TruthSeeker56
Silver Member
Thirty years ago today, a rented plane took off from Greenville, S.C., headed for Baton Rouge, La. Just before dark, just before it reached the Louisiana line, the plane ran out of fuel and sank toward the Mississippi landscape below.
It first grazed the tops of the pine trees.
"It was like the sound of a billion baseball bats beating the side of the plane." Lynyrd Skynyrd bass player Leon Wilkeson described in an interview a decade ago.
The plane crashed down through the trees to the ground, breaking apart as it went. In the twisted, broken pieces of that 1947 Convair lay what was left of Jacksonville's greatest musical legacy.
Though there were 26 people on the plane, only six died that evening, Oct. 20, 1977. But killed along with the two pilots were three band members and the road manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The long-haired, blue-collar guys had moved from playing the bars of Jacksonville's Westside to filling arenas, taking Southern rock far from their native South. But the dream ended, at least a good chunk of it, in those piney Mississippi woods with the deaths of singer and leader Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backup vocalist Cassie Gaines.
LINK:
Sad rock anniversary: Skynyrd's plane crash | jacksonville.com
It first grazed the tops of the pine trees.
"It was like the sound of a billion baseball bats beating the side of the plane." Lynyrd Skynyrd bass player Leon Wilkeson described in an interview a decade ago.
The plane crashed down through the trees to the ground, breaking apart as it went. In the twisted, broken pieces of that 1947 Convair lay what was left of Jacksonville's greatest musical legacy.
Though there were 26 people on the plane, only six died that evening, Oct. 20, 1977. But killed along with the two pilots were three band members and the road manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The long-haired, blue-collar guys had moved from playing the bars of Jacksonville's Westside to filling arenas, taking Southern rock far from their native South. But the dream ended, at least a good chunk of it, in those piney Mississippi woods with the deaths of singer and leader Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backup vocalist Cassie Gaines.
LINK:
Sad rock anniversary: Skynyrd's plane crash | jacksonville.com
