From Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain, and countless others across the decades, many music legends have passed away too soon. Yet throughout history, there have been singers who have eerily predicted their own deaths, Patsy Cline, Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant and Ritchie Valens among them. All three perished in plane crashes at the height of their careers, leaving fans devastated and grieving for years to come. However, their voices live on through their enduring songs.
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1. Ritchie Valens
The “La Bamba” singer had always had a fear of flying, stemming from childhood. In January 1957 when he was in middle school, Valens happened to miss a day of school to attend his grandfather’s funeral. Soon after the family returned home, they witnessed a horrifying plane crash take place in midair. Compelled to take action, the family drove to the site of the crash, which happened to occur above Valens’ school, Paicoma Junior High School. The crash left three people dead, including Valens’ best friend, and 90 others with injuries, according to the Library of Congress.
“He would have nightmares about [flying],” said Valens’ girlfriend Donna Fox, who inspired his hit song “Donna.” “He just had a horrible fear of small planes, and planes in general. He indicated that he would never fly. He just would never fly.”
Valens was traveling the country with superstar Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson (known as Big Bopper), and Dion and the Belmonts on the Winter Dance Party Tour in 1959. His friend Gail Smith reports that on their last night together in Los Angeles, they went to church where Valens prayed for a safe trip, as they were heading across the midwest on the tour. “‘What’d you do if you crash?'” Smith asked him. “‘I’ll land on my guitar,'” he replied.
After their show in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, Holly, Valens, and Richardson boarded a small aircraft chartered by Holly that crashed not long after takeoff, the three singers and pilot dying on impact. Valens was 17 at the time. The tragic accident inspired Don McLean to write his timeless hit, “American Pie,” which notably references the day the music died.
2. Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline died at the age of 30 in a tragic plane crash in March 1963 that also claimed the lives of fellow country stars Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas. At the time, Cline was riding high on the success of career-defining songs, including “Crazy” and “She’s Got You.” In the years leading up to her death, Cline was involved in two near-fatal car accidents, the first of which briefly put her career on pause while she recovered. Friends Loretta Lynn, Dottie West, and June Carter Cash shared over the years that Cline had said she didn’t believe she’d be alive for much longer. Allegedly, Cline acknowledged to fellow singer Ray Walker days before her death that she’s prone to tragic accidents. “Honey, I’ve had two bad ones [accidents],” she told him (quote via Good Housekeeping). “The third one will either be a charm or it’ll kill me.”
Those words sadly became a self-fulfilling prophecy when the plane she was on en route to Nashville crashed on March 5 in Camden, Tennessee. Cline supposedly turned down a car ride back to Nashville from West, who also performed at the benefit show for the family of Jack “Cactus” Call, who had ironically died in a car crash. “Don’t worry about me, Hoss, when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” she told West. Cline’s longtime friend and fellow singer Jan Howard recalled in the 1993 documentary Remember Patsy Cline that Cline had a feeling that her album Faded Love—which was supposed to be released the same month as her death but was later reissued as Patsy Cline the Last Sessions—would be her last. Howard recalls that Cline came into the office holding a record and said, “Here it is, the first and the last.”
3. Ronnie Van Zant
Though his life was tragically cut short in the infamous 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, Ronnie Van Zant blazed a trail as the lead singer and songwriter of the iconic band during his time on earth. Van Zant was one of the six people killed when the plane that was carrying the band members from South Carolina to Louisiana crashed in Mississippi.
Van Zant had a suspicion that he would meet his demise early on in life. The singer told his father as a child that he didn’t think he’d live to be 30, a prediction that tragically came true, as Van Zant died when he was 29. “He said to me many times, ‘Daddy, I’ll never be 30 years old,'” his father Lacy Van Zant allegedly said in the VH1 special Behind the Music Remastered: Lynyrd Skynyrd. “I said, ‘Why are you talking this junk? You will never be 30 years old?’ and he said, ‘Daddy, that’s my limit.'”
“Ronnie and I were in Tokyo, Japan, and Ronnie told me that he would never live to see 30 and that he would go out with his boots on, in other words, on the road,” Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle added. “I said, ‘Ronnie, don’t talk like that,’ but the man knew his destiny.”
Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns
