On October 20, 1977, a chartered plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd from South Carolina to their next show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crashed into a tree-filled swamp just outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi—a horrific tragedy that happened in minutes yet changed the face of the band and Southern rock as a whole forever. Six people died in the crash: lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, road manager Dean Kilpatrick, and two pilots, Walter McCreary and William Gray.
Videos by American Songwriter
After the crash, drummer Artimus Pyle, whose chest was crushed by the wreckage, still managed to find a nearby farmhouse and alert the homeowners to what had happened. “I remember looking up from the swamp. Help was so close but so far away,” Pyle recalled to Easy Reader News in 2013. “Then, I heard this snake slither up to me in the darkness. And I remember saying, out loud, ‘Snake, I will bite your f***ing head off.’ Nothing was going to stop me from getting help. I’m a Marine. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
The tragedy sent shockwaves through the musical community and beyond. Lynyrd Skynyrd was at the height of their fame, having just released their fifth studio album, Street Survivors, days before. (Steve Gaines’ widow requested the album cover be changed from the original photograph of the band standing amid flames to a picture of Lynyrd Skynyrd against a black background.)
Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded following the plane crash. Though they would reunite in various configurations in the decades that followed, misfortune and tragedy seemed to follow the group.
The Eerie and Disturbing Legacy of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Tragedy
A plane crash killing half of one of the most popular Southern rock bands of the time would be unsettling enough as it is. But strangely, this tragedy seemed to permeate the years before and after the accident. According to several people, Ronnie Van Zant often talked about how he wouldn’t make it to 30 years old. He also began to call himself the Mississippi Kid, inexplicably, given that he was from Jacksonville, Florida. When Van Zant died in a Mississippi swamp that fateful day, he was 29 years old—three months away from his 30th birthday.
Although the band would reunite following the crash, death and misfortune seemed to follow. Allen Collins, who survived the plane crash, lost his wife in 1980. Still reeling from her death, Collins was drinking and driving when he crashed his Ford Thunderbird in 1986. The crash killed his girlfriend and paralyzed him from the chest down. Bob Burns, the band’s original drummer who had left the band due to mental health issues two years before the plane crash, also died in a car crash.
Perhaps most disturbingly, over two decades after the Lynyrd Skynyrd tragedy, the survivors and affected families were forced to relive the incident all over again after vandals broke into the mausoleum containing the band members’ remains in Florida. Gaines’ cremated ashes were spilled on the ground. Van Zant’s coffin was dropped on the ground (but fortunately still sealed). Following the break-in, the family moved the remains to an undisclosed location. “I hope they get help,” Van Zant’s nephew, Ronnie Morris, told The Florida Times-Union in 2000. “I hope the Lord will forgive them for what they have done.”
Photo by Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.