One of many biggest tragedies in rock historical past passed off on October 20, 1977. Three days after they launched an album known as Road Survivors, Lynyrd Skynyrd had been concerned within the horrible airplane crash that claimed the lives of three band members and left all of the others, and their crew, with critical accidents.
A chartered Convair CV-300 was taking the band from the gig they’d simply performed in Greenville, North Carolina to their subsequent gig in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A defective engine after which a gas scarcity led the pilot, Walter McCreary, to aim an emergency touchdown. However he was killed on impression together with Skynyrd’s vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backing singer Cassie, the co-pilot, and the band’s assistant highway supervisor.
Lynyrd Skynyrd had had big success with their first 4 albums from 1973, though the final of these, Gimme Again My Bullets, had had extra modest gross sales than its predecessors. Road Survivors, recorded in studios in Florida and Georgia, was their first to characteristic guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines.
A poignant hit single
It grew to become an enormous album, reaching the band’s profession peak of No.5 within the US, turning gold in ten days and, finally, double platinum. The LP featured a canopy of Merle Haggard’s “Honky Tonk Night Time Man” and gave them a Prime 20 single in America with the Gary Rossington/Ronnie Van Zant composition “What’s Your Name,” one of many pair’s 4 co-writes on the document.
The duvet picture of Road Survivors, displaying the band rising from a fireplace, was, after all, withdrawn after the crash, however it was restored for the album’s deluxe reissue. Skynyrd disbanded after the tragedy, however reformed in 1987, that includes 4 of the crash survivors and guitarist Ed King, who had left two years earlier.
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