The pilots were aiming for a certain area to crash land, but they missed their mark, and when the plane crashed, both pilots and four others will killed, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant. "We ran out of fuel over Mississippi and spiraled in," Pyle recalled. Lynyrd Skynyrd had just released their album "Street Survivors" three days prior, and the band and crew were on their way to Louisiana for a show on their 95 city tour when there was a problem with their plane. "Everything was great, we were on top of the world," Pyle, the drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd at the time, said. That is a day that Artimus Pyle will never forget. Van Zant's unopened casket and a plastic bag containing Steve Gaines' cremated ashes were disturbed, prompting Van Zant's widow to make the move.October 20th, 1977. But the remains were moved to an undisclosed private burial site after their tombs were vandalized in 2000. The inductees included posthumous honors for Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines.įor 23 years, Van Zant, Gaines and sister Cassie Gaines were interred at Jacksonville Memory Gardens in Orange Park, Florida. Lynyrd Skynyrd was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. The band ultimately made good on its canceled tour stop at LSU 14 years later, honoring the more than 100 concertgoers who kept their original tickets to the Oct. Lynyrd Skynyrd wouldn't perform for another decade, until Johnny Van Zant – Ronnie's younger brother – took over as lead singer in 1987.
Van Zant, who wrote some of the band's most famous songs, including "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama," was gone. Stuart Ramson/AP The band Lynyrd Skynyrd, from left to right, Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, Artimus Pyle, Ed King and Bob Burns, pose for photographers backstage after being inducted at the annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame dinner Monday, March 13, 2006, in New York. He helped lead rescuers to the wooded crash site, but not before being shot. Pyle, who was the band's drummer, broke several ribs but managed to stumble through a creek and field to a farmhouse for help. Wilkerson, who was suffering from chronic liver and lung disease at the time of his death, was 49. The bassist rejoined the band in 1987 but died in his sleep at the Sawgrass Marriott Resort & Beach Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, in 2001. Wilkerson suffered a double fracture to his left leg, a double compound fracture to his left arm, six broken ribs, one of which punctured his left lung, and severe facial damage, losing 15 teeth. Despite breaking both arms, legs, wrists and ankles, as well as his pelvis, Rossington recovered from his injuries and still plays guitar with the reincarnated version of the band. When he woke up, he was on the ground with the plane's door on top of him. Rossington was knocked unconscious in the crash. He died four years later of chronic pneumonia – a complication of the paralysis. He eventually recovered but became paralyzed from the waist down after a 1986 crash that claimed the life of his girlfriend. "The smell of death surrounds you." - lyric as sung by Ronnie Van Zant in "That Smell"Ĭollins broke two vertebrae in his neck and suffered severe damage to his right arm, which he refused to have amputated. The crash took the lives of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines. in a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi. After the pilot and co-pilot determined that the plane didn't have enough fuel to land at a nearby airport, they unsuccessfully attempted an emergency landing and crashed a few minutes before 7 p.m.
Near the end of the flight, the twin-engine Convair CV-240 ran out of fuel.
20, 1977, the Jacksonville, Florida-based band left Greenville, South Carolina, after a concert at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, and boarded a chartered plane en route to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they were scheduled to perform the next night at Louisiana State University. "I think about it every day," one of the last living original members of the band on that fateful flight in 1977 recalled to Forbes earlier this week. Forty-five years to the day after a plane crash claimed the lives of three members of southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, Artimus Pyle remembers the tragedy like it was yesterday.
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