Lynyrd Skynyrd, December 30, 1976, San Francisco
Photography and commentary by Michael Zagaris

“These guys were so great to be around. I mean, they’re just what I’m talking about, about people being really open… fun loving guys. I actually met them, for the first time, in November of 1973. They were opening up for the Who, and I was working for the Who then. At that point in time, Peter Rudge was like the big tour manager—he was the tour manager for Skynyrd, for the Who, for the Rolling Stones, and for Golden Earring, who were like the big band in Amsterdam.

“But, I met them on this tour, and they had three incredible guitarists. And we hit it off; a friend of mine, Jack Miller, had just come back from Columbia and Mexico. He was managing bands; but, you know, he was supporting the bands by dealing. Well, he was a Christian coke dealer. He would sell you dope and talk about Jesus. And he came with me and met these guys and they were best friends. Once Skynyrd were off the tour, I stayed in touch with them, and I started doing a lot of photography for them. We did this group setup for MCA records, which was their label. I remember we used Herbie Green’s studio here in town. This was the second to last group shot they ever did before the plane went down the following September; we did this December 30th and then they had a New Years concert at the Oakland Coliseum. After the concert we almost got kicked out of the hotel—in fact, they might have got kicked out of the hotel; I hear the police were on their way so I went down the back stairs and got in my car and left.

“But they were good ‘ole boys. Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed in the plane crash, he was from Alabama, he always wished he could be Ken Stabler, who was quarterback from the Raiders at the time, and was from University of Alabama; Ken Stabler always wished he were Ronnie Van Zant. But we had a whole session like this. This is toward the end of the session.

“What happened after the plane crash… Ronnie was killed; David was killed; Dean, who was basically their head roadie, he was killed—everybody was fucked up. Allen felt so guilty that he survived; he started drinking heavily and ended up getting in two different car wrecks where people in the car with him were killed. But you can see, he was just despondent and felt guilty that he had survived this. And I remember the day after the plane crash, Artimus Pyle called from the hospital in Mississippi, and he had dropped some acid. And for almost an hour it was like this monologue of leading up to the crash and then the plane crash. And how they had to wake Ronnie up, because they said they were going down; and he said it was twilight and Ronnie was asleep in the front of the plane, and was real pissed off, and was talking about ‘this is fucking Rudge, this is fucking bullshit.’ And then they all had to strap in and he said they got lower and lower and all of a sudden you saw the trees; and see—they crashed because they ran out of gas.

“And he said you could see the trees and all of a sudden it sounded like a thousand baseball bats were hitting the plane. And then he said the next thing he knew, he said you could smell swampy water and he had a really bad pain in his leg and it was dark, and he said was trying to get up and his leg hurt so much. And Cassie [Gaines, backup singer], who was David’s sister, walked past him, because her brother was up in the front of the plane with Ronnie; and he said he got his seatbelt out and he somehow got out of the plane and, you know, shoved the door open and a bunch of them jumped down; but they were in like almost five feet of water. And they waded out and now it was dark and you could hear crickets and fireflies; he said he knew his leg was broken—and they walked along, he didn’t know how far, but then they saw some lights in a cabin so they started yelling. And this guy came out with a gun, said ‘Hey motherfuckers, get in.’ And they said, ‘No no, our plane’s crashed…’ So ambulances came and he was taken to the hospital; and he found out, in the hospital, about an hour before he’d called us, who didn’t make it. And one of the people said, ‘Well, Cassie’s dead.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean? Cassie’s fine—Cassie, you know, went by me in the plane; to check on David after we crashed.’ And they said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, she went past me when I was getting my seatbelt undone, to check on her brother.’ And they said, ‘No, she was killed on impact; she was strapped in her seat.’ So he thinks that must have been her spirit.

“And they’ve, they’ve never been the same—you know, they toured after that, but it was never the same.

“I thought—and this is just personal opinion—I thought when the plane went down, they were the penultimate band in America—I thought they had surpassed the Allman Brothers—and that’s not a knock on the Allman Brothers, they were a great band—but they were just like white-hot they were so good. And I mean, to have this happen…”

See more photography by Michael Zagaris