When Skynyrd returned to the stage, it was with Ronnie Van Zant\u2019s younger brother Johnny fronting the band alongside four survivors of the crash \u2013 guitarist Gary Rossington, bassist Leon Wilkeson, keyboard player Billy Powell and drummer Artimus Pyle.<\/p>\n
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But while fans were thrilled to see these Southern rock heroes performing again, for the musicians involved this was not the joyous experience it might have seemed.<\/p>\n
As Gary Rossington admitted. \u201cThat tour was hard, man. Real hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comin\u2019 Home (Live 1987) | Lynyrd Skynyrd – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n In 2012, Rossington spoke to Classic Rock magazine for the release of the band\u2019s album Last Of A Dyin\u2019 Breed.<\/p>\n He gave an account of the plane crash<\/a> \u2013 and its aftermath \u2013 that was as poignant as it was harrowing.<\/p>\n The band’s rented light aircraft went down in a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi.<\/p>\n Recalling the scene, Rossington said: \u201cI could see and hear my brothers dying. It was terrible. It was like something you see in a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to reveal how he rebuilt his life in the years that followed \u2013 and how he shared that struggle with Allen Collins, his fellow guitarist and founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, who also survived that terrible day in 1977.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n \u201cFor myself and Allen Collins, it was hard after the crash to want to keep going on,\u201d Rossington said. \u201cWe were so down about what had happened to our career and our friends and our band. That whole situation was real hard to live with.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, with hindsight: \u201cIt\u2019s been so long now, I can look back on it without it freaking me out or without wanting to do some drugs or drinking or something. But at the time, it\u2019s so hard to get through all that.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1979 the two guitarists formed The Rossington Collins Band, which also featured Leon Wilkeson and Billy Powell, plus \u2013 significantly \u2013 a female lead singer, Dale Krantz, who later became Rossington\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n Rossington said of this band: \u201cWe were kind of pushed into it by friends and family saying, \u2018Y\u2019all need to start something back up.\u2019 Because we were just sitting around doing nothing \u2013 and unfortunately doing a lot of pills and drinking and drugs, as we were almost hooked by then on all the pain medicine from the plane crash.<\/p>\n \u201cWe decided to get Dale to sing for us. We\u2019d have a female vocalist so it wouldn\u2019t be the same as Skynyrd. We tried to change a little bit. And we made two albums. But a lot more tragedies happened.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rossington Collins Band\u2019s debut album Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere was released in 1980 and included their best-loved song, Don\u2019t Misunderstand Me. But in the same year, Allen Collins\u2019 wife Kathy died during the miscarriage of their third child.<\/p>\n \u201cAllen Collins lost his wife who was pregnant at the time, and it was real hard for him to get through that,\u201d Rossington said.<\/p>\n The Rossington Collins Band broke up after the release of a second album, This Is The Way, in 1981.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all kind of drugged out at the time,\u201d Rossington confessed. \u201cWe were doing too much of bad things and just not living right. So we decided to stop playing for a while. And myself, I went out to Wyoming and just recuperated for eight or nine years until the Skynyrd reunion.\u201d<\/p>\n For Skynyrd\u2019s comeback tour, the band\u2019s traditional three-guitar line-up saw Rossington joined by Ed King and Randall Hall.<\/p>\n King had been Skynyrd\u2019s bassist and then guitarist from 1972 to 1975. Hall took the place of Allen Collins, who had suffered another disaster in his personal life in 1986. In Jacksonville, Florida \u2013 the city where Lynyrd Skynyrd had formed \u2013 Collins had been driving under the influence of alcohol when he crashed his car, killing his passenger, girlfriend Debra Jean Watts, and leaving himself paralysed from the waist down.<\/p>\n Unable to perform with the group, Collins served as musical director for the 1987 tour. He chose Randall Hall as his replacement after they had played together in the Allen Collins Band.<\/p>\n Rossington admitted that it was a difficult decision to reunite Lynyrd Skynyrd without the talismanic Ronnie Van Zant.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first we didn\u2019t wanna go back out cause we didn\u2019t have Ronnie,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Johnny was around, and I knew he could sing like Ronnie. So in the end we said we could go out and do a tribute to Ronnie with Johnny.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Rossington, there was a strong sense of camaraderie during the rehearsals for the tour. But after some time out on the road, relationships deteriorated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was fun to start playing again,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had Allen with us, and Leon and Billy Powell. We got everybody that was left that was alive. And we had our old crew. It was fun to see everybody again.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then it got hard after we got out on tour. Everybody had grown apart and separate and kind of grown up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were only in our early twenties when the plane crashed, so after ten more years you kind of grow up a little more and mature. Things change. So it was harder then. There was a lot of hard feelings and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n For Rossington, the toughest thing of all was seeing his old friend Allen Collins confined to a wheelchair, from which he would address the audience each night with a speech about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, it was very hard to see him like that,\u201d Rossington said. \u201cAllen gave us the OK to do the tour. He wanted the name and the music to be heard and us to go about our business. He travelled with us until he just couldn\u2019t anymore. But that was really hard on the band.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than three years after Lynyrd Skynyrd made their comeback, Allen Collins died on 23 January 1990 from chronic pneumonia.<\/p>\n Back in the \u201970s, a number of Skynyrd\u2019s greatest songs were written by Collins with Ronnie Van Zant \u2013 among the funky Double Trouble, the Metallica<\/a> favourite Tuesday\u2019s Gone, the grimly prescient anti-drug song That Smell, and the all-time classic rock anthem Free Bird.<\/p>\n Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird – 7\/2\/1977 – Oakland Coliseum Stadium (Official) – YouTube
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