The rock band's frontman, Ronnie Van Zant; guitarist Steve Gaines; backing vocalist Cassie Gaines; and three others were killed. Rossington, another of the band's guitarists, survived. But the effects, both physical and psychic, still linger a quarter-century later.

"It's a lot of pain," he says, "and it hurts all the time."

Remarkably, Lynyrd Skynyrd, considered one of the greatest American rock bands of the '70s, still has a strong effect on contemporary music.

After the band re-formed in 1987, adding Ronnie's little brother, Johnny Van Zant, on vocals, Rossington assumed Ronnie's role as the spokesman and emotional core of the group.

The band, in first and second incarnations, has sold 36 million albums and continues to pack amphitheaters and arenas. Sweet Home Alabama, one of its best-known songs, provided the title for a box-office-topping romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. And you can hardly attend a rock concert, particularly in the South, without hearing someone shout "Free Bird" from the back of the hall.

"I guarantee you, I can start into Sweet Home Alabama on any stage in this country — just the first lick, and the crowd will go bananas," says country singer Travis Tritt, who counts Skynyrd records among his most formative musical experiences growing up in Georgia. "If you could ever get that lick down for Sweet Home Alabama, all the chicks at school would hang around."

Lynyrd Skynyrd combined a Southern mind-set with an approach to the blues, influenced by British rock bands, and a lyrical sense, courtesy of Ronnie, that was pure country. The fierceness of its three-guitar sound and the perception of the band as longhaired, hard-brawling roughnecks made them at once attractive and intimidating.

"They were a band any Southerner could be proud of and any Northerner could relate to," says Lee Ballinger, who wrote Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History.

"It was the kind of music that didn't pigeonhole you into being a cowboy or pigeonhole you into being a redneck or nothing," singer Tim McGraw says. "It was the kind of music that was serious rock 'n' roll music, but it was seriously from the South, too."

Last year, Drive-By Truckers, a band that also boasts three guitars, released Southern Rock Opera, a two-disc album based on the Skynyrd story. "There's a lot of things that would be better if (they were) more impacted by what Skynyrd did," says band front man Patterson Hood.

Ballinger sees Skynyrd's most direct impact on music in "the other side of the whole vast arena of the merger of country and rock — the other side from the Eagles."

Eddie Montgomery of the country duo Montgomery Gentry agrees. "You could take just about all the Skynyrd tunes and put 'em right on country radio right now," he says. "I got a lot of my front moves, on the front of the stage, from Ronnie Van Zant."

But Skynyrd's influence reaches beyond country, says Warren Haynes, guitarist for rock jam band Gov't Mule. "Even in bands that may not sound like Skynyrd, at least the guitar player listened to them," Haynes says. "It was guitar music, and that was such a fertile time for guitar players to learn. I've heard Pearl Jam songs that didn't sound at all like Skynyrd, but the guitar part did."

Little about Skynyrd's music was ever as obvious as it seemed. Detractors dismissed the band as rednecks, but such songs as the anti-handgun Saturday Night Special and That Smell, which warned of the dark side of substance use, told a different story. They were intelligent songs that engaged and challenged the group's audience. Gimme Three Steps contradicted the band's macho swagger by suggesting there was a time to fight and a time to turn tail and run.

Then there was Sweet Home Alabama, which contained Skynyrd's most obvious hook and most ambiguous lyric. When Skynyrd answered Neil Young's anti-Dixie screed Southern Man by singing, "Southern man don't need him around, anyhow," the band pretty much drove Young's records off the radio in the South — though Young and Van Zant wound up being mutual admirers. And many people heard the line "In Birmingham, they love the governor" as implied approval of Alabama Gov. George Wallace and his racist policies, completely missing the female singers booing him in the background.

"We liked it because of what it said lyrically, not because it was mindless drivel with really loud guitars that had a cool beat to it," Tritt says. "Every song practically that I can think of, from The Ballad of Curtis Loew to That Smell, they all had a message behind them."

These days, Skynyrd is caught in a paradox, a dual existence caused by its present incarnation and the legends of its past. "It's like two train tracks running parallel to each other," manager Ken Levitan says. "There's the old Skynyrd and the new Skynyrd — they exist with each other."

One track is represented by the myth of Ronnie Van Zant, a perpetually 28-year-old rock 'n' roll icon who is part martyr, part rebel. Even Rossington has a hard time leaving Ronnie in the past — not that he wants to. "I feel like he's still older than me and we're still all the same age," he says. "I ain't getting a good grasp on getting old here."

Rossington, however, remains in the world of aches and scars, where he not only ages but spends his life playing the songs of a band that never completely healed after the crash. He is left to deal with the day-to-day affairs: estates, disgruntled former members, criticism from people who believe Skynyrd should have called it a day — if not after the crash, then probably after guitarist Allen Collins died in 1990 and certainly after bassist Leon Wilkeson died last year.

"They can't get out from under it," Ballinger says. "It's an insoluble contradiction. I admire them just for trying."

Rossington says, "My main job is trying to keep the name of the band intact and credible and us sounding good." Of the lineup at the time of the crash, only Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell remain. In addition to Johnny Van Zant, the band's current membership includes guitarist Rickey Medlocke, an early member of the group who later played with Southern rock band Blackfoot; guitarist Hughie Thomasson, formerly of The Outlaws; drummer Michael Cartellone; and bassist Ean Evans.

"To end Skynyrd, I mean, we can do that, but then I feel like that would hurt all the guys who aren't with us," Rossington says. "Their spirits and their memories start fading away all of a sudden. When we take a long period of time off, the catalog starts going down in sales. People do forget."

The members of Skynyrd hope to join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year; they have been eligible since 1998. Either way, they'll have an exhibit at the hall next year; it will begin in March if they're among next year's inductees, in June if they're not. An authorized biography of the group is also in the works.

Lynyrd Skynyrd performs today in Tuscaloosa, Ala., as part of the University of Alabama's homecoming festivities. Saturday, the group plays in Polk City, Fla. Sunday, the anniversary of the crash, will be a day off.

Rossington used to mark the day by sending flowers to his bandmates' graves, until he learned the arrangements were being stolen the next day. "Now," he says, "I just try to carry on. It happened so long ago, and life does move on. Twenty-five years later, you can't think about something that long and let it get to you real bad. Even though it does, you try not to.

"I don't know what I'm going to do that day. I hope to go fishing."