Lynyrd Skynyrd Honors Late Bassist

The past is a potent and irresistible force in pop music, which helps explain the unlikely resurrection of Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1987, a full decade after key members of the Florida rock band were killed in a plane crash. The new group has now been playing twice as long as the original.

So at the Universal Amphitheatre Sunday, Lynyrd Skynyrd was much more than a tribute band, though also something short of the real thing. With singer Johnny Van Zant firmly in the place of his late brother Ronnie, the band was tight and convincing, favoring classic songs over new material. No reinterpretations were attempted or desired.

The concert was also partly a tribute to longtime bassist Leon Wilkeson, who died July 28 between tour dates, causing the Amphitheatre show to be moved. The crowd sang along to 1976’s “Simple Man,” which Van Zant dedicated to the bassist as a huge portrait of Wilkeson was raised behind the band.

Lynyrd Skynyrd has never left the airwaves, and its Southern rock influence can still be felt in the disparate music of Detroit’s Kid Rock and Atlanta’s Black Crowes. Sunday’s newer material was unremarkable roadhouse blues, lacking the original band’s brutal finesse, which could be heard even in a song as simple as 1977’s “I Know a Little.” But the band (with Ean Evans installed as Wilkeson’s replacement) could recapture Skynyrd’s most moving moments, such as 1973’s “Tuesday’s Gone,” its manly sensitivity and gospel flavor intact despite Van Zant’s tough-love persona.

The inevitable show-closing “Free Bird” could have been ponderous, but the band wisely pared the epic back down to its original arrangement. In that sense, it remained a fitting showcase for Skynyrd’s three guitarists (including founding member Gary Rossington), with music that was absolutely familiar and genuinely exciting.