By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
BOSTON -There are some sad dates in rock music history and October 20, 1977, is indeed one of them. During the summer of 1977, Boston band Aerosmith scouted for planes for their upcoming fall “Draw the “Line tour. One aircraft the band management had inspected was a Convair CV-240 plane located in Addison, Texas.
Photo/Wikimedia Commons
However, the band’s assistant chief of flight operations Zunk Buker and his father felt the plane’s condition was not being maintained properly. Plus, watching the pilots share a bottle of Jack Daniel’s was too much for them and for Aerosmith, despite the band’s partying reputation.
Last flight
Unfortunately, fate would not be so kind to Lynyrd Skynyrd, who did charter the plane for their fall tour, ironically named Tour of the Survivors. The band had performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina on October 19, 1977. They boarded the plane the next day and set out for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to perform at Louisiana State University. The plane ran out of fuel towards the end of their journey and crashed in a heavily wooded area in Gillsburg, Mississippi.
Reportedly, the pilots initially tried to re-route towards McComb Airport, which was about 10 miles away from where the plane eventually went down. After realizing they would not make it to the airport, they attempted an emergency landing. Sadly, the plane skimmed the top of the tree line and crashed into a large tree, splitting the plane into pieces. Out of the 26 people on board, 20 survived.
Photo/Wikimedia Commons
Those who died in the crash, included lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines along with Gaines’s sister, Cassie Gaines, who was touring as a backing vocalist, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, Captain Walter McCreary, and First Officer William John Gray. Other members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were severely injured, and some took years and even decades to recover. The crash is among the most tragic events in rock and aviation history.
Survivor’s guilt
Upon hearing of the heartbreaking news, shaken members of Aerosmith soon realized the plane was the same aircraft they had turned down months prior and were left with feeling survivor’s guilt. In 2015, Aerosmith’s founding member and guitarist Joe Perry told Crave Online, “It was a terrible tragedy, and we just considered ourselves incredibly lucky. People were flying on all these different planes, and it was very common to be on a plane Fleetwood Mac had been on the week before.
“We’ve always felt there was somebody watching over us, and this was another example of that. People were put in our lives that helped bail us out for one reason or another. Fortunately, we had someone looking at the plane that we would be taking, and he put his foot down. To be that close to it… it was really a blow, up and down the line. From knowing those guys, to the loss of music and beyond.”
The flight was intended to be the last flight the “Sweet Home Alabama” singers would make on the Convair since they were planning on acquiring a Learjet after arriving in Baton Rouge, to replace the 30-year-old ancient vessel. The fatal crash took place three days following the release of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s studio album “Street Survivors” with the original album cover showing the band surrounded by flames. In lieu of the tragedy, MCA replaced the image with a new cover, showing the band against a simple black background.
As mentioned in the Aerosmith memoir, “Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith,” lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry were initially very interested in renting the ill-fated plane. Low-fueled or not, wiser voices prevailed.
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