October 20, 1977. Remembering Lynyrd Skynyrd's crash

The plane crash news hit me hard. I was going to High School at Bellarmine in San Jose at the time. My love of Skynyrd was rising steadily at the same time the band was making their further jumps in their popularity in steps.
I think of them quite frequently. One thing which got me terrifically angry about 5 years or so ago was when a newswire story broke about some people who went to Ronnie's gravesite and attempted to take the body out. I had a wave of both anger and sadness wash over me in a very complicated mess of emotion. The news struck me that someone was attempting to steal a little peiece of Heaven from an artist who gave us so much was horrifying to me. How black a heart must a person have to do such a thing? There was eventually a charity fundraiser in care of a bank down where Ronnie was buried where they had people help to pay for the damage repair and maintanence of the burial site. I happily donated so that I could throw off some of the anger that I felt.
The Ronnie Era Lynyrd Skynyrd was such a brutally honest band in lyrics and in authentic playing for a crowd. Plus, you had to love a guy like Van Zandt when he had the guts and chutpah (in a good way) to tell one of his heroes, Pete Townshend, before a show that even though they were opening for them, they were going to blow them off the stage during their portion of the show.

 

I don't know why Convairs were so popular with bands, but it was probably due to cost. IIRC, the Doobie Brothers also had one go down, but I don't think anybody was hurt. I think it crashed on a runway. We flew over the wreckage once. I seem to remember it was somewhere in Tennessee.

I've never been in any Convairs belonging to other bands, but ours was pretty cool. We had couches, recliners, beds, TV's, an electric piano, and all kinds of cool amenities.

We couldn't go coast to coast with that plane, because we'd always have to stop and fill up with oil. Yep, I said oil. That's what was throwing the flames out of the engines.

 

Good memory. Actually, the thing caught fire on the ground as it was being fueled. But they had two planes...one for the band (Doobieliner) and one for the crew (Crewbieliner).

 

for anyone who didn't see this pic, go to the Southern Rock Thread:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=124171
post #90 is a live pic of a very young Skynyrd, Ronnie looks to be about 16!
I too was bummed to hear of the gravesite desecration. About eight years ago I had to drive from Gainesville to Jax to pickup my girlfriend at the airport
and was gonna drop by the cemetary on the way to check out the Skynyrd area (they were all together at the entrance of the cemetary by the guardhouse) but I got held up and couldn't leave in time to visit. In the eighties I used to play with a guy in Jax who knew Allen Collins when he was paralyzed in the hospital, he used to visit him and roll doobies and help him smokeout....apparently the reason Ronnie died in the plane crash was he was the only one not buckled in, he was passed out drunk on the floor, according to the Gene Odom book...

 

Rock stars and airplanes seem to have a lot of mishaps. Think I`ll ride the bus

 

I love skynrd we could have used a lot more of their music as the original band.

 

I saw LS at the Anaheim Stadium with a few other bands in July or August. Then I wake up one morning and my dad shows me the front page of the newspaper and asked me "Didn't you just see this band awhile back?"

 

That makes sense. That's why it was off the runway when we saw it all burned out. Yeah, it's amazing what I seem to remember some times.

Well I cheated a bit and looked in my calendar. We were in Tennessee, in the end of Oct and Nov 76, so I imagine it happened not long before that. Now I'm not 100% sure it was Tennessee where I saw it, but that sure seems right.



Actually Seals & Crofts had three planes for the tours I was on. I didn't fly on Thunderfoot that often, maybe a dozen times.

Thunderfoot was for Jimmy & Dash, the band, management, and whoever.

We had a Cessna 310 that the lighting crew used. They woke up earliest because their gear was in the back of the truck.

Sound and band gear had a Beechcraft Queen Air, and we left about an hour or so after lights.

The band got to sleep in. We were usually at the venues for hours before they showed up.

Problem was I usually hung with the band and we were generally up pretty late. They were still asleep while I was already in the next city humping gear. It got old very quickly.

 

Well, it's kind of a long story, but I had my choice of going out with Seals & Crofts or Earth, Wind, & Fire. I chose S&C largely because it was an airplane tour. EW&F's bus was nice, but it was not for me. I want my own bathroom with a shower every night.

I'll never know if I made the right decision. Working with George Masenburg would have been a gas.

 

Ronnie looks young, but Leon Wilkerson looks like a 13-year-old! No wonder he grew that Hank Jr. beard...

 

It was my 18th birthday. The clock radio snapped on (on the hour) in the morning - I was laying there waking up. A DJ said something like 'several members of L.S. were killed this morning in a plane crash, we hope to have more soon....' then a Skynyrd tune started but for some reason I forgot what it was. I snapped up awake in a second - I remember it like yesterday.

The reason those Convairs were so popular then was that the larger airlines had eliminated them about ten years earlier from their secondary or hub distribution lines, along with the larger 4-engine piston aircraft like the DC-6 and DC-7. However the Convairs, being 2 engine, were more economical for fuel and maintenance - especially if the new owner was not flying for the purpose of generating further revenue. I well recall Eastern using those Convairs in the late sixties before going to the DC-9 (as I recall that replacing the Convair.) My father was a Captain with United Air Lines and another of my memories was being on one of the last of the major airline piston engine flights in the US - a DC-6B from Chicago to Grand Rapids in 1967.

 

I found this online regarding Aerosmith.


In 1977, the band wanted to rent a Convair 240 that had been previously used by southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Aerosmith's flight crew inspected the plane for possible use in the early summer of 1977, but it was rejected because it was felt that neither the plane nor the crew were up to standards. In an interview in the book Walk This Way, Aerosmith's assistant chief of flight operations Zunk Buker tells of seeing pilots McCreary and Gray trading a bottle of Jack Daniels back and forth while Buker and his father were inspecting the plane. Unfortunately, the plane that they wanted to rent crashed, killing three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and severely injuring most of the rest of the band. When Aerosmith's crew heard of their tragic misfortune, they were shocked, but not necessarily surprised. Aerosmith's touring family was also relieved because the band, specifically Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, had been trying to pressure their management into renting that specific plane.

 

wow, never heard that !!!

 

Nor I.

I was trying to find out more info on the Doobie Brothers plane, to see if it was actually in Tennessee that I saw it, when I came upon this info.

 

It's mentioned in Steve Tyler's biography, a cool read you can usually find for a bargain price.

 

I had seen Skynyrd the previous December (1976) and it was as expected a fantastic concert. The plane crash and loss for me was but another crappy day in Rock history. I remembered Janis dying, Jimi dying, Jim dying, among all the others. I would never go to another Skynyrd concert after that. The closest was the Rossington Collins Band. Just never the same.

30 years, and it could have been last week for me.

 

Agreed-
another crappy day in Rock history.

 

Hi,

Remember this very well! I got calls from The Oak Ridger and WATO radio wishing to clarify the spelling of the band's name. I had the correct spelling. I found out about the plane crash then and the deaths and injuries. I spent that day and the week in shock. I remember well going to The Music Box after school and purchasing my copy of "Street Survivors". It was their last Flames Cover before they got the new cover in stock. I lived in Oak Ridge, TN then. On WATO that Saturday, I played a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd and took many calls from distraught fans. A bad year for rock and roll and blues deaths.

 

One of the worst ever tragedies in rock music imo. In addition to the deaths of both pilots, Ronnie, Steve, Cassie & Dean Kilpatrick...everyobne else suffered serious injuries. Artimus Payle's ribs were sticking out (ouch!), Billy Powell about had his nose ripped from his face, Allen about lost the use of one of his arms and a cracked neck, Gary had a broken leg and arm, Gene Odum (friend and security man) lost an eye due to ice flairs from the plane liquifying one of his eyes, etc. IIRC correctly, both wings were ripped off the fuselage and the plane was ripped apart. Senseless...sure those guys were a rowdy and sometimes reckless bunch. But nobody deserves something like that! If only they hadn't gotten on that plane...

 

Two words: Cliff Burton.

At 13, Skynyrd wasn't on my radar until the day after the crash, when I turned on "Good Morning America" while getting ready for school. Seemed like such a shame, though I shrugged it off, having never heard of them. Shortly after that, I got the Rolling Stone magazine, which covered the crash news, and learned about the band.

Of course, as I got older, Skynyrd music was all over the place, on the radio, on boom boxes, and played by cover bands all over town. Obviously, I came to appreciate who they were and what they accomplished. Like anyone who passes with so much more to offer, it left a sad sense of what might have been.

 

Apparently, this was an airccraft that Aerosmith had turned down.



Date October 20, 1977 at 18:52 (CST).
Type Stalled due to Fuel Exhaustion, destroyed on impact during emergency landing attempt.
Site Heavily-wooded Swamp, five miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi
Passengers 24
Crew 2
Fatalities 6
Survivors 20
Aircraft type Convair CV-240 manufactured in 1947
Operator L & J Company of Addison, Texas
Tail number N55VM
Flight origin Greenville, South Carolina
Stopover McComb-Pike County Airport, Pike County, Mississippi (emergency attempt)
Destination Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

31 years ago. wow.


do you have anymore info on "aerosmith turned down"?