The oft-told, star-crossed saga of Lynyrd Skynyrd has been portrayed as the convergence of opportunity, preparedness, talent and luck. I had a creepy feeling things were going against us, so I thought I’d write a morbid song.” It was last year and Allen and Billy also were in car accidents all in the space of six months. Van Zant told journalist Jim Farber three months before the plane crash. There was so much leading up to that… Now as an older person I can see it. Cassie said, ‘I’m going to ride in the truck,’ but she changed her mind at the last minute. “But it was one of those things where intuition should have been followed. But there was a lot of confidence with the pilot, Walter.' They flew a mechanic in from Dallas who was supposed to repair everything. “We had a day off, then a show, then a day off flying. “We had problems on the plane before that last flight,” Elson says. Had he been older and wiser, he says, he never would have climbed those rickety steel stairs. I don’t think I’m going to make it.’”Įlson was also on that rented twin-engine plane the day it fell out of the Mississippi sky.

They were like, ‘I have this funny feeling about this. “I think it was because he lived hard every day and anyone who does that – like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix – is gone by the time they’re 28 or 29. “Ronnie told me often that he didn’t expect to live past 30,” remembers Kevin Elson, Skynyrd’s soundman, who went on to produce Journey, Mr. As he leaned over to spit the bug-coloured juice from his Red Man chewing tobacco into an empty plastic milk carton, he looked me straight in the eye to see if I believed him. The bearded octogenarian was slumping heavily in his La-Z-Boy Recliner. “Ronnie was the only one of my children who had second sight,” recalled his late father Lacy Van Zant in 1995. “I said, ‘Bullshit man.’ But he said, ‘No, no, I want to go out with my boots on.’” Ronnie told me, ‘I am never going to live to see 30’,” recalls Pyle. “We were in Tokyo at some bar and we were drinking lots of sake. “He told me so many times that I realised that he really knew what he was talking about.”įormer Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle was often nearby when Van Zant foretold his own demise. 'When I heard that there had been a plane crash, I just knew Ronnie was one of the ones that didn’t make it,” Judy Van Zant Jenness recalls. Was this litany of woe what Van Zant had in mind when he insisted matter-of-factly to his wife, bandmates, family members, audiences – and this journalist – that he just wasn’t long for this world? The tale boasts all the elements of a southern gothic soap opera. He died 87 days before that pivotal date. “In the crash, I lost cartilage in both knees and tore ligaments, ability to stand was negatively affected.”ĭespite the severe injuries, Welch and the other survivors are happy to still be alive.Ĭopyright 2023 by WJXT News4JAX - All rights reserved.No one who survived that day can forget that Van Zant, then 29, had repeatedly proclaimed that he would not live to see his 30th birthday.

“I was working for ShowCo, which was at that time assigned to work the Lynyrd Skynyrd Tour,” Welch said. His skull was fractured and suffered other severe injuries. Paul Welch worked on the sound for “The Tour of the Survivors” at 23 years old. Hundreds of people gathered to listen to several rock bands such as Slickson Revolver and Street Preacher and participated in a silent auction to support a good cause. Back then they didn’t really have the best insurance,” Reed said. They were employed by other bands, and some of the people were employed by the band. “A lot of the people that were on the plane weren’t actually directly employed by the band. MORE: Southern rock legend Lynyrd Skynyrd adds 2nd show in St. Lynyrd Skynyrd was leaving South Carolina and heading to Louisiana when their plane started misfunctioning and crashed in Mississippi.Ĭhad Reed, with Survivor Film and Productions, said they are doing this fundraiser to help the survivors pay their medical bills and living expenses. Among those people killed were several members of the rock band with Jacksonville roots, Lynyrd Skynyrd. In October 1977, six people died and 20 people were severely injured in a plane crash. – A production company put together a fundraiser Saturday to help out five survivors of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash that left them still dealing with health problems 40 years later.

Who died on lynyrd skynyrd plane crash