<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What do you call it?\u00a0 Deja vu?\u00a0 Clairvoyance?\u00a0 Luck?\u00a0 Intuition?\u00a0 No doubt you have heard tales of mysterious events that defy simple, rational explanation.\u00a0 It is a pretty safe bet that many of you may have experienced these kinds of things.\u00a0 Whether one chooses to tell other people about these happenings is a rather personal decision usually introduced with a qualifier like, \u201cThis is going to sound kind of crazy\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I was in college, we used to climb Sugar Loaf Mountain just north of Marquette a couple of times a year.\u00a0 The panorama of Marquette to the south and the shoreline to Little Presque Isle and beyond to the north is still well worth the climb.\u00a0 Maybe it was the after effects of reading Tolkien\u2019s <\/span>Lord of the Rings<\/span><\/i> trilogy (twice), but I would often point to the western horizon and idly say, \u201cI have a feeling I will go west one day.\u201d\u00a0 When asked if I meant \u2018west\u2019 as in \u2018<\/span>moving to Montana soon<\/span><\/i>\u2019 (to quote the late Frank Zappa\u2019s lyric) or some other place in that general direction, I would always reply, \u201cI do not know.\u00a0 I just have this feeling that I will do something that involves going in that direction.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When we would top one of the peaks in the Huron Mountains during my three summers working there, I would get the same thought.\u00a0 In hindsight, I can report my journey west landed me in Ontonagon.\u00a0 Okay, so I only transplanted myself 120 miles to the west, but here I am.\u00a0 My vague feelings of fifty years ago were a far cry from having me filling in any details of what would transpire over the next decades.\u00a0 Saying anything different would be a lie of Biblical proportions, but I do know what I felt back then and I have not felt the tug to keep going west since.\u00a0 Discounting trips to visit the WOAS West Coast Bureau )first in Boulder, CO, then Los Angeles, CA, and more recently Eugene, Oregon), living in Ontonagon is \u2018west\u2019 enough for me.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the reoccuring themes in the aftermath of the tragic October 20, 1977 plane crash that claimed the lives of six passengers on Lynyrd Skynyrd\u2019s chartered plane are the unexplained \u2018signs\u2019 that people raise about the event.\u00a0 Some came before the accident and some after, but enough things have been reported to cast an eerie glow around the band\u2019s history.\u00a0 I am not passing judgment on any of these anecdotes (my crystal ball isn\u2019t bright enough to see that far back), but <\/span>Classic Rock Magazine\u2019s<\/span><\/i> Jaan Uhelszki did a lot of boots on the ground detective work to amass many of these strange tales.\u00a0 I missed <\/span>CRM <\/span><\/i>Issue 121 when this article first came out but Uhelszki\u2019s piece was reprinted in the summer of 2022 in an exclusive subscriber only \u2018<\/span>Best Of\u2019 <\/span><\/i>supplement sent as part of <\/span>CRM\u2019s <\/span><\/i>celebration of their 300th edition.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lynyrd Skynyrd was one of those accidental band discoveries – a real \u2018right place, right time\u2019 deal.\u00a0 Noted record producer Al Kooper (founder of Blood, Sweat, & Tears, the Blues Project, and a Bob Dylan associate) happened to catch them playing in an Atlanta dive bar in 1972.\u00a0 Kooper was on a mission to find bands to populate the Sounds of the South label he had recently persuaded MCA Records to fund.\u00a0 Kooper pitched it as an answer to Phil Walden\u2019s Capricorn Records, home of the Allman Brothers.\u00a0 Al\u2019s first impression of Skynyrd wasn\u2019t great.\u00a0 He was impressed by their professionalism, arrangements, and guitar playing, but not by their lead singer.\u00a0 Sporting a black T-shirt, droopy jeans, and no shoes, Ronnie Van Zant got on Kooper\u2019s nerves:\u00a0 \u201cAt first he annoyed me, because he was a mic stand twirler.\u00a0 The drum major of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but instead of a baton he had a microphone stand that was, by the way, lightweight aluminum – it only looked like it was heavy.\u00a0 That just got to me.\u00a0 The look didn\u2019t really matter to me.\u00a0 The music was incredible.\u00a0 How can you not respond to the first time you hear <\/span>I Ain\u2019t the One <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>Free Bird?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was Van Zant who had the vision of what the band could be.\u00a0 A hard working, hard living man, he used his unrelenting passion to whip Lynyrd Skynyrd into a top notch southern rock band.\u00a0 It was Ronnie Van Zant who also planted the seeds of the first Skynyrd mystery.\u00a0 Drummer Artimus Pyle recalled, \u201cWe were in Tokyo at some bar and we were drinking lots of sake.\u00a0 Ronine told me, \u2018I am never going to live to see 30.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 When Pyle told him that kind of talk was nonsense, Van Zant replied, \u201cNo, no, I want to go out with my boots on.\u201d\u00a0 Skynyrd\u2019s soundman, Kevin Elson, echoed the drummer\u2019s comments:\u00a0 \u201cRonnie told me often that he didn\u2019t expect to live past 30.\u201d\u00a0 One could attribute Ronnie\u2019s comments to that of someone living a straight ahead rock and roll lifestyle, but his father Lacy had other ideas.\u00a0 Lacy said, \u201cRonnie was the only one of my children who had second sight.\u201d\u00a0 His wife Judy said, \u201cWhen I heard that there had been a plane crash, I knew Ronnie was one of the ones that didn\u2019t make it.\u00a0 He told me so many times that I realized that he really knew what he was talking about.\u201d\u00a0 Ronnie was 29 when their plane went down in a Mississippi swamp.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lacy Van Zant took Ronnie\u2019s death as hard as anyone.\u00a0 At the funeral, he unnerved backup singer Jo Jo Billingsley when he scooped up some dirt, wiped it across her mouth and told her,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cKiss this ground you\u2019re walking on,\u201d before he walked away.\u00a0 Billingsley had been fired from her position as one of the \u2018Honkettes\u2019 (as their trio of background singers were called) for allegedly having an affair with one of the married band members.\u00a0 Just before they departed on the Street Survivor Tour, Ronnie called her before a show in Greenville, North Carolina and asked her to rejoin the band for the tour.\u00a0 As she was accepting his offer, she heard a voice in her head say, \u201cWait.\u201d\u00a0 She told Ronnie she had been planning on traveling to Little Rock anyway, so she said she would just catch up with them there.\u00a0 According to Jo Jo, \u201cThat night I had the most vivid dream.\u00a0 I saw the plane smack the ground,\u00a0 I saw them screaming and crying, and I saw fire.\u00a0 I woke up screaming, and my mom came running in going, \u2018Honey, what is it\u2019?\u00a0 I said, \u2018Moma, I dreamed the plane crashed!\u2019\u00a0 She said, \u2018No, it was just a dream,\u2019 but I said, \u2018No mom, it was too real.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rattled by her dream, she called all over Greenville and finally got a hold of Allen Collins.\u00a0 She begged him not to get on the plane.\u00a0 He surprised her, saying, \u201cJo, it\u2019s funny you\u2019d mention that, because I was looking out the window yesterday and I saw fire coming out of the wing.\u201d\u00a0 Billingsley continues, \u201c[When I heard about the crash] the first thing I thought was, \u2018God saved my life.\u2019\u00a0 The Lord gave me that dream to warn me, and I did the only thing I could do and warn them.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently Lacy had a hard time accepting that she had not been on the flight and survived.\u00a0 Guitarist Ed King had been let go from the band two years earlier and he later recalled, \u201cI always knew something bad would happen to them after I left.\u201d\u00a0 Fired from the band or not, King drove all night to get to Mississippi to be with the surviving band members.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Billingsley was not the only one who did not end up on the flight.\u00a0 Chris Charlesworth worked for their management company, Sir Productions, and he would normally have been with the band.\u00a0 He decided to travel on his own and meet them in Baton Rouge and the last minute change of plans probably saved his life.\u00a0 He would normally have been in the front of the plane with road manager Dean Kilpatrick, Ronnie, Cassie Gaines, and Steve Gaines.\u00a0 Those four in the front of the plane plus the two pilots died on impact.\u00a0 Charelsworth later said, \u201cThe crew in the back were less injured.\u00a0 The group and those closest to them were up front.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I would have sat, because I didn\u2019t know the crew.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Pianist Billy Powell was still amazed any of them survived when he described the crash to <\/span>CRM:\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>\u201cWe hit the trees at what seemed like 100 mph.\u00a0 It felt like we were being hit with baseball bats in a tin coffee can with the lid on.\u00a0 The tail section broke off, the cockpit broke off and buckled underneath, and both wings broke off.\u00a0 The fuselage turned sideways, and everybody was hurled forward.\u201d\u00a0 Reports that Ronnie was decapitated spread in later versions were untrue.\u00a0 According to Powell, \u201c[Ronnie] was catapulted at about 80 mph into a tree,\u00a0 Died instantly of a massive head injury.\u00a0 There was not another scratch on him, except a small bruise the size of a quarter at his temple.\u201d\u00a0 Injured drummer Pyle and crew members Ken Peden and Mark Frank made the painful slog to a farmhouse three quarters of a mile away to summon help.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The force of nature that was Ronnie Van Zant in life seems to have carried over with him in the afterlife.\u00a0 Stories about him seemingly sending messages from beyond the grave,\u00a0 many involving birds, are relayed by those that knew him best.\u00a0 Ronnie\u2019s younger brother Johnny refused to sing the words to <\/span>Free Bird<\/span><\/i> a full three years after he began performing with the Skynyrd survivors.\u00a0 He finally agreed to sing the song in 1990 after band members found an injured bird hopping around on one foot in a parking lot.\u00a0 It turned out the bird had one wing entangled in a length of string and when they untangled it, the bird flew away.\u00a0 Johnny interpreted freeing this bird as a sign that they should also go on, thus he agreed to start singing <\/span>Free Bird.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Allen Collins had a different kind of bird encounter when he tried to visit Ronnie\u2019s grave.\u00a0 He wanted to see the Charlie Daniels poem Ronnie\u2019s wife had carved into a wooden bench at the gravesite.\u00a0 Each time he tried to approach it, a mocking bird would dive-bomb him and peck at his head.\u00a0 Collins finally retreated and told the band\u2019s then road manager, Gene Odom, \u201cI think it\u2019s Ronnie telling me not to worry about him and don\u2019t come back here with your head in your hands.\u00a0 Go back and set the stage on fire.\u201d\u00a0 It could also have been a territorial mockingbird protecting its nest, but who am I to tell Allen Collins how to interpret the event.\u00a0 He was there, I was not and as with many \u2018signs\u2019, the message is in the mind of the receiver.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Guitarist Gary Rossington became the de facto leader of Skynyrd after the band was healed enough to reform.\u00a0 He confirmed the fact in a phone interview when he told Uhelski,\u00a0 \u201cYou know how they always say, \u2018Who died and made you boss?\u2019\u00a0 Well, Ronnie did.\u201d\u00a0 Still, Rossignton feels Ronnie spoke to him from the astral plane to help him make the band stronger.\u00a0 Gary says Van Zant even told him to fire two of the band\u2019s guitarists from beyond the grave:\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s hard but you gotta do what you got to do.\u00a0 Especially if it\u2019s a guy like Mike Estes and Ed King (who was in his second stint with the band that lasted from 1987 to 1996 when he was let go again).\u00a0 They were my brothers, and we were real close.\u00a0 Mikey and me were like best friends.\u00a0 Then I had to fire him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t do nothing wrong.\u00a0 Nothing happened, \u00a0 It\u2019s just that I had this vision, this dream and it\u2019s almost like I felt it from Ronnie and Allen.\u00a0 They were saying \u2018Hey, go for it,\u00a0 Do itl\u00a0 Just do it.\u2019 So, I did it and it worked out.\u00a0 Rickey Medlocke and Huey Thommason are great.\u00a0 The band has a whole new spark and flame.\u201d\u00a0 Gary made these last comments in 1997;\u00a0 Thommason has since died, passing away in 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In a less mystical matter, there has been a tendency for some misguided individuals to vandalize the graves of both Van Zant and Steven Gaines.\u00a0 The band used to make sure flowers were sent to their graves on the anniversary of their death but Judy Van Zant finally asked them to stop – \u2018fans\u2019 would simply steal them as soon as they were put in place.\u00a0 Van Zant had been intered in a mausoleum at his wife\u2019s request and twice in the early 2000s, ghoulish hooligans had managed to drag his casket out of its place in the vault.\u00a0 They also managed to tip over the urn containing Gaine\u2019s ashes located not more than 30 feet from Ronnie\u2019s original resting place.\u00a0 In the second instance, the vandals’ aim was to see if the legend that Ronnie was buried in a black Neil Young T-Shirt was true (Judy Van Zant has said he was laid to rest in a suit).\u00a0 After the last incident, the remains were moved to an unmarked grave and the mausoleum was left behind as a memorial that fans can still visit.\u00a0 Residents in the Jacksonville suburb of Doctor\u2019s Inlet don\u2019t need to know where his body is resting;\u00a0 they claim they often see Ronnie heading toward his favorite fishing hole behind his old house, trusty fishpole in hand.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fans will do odd things in their grief, but in the case of Skynyrd, some people (I can\u2019t blame this on their true fans) went beyond the pale.\u00a0 By dawn on the day of the crash, it is estimated some 3,000 people had descended on the scene of the accident, but not to be of any help to the rescuers.\u00a0 Road manager Craig Reed remembered, \u201cThey were human vultures.\u00a0 All the money that was in my pockets was taken.\u00a0 I had a couple of grand in my pockets from the poker game we were playing before the crash.\u00a0 All my T-shirts were taken, all my jewelry, my silver bullets from <\/span>Gimme Back My Bullets, <\/span><\/i>all gone.\u00a0 They went through our suitcases.\u00a0 They took anything that said \u2018Lynyrd Skynyrd\u2019 on it.\u00a0 They even went out and took the side of the plane that was painted \u2018Lynyrd Skynyrd\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 It is horrifying to think this mob took items from the living and the dead and essentially picked the plane\u2019s clean like a Thanksgiving Day turkey carcass.\u00a0 This part of the story isn\u2019t at all \u2018mystical\u2019, just rather sickening by any standard one could compare it to.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In light of Allen Collin\u2019s comments to Jo Jo Billingsley about flames coming from the wing, a mechanic had been dispatched to Greenville to work on the plane before they departed for Baton Rouge.\u00a0 Ironically, the crash was not caused by engine failure but by a series of errors.\u00a0 The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the crash was caused by, \u201cFuel exhaustion and total loss of power to both engines due to crew inattention to fuel supply.\u00a0 Contributing to the fuel exhaustion were inadequate flight planning and an engine malfunction of undetermined nature in the right engine that resulted in \u2018torching\u2019 and higher-than-normal fuel consumption.\u201d\u00a0 When the right engine shut down, the pilots were on the radio searching for vectors to the closest airport.\u00a0 When the left engine also shut down due to lack of fuel, they were doomed to fall short of making it to the alternate airport emergency landing they were trying to achieve.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The band\u2019s label, MCA, replaced the cover of the album released shortly before the fatal crash.\u00a0 The original cover of <\/span>Street Survivors <\/span><\/i>showed the band members surrounded by flames.<\/span><\/p>\n That in itself seemed to be a cruel portent of things to come.\u00a0 RIP to those who perished in this tragic crash 45 years ago and peace to those who survived.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Prime Lynyrd Skynyrd at Knewworth in 1976, a year before their fateful plane crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What do you call it?\u00a0 Deja vu?\u00a0 Clairvoyance?\u00a0 Luck?\u00a0 Intuition?\u00a0 No doubt you have heard tales of mysterious events that defy simple, rational explanation.\u00a0 It is a pretty safe bet that many of you may have experienced these kinds of things.\u00a0 Whether one chooses to tell other people about these happenings is a rather 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