114650882 People Magazine Ronnie Van Zant 2

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UPFR@NTTHE ROCK ROAD CLAIMS ANOTHERTRAGIC VICTIM: RONNIE VAN ZANT

OF THE LYNYRD SKYNYRD BAND

LP, Street Survivors, whlch just hit thestores gold, had been recorded, un-characteristically, cold sober. Similar-ly, they joklngly dubbed the three-month, 50-city journey they launchedlast month as "the torture tour,,-theirfirst in years when they would try toface audiences without being deaddrunk.

Then, between Greenville, S.C. andBaton Rouge, en route to their fifthdate, the band's chartered Convair 240prop jet, reportedly low on f uel,nosedived into a swampy thicket insouthwest Mississippi. Van Zant waskilled instantly. Also dead at the sitewere guitarist Steve Gaines; his back-up vocalist, sister Cassie Gaines; theassistant road manager, and thetwo-man flight crew. There were 20survivors, but many were hospitalized.lf ever reconstituted, Lynyrd Skynyrdcould not be the same. Stunned andmournful, the rock world had lost oneof its most colorful and distinctiveartists.

A few days before his finat weekon the road, Van Zant had invitedPEOPLE 3 rm Jerome for a rare inter-view at his home in Doctor,s lntet, Fla.Jerome's report:

The most devastating irony of theSkynyrd tragedy was that Ronnie VanZant really seemed to be recoveringfrom what he himself described as

"five years of alcoholism.,,Anyone whohad heard his pained and snarling bluesdelivery in performance, seen hisbarefoot inebriated swagger and methim backstage afterward-often thick-Iidded and stuporous-would hardlyhave recognized him. Alert and athlet-ic, he was trimmer than he hadappeared in years and exuberanily per-sonable in conversation.

It was a jolt to meet the new VanZant, legendary trasher of hotels, when

CONTINUED

ttlt's a miracle anyone walked out,,' said anFAA officlal, but the whole group did except VanZant (center), Steve Gaines (upper right) and htssister Cassie (lower right).

Too Otd to Rock'n'Rott, Too youngfo Die is just a sardonic song by theJethro Tullgroup. The terrible realityof this 2S-year-old art form is that a dis-proportionate number of its stars havedied in their creative prlme. SomeOD'd on the instant fame and the temp-tations of too much disposable income.Some artists confused drugs anddrink for a muse until they became afatal addiction, especially in combina-tion with overpowered motorcyclesand cars. Life in the fast lane (as the Ea-gles hymned it) only worsened theactuarial odds. The more money thatwas spent on dangerous pursuits, themore that had to be earned on mer-ciless touring schedules in which theall-night travel miles-and the risk-in-exorably mounted. Sometimes, admit-tedly, the blame was greedy manage-ment or perverse fate. But majorf igures f rom Buddy Hoily (1959) to OtisRedding (1967) and Jim Croce (1970)were lost in plane crashes. The latestwas buried near his native Jacksonvillelast week. He was Ronnie yanZanl,Zg,co-founder, writer and lead singer ofLynyrd Skynyrd. lt had supplanted theAllman Brothers as the reigning South-ern boogie band and as a leading U.S.challenger to the British hegemony ofthe concert coliseums.

The group members who eight yearsago were working 9100-a-week Floridahonky-tonks this year reached a newpeak of commercial importance-andthreat of drunken self-destruction. Sin-gle-concert guarantees ranged up to$150,000. Three of their LPs sold a mil-lion. At the same time Van Zant wasnoting, "We made the Who look likechurch boys on Sunday. We donethings only fools'd do." Ronnie, after adozen arrests for brawling and miscon-duct himself, helped convince LynyrdSkynyrd this summer that ,,we had onelast chance to get it together-weain't getting any younger." Their latest

The Yan Zants kept the chape! from be-coming a media ecene. One of the few

ctars attendlng: Krlc Krletoffeneon.

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