Legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd have traveled a road that's been anything
but smooth.
They've weathered more tragedy than many groups, and through it all, they've made some truly
epic music.
Their albums are classics of the genre, with songs like "Sweet Home Alabama", "Free Bird",
and many more.
Here's the tragic, real-life story of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd know that drummer Artimus Pyle survived the horrific plane crash that
claimed the lives of other group members, but might not realize aviation was a passion
he shared with his father, a retired Marine awarded a Purple Heart for injuries sustained
while fighting in the South Pacific during World War II.
Artimus Pyle followed in his father's footsteps.
He enlisted in the Marines and hoped to pursue a career in civil aviation after the service.
He even took flying lessons in the Marines, and his father, then a civilian, did as well.
But tragedy followed, when Del Pyle was offed in a midair plane crash over Albuquerque in
1971.
In an interview with radio personality Eddie Winters, Artimus recalled how his father had
been hit from above and behind by a B-57 weather reconnaissance bomber.
"Dad was in his Cessna 150 flying over some property that he was going to build houses
on.
He liked to do that; he liked to look at pieces of property from the air…
He was offed instantly.
That kept me from really losing my mind, because Dad never suffered.
He was doing what he loved and then he was gone."
A lengthy feature story in Spin magazine back in April 1999 detailed the tough road Lynyrd
Skynyrd took to achieving their dreams as a band, as well as the rough ways bandmates
treated one another all along the way, often resorting to violence to address their issues.
The violent tendencies started before anyone knew who the band was, and it didn't stop
when the fame came.
There were stories of fighting in public and in private, of going on stage with bruises,
bandages, and missing teeth.
Introducing seemingly endless tours and a stable supply of drugs and alcohol into the
proceedings didn't help.
Take the story of a bar fight in Munich.
It sprawled across the city and followed the band back to the hotel, where singer Ronnie
Van Zant broke a bottle over the head of a Skynyrd roadie and used the shards to slice
up guitarist Gary Rossington's hands.
The show went on, though.
Rossington played the next night with bandaged hands, as did Van Zant, who broke some bones
punching someone, somewhere along the way.
And that's just one incident in the history of the strange and volatile rock 'n' roll
family.
One of Ronnie Van Zant's last great songs, "That Smell," was in direct reference to Labor
Day weekend in 1976.
That's when Gary Rossington drove drunk and wrapped his new vehicle around a tree, injuring
himself badly in the process.
Van Zant told the Los Angeles Times:
"He passed out at the wheel of his brand new Ford Torino.
He knocked down a telephone pole, split an oak tree, and did $7,000 worth of damage to
a house.
That's being just plain stupid.
I told him that on his hospital bed."
He also told him so in "That Smell," which he wrote with guitarist Allen Collins.
Some speculate, though, that Van Zant was speaking as much to himself as he was to Rossington
and his other bandmates when he wrote the song.
Skynyrd biographer Mark Ribowsky wrote that at the time, the singer was an avid indulger
in funny stuff, but he was also at a point in his life where he was starting to rethink
that lifestyle.
Van Zant told the Los Angeles Times:
"For the first time I'm really thinking about the future.
I'm 27 now and I've got a baby girl and I plan to stick around and watch her grow up."
On October 20, 1977, as they prepared to embark on a flight to Baton Rouge, several members
of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their entourage were nervous about flying in the band's leased
Convair 240 and had expressed reservations to Ronnie Van Zant.
His reported response was eerie.
"Hey, if the Lord wants you to die on this plane, when it's your time, it's your time.
Let's go, man.
We've got a gig to do."
According to reports, almost two hours into the flight both of the plane's engines died,
and it began a ten-minute freefall into a dense forest of pine trees close to the Mississippi/Louisiana
border.
When it was all over, the cockpit and tail had separated from the cabin, and the plane
had cut a 500-foot path through the woods.
Seven people were dead, including Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister
Cassie, a background singer for the group.
Suddenly, the cover of what would be the original band's final studio album, Street Survivors,
seemed full of terrible foreshadowing.
The album had been out three days and the cover featured the band members standing between
burning buildings; Steve Gaines, in particular, seemed to be engulfed in flames, his eyes
closed.
The record was pulled from shelves until Skynyrd's record company could manufacture an alternate
cover, and while it all seemed prescient, no one could have actually predicted the crash
would happen, and that it would silence the leading voice of Southern rock.
Of all the survivors of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, Allen Collins seemed to be the
most unlucky and the most self-destructive.
Doctors had wanted to amputate his arm after the crash, but his father, acting on Collins'
behalf, refused to give them permission.
According to the band's biographer, even after recovering, both Collins and Rossington suffered
from terrible nightmares and survivor's guilt, and both self-medicated with copious consumption
of stuff, booze, and Quaaludes.
They also eventually made music again, forming the Rossington-Collins Band with several other
Skynyrd bandmates, making a record, and hitting the road on yet another rock 'n' roll tour.
Days into the band's first tour, Collins' wife, Kathy, suffered a hemorrhage during
a miscarriage and passed, devastating the already vulnerable guitarist.
His drinking and use accelerated, and a rift developed between him and Rossington.
The Rossington-Collins Band lasted only two years, after which Collins' indulgences wound
up having dire consequences.
He had a number of alcohol- and stuff-fueled car crashes, one of which, in 1986, took the
life of his girlfriend and left him paralyzed from the chest down.
When surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd went out on a tribute tour in 1987, Collins was
unable to perform, relegated to being wheeled out on stage several times per show to give
speeches on why he couldn't play, and on the dangers of stuff and alcohol.
He passed in 1990 of complications from pneumonia at 37 years old.
Bassist Leon Wilkeson was among the most severely injured in the Skynyrd plane crash, and his
heart stopped twice on the operating table.
The left arm injury was of particular concern; it was his fretting arm when he played bass,
and his wounds had gotten infected, nearly leading to the arm's amputation.
Even after he recovered, he had severe nerve damage and minimal range of motion in that
arm, causing him to hold his bass guitar almost upright for the remainder of his performing
days.
Other issues affected his health in the years after the crash.
On tour in the early '90s, Wilkeson awakened in the tour bus in a pool of his own blood,
his throat having been cut by someone on the bus.
He survived, but the perpetrator was never identified.
In 2001, he was cited for driving under the influence in Florida, a charge he was preparing
to face in July of that year.
He never did, though, as he was found in a hotel room.
According to the autopsy, Wilkeson was suffering from liver and lung diseases at the time of
his passing, with intoxication as a contributing factor.
Hughie Thomasson was Southern rock royalty even before he joined Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1996.
As one of the founders, chief songwriters, and singers of the Outlaws, he was responsible
for a number of the genre's classic songs, including their version of the cowboy anthem
"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky."
Fittingly, legend has it that the Outlaws were signed in 1974 by Arista Records president
Clive Davis after he saw the band open for Lynyrd Skynyrd and at the suggestion of Ronnie
Van Zant.
Thomasson claimed he joined Skynyrd on a six-month contract and wound up staying nine years.
When he left in 2005, he did so on good terms and for the right reasons.
He told Classic Rock Revisited:
"I just felt like I needed to do something different…
I really didn't do any singing with Skynyrd…
I wanted to get back to doing what I love to do."
He re-formed the Outlaws and hit the road, headlining small venues and opening for bigger
bands.
Tragically, he passed of a heart attack in his sleep on September 9, 2017.
Billy Powell nearly lost his nose in the plane crash that ended Lynyrd Skynyrd for a decade,
but of all the passengers on the plane, he was among the least grievously injured.
He was the only member of Skynyrd to attend the funerals for his bandmates Ronnie Van
Zant and Steve Gaines, as the rest of the survivors were still in the hospital.
Powell played in the Rossington-Collins Band after the crash, and was one of the first
Skynyrd members to sign on for the 1987 reunion and subsequent tours, but he was not always
well.
In the early morning hours of January 28, 2009, Powell called police in Orange Park,
Florida, complaining of dizziness and difficulty breathing.
By the time police and paramedics arrived at Powell's home, he was unconscious and unresponsive.
He was pronounced passed after repeated attempts to revive him failed.
According to one report, he had failed to show up for a cardiologist appointment shortly
before his passing.
The next Lynyrd Skynyrd album, God & Guns, included "Gifted Hands," a song dedicated
to Powell.
Gary Rossington cheated passing when he survived the plane crash that offed Ronnie Van Zant
and Steve and Cassie Gaines, and he continued to tell the Grim Reaper exactly where he can
go.
The issue was his heart, which has been through a lot, particularly in recent years.
In 2003, Rossington had quintuple bypass surgery, after doctors discovered during routine screening
that he was suffering from coronary artery disease.
In 2015, he suffered a heart attack.
Then, in August 2017, Lynyrd Skynyrd announced that Rossington's scheduled procedures, once
again to fix problems with his heart, led to the band to cancel some dates on that year's
tour.
With their leader's health a concern, Lynyrd Skynyrd announced a "Farewell Tour" in 2018,
even as Rossington shared something incredible with the Tampa Bay Times:
"I've had heart attacks on stage a lot…
I don't want to just say, 'Well, we're never going to end' because I don't want to pass
and then it end that way.
Which is a heavy thing to talk about, but I have to."
It wasn't long before the farewell tour took on yet another meaning, when guitarist Ed
King passed away in 2018.
King, who had been with the group since 1972, started out as a temporary replacement and
just ended up staying.
Rolling Stone reported that while the cause of death wasn't immediately specified, his
passing came after a battle with lung cancer.
In spite of tragedy after tragedy, the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd lives on.
It might not be played by the same group of good ol' Southern boys anymore, but it still
holds the same deep meaning it did for fans decades ago, perhaps the best kind of immortality
there is.
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