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He was offered the Convair 240, registration number N55VM, by the L&J Company of Addison, Texas.
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A string of rowdy incidents on previous chartered flights – including an alleged attempt to toss a roadie out from an altitude of 13,000 feet – had ensured that Lynyrd Skynyrd were unwelcome on most private airlines, so it fell to the band's manager, Peter Rudge, to obtain a vehicle of their own where they could be free to misbehave. Van Zant loathed flying, and the ramshackle plane contributed to his feeling of malaise. It would be one of the last songs he ever wrote. "I had a creepy feeling things were going against us, so I thought I'd write a morbid song," he said three months before the crash. "He told me so many times that I realized that he really knew what he was talking about." Even his father, the late Lacy Van Zant, boasted of Ronnie's "second sight."Ī feeling of impending doom carried over into his music, particularly the Street Survivors track "That Smell." Written as a stern warning after Rossington wrapped his brand new Ford Torino around a tree during a substance-fueled joyride, the foreboding "smell of death surrounds you" refrain provides a glimpse into Van Zant's unsettled psyche. "When I heard that there had been a plane crash, I just knew Ronnie was one of the ones that didn't make it," the singer's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness told Team Rock’s Jaan Uhelszki in 2016. "Of course I said, 'Ronnie, don't talk like that,' but the man knew his destiny." On October 20th, he was 87 days from his limit. "Ronnie and I were in Tokyo, Japan, and Ronnie told me that he'd never live to see 30, and that he was going to go out with his boots on – in other words, on the road," recalled Pyle on Behind the Music. On numerous occasions he proclaimed that he would never reach his 30th birthday. Many in the band's circle believe Van Zant had a premonition of his fate. While their bodies recovered, they'd never again be reunited with the voice that made songs like "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama" perennial anthems of Southern rock. The 20 survivors endured shattered bones, torn flesh, lengthy hospitalizations and grueling rehabilitations. Less than three hours later the twin-engine would plummet from the sky and into the darkened swamps of Gillsburg, Mississippi, claiming the lives of Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray Jr. We've got a gig to do,'" remembers Rossington.įorty years later, his words resonate like a dare to the gods. "Ronnie said, 'Hey, if the Lord wants you to die on this plane, when it's your time, it's your time. "He said, 'I'm not gonna get on it because it's not right.'" But the band's frontman remained almost eerily calm. "He didn't want to get on that plane," Gary Rossington told the Orlando Sentinel in 1988. Guitarist Allen Collins was equally apprehensive. Cassie Gaines, a member of the backing vocal trio known as the Honkettes and sister of guitarist Steve Gaines, was so petrified that she nearly squeezed in the band's cramped equipment truck until she was reluctantly persuaded to board the aircraft. "Our wives, everyone were afraid for us to get on this thing, but we didn't know any better," keyboardist Billy Powell said on a 1997 episode of VH1's Behind the Music. Still, one final hop on the Convair felt like one too many for most in their entourage. Surely they needed something better than a bucket of bolts to shuttle them there?Īfter making the 600-mile trip from Greenville to Baton Rouge, where they were due to play the following night at Louisiana State University, Lynyrd Skynyrd planned to acquire a Learjet, the air chariot of choice for the Seventies rock elite. The ambitious trek, their largest to date, would see the band achieve its dream of playing New York's Madison Square Garden. Their latest album, Street Survivors, had gone gold upon its release three days earlier, and the first five dates of the accompanying tour had been met with rapturous crowds throughout their native Southland.
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The scary incident convinced the group that they needed to upgrade their vehicle to something befitting their status as one of the biggest acts in music. The 10-foot flames seen shooting out of the right engine two days earlier had done little to inspire anyone's confidence. "We were flying in a plane that looked like it belonged to the Clampett family," drummer Artimus Pyle later said. And they had good reason to be: Lynyrd Skynyrd's rickety Convair 240, pushing 30 years old, was obviously past its prime. Ronnie Van Zant's bandmates were anxious as they prepared to board their leased plane at Greenville, South Carolina's Downtown Airport on the afternoon of October 20th, 1977.
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