatment was under-

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portralt of Van Zant's close-knit kin, Ronnie was at the wheel of his prized Mercedes,
!n a Iast brother Donnie in the backseat, wife Judy along-

side and, in the rear, a sister's son, brother Johnnie, Melody and grandpa Lacy Van Zant, who gave the boys their love of music.

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