On October 19, 1977 at Greenville Memorial Auditorium (which was imploded in 1997) here in Greenville, the band Lynyrd Skynyrd (creators of the iconic song, Sweet Home Alabama ) played their last show together. The next day, the band boarded a plane at Greenville’s downtown airport that was headed to Baton Rouge, LA, where the band was supposed to play a show that night.
But the band didn’t make it to Baton Rouge. Apparently the plane’s engines were faulty + burned through their fuel too quickly. They needed to make an emergency landing, but with nowhere safe to land in time, the plane crashed into a wooded swamp in Mississippi.
The crash took the lives of three band members – lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, Steve + Cassie Gaines – plus the band’s manager and the two pilots of the plane. Multiple band members had expressed concern over the plane beforehand (just days before, during a flight on the same plane, they had seen flames shooting from the right engine), but Ronnie Van Zant insisted they use the plane , saying, “When it’s your time, it’s your time. Let’s go, man. We’ve got a gig to do.”
The last song the original band ever played together that night was Free Bird , which starts, “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”
You can hear more details about the crash + it’s tie to Greenville by watching this video .
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