Ronnie Van Zant was born on January 15, 1948, in Jacksonville, Florida. He died on October 20, 1977, in the woods of southern Mississippi. He was 29 years old, just 87 days away from turning 30.
Nobody who knew him was surprised by the number. For years, the Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman had been telling the people closest to him that he would never reach 30.
“That’s my limit”
The first person to hear it may have been his father. Lacy Van Zant later said that Ronnie told him the same thing many times. When Lacy pushed back and asked why he talked that way, Ronnie did not laugh it off. He told his father that 30 was his limit.
“Daddy, I’ll never be 30 years old.”
Lacy carried those conversations with him for the rest of his life. Years after the crash, he described Ronnie as the only one of his children who had what he called second sight.
A promise made in Tokyo
Ronnie Van Zant said it to his bandmates, too. Guitarist Ed King heard it so often that he admitted he got tired of hearing it. Drummer Artimus Pyle remembered a conversation in Tokyo, while Lynyrd Skynyrd was touring Japan.
“Ronnie told me, ‘I am never going to live to see 30.'”
Ronnie Van Zant added one more detail. When his time came, he said, he wanted to go out with his boots on. To Pyle, that meant on the road, doing what he loved. Pyle told him not to talk like that. Ronnie did not change his answer.
Some friends later wondered whether the prediction came from the hard way Ronnie Van Zant lived, and from the late nights and the drinking that came with life on the road. Sometimes he made the prediction over a few too many drinks. Whatever the source, he never stopped believing it.
The plane nobody trusted
In the fall of 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd was flying between shows on a chartered twin-engine Convair. Not everyone in the group felt good about it. Keyboardist Billy Powell was among those who later described seeing flames shooting from the plane’s right engine on a flight just days before the crash.
Guitarist Gary Rossington later recalled that some in the touring party were uneasy about getting back on board. Ronnie Van Zant, he said, was calmer about it than the others. His attitude was simple. If it was your time, it was your time.
October 20, 1977
The band had released its fifth studio album, Street Survivors, three days earlier. It looked like it would be their biggest record yet. They were only a handful of shows into the most ambitious headlining tour of their career.
That afternoon, the plane took off from Greenville, South Carolina, bound for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the band was scheduled to play at LSU. Near the end of the flight, the pilots radioed that they were running out of fuel. They tried to reach the small airport in McComb, Mississippi. They did not make it. A little before 7 p.m., the plane skimmed across the treetops and broke apart in a heavily wooded swamp near the town of Gillsburg.
Ronnie Van Zant had been lying asleep on the floor of the cabin, his head on a pillow. That left him more exposed than most of the others on board. He died of head injuries, apparently on impact.
Six people died that evening: Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backing singer Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. Twenty people survived, many of them badly hurt.
The National Transportation Safety Board later ruled that the plane had run out of fuel because the crew did not pay enough attention to the fuel supply. It cited poor flight planning and a malfunction in the right engine as contributing factors.
Boots on, on the road
Ronnie Van Zant had said he would not see 30, and he did not. He had said he would go out with his boots on, out on the road, and he died between two concerts in the middle of a tour.
Artimus Pyle survived the crash. Looking back on that conversation in Tokyo, he said he had told Ronnie Van Zant not to talk that way. In the end, Pyle came to believe that his friend simply knew his destiny.
Ten years later, Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited with Ronnie’s younger brother, Johnny Van Zant, singing the songs Ronnie wrote. Johnny is still singing them today.
Do you remember where you were when you heard the news about Lynyrd Skynyrd in October 1977?