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Lynyrd Skynyrd: Busted Teeth, Saturday Night Specials, and the Smell of Death · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Lynyrd Skinnert are insane. Their singer, Ronnie van Zandt, was
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a violent bully from the mean streets of Jacksonville, Florida.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: He tried to maim one of his guitar players hands
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: with a broken bottle. He knocked out his piano players
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: front teeth not once, but twice. He held a gun
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to his drummer's head during rehearsal. And when his bandmates
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: followed suit with their own debauched antics, Ronnie turned their
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: drug and alcohol flirtations with death to hit songs, great songs,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: some of the best and most enduring American rock and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: roll songs of all time. Unlike that music I played
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: for you at the top of the show. That wasn't
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: called you Can Call Me Betty MK one. I played
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you that loop because I can't afford the rights to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you let Up My Life by Debbie Boone. And why
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: would I play you that specific slice of pining by
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the window Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the number one song in America On October twentieth, nineteen
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: seventy seven, and that was the day that Leonard Skynerd's
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: plane dropped from the sky and crashed into a Mississippi swamp,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: killing six passengers, including Ronnie van Zand on this episode
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: busted teeth, broken bottles, pining by the window, cheese and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Lenyard skinnerd. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Leonard
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Skynyrd's drummer, Artemis Pyle, was covered in blood. He dragged
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: his battered body through the swamp. His ribs felt like
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: they were shattered, just like that conveyor CV two was
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: shattered into god knows how many pieces when it dropped
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: out of the sky and crash landed here wherever. Here
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: was South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana. The plane wasn't in the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: air too long before it all went to shit. Now
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: that two bit death trap was smoldering on the swamp floor.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: The members of Lyonard Skynyrd and their entourage were dying
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: or already dead. When Pyle managed to pull himself out
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of the destruction, he saw the pilot and the co
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: pilot still strapped into the cockpit seats hanging upside down.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: From a tree. You didn't have to look twice to
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: know they were no longer of this earth. But what
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: about everybody else? Pyle had no idea. Ronnie van Zan,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Leonard Skynyrd's lead singer and resident ass kicker, hated flying.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: How's that for a bad woman? There were others too.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: The conveyor was thirty years old. It looked like something
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the fucking Clampets would tool around in Aerosmith straight up
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: refused when they were offered to fly in it. And
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: just yesterday, flying from Miami to Greenville, South Carolina, a
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: ten foot fireball shot out of the engine at twelve
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: thousand feet in the air. Burned for a minute easy.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: They all saw it. And that was textbook fucking biblical guidance.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: You get through this flight, you touch down, you kiss
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the ground, you think the Lord, and you do not
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: get back on that plane. And why was Leonard Skynyrd
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: in this position in the first place? They were huge,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: like blow the rolling stones off the stage at Nebworth huge,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: about to headline Madison Square Garden. Huge, and as such
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: they should enjoy the luxuries that a huge band can afford.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Like their manager. That fucker was sitting in first class
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: right now on some commercial flight while his boys sweated
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it out in this hunker chunk. What's their name? Everybody
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: knew their name. This wasn't the early seventies anymore. It
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: was October twentieth, nineteen seventy seven. Just three days earlier,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Lynyrd Skynard released their fourth studio album, Street Survivors, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the critics even liked him, and the fans liked it too.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: They were a big deal. The pilots, on the other hand,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: had acted like yesterday's ten foot fireball wasn't a big deal.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Ronnie followed suit. That was probably just his confrontational machismo,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: trumping as aviation phobia. The dude was born fists first,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: That's what they said. At least he fought anyone in anything,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: even his bandmates. Ronnie van Zant wasn't gonna let some
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: puddle jumpers scare the but Jesus out of them. Besides,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the plan was to have the plane serviced when they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: reached their next destination, Baton Rouge, but they never made
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it to Baton Rouge. Up in the air, the right
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: engine sputtered and then it just died. The pilots were
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: surprised to notice that they were dangerously low on gas.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Since they had just fueled up in Greenville, they decided
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to find the closest airport for an emergency landing. They
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: began a slow descent landing with one working engine probably
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: would have worked if that is, the left engine didn't
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: give out two, which it did. The pilot walked back
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to the cabin and made the announcement, we're out of gas.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Put your heads between your legs and buckle up tight.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Artemis Pile replayed that moment through his head as he
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: continued to drag his ass through the swamp. The sun
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: had gone down, the sound of cicadas had gone down
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: with it, and in their place, saw Pile could hear
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: so Russian wind. After the conveyor's second engine failed. Then
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the sound of the wind was replaced by the violent
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: sound of trees hitting the undercarriage as the plane sank
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: lower to the ground, first one tree, then another, and another,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and suddenly ten, fifteen, twenty tree tops all smacking the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: plane at once and then ripping it apart like beasts
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: dimboweling their prey. Pile shook the sounds from his head
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and moved through the swamp. He hadn't always been a drummer.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: He was ex marine. Once a leather neck, always a
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: leather neck. Marines didn't give up, and they didn't leave
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: anyone behind. The swamp, on the other hand, had different ideas.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: The swamp was a sunken tableau of mud and vines
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and grass and twigs. The dead limbs of mighty oak
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: trees abandoned and forgotten. The low croak of bullfrogs sang
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: their ancient forest ballad. Pyle looked up helicopters. That was
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: nice and all, but he didn't have time to wait
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: for the search party to land. He crossed over a creek,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: snakes hissed in the muck. At long last, he saw
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a barbed barre fence up in the distance, and just
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: beyond it a herd of cattle. Civilization. Pyle hoped to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: God that someone was home. He slid under the fence
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and approached the farmhouse. The cows standing in the field
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: gave him blank stairs, not so much for the farmer
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: who had emerged from his homestead with a shotgun in
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: his hand. He looked at Pile like he was a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: blood soaked, long haired hippie swamp thing he saw the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: copters circling above. He knew there was a prison camp nearby.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: He put two and two together. He cocked his firearm,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: raised it, and then he pulled the trigger. Was supposed
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to be a warning shot, but Artemis Pyle felt the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: buckshot tear into his shoulder. That sealed it. Pile knew
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: he wasn't in South Carolina, or Mississippi or Louisiana. He
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: didn't need no bullfrog croaking its primordial folk tale to
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: tell him where he was. He caught a whiff, first
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of gunpowder and then of hot metal, charing his flesh.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Can you smell that? Smell? Destruction? Death? Hell? In nineteen
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: seventy two, five years before their blossoming superstardom was cut
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: short by a fatal plane crash, Leonyrd Skynyrd were big
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: fish in a little pond. The pond was Jacksonville, Florida,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: a town that wasn't big enough for two shit hot
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: local bands. Lucky for Skinner, Dwayne and Greg had taken
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the almonds over to make it Skinnyard stuck around. They
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: made an impression. Whether they were calling themselves conqueror Worm
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: or the Noble five, the one percent or Sons of Satan,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the name they eventually settled on anddeared them to a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: particular subset of Jacksonville denizens, those long haired hippie types
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: whose very appearance made the old school rednecks nervous. Leonard
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Skinner was a real person, a high school gym teacher
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: at Yes Robert E. Lee High School. He got soon
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to be skinnered guitarist Gary Rossington, suspended because Gary's hair
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: touched his shirt collar and fell within two fingers of
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: his eyebrows, thus violating the high and tight dress code.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just their long hair and fucked the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: man's sense of humor that got skinnered. Notice they could
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: fucking play. They played so damn well that Alan Walden,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: formerly of Capricorn Records, picked them over the one hundred
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and eighty six other bands he auditioned in the course
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of one year and signed them to a management contract.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: They played so well that Al Cooper, Bob Dylan's rock
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and roll Zelig signed them to his brand new MCA
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Records in Prick called Sounds of the South, after witnessing
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: them kill at a small club. But if they ever
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to make it outside the greater Jacksonville area. They
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: needed more original songs, so they rented a one room
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: shack some thirty miles outside of town to write and rehearse.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: No ac and the heat didn't kill you, then maybe
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the gators and cotton moths would. They called it hell House.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just a heat that made the cabin feel
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: like purgatory. Ronnie van Zandt was a take no shit
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: task master. Practice was nine am to dusk every day,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: no entourage, no girls. You played the song and then
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: he played it again. He fucked up the intro. Stop
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: do it again. He played the solo different than last time.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Stop do it Again. Leon Wilkerson's bass had to be
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: married to Bob Burns's kickdrum, and the guitar onslought of
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Gary Rossington, Alan Collins and Ed King the triple Threat.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: They dubbed the guitar Army. That had to be assassin
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: level precise, leave the shroom shit to the Almonds. Jamming
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't Skynyrd's Across to Bear Skinnyerd was tight. SKINNERD Live
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: sounded just like SKINNERD on record. Even their show stopping
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: ballad turned Barnburn or Freebird the Stairway to Heaven of
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the South. That song was mathematically precise. Every time they
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: played it could cut glass with that tune. And that
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was all because Ronnie van Zandt held Skinnerd's feet to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the hell house fire. Now after hours, After hours was
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: when Ronnie switched gears and lived with he called the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: rock gut life. The rock cut life was bottomless bottles
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: of scotch, broken noses and busted fists. It was when
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the booze did the talking for you. It did the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: fighting too. Ronnie van Zandt wasn't just a street survivor
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: from a poor neighborhood. He was a street fighter. There
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: didn't have to be a reason why he fought. Maybe
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a guy looked at him the wrong way on the sidewalk,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: maybe a guy didn't look at him at all. Didn't matter.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: You wanted to exit the room with all your teeth right.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So first you had to figure out how you were
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: going to get past Ronnie van zand Ronnie's own mother
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: thought he was the meanest son bitch in town. But
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you know, moms are biased like that. And though Ronnie
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: van Zant may have been as his heroes of rolling Stones,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: saying about a street fighting man. He was not, to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: paraphrase a Skinnert song, a simple kind of man. Ronnie
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: was complicated. Ronnie could write a song like The Needle
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: and the Spoon, a cautionary tale about heroin, while still
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: dabbling in stuff that was way harder than Shitas regal.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Ronnie could write a song Sweet Home Alabama, a Southern
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: man's proud battle cry, shit talking Canadian liberals be damned
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and do it while not only claiming that the deviceive
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Confederate flag hoisted at Skinner shows in the mid seventies
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: was not his idea but merely a marketing gimmick by
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: MCA Records, but also by loving the hell out of
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: a certain Canadian liberal, mister Mealyng, the one who had
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: dissed Southern man not once but twice in his own songs,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Ronnie did, as it turns out, means mister young around.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: But I digress and more on that age old beef later.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Ronnie van ZANDT could even champion gun control in a
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: song like Saturday Night Special, while simultaneously putting the fear
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of God into his bandmates with a loaded pistol. Bob Burns,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Leonard Skynyrd's original drummer was burning up inside hell house.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Ronnie was cracking the whip again. Bob just wanted to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: be done. Ronny didn't care what Bob did or didn't want.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Leonard Skynyrd weren't going to grab that big brass ring
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: by quitting when they were tired as basis. Leon Wilkerson
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: once said, Ronnie ran Skinnerd like Stalin ran Russia. The
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Saturday Night Special came out fast, barrel blue, and cold.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Ronnie stuck it against Bob's temple, played the motherfucking song
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Ronnie said, were I'm going to blow your brains all
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: over this room. Bob and the rest of the band
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: feared Ronnie even more than they loved and respected him.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: They did what Ronnie said. That was the only pass.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: It was a path of destruction At first. Skinnyard destroyed
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the bands they opened up for. They could fuck off
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the competition just by showing up, asked the band that
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: was playing at Greenfield Stables. When Skynyrd's van arrived on site,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: fans screamed and cheered so loudly for Skinner that they
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: drowned up the music being played on stage. Do you
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: know who that band was. Neither do I. No one
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: remembers them, but everyone remembered Lynyrd skinnerd For Better or
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: for Worse, nineteen seventy three, Daily City, California. Keith Moon
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: was drunk. Or maybe it was the pills the ones
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: meant to knock out a horse or put an elephant
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: on its ass. Either way, Keith was sprout out backstage
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: at the Cow Palace. He could barely sit up straight,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: let alone play, and the other members of The Who
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: quickly came to a solution. The drummer for the opening
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: band could fill in. That was easier said than done.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Playing or partying. Leonard Skiddard went toe to toe. There
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: are also quick studies. Touring with The Who would prove
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to be their big break, a serious promotion from playing
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to audience of a thousand on a good night to
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen thousand every night. But it also proved to be
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the moment where Ronnie Van's Aunt's rock got life led
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: over into band life. Replaying or fighting. It was hard
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: to tell the difference while you were busy setting a
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: new pace. The Who plays loud, you play louder. Keith
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Moon gets drunk, you get drunker. Which explains why Skinnerd's
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: drummer Bob Burns, did not fill in for Moody that evening, because,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: just like his British counterpart, Bob Burns was plastered. Instead,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: some nineteen year old got the dream gig of a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: lifetime when he was hauled from the crowd to sit
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: in with one of the biggest bands on the planet.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Skinner could relate to the luck of the nineteen year
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: old kid. Thanks to the connections of their producer Al Cooper,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: they were opening for The Who, and thanks to The Who,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: they now had the attention of audiences beyond Jacksonville. This
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: coming on the heels of a hit debut album pronounced
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Leonard Skinnerd, which peaked at number twenty seven on the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Billboard Album Chart, it felt like the beginning of a
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: new chapter for Bob Burns. However, it was the beginning
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of the end. The next year, nineteen seventy four, on
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: tour in England, Bob Burns saw the devil. It stared
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: at him from behind the eyes of a hotel owner's cat.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: The thing was possessed and it had to die. Bob
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: grabbed the cat, made his way to the top floor
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: of the hotel, tossed it out a window. They say
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: a cat always lands on his feet. This is not true.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: This cat died on impact. The devil, on the other hand,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be killed off so easily. Pretty soon he was back,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: this time in the eyes of Skynyrd's road manager. Bob
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: knew it. He looked into those eyes and trembled once again.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: He knew what he had to do. He had a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: cast out satan with extreme prejudice and Ronnie van Zant
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: caliber of violence. But although Bob Burns tanked up on
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: codine laced whiskey and chased the guy down the street
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: with a pickaxe, he never caught up with him. Life
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: on the road, on the other hand, life with Ronnie
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the rock cut life that caught up with Bob real
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: fucking quick, and so Bob Burns spiraled out of control
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and right out of Lynyrd. Skynyrd fast, not Ronnie van
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Zand Ronnie was going to take time, go down slow
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: at first, and then pick up speed. The CA conve
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: CV two forty with two busted engines dropping from the sky,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and he was going to take the whole band down
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: with him.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this We're We're, We're, years
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: before became drunken shorthand for Heckler's At concerts, free Bird
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: was a cathartic finale at Lynard Skynyrd's live shows.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It had everything. It's the sensitive part that you swayed
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: to while holding your lighter in the air, from the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: double time guitar, army climax that left your face melted,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and though it ran nine minutes long, Free Bird was
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a staple of nineteen seventies rock radio thanks to the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: aar or album oriented rock radio format, where DJs on
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the FM dial were key to play any and all
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: album tracks they deemed worthy. MCA, however, wouldn't release free
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Bird as a single, and why would they. The song
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: single handedly made Skynyrd's debut album a massive commercial success.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until November of nineteen seventy four, more than
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a year after the album was released, the free Bird
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: was finally released as a single. By that time, Skynyrd's
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: sophomore album, Second Helping was already on shelves, and one
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of that album's singles was making ways For entirely different reasons.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Ronnie van Zant and Skynyered guitarist Ed King and Gary
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Rossington wrote Sweet Home Alabama in response to the song
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Southern Man in Alabama, both by Neil Young, both unflinching
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: portraits of deep seated racism in the Deep South. Ronnie
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was proud of his Southern heritage. He wasn't a dumb redneck.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: He didn't think it was fair for Neil to lump
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: all Southerners together as bigots, so he called out Neil
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Young by name and what would become Skynyrd's highest charting single.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: But it was the song's other call out that attracted
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: more controversy. George Wallace, the Alabama governor who championed at
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Jim Crow South in the middle of the Civil rights movement,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the guy known for lines like segregation Now, segregation, Tomorrow's
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: segregation Forever. He got his own moment in Sweet Home, Alabama.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: But was it Skynyrd's saluting or lampooning the infamous politician.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Ronnie gave an interview in the mid seventies where we
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: called the song a joke, but then went on to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: call Wallace a gentleman with a lot of nerve and balls.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Ed King was less coy when it came to the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: band's politics. Ronnie was a big fan of George Wallace.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: He later said he totally supported him. We all did.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: We respected the way Wallace stood up for the South.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Anybody who tells you differently is lying. Ronnie's supposed to
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: beef with Neil Young wasn't a lie exactly. It was
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to rally Skynard's base. It was good for business,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: but off the record. Even after the Sweet Home Alabama dustup,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Ronnie regularly wore Neil Young t shirts and concert He
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: even wore one on the cover of The Street Survivor's album.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And Neil passed on his home demos to Skinner. He
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: wanted them to record his song powder Finger on an
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: upcoming record. They never got around to it, which meant
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the existing narrative, the one that lived and breathed on
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the airwaves, carried on their f the last rift for decades,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: still does today. But this is the real story. Neil
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Young loved Ronnie van Zant, and Ronnie van Zant loved
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Neil Young. Ed King, on the other hand, didn't feel
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Ronnie van Zant's love. All ed King felt was Ronnie
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: van Zant's Rath. Ronnie bitched and moaned about Ed's playing
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: over and over. Ed was garage rock royalty, former member
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, co writer of the number
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: one hit Incense and Peppermints. That was a nugget if
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: he dug it, but Ed never got that respect. There
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: was a pecking order in skinnerd Ronnie van Zant was
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: on top. Everyone else was down below. The abuse was verbal,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the abuse was physical. Ed King couldn't take it. He
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: didn't see the devil like Bob Burns did, but he
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: saw the writing on the wall the same. In nineteen
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: seventy five, a year in which Ronnie was arrested no
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: less than five times for being shiit faced, Skinnered embarked
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: on a ninety day sixty one show tour to support
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: their third album, Nothing Fancy. They called it the Torture Tour.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: The tour was aptly named Ronnie berated Ed backstage after
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: a show in Pittsburgh, Ed bounced back to his hotel room,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: where he packed his shit and left in the middle
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: of the night. He never came back. He didn't know
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: it then, but Ed King got out while the getting
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: was good, not so much for Billy Powell, the band's
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: piano player. Billy made the unfortunate decision of arguing with
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Skinner's road manager in a hallway directly outside Ronnie's hotel room.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Ronnie opened the door and told him to cut the shit.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Billy told Ronnie to mind his own fucking business. Ronnie
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: punched Billy square in the mouth. Billy stumbled back. He
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: tasted blood as it rushed from his lip, and then
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: he felt his two front teeth bouncing around in his mouth.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Just a week later, at the tour's closing date in Jacksonville,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: it was Ronnie's turn to taste blood. He started coughing
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: just a few songs into the set and tasted warm
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: iron in his mouth. All that singing from the throat
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and not from the gut. They cut the show short.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: The audience rioted, They tossed bottles, They fucked up Skinner's gear.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Police drew their revolvers. Kids get their arms chewed up
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: by can nines. Sixteen people were arrested. Ronnie's street fighting
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: rock gut Life manifested itself by osmosis. Backstage, Ronnie eating
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: something for the riot in his throat, something to make
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the pain go away. Pills, coat, booze, something stronger, something anything.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: The peppermin schnapps tasted good on ice. It wasn't like
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: bourbon or scotch. It went down real easy. The boys
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and Leonard Skinnyard ordered another round and then another conversation
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: turned the hell even was schnapps? And how did you
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: say that word? Schnaps? Schnaps, schnopes, schnaps schnops, right, schnops.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Ronnie van Zant wasn't amused. The more he drank, the
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: more he wasn't the lead singer of one of the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: biggest bands in the world anymore. He was the neighborhood
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: bully you pronounced schnaps. He dun't fuck like shut up
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and stopped smooched together fucking idiots saying words all wrong
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and shit, that's Ronnie, by the way, not me. So
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the band got back to their hotel room and they
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: were pissed off, and Ronnie was still pissed too, So
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: he did what he always did when he was pissed.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: He started swinging his fists around. The guy's told him
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to cool it, and that just made him angrier. Ronnie
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: grabbed a bottle and smashed it. Then he waved around
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a jagged piece of glass clutched in his fist. Someone
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: was gonna get fucked up tonight, Gary Rossington would do.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut your hands. Ronnie said to Gary, you're
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: not gonna play guitar again. Ronnie slashed mcglass, cut open
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Gary's hand. Ronnie slashed again, slice Gary's other hand, again
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and again and again slash, slice, slash, slice, until Gary's
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: hands were chopped. To help, and the blood was everywhere.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Skared's road manager took carre the whole thing. Like he
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: always said, he had a briefcase stocked with two hundred
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars in cash just for shit like this,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: bail money, hush money, blood and glass on hotel room,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: carpet floor money. But although money meant to Gary's hands,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: throwing money at a problem didn't always fix it, and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the problems kept coming. Not just Ronnie's problems, the crew
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: got into it with some assho who wouldn't stop running
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: his mouth at the bar one night. Words turned to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: elbows in the face, which then turned into Skinnerard getting
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: tossed out on the street. That incident was immortalized in
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the Lenyard skinnerd song What's Your Name, the leadoff track
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to the album Street Survivors, released in October of nineteen
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: seventy seven. That album also featured the song that Smell,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: partly inspired by Gary fucked up on Kayludes and Booze
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: when he drove his brand new four Torino at high
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: speed through a telephone pole, then a parked car, an
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: oak tree, and finally into a house. No way, it
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't garyo hit the park car. That was another Skinner guitarist,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Alan Collins when he got into it in his own
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: automobile wreck. Ronnie used Gary and Allen's car accidents as
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: inspiration for the cautionary tale. It was that smell. You know,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: do as a skinnered boy? Say not as we do? Still,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: can you imagine? And the guy who gets so fucked
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: up that he carves up your hands with a broken bottle,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: hands that used to make your living in his band,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: or he knocks out your teeth in a hotel hallway,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: which for the record, was not the last time Ronnie
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: punched out the piano player's teeth. That's the same guy
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: who comes to your hospital where it gives you a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: guilt trip for crashing your car and then writes a
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: fucking song about it. I get a word for a
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: guy like that, asshole. Lard Skinner did a song for everything,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: though it seemed, bar fights, car crashes, guns, drugs. They
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: even wrote their own eulogy. They just didn't know it yet.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Artemis Pile's shoulder burned from where the buckshot had hit him.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: He held up his hands in the air as the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: farmer reloaded. Don't shoot, he yelled, and then he desperately
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: told the farmer who he was and what had happened.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: By the time rescue crews arrived on the evening of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: October twentieth, nineteen seventy seven, at the sight of the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Nerd skinner It's plane crash near Gilsburg, Mississippi, a stretch
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of tree lined swamp called Slaughterhouse Road. The bone pickers
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: were already picking up on that smell, not just the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: smell of death, but of morbid opportunity. They picked up wallets, purses, cash, jewelry,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: all of it stolen, while twenty survivors lay there bleeding,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: like Gary Rossington, one leg in both arms broken, his
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: stomach and liver punctured, and Billy Powell, whose facial lacerations
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: were so severe his nose was hanging off his face,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and the band's security chief, gene Otum, blind one eye
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: with a broken neck, whose final words to the pilots
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: before the crash were, I hope you too, sons of bitches,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: lived through this, so I can kill you both. Gene
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Otum didn't get to carry out his threat. The pilot
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and co pilot were both dead, hanging from their cockpit
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: seat upside down in a tree. Steve Gains, the guitarist
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: who had replaced ed King just the year before, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: assisted Casey, one of Skinnerd's new backup singers, were also
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: among the dead, as was Skinnard's tour manager and Ronnie Vanzan,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: who was not in his seat at the time of
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the crash, but was passed out on the cabin floor,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: either from a stiff drink, a sedative, or both. He
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: died from blunt force trauma to his forehead, most likely
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: from a tree limb that thrust through a window during
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that harrowing descent into the Mississippi tree line. Other details
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: of the crash were as ambiguous as Ronnie's lyrics. The
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: National Travel Safety Bureau's official report ruled the crash was
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: caused by quote fuel exhaustion and total loss of power
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: from both engines due to crew and attention to fuel support.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: In other words, the plane burned through gas at an
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: abnormally high rate and the pilots failed to notice it
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: until it was too late still to sup It sure
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: was convenient that Peter Rudge, Skinnyrd's manager since Alan Walden
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: left in nineteen seventy four, chose to ride first class
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on a commercial plane instead of an the least Corvair
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with the rest of the boys. Others grasped for clues
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: on the cover of Street Survivors, Skynyrd's final album with
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Ronnie van Zen in their original lineup, released just days
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: before the crash, The cover showed the band standing on
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a street surrounded by flames, as if they were making
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: a defiant stand in hell itself. The photograph was said
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: to be prophetic that the members touched by flames in
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the photo were the ones to perish in the crash.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Closer inspection of the cover showed that actually all members
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of the band were touched by the flames in one
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: way or another. Nevertheless, MCA pulled the original cover and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: replaced it with a similar shot of the band standing
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: in utter darkness, illuminated only by a spotlight, and in
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that darkness they remained. Lynyrd Skynard disbanded, but the crash
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't the end of their suffering. The swamp, the darkness,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the devil hell, none of that was through with him. Yet.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the tragedy, one Roadi took his
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: own life, another was institutionalized. Guitarist Alan Collins lost his
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: wife and childbirth, and then years later lost his girlfriend
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: when he crashed his Ford Thunderbird into a ditch. The
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: accident left Alan paralyzed from the chests down. Surviving band
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: members argued and sued each other, largely over Leonard Skynerd's legacy.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Many of them had it out for their manager, Peter Rudge,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: the one who leased the plane but refused to ride
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: in it. As a result, Rudge nearly killed himself with
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: cocaine and alcohol, and after a ten year hiatus, Lyonard
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Skynyard returned, but they were never the same. Leonard Skinnerd
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: two point zero has been around for decades now, far
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: longer than the original lineup. Ever, was Ronnie's younger brother,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Johnny is the band's lead vocalist, not to be confused
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: with the third Van Sant brother, Donnie former lead singer
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: for thirty eight Special Gary Rossington remains the band's only
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: original member. If you're seeing Leonard Skinner these days, you're
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: watching a glorified tribute band. All the things that made
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Leonard skinnerd for better or worse, the mystery, the danger,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the violence, all that either got left at the bottom
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of a Mississippi swamp or was put six feet in
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a hole. June twenty ninth, two thousand, Jacksonville Memory Gardens
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Cemetery three am Clay County Sheriff's deputies responding to a
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: disturbance were shocked at what they found. Someone had robbed
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the graves of Steve Gaines and Ronnie Van Sand near
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the smashed marble maus of Liams. A plastic bag containing
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Steve Gaines's ashes was on the ground. Next to it
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: was Ronnie's casket, which had been wrestled from its tomb.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: The vandals either one able to pry open the casket
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: or they got spooked and ran off before they could
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: do further damage. The cops didn't have any leads for
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: more than twenty two years. The final resting place of
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Steve Gaines and Ronnie van Zant had been a mecca
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: for skinnered fans to pay their respects, not just to
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the memory of those two men, but to the memory
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: of Leonard skinnerd which, for all intents and purposes, died
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: in that Mississippi swamp back in nineteen seventy seven, and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: for more than twenty two years visitors treated the grounds
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: with respect, but not on this night. The families were horrified.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: They moved the remains of Steve Gaines and Ronnie van
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Zandt to an undisclosed private location where they could carry
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: out eternity in peace. And why would someone do such
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: a thing, dig up a grave? Could they do it
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: for no other reason than to just do it, just
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: like Ronnie van Zant didn't need a reason to fight?
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Or was it something else? Were the vandals hoping to
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: confirm one final long standing rumor it was Ronnie van
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Zandt really wearing is Neil young t shirt? Can't you
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: smell that? Smell destruction, death, disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: this this disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: episode can be found on the show notes page at
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All
• 32:41
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• 32:44
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• 32:47
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• 32:51
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• 32:55
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• 32:59
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• 33:03
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• 33:08
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• 33:11
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• 33:20
  Speaker 1: a Roller, He's the bad man.