“But I can feel the concrete slowly creepin'. Lord, take me and mine before that comes.”
- All I Can Do Is Write About It/Lynyrd Skynyrd
Today is the 49th anniversary of the saddest day in rock history for me. October 20, 1977, the plane crash of Lynyrd Skynyrd. In my life, it was like a tragedy involving close family members. The kind of thing that leaves you stunned, confused and disbelieving. Back then, access to news was scanty. It was hard to obtain information, so getting any details on the what happened was frustrating as hell. What occurred? Was anyone killed? What?
Eventually, word trickled out. Their chartered plane had run out of fuel on their tour stop from Greenville, SC to Baton Rouge, LA, and crashed in the woods near Gillsburg, MS. Ronnie Van Zant, the spiritual leader of the band was dead. Recently added guitar ace, Steve Gaines and his sister, Cassie, one of the band's backup singers, was dead. Both pilots were dead as was Dean Kilpatrick, the assistant road manager. The rest of the band were variously injured, most in critical condition. All of them in their mid to late 20s.
It was the end of what was. I walked around in a stupor for months. It affects me still. I could no more articulate what that band meant to me than I could explain emotions and ideas like love, forgiveness, loneliness or joy. I could say some words but they would never get to the essence of the thing. You likely have a similar passion for an artist or band. You understand.
I had loved them since I heard, by chance, the first song on their first album. Something about their sound, their guitar tones, the rawness, the heart, for lack of a better term, of their music got in my bones. They were gritty, hard-working kids from Jacksonville, FL. They were from “across the tracks” to state the truth, and they were unashamed of it. I, a rural, small town boy without much money around growing up, identified with that ethos. Maybe that was some of it. The other part was they were flat out fantastic musicians with great songs. It all worked for me.
They had just released their sixth album, Street Survivors, the week before the tragedy I had been at the record store door the morning it went on sale. They sounded particularly fresh thanks to the energy new-comer Steve Gaines had injected. The future was brighter than ever. And then it wasn't. Members of the band recovered and went on to reform a version of the band with Johnny Van Zant stepping in for his older brother, Ronnie, on lead vocals. But, you know, it wasn't the same. Things are never the same.
Like many great bands, Skynyrd gets identified with one or two songs. Half the country, it seems, thinks the band is actually a guy named Leonard Skinner who sings the song Sweet Home Alabama…CRINGE. Others know them from Freebird which is often a punch line for a cheap laugh. “Play Freebird!” That's the way it goes with such things, but the depth of their body of work is completely missed. Also, it's not uncommon to hear the band referred, explicitly and implicitly, as nothing more than rowdy, regressive rednecks only a few degrees removed from the Confederacy. When I hear or read that, I no longer bristle because I know it comes from a place of total ignorance. It's a lazy categorization. If someone made even a cursory scratch of the surface, they'd find that the band covered an array of social issues that ardent virtue signalers are forever jumping up and down about. But, unlike many of those folks, Skynyrd's views came from a place of authenticity. A few examples: The Ballad of Curtis Loew (Race Relations), Saturday Night Special (Handguns), The Needle and the Spoon, That Smell (Drug and Alcohol Abuse), All I Can Do is Write About It (Environmental Issues), Things Goin' On (Economic Concerns, etc).
That's all I have to say on the matter. May they all rest in Peace.