Lynyrd Skynyrd Remembered

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host Ramsey Russell, join me here to listen to those conversations. Thank you all for joining me on a very special episode of duck season somewhere been working on is a little bit guys I have never fallen off down a rabbit hole about a subject matter non duck hunting related in my entire life. But I have and to kick this episode off, I’ve got my buddy Lee Kjos on the other line. How are you Lee?
Lee Kjos: I’m good man. How are you?
Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good, Lee. I’m glad to have you on the phone. Because you know, of course we’ve said in other podcasts before we connected pretty strongly over duck hunting but also our love of rock and roll and music and things of that nature. If I asked you who your favorite band in the world was, who is it going to be?
Lee Kjos: Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. Absolutely. Which is the subject of today’s podcast.
Lee Kjos: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What, you know, Lee growing up I was a young man when the band ended, and I’m talking about the real band, not this other band. I’m talking about the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, you know, 1977 today, it everybody’s listening is October 19. And on October 19th, 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd exited the stage in Greenville, South Carolina, having played would ended up being their final concert. At the time, they were the absolute pinnacle of rock and roll contra success. They were the top, they were the best. All these years later, 44 years later man, who doesn’t walk, what duck hunter, what man doesn’t walk just a little bit tolerant of crocks when he hears a Lynyrd Skynyrd song. Am I the only one that – I’m cruising through the radio and I hear Skynyrd, I just turn it up. I know the word I turn it up full blast to this day.
Lee Kjos: Man. Mm-hmm.
Ramsey Russell: What was it about Skynyrd that made him your favorite band Lee?
Lee Kjos: Oh boy, you know the word influencer runs rampant social media platforms and stuff now. And but when you look at like real influence, I mean, obviously, I’m a photographer and an art guy my whole life and you would think photography, other photographers is what influenced me. Well, that’s not quite true. What influences me is original works of art. And in your informative years, like, in your early teens, I think you’re starting to, you know, your bodies are everything to you back then. You’re starting to get in girls and your group of kids is like, it’s your whole life at that time. I mean, ducks, they’ve always been right there with me, right? But I had time for this right. Well, in those years back then, Lynyrd Skynyrd like when that when that album Pronounced came out in those grungy looking rock stars where, you know, you remember the album to sit down or you know, or they’re on that sidewalk and this is back when Bernz was the drummer, it was an artemus file yet, but still, it’s that Skynyrd, right? And then you think about those four songs that came off of that one album, three steps, simple man, Tuesday’s gone, and then Freebird to end it, right?
Ramsey Russell: Yep.
Lee Kjos: Okay, now, here’s what I’m going to talk about that because this is how big they were when I was a kid. When you’re in high school, or junior high or whatever, and you’d have a pep fest? It was in that gymnasium, right? The whole school would come on its homecoming and somebody would be speaking the principal or something like that and so can we swear here? On this? Can we swear?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah go ahead. By all means.
Lee Kjos: So you’re sitting there, right? And some dude with your fucking Skynyrd, right? Like they would yell this stuff during the principal talk and my point is, I highly doubt anybody screaming Taylor Swift at fest. You know what I mean? It was just wait, well, you and I’ve talked about this all the time, the 70s were so different. And I bet most people that grew up in it, music was a major part of life. Now, we didn’t buy like a tune here or there on iTunes. We followed the band. You attached yourself to a band. You travel, you do anything to get to go see the band. If you saw it on a magazine, you’d buy the article, you know what I mean? You devour the albums like, I remember when one more from the road came out the live album was a double album, just devouring that the jacket the album cover, right? That’s what made Skynyrd so good. They were organic. Even though they were in for you’d go, well, it’s southern rock and the first Southern rock, the guy that band that, define that genre probably would be the Allman Brothers. And sure they had an influence. But dude Skynyrd took that Southern fried rock shit to a new level. In fact, the dude that influenced Van Zant, more than any of them was Paul Rogers of the group Free. And that’s a British band, right? But what I’m saying is they were so original and organic. And when you saw them live, oh my God, dude it was like they were on fire.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s because they were authentic. And that’s what I was getting at, you know, what strikes me about the conversation. I’ve got some buddy down on McComb that had a guest speaker Mr. Gene Odom and I listen to it. But here’s the deal. You know, as Southern born and raised in state of Mississippi, I always took a sense of ownership in Lynyrd Skynyrd, their music spoke to me it gave me a sense of southern pride, it was kick butt rock and back in the day when it meant a whole total assaults, totally different thing. They had that rebel flag back there and it just bugged to meet the southern. And I knew that back in 1977, there’d been a plane wreck in the state of Mississippi, that Ronnie and several others passed and the band that it was known died, in 1977, it died. And I’ve never driven past McComb, Mississippi, exit that I didn’t think about that. Well, it didn’t happen there, it happened about 30 miles away off in the middle of nowhere woods even for the state of Mississippi. And it started tracking down the story. I just became overwhelmingly enamored with the story. I mean, you’re talking about an authenticity. I don’t know how you become a rock star. But I can tell you for the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, it wasn’t overnight, they went off to a remote cabin, a little red house out in the state on a bow and they call it the hell house because there was no air conditioning. And they showed up at eight in the morning, and they left at eight or nine or midnight that night. And they practiced and they tune and they played all day, every day, all day, every day, practice, practice, practice, practice for 10 years. For 10 years. They dedicated themself to this art and to that sound. And finally somebody took a chance on them and recorded an album Pronounced and in a very brief amount of time, they blew up and I heard Mitchell Jain was telling me last week that the Rolling Stones sold out five consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden, which is a record only because Lynyrd Skynyrd did not live to fulfill their seven sold out night. And had they done a [**00:10:33] but that, you know, it’s just they would go and – they would use constantly touring and recording and practicing and touring and recording. And they never really got to come home and sink their teeth into success. They were the absolute, if you think back to the 70s bands, the absolute drug sack, rock and roll, partying hard, rocking and just kicking people’s ass out there 90,000 people. Boom rocking them. They was them. That was the band.
Lee Kjos: Oh, man. Okay, so you bring up the stones right? And you think about Keith Richards and I mean, of course you see him now and he’s in a Louis Vuitton spot and stuff like that. I mean, he is a rock star, right? But you’ve had decades, decades with Keith Richards and kick man Mac, right? You got to think about like when Pronounced came out, that was 1973, okay. When they craft Freebird went down in 77. That’s short man. That’s short. You know, when older, I’m 60, so I think I remember it, but it’s like so young that I’m not sure, but it was when JFK was assassinated. And I’m not sure because what would that have been three, four years old, you know, I mean, really remember that, but for sure, like you remember when you heard about 9/11, right? Oh, I can tell you where I was when I saw it on the TV that Freebird went down. I was in on LA hunting and fishing lodge up in BigFork Minnesota. Shooting pool at night and that thing came across the ticker man and I couldn’t believe it. It was shocking to like the kids, my group, you know what I mean? You were talking about this with another rocker the other day. We used to show up at parties with albums. Imagine that? Like, you had your —
Ramsey Russell: I still remember those days.
Lee Kjos: Joseph’s here dude, he’s got Skynyrd. This way different but it was absolutely the best in seeing them live, oh, man, dude.
Ramsey Russell: What I learned about Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’ve listened to their music forever that double album Live has been in my “playlist”, had been in cassette form or CD form and now in my phone form. Since I was in ninth grade, my whole life number its one favorite album. And I love that live music. I love the energy of that music. But what I learned about these guys is they weren’t rock stars in a conventional sense. They were just guys, they were just barefoot country boys and they like to play music.
Lee Kjos: Don’t you think that’s because it wasn’t contrived?
Ramsey Russell: No, it was who they were.
Lee Kjos: It’s organic.
Ramsey Russell: It was just purely organic. And, you know, Lee, you and I talked about John Prine a lot, who to me was a folk music and he drew such profound observations from his life experiences. And he was able to put them into song form that means something to people that listen to that music, and Lynyrd Skynyrd was absolutely no different when you hit. I heard the story. And it’ll be told later in his podcast about how Lynyrd Skynyrd came to be and how that smell came to be and how Curtis Lowe, you know, I learned different little parts of their lives growing up in Jacksonville, Florida that became real music. But they never lost their sense of at least Ronnie Van Zant, they did it himself. You know, it’s like back before, they didn’t have a big elaborate studios full of costumes that they wore on stage they just – Ronnie just went to his closet and snapped a pair of blue jeans on and whatever T-shirt that stuck him.
Lee Kjos: Put on his Neil Young T-shirt.
Ramsey Russell: Put on his T-shirt and when he very likely with bass fishing in it just the week before.
Lee Kjos: Mm-hmm.
Ramsey Russell: You know, he drove a Jeep but Lee, tell us about what it was like – I never saw him in concert. What was it like to see Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert?
Lee Kjos: Well, when I think back it could be and why I’ve been 13 when that first tour came out, back then, like you and I talked about, there are no more bands today, the bands are done, right? Back then, there were two places that would have concerts in the Twin City area. And it would be was the Met center in Bloomington, in the St. Paul Civic Center. And about every, if I can remember right, every two weeks, every month, some major band was there. So when Skynyrd – when tickets came on sale, we’d take our coins, we’d get on the bus and we’d go to like a record shop. And the tickets would be on sale there or think maybe like Dayton’s or something like that there’d be tickets there for sale, and I want to say they were like $ 5, $ 6, $ 7, $ 8 the ticket, and you’d buy it of course months in advance and you waited like opening day of duck hunting season, right? Skynyrd will be here, then you’d get there, right? It would be dark and everybody would have their lighters, not iPhones lit up, we had lighters back then and it the place would literally be lit from Bic lighters. And of course, you could smell weed, we called it pot back then back in the day and you could smell that and people were usually passing a flask around and passing weed around and then they would hit that first note. And the lights would come on and it was like your hair was on fire for the next guiding, they could play for three hours. They played their own music, they covered some other stuff, but of course, when the crowds, Ronnie would always say, you know, what song is that you want to hear? Well, you know what would happen then, that’s like any politician playing to his base, right? I mean, we had all screams Freebird and they’d play those first couple licks man, and it was like, it gave me goosebumps.
Ramsey Russell: It gives me goosebumps here as you say it.
Lee Kjos: It gave me goosebumps man. It was really cool. My favorite live story, and I don’t have to do it now, we can do it later in the podcast because it’s a critical time. Well, you remember when Ed King? It wasn’t that long ago Ed King died, right? What was it just a few months back?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Lee Kjos: Okay. He’s the guy that did the lick in —
Ramsey Russell: Sweet Home Alabama
Lee Kjos: In Sweet Home Alabama, that broke into that little riff in the beginning, right? It’s just iconic, right? Well, if they recorded that first album at Muscle Shoals and Ed King loved the sound and everything about Muscle Shoals. Well, Ronnie wanted to do second helping somewhere else, Ed didn’t like that, right? This is from me reading if I got to do what you did with who you were with, these are the questions that I would have asked, is this what really happened? Okay, so anyway they went a long time. And Ed King really didn’t like the music because he thought it was off brand from Pronounced. Well, when they went to the Oakland Coliseum, outdoors in front of screaming people, and it’s when Ronnie introduced Steve Gaines, right? And Gaines played the slide, right? And if you remember the beginning, for those people that are listening to this go, you got to check this out. Because this is like the happiest you’ll ever see Ronnie Van Zant in his life, and it was they get there up there and they’re playing and blah, blah, blah and Ronnie introduces Steve Gaines and old okay, he does that bit and they start the bus, they start to the beginning of T for Texas. And Gaines bust into this outrageous slide riff right out of Duane Allman stuff, right? And Ronnie just sits back and looks at him and just busts out laughing like, we’re back dude, like, we’re back and it really was a big moment and even for, like, fans like when you heard that and that album that live album, man that one is fantastic. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. You know Lee, I went to Jacksonville. Here’s what listeners can expect for the remaining of this episode, I went to Jacksonville and I met with Mr. Gene Odom, who was a lifelong friend since childhood of Ronnie Van Zant, and when they hit the big time he was brought on by Ronnie Van Zant to be his personal bodyguard help clean the band up help get them ready, I’m sorry I mean they were heading down that path and we talked about a lot of growing up in that neighborhood, some stories never before, heard stories of who those band members were especially Ronnie Van Zant, what he was like, how he grew up, and we talked about being on stage, we talked about being on tour, talked about some really cool stuff, to me speak about who he wanted a person, as a real person is the authentic Rockstar. And then I found my way down to Amite County, Mississippi. And I got to meet persons from the local community down there that have since built a magnificent monument. I was told and have no reason to doubt that is about the third or fourth largest granite monument in the state of Mississippi. It’s located about a quarter mile from Dhaka crash site, and I got to meet landowners and volunteer firemen and people within a community that were there when the plane went down and they tell their story. They talk about how it affected them. They talked about why four decades some odd later, they put hands in her own pocket and wanted to have this monument to this band. One of the interesting things I did is I jumped in a jeep and we drove across a pasture and we walked up into the woods. And there’s this large beech tree that for decades, set the day after the crash, people have been finding it and carbon initials and leaving mementos. And it’s just is scarred over carvings on top of scarred over carvings of people that felt compelled to connect to the band. And then we walked across the creek and just kind of stood on site to where exactly that plane was laying in. And it was odd, it was humbling but to hear these stories, really, I think everybody’s really going to enjoy this podcast. I really do. Lee, I got to ask you before we part, what is your favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?
Lee Kjos: Oh, boy. Tuesday’s gone.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I heard that. And I love that song myself. I really catch me on mood. It may be Simple Man. I think I’d have to stick with Simple Man or it might be Freebird, one of the other. When I learned last week that Freebird and Stairway to Heaven for the last 40 some odd years have vied for the number one most requested whatever you want to call it song, they vacillate between first place, those two songs.
Lee Kjos: For sure I loved like when second helping came out. Like Curtis low back in the – I mean dude, there’s so many, right? But I just think Tuesday’s gone is like, iconic, even more so than Freebird, I know that sounds like blasphemy but —
Ramsey Russell: [**00:24:09] Because everybody’s got their favorite, you know, everybody got a favorite song. I guarantee everybody listening had a favorite song or a favorite half dozen songs you know.
Lee Kjos: How about the difference in sound between the GarageBand sound of Pronounced in 73 and then when they did street survivors in the studio right before the crash. But listen to how clean the sound was in street survivors but still it’s fantastic – I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s like the guitar playing, you know, and Alan and Gary and Steve and guitars and Billy Paul, he had his deal going always, he was always cool on the keyboards and artimus Pyle was a super cool after burns didn’t want to do it anymore because I think Ronnie just burned him on big time. In Obon then artimus Pyle took over and then like you were talking about the outdoor concert look when you see him and they’d have that confederate flag and back to him and he always wore like, cut offs a pair of tennis shoes and high tubes and no shirt on and red bandana was just blowing his air and oh my god.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, we talked a little bit about that flag. It —
Lee Kjos: I was going to ask you about that. Did you guys broach that subject?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, oh, absolutely. We talked about it because you know, Lee, let’s face it man, the time has passed to that flag it used to it’s a whole different political climate and everything else than it was back then. I grew up under the shadow of that flag. And never in a million years did it cross my mind anything in the last five or ten years about that flag? Not one time —
Lee Kjos: Of course not.
Ramsey Russell: Let me tell you what the flag was to me and we said this in the podcast and I’ll let you all listen to hear what Ronnie Van Zant words were but to me that flag was a big fat middle finger to anybody that judge me by my accent, my bare feet, my heart, my fishing my ways in Mississippi. That’s what that’s all that flag ever meant to me.
Lee Kjos: If we could keep that narrative, we could keep the flag alive. You know, and I’m not here to start a fight?
Ramsey Russell: No, no, no.
Lee Kjos: I’m just saying to us that is not what that thing represents.
Ramsey Russell: That is not what it represents.
Lee Kjos: It doesn’t have anything to do. I mean, look, wasn’t it on that the general Lee and the Dukes of Hazzard?
Ramsey Russell: Sure.
Lee Kjos: I mean, it’s not what that was about. That’s not the way we viewed it. And I’m sorry, like you say we grow up and we learn things and we change but —
Ramsey Russell: Well, it was hijacked and people change the narrative about it.
Lee Kjos: Correct.
Ramsey Russell: And it lies in its past. But, but we do talk about that subject because, you know, when I think of Lynyrd Skynyrd, that I like about raw 1970s band and they’re only stage set prop. What a great big confederate flag.
Lee Kjos: Yep. And all I can remember is Artimus with that giant fan blowing, his hair is long – his long wavy hair just blowing that and him beating the skins in that flag in the background and that was Skynyrd. Later on they’d come out and they do work in for MCA. You know what I’m talking about that riff in the beginning. And I mean, it was the plug the house would just freak out, come apart. Like Trump did the other night come apart is here which stayed on fire. And he is Oh, man.
Ramsey Russell: I’m in Jacksonville, Florida. And today’s special guest, Mr. Gene Odom. Gene, could you introduce yourself?
Gene Odom: Yep. My name is Gene Odom, Jacksonville, Florida here, of Southern cracker. I work with Van Lynyrd Skynyrd, just security for Iranian bodyguard work and here we are.
Ramsey Russell: How did you Ronnie? How did you know Ronnie to end up working for their security detail?
Gene Odom: We lived in the same neighborhood.
Ramsey Russell: You grew up together?
Gene Odom: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Well, how long has it been? Since you all were children?
Gene Odom: Little kids. As long as I can remember, yeah. We’d have a walk and probably 200 yards difference in our house.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve played baseball together and go out for fishing and all that kind of stuff kids do, right? And go to racetrack?
Gene Odom: Yeah, Speedway park right there. I’m in a house where the great LeeRoy Yarbrough came from? We used to ride in the car with him.
Ramsey Russell: When you all were every little boys did it cross your mind that Ronnie Van Zant would be the front man for the world famous band Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Gene Odom: Not my mind. I don’t know how to get lefty kind of guy. You know, let me tell you how he started that. First off as real young, cashes Mohammed Ali cashes glare. Ronnie loved him. And so Ronnie want to be a boxer. You know he’s going to be a boxer and basically they got boxing gloves. And a boy around the corner named Estes Godwin short, stocky. Twelve year old than us, Ronnie put the gloves on and Estes just beat the tor out of him. And so that ended his boxing career then. That was end of his boxing.
Ramsey Russell: It isn’t fun with you getting punched.
Gene Odom: Oh my god, no. He didn’t, you know, of course he was young and he was only a teenager, you know.
Ramsey Russell: But what was it like growing up in Jacksonville back in those days would have been back in early 60s probably. And what was it like growing up, you all grew up hunting and fishing I know from hearing you in another podcast and talking and he was a big fisherman, you all did a lot of bass fishing down here.
Gene Odom: A lot of bass fishing. Young boys we used to drag that aluminum boat up and down to banks on that bridge or timber quanah and when we first got to drive, before that it was bicycles, we ride bicycles to fish down cedar creek and that their own timber quanah. He loved it. He loved it bass fish.
Ramsey Russell: That’s good. And there’s even a story he basically caught his fish of a lifetime.
Gene Odom: Yes, he did, right and I was with him. He always wanted a trophy bass. I had several of them and he wanted a trophy bass and they always wanted an old pickup truck. So he got both of them right before he died and I was with him when he put that it was 12 pound eight ounces. Like 11 pounds 8 ounces – 12 pound 8 ounces. Anyway was 12 pounds a big bass and I got it and flipped it in the boat for him and it was the best day of his life jumping around and he’s hugging me and meet my sister Gina, this is it you know, john boat, you know, when I say critical I’m seeing the boat and I can’t swim. You don’t sink the boat man. He’s and let’s go. First thing he said after he calmed down. He said let’s go wait. Let’s go wait. Let’s go to the guy that had little fish camp on Lake Delancey. We could wait. He had a fish tank we could put it in and keep it alive. Till we got the fish.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. That’s awesome. When did he decide, I want to be a rock star. How did that come about?
Gene Odom: Well, after Estes just punched him out at Lee High School, I think it was Jim Brown, running back Ronnie Van says that I’m going to be a football star. And early high school he made he went out for the team and he made the team and the very first practice game, scrimmage. He got tackled and broke his ankle and had to put pins in his ankle. And that made him four F so he couldn’t be drafted. So there when his football career and I didn’t go with him is the first time the Rolling Stones came to Jacksonville. His good buddy Bill Fers and Jim Daniel went with him to see the Rolling Stones. And Ronnie saw Mick Jagger on that stage dancing and Ronnie saw the action that Mick Jagger got. When he came back, he said I want to be a singer. I want to dance on stage because he couldn’t dance. But watching Mick Jagger sing and that was it. He went from what he wanted to what he got.
Ramsey Russell: We drove around some of the old neighborhood yesterday and they all live about a mile apart. Most of them went to the same high school. And so how did he end up putting that band together? Did he knew these boys who grew up with him hunting, fishing or what?
Gene Odom: Well he had went to another band earlier and just went into their rehearsal. I can’t remember the name of them. I know the couple of the guys and said, I’m your new singer. Ronnie was mean anyway and tough, I mean, new singer. He’s looking for a singer, I’m your man. And so he didn’t like that style of what they were doing and so he decided he wanted to put his band together. And Kim and Gary were the first two and then Larry John’s Johnston, which became 38 specials bass player. Ronnie got Larry Johnston. Ronnie, Geary and Larry Johnstone, and then playing ball and Ronnie hid a bone and Bob Burns had right no Bob but I knew Bob from elementary school, me and Bob grew up together also. And so Ronnie hit Bob with the baseball behind the back of the head on the shoulder and Ronnie ran out there to check on bob and then he said we know you Bob Burns. You play drums? Yeah. So okay, so come on, we want you to be in our band. So it’s Ronnie, Gary, Larry Johnston, Bob Burns. They’d heard about Alan Collins when I heard it, he was a little guitar picker and he was playing in a little band called the mods. And Ronnie run into him one day and told Alan he wanted to play now riding his bicycle. He’s talking about teenagers and Alan scared Ronnie, and he throws his bike down and ran and Ronnie couldn’t get him to the next day. I happened to go by where they were playing ball and Alan was pitching and I ran to Ronnie, and I said, Hey, I said Alan Collins, pitching Roger Jr’s house, on a mound. Now he’s pitching. So we get the mustang, we took off around here and just run up on the mound and kidnapped him. Just because nobody would mess with me and Ronnie and him in now we got you, come on, you come in on and be in my band. And it was really relieving when he said, we’ll be back in a little while to get his guitar and amplifier. So we did kidnapped him and so Alan became a part of the band and their first notes rehearsing was in Bob Burns garage, as a band called is F my backyard. They had my backyard conquer the worm. Another one, the pretty ones the noble five the pretty ones, then 1% and then Lynyrd Skynyrd was renamed.
Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. I heard that that band was a spin off named after a coach in their high school system, Coach Lynyrd Skynyrd. And you knew him you all were friends here for a long time. But how did it come to be that they named their band after this notorious coach?
Gene Odom: Well, they were at that time, they were trying to come up with a new name. They were the 1%. And they were tossing around name, but by the time they got to the name, they were smoked up and dropped from marijuana or Budweiser. That’s what they would get back then, yeah. And so Bob Burns is always a jokester, funny, and when the phone would ring at the hell house, Bob would say it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd, he’s after you, Gary, or something like that and freak them out. And so they were all smoked up around there and half-drunk from what I heard. And a song back then was came on radio called Camp Grenada. Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, Here I am at Camp Grenada. And then that song is a lyric Lynyrd Skynyrd got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner. And they heard that and they went well as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s, you know, names itself as Lynyrd Skynyrd, so they put the name together, did use his name and change the spelling to aggravate him and change the name from the 1% to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Ramsey Russell: What I kind of gathered is coach Skynyrd, or probably Jim short wearing whistle blowing crew cut of a flat top, you know, kind of a Boy Scout coach. And they both were the long haired free thinking musicians of the 60s that he wanted to get to conform and so there was a little bit of issue between them, that’s about it. Do you make them run extra laps to give him a hard time or?
Gene Odom: Well, at the time he got there within a few days or a week, Ronnie had got his girlfriend pregnant he had to leave school and go to work. That’s about the same time coach got there. So Ronnie and coach Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t really butt heads. It was Gary Rossington, Larry Johnson was able to remain, it was Gary’s long hair. But coach was by the book kind of guy and he made him confirm to the school rules, you know, two inches above the collar, shirttails had to be poked in tucked in, he had to wear socks, you know, back then it was they don’t have them rules nowadays. I need them kind of rule by coach was by the book kind of guy. And he made Gary wear a hair net, get his hair trimmed or wear hair net you know. And so one day Gary is dead I think that in Korea. Ronnie was more of the father figure to Gary than anybody else. But Lacey went down there one day to represent Gary to say Hey, you need to slag up on this guy, but Lynyrd’s redneck, and he was alumna from FSU. He hated the Gators. He was barred from Gainesville. He could watch the Gators play in Tallahassee, but he couldn’t go to the stadium in Gainesville cause he’d get into fight. William Gator. Oh yeah. As he was Lynyrd Skynyrd was a redneck fighter.
Ramsey Russell: You know, we say a lot of people don’t consider Florida, the South. But it is. It’s just the further north you go in Florida, the deeper into South you become and at SEC football is religion in the deep south.
Gene Odom: Oh, man. I’m telling you, yeah. And it’s different now. Because all the snowbirds and Yankees coming down here, you know, but I mean, the South, the South ain’t the South and the more but like you said, the farther north you go into Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, those are the other states you find the South.
Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly right. I like Ronnie Van Zant was kind of a tough guy, man. He grew up in a tough neighborhood. And a lot of times things were saddled with his fist down the street back in those good old day.
Gene Odom: Yeah. And he was a scrapper, no doubt about it. But a lot of his scrapping was a result of amongst a result of barley, hops and barley.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, hops and barley. Yeah.
Gene Odom: I know. And when they rehearse and they rehearsed hard, many, many, many hours every day. And Ronnie, they would after when you get there, you’re sober. Then they get the booze and the marijuana and all the other stuff. And by 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 hours they’re not playing right and Ronnie would actually get in fight. He knocked couple of his teeth out. There’s a time to play and there’s a time to play, don’t mix them up.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Yeah, well, speaking of them practicing a lot that that was one thing, you know, they did practice a lot. I mean, they practically went eight 8 – 12 – 15 hour stretches in their little red hell house which was just a little wooden non plumbed, non-air conditioned, not nothing just house out in the country right here.
Gene Odom: It was like a little what you would call an efficiency. The bedroom and the kitchen in the dining room is all the same thing. And the living room area was our practice located little small bathroom. It was probably, gosh, it was probably 20 – 21 – 22 feet wide maybe 30 feet long it was like a smaller than a normal one car garage. It was so hot in there, you know, and then when it got to the hell House was I mean it was a few times I went by there I was, it was too hot for me to go in there.
Ramsey Russell: I heard that, you know, we went out there yesterday of course the house is going to burn down or two big subdivision going in now but there’s still that little bio back here in the backyard and you’re showing us how you’re saying, oh man, it that have not have cracked come out here drink cold beer just bail off into the deep hole and cool off.
Gene Odom: Yeah, I’m sure Greg Reed has got some footage of them jumping off the dock. You know, he’s got a lot of footage that people don’t know about, but I’m sure he has.
Ramsey Russell: I was surprised to learn precisely tough guy football, boxing, scrapping. Ronnie Van Zant must also have been a poet of sorts, because he wrote a lot of those words, he did not play musical instruments, but he gave life to that music with his words. And somebody told me I heard somewhere that he never wrote down the lyrics. Once I ran his head, he said if its worth, I don’t have to write it down if it’s worth remembering.
Gene Odom: He didn’t write nothing down. Whenever a copywriting a book or something like that, but he didn’t write nothing down. He had a memory that was unbelievable. Even when we sold parts as his brother in law’s auto parts store, Ronnie wouldn’t look in the window computers back then it was just big, thick books, you would go through these parts books and you’d find the part what you needed. They just call it go get that get this you know, and I’ll go look it up with that. Just go get the parts Gene and I was like he had a photographic memory. And I don’t know what you would call it. I can’t imagine it that he could recall. Although I can do it today. I can write it down and can’t remember one row, but he could recall words that he had put together for that song. And if he did want to change one he could just automatically change it in his head, unbelievable. He had a he had a photographic memory I guess.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. Some something I saw in one of the documentaries. It’s not like they just formed a band, went out to the hell house for a few weeks practice and became rock stars. This was decade of real dedication and practice they put into it. I mean, and there was somebody from New York that met them in Atlanta, that liked their music, and they could not get a record deal. And he said, I’m going to record you and he started at start a little – they went to a studio, he started a record label and recorded for now, Lynyrd Skynyrd Pronounced and then they started blowing up. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s like a decade of them committing himself to be a musician.
Gene Odom: Yeah, that was sounds of the South record.
Ramsey Russell: Sounds of the South record, right.
Gene Odom: Al Cooper. And he gave it then they turned it into a subsidiary of MCA, and then MCA bought them out early on.
Ramsey Russell: Hmm. A lot of getting back to the songs. The songs are so relatable. The music of Lynyrd Skynyrd is so relatable to people where I grew up in South but it’s also relatable to a lot of people around the country, around the world. And it’s just, regular folk, regular country folks, just simple people just that grew up and Ronnie Van Zant was able to articulate detail from his life narrative just from growing up in the neighborhood, from people he knew from things he saw, and he was able to put it into words that became famous songs. But what are some of the inspirations for some of the songs he wrote. Do you know where some of the detail for some of the songs that we know came from?
Gene Odom: Yeah, The Ballad of Kurt is low, the lyric says, is to wait the morning before the rooster crowed searching for soda bottles to get myself some dough. Personally, he told me he said, I wrote that lyric about you because he was in his ditches, picking him cokes up began coke bottles and stuff up is less about you. And then the other efforts in that song that the cortisone black blues player, dobot player, clone that ran the store was a white ball headed guy that played the guitar for, so you couldn’t put —
Ramsey Russell: What was the proper name of that Curtis Loew store?
Gene Odom: Back then it was called Cloves Midway Meats. Back in the 50s and early 60s in aid club moved it up to Plymouth street Lakeshore Boulevard in the early 60s. And they changed it somebody opened up later on and called it would crush grocery but it was Cloves Midway Meats.
Ramsey Russell: And that was where you all used to hang out a lot.
Gene Odom: Oh, yeah, go down or bar cokes moon bars and stuff, you know, when I take the coke bottles in there. I used to sweep the floor and rack the bottels, right. And bottles means in my brain water bottles and you rack the bottles. Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, cocoa. So you put them in the cartons so the coke man when he came he could just put it, he didn’t have to sort of bottles up. You know I would sort and rack up bottles make little joking money but his writing it and I’d have to get in his mind which you can’t do that. His writing was his life. Things that went on around him around us, you know, like the curtains those door, you know, and I can’t say for every song he ever wrote and I know what I know about it.
Ramsey Russell: The song you know, like we looked at a big live oak tree on a Boulevard yesterday that one of the band members had raked into that that became a song.
Gene Odom: Yeah, and I can tell people that was one of the oak trees Gary hit. And when he hit the oak tree that Ronnie sat right down and they wrote the song, a hurricane blew those trees away years and years back and he was writing it coming from the place you wish to call the Sugar Bowl. Him and Joe Grimm. People don’t know that the Joe Grimm was riding with him when he hit that tree and he was traveling pretty given he had that and told her from his car up. But this particular one is when he ran into that he didn’t know he hid it. He had passed out of the wheel and just to guard just pulled over and hit that one. And he hit several, anyway lived out and Alan hit several oak trees. And but when that happened, Ronnie just got an inspiration to write that smell. There’s just melodies around you. Because Ronnie realize that wrecking the car. That wasn’t so bad right then but it could have been a lot worse and that he’s really putting in words together. You know, and go ahead.
Ramsey Russell: One of the coolest stories you told us yesterday was about the origin of Freebird. You knew a little bit about how that song came into being because that is probably that’s certainly among their top song FreeBird.
Gene Odom: It’s one of the top songs ever written. It’s Stairway to Heaven. They rotate from the number one number one or two. That’s one of the most requested songs of all time.
Ramsey Russell: I believe that.
Gene Odom: Yeah. Rock and Roll.
Ramsey Russell: What were the origins of that?
Gene Odom: Alan had the music, except he didn’t have the fiery stuff on the end. But it had music, they didn’t have any words. At that time, they couldn’t come up with the inspiration for words and just hadn’t put the words to it. And so I came home and Alan was home and Cathey, his wife, which was his childhood sweetheart, was fixing supper, dinner, whatever you want to call it. And Alan’s at the back of the couch would face the kitchen. And he would be setting away watching TV or whatever. And she was in the kitchen, doing something cooking or doing some. And she wrote on a napkin. If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? And she’d leaned over the couch and handed it to Alan across his shoulder. And Alan looked at it and read it. He picks the phone up me calls Ronnie, get over here, right now quick, Ronnie thought something’s up. Ronnie runs over to his house, they also look at this. And when I looked at it, I said that was Alan Collins on the couch and they wrote the words to FreeBird.
Ramsey Russell: All it took was that one sentence.
Gene Odom: That one sentence that Cathey came up with an issue because they were childhood sweethearts, you know. And as she wrote that lyric and Alan and Ronnie said and I wrote the words of FreeBird.
Ramsey Russell: And you were telling us you have to have a cemetery, you know, how Alan Collins was the inspiration for the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was the music Ronnie was the words.
Gene Odom: Alan Collins was the sound. He was, I don’t know, I’m not going to call it the rhythm but the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd music without Alan Collins you can never ever achieve that and they’ve never achieved it since he passed away and he got paralyzed.
Ramsey Russell: And his wife Cathey ended up pre deceased and him over from health issues or something, is that right?
Gene Odom: Yeah. She was four months pregnant. And she started spotting and the doctor told her just lay flat to your back for a week. Stay in the bed, don’t you get up and she did. And she called the Doctor back on a Friday and said, I’ve stopped spotting. Can I take my daughters to the movie? The doctor says, sure. But you be in here Monday morning, I want to check you out. So she went to the movie, and I guess she felt something happened inside and she went to the bathroom with her daughter, Allison. And what had happened is the week that she laid flat of her back, the fetus inside of her died and turned into gangrene. And when she realized I guess something was going on, she went to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. And the main artery from her heart toward her stomach just exploded and busted and she just fell over on the floor dead. That was the end of him there. And after that he had no –
Ramsey Russell: Love of his life.
Gene Odom: Yeah, that was that was the end of him.
Ramsey Russell: That give those words meaning, doesn’t it?
Gene Odom: It does. It really does, you know, so I mean, that wasn’t just his wife. I mean, she handled everything, the kids and everything the house he’s, you know, she was his life, you know, and the two girls.
Ramsey Russell: You told me a pretty funny story yesterday. Ronnie as a thinker, problem Solver. A lot of stuff was disappearing from his front yard. People were walking by stealing stuff. Both the old yards, the whole neighborhood. I grew up in a similar neighborhood if it wasn’t nailed down or locked up it walked off. How did Ronnie fix that problem? How did you all fix that problem I should say?
Gene Odom: It was down off of Ellis and Park Street. Some of those woods are still there. They built a church there and there was people would dump stuff down there, you know, trash and stuff. Moved down there, target practise and one time and heard his racket, and it was about where are some barbed wire fence and all the way back and we are distracted and we went over the end of Bobcat had got into the corner of that fence. And there was other barbed wire tangled up there. And as Bob cat had gotten tangled in that barbed wire and was couldn’t get out. And so, you know, what are we going to do? We’re going to measure a bobcat, you know, don’t want to shoot him, you know, we don’t want to shoot the wild animal and talking, you know what we’re talking in everything anyway, man, he said, we need to get him and so we’re going to do it anyway. We need to get him Gene, and there was all kinds of clothes and people dumped stuff in suitcases, there’s all kinds of there was a suitcase. And he said, we need to stop these thieves and this is the way to do it. And we can always listen to us and find a way to get him as well carpet as most of their, you know, so we got that carpet out and we forced him into the corner of that barbed wire so ensuring he couldn’t get out. He couldn’t because he was tangled all up, forced him down, we got him out and rolled him into their suitcase and close the lid down on the suitcase. And we had a bumpkin suitcase. And so I said, hey I’ll tell you what, let’s lay it by the road, and then thieves will come and go, come get it later on. And so we got there and we set it right beside the road. And we was hiding in the bushes. And it wasn’t long, it wasn’t long at all here to go and 49 Chevrolet or old Chevrolet stick shift, and then our driver license. And so like, went by it first and then Penny backed up you don’t know which one was it jumped out and grabbed the suitcase and put in a man in the backseat there was one or two guys in the backseat. And I get they’ve popped that suitcase open.
Ramsey Russell: Carved up off from the house to get when they opened up that suitcase.
Gene Odom: We were out in the neighborhood. I mean it was houses all around us their houses and stuff too, you know, and that was just about dark. Just about thieving time I called you know and it was screaming that Bob get to NASF and they rolled in a ditch and the cord on the side little bit and up on the back one of the back windows whatever was down and then Bobcat came out of there. They were screaming Mama, Mama, Mama. Mama can do you know payback. Leon Wilkerson love that story. No matter what would be at if he came in and he’s a Gene, tell us the Bobcat story. And I tell they have to tell that story.
Ramsey Russell: As a good story. Did you show kind of who they were growing up? Pay back. Lynyrd Skynyrd started touring and they represent what I look back now as the absolute, stereotypical utter successful rock band of that era. You know, they were the hottest tour in the world.
Gene Odom: Back then.
Ramsey Russell: Back then they were the hottest tour around the world. They were hottest tag had great music, they were all over the radio, tons of fans. Everybody loved him and then we all imagined rock stars girl fake rock and roll parties crazy. What was it like touring with Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Gene Odom: You say that. Now I didn’t do nothing that crazy stuff. I’ve never smoked or drank done all that crazy stuff and when we first started out, I was married and we got divorced first part of 77′, but I had a job to do and watch over them people and what normal people wouldn’t have a job like that. And most of them wouldn’t care about having to my watch over and because they’re rock stars, they got plenty of money. And they got plenty of lawyers and stuff like that but sometimes you’re just too dumb to realize that they’re liable.
Ramsey Russell: But it’s why you were brought on as a bodyguard, Lynyrd Skynyrd because once they hit the road and watch that success started to blow up and once those 24/7 parties began, they realized that wouldn’t sustain itself so Ronnie reached out to you for help.
Gene Odom: He wanted to just straighten up and they were bed on the booze and bed on the drugs. I know how bad all the drugs they were because I wouldn’t know part of it. I know how there was at the hell house and stuff like that and rumors when he asked me I wanted to come clean this up, get us off all this stuff. And you could only person a world that can do it, nobody else can do it. And I said, well, it had to be done my way. And he said it will be he’s I’ll tell the band members and they got to follow your orders. And I started weaning him off the booze, and even told me, is he doing a good job? He says another drug will be a little bit harder to do. But you know what you’re doing? So let’s get it done. It’d be tougher and he’s talking for herself also, you know, and so they didn’t tear up the hotels. They didn’t tear nothing up. They didn’t fight, none of that stuff because I wouldn’t put up with it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Gene Odom: If they come at me, they were in trouble. When the Billy Powell started to hit me, drop back cocked, ready to punch. I’ve seen sent him flying backwards. And then that changed his attitude real quick. And so I told Ronnie, I said, it’s going to be done my way. I’ll do it. He said, alright, he is a man, let’s do it.
Ramsey Russell: I saw a picture of you backstage back in those days wearing a T-shirt, it said God forgives, I don’t.
Gene Odom: That’s exactly right.
Ramsey Russell: You were the law back there to keep them cleaned up, that was your job. What curtailment? What was it like? I mean, you had to be a tough guy, I’m sure to keep folks off stage and protect the band. How crazy was that?
Gene Odom: You know, spur of the moment? You know, it’s my jump on stage, whatever you see in Ronnie seen something happening, he would point and I know and then I’d look and see what was going on, keep an eye on it, you know, one moved up to the crowd came up to the front of stage and got ready to get on stage and when he came up, I was already behind him. I had him and he had a buck knife. He came at me with that buck knife and try to stab me. I blocked it with more me hit me in the elbow with it. You know and I’d elbowed him and pumped him off stage he went backwards flying off stage and Billy Powell [*01:02:07*] it man you was too rough on that guy. So your arm bleeding? Yeah, he had a knife he stabbed me with a knife and Billy Powell said he was way too over and Ronnie told Billy to sit down. Don’t interfere with Gene Odom’s job. Somebody said him to shut up, he’s taking care of us. But it was hectic in but most people abide by the rules, you get the people that’s drugged out or whatever other girls that want to get up there and meet Lynyrd. I get him out of harm’s way. Lynyrd’s in Jacksonville, you know, my Lynyrd, get this Lynyrd or meet Lynyrd did the hunting. But it was fun, but you know, I had a job to do.
Ramsey Russell: Sure. What was it like? Gosh, I can’t imagine what like being house mom to a staff of 15 or 20 full on parties. I mean, how did you keep up with everybody?
Gene Odom: Well, you can’t, you know, and I had to get 8 – 7 – 8 hours sleep at night. And Ronnie’s just when Gene Odom goes to bed, you all don’t mess with him. And if he tells you to say straight, don’t be going over messing up because you got to deal with Gene. And they knew the rules, but you can’t watch six guys go into six directions. There’s no way. And Ronnie knew that. He said David Lee, going to go over. No problem. You know, get the phone Hey, Gene come down to the bar and straighten this mess out down the bar, go down there and with a level head and take care of the problem. For instance, I forget where it was at. As Jojo and Alan, we’re in the bar. And Alan had his big hat with big big feathers on it and Jojo has his hat and there was they were at the table. And they wanted this old redneck coveralls warned his table and they’re done. You know, we’re rock stars, have our will, get it and he said you all don’t mess with me whatever. And so Alan or Jojo they would flick the feather around and the feather wouldn’t even know. I got a phone call, arrives up in his room. Our room we were rooming together at the time and said Alan’s in trouble in the bar. I’m run down there. You know, Ronnie behind me. And it was going on in a big old redneck guy says they want my table, I ain’t giving my table and I’ll whip all of you, he said I’ll whip every one of you, I said, no you won’t. It a’int going to come to that. We’ll take it as promised that Alan you and Jojo said don’t be messing with this guy, leave this guy alone, whatever. And then, as a matter of fact, because I knew if I turn my back, Alan’s going to start some trouble. I said, let’s go. Oh, you all get out of the bar. Let’s just go. And so Ronnie had got in there [**01:05:03] we’re going back to the rooms. Everybody’s got leaving, I told the bartender, I said we’re getting out here. We’re going to call the cops. He wanted to call, they’d already call the cops. I said, we’re going, everything’s fine. And so when I was saying that it was I’ll cut you man, I’ll cut you, jokingly, you know, mess around me and I’ll cut you. So Ronnie walks by the bar, the Bartender rise that I’ll cut you and put his hand on his pocket. We’re up – we went to the room. It just got there, here come the cops, and the girl went there see it, that’s the guy right there he’s going to cut me. And I went, hey, look here, I’m security is here, Jesus, if you just stop, back up against the wall, said he will take care of this. So he’s the one who said he’s going to cut me. I said put your hands against the wall, he got a knife. And I was security, all he has is his driver’s license. The cut, we’ll handle this. I said I’m their security. He don’t carry a knife, we made a joke. We have an old joke saying, I’ll cut you, it’s just a saying and the cop went. Well, that’s kind of a weird saying. But that’s how as a weird thing. And so Ronnie, you know, he didn’t get out a lot or nothing, he knew that he’d let me handle everything. But Alan Collins says, to the cops, oh, you’re coming into my room here and have a drink. And it’s too late for me to stop him. He invited the cops into his room. And so they go and go, they’re going even further than the cop sees is by his phone is a bottle of pills. And a cop picked it up as administers like a Christmas tree? Or the all these legal eleganza and probably not. And the cop went you’re going to put your hand behind your back sir. Alan said, Gene, I said, you invited him in the room son. Go on down there we’ll get you.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, did you get stressed out doing all that? That would just stressed me out.
Gene Odom: It would stress me out now. But not then because I knew them. I knew what to expect and that we had a folder of all the lawyers in every town that we needed to call to take care of the problem. And anytime you got that big cash money, something like that is nothing, you know.
Ramsey Russell: But it wasn’t every night after party. What it might must have taken to get up and play a big music set in front of all the people night after night after night. I mean, surely they didn’t go out and party every single night?
Gene Odom: Well, you only have certain band members that go out there and party every night and party party party. Some of them don’t, some of them just go to bed, watch television. Some of them come back, they got wives. Some of them and they go to the get something to eat, you get exhausted after a certain period of time. But you have certain members of the band that just want a party all the time party party party party, they pay for it.
Ramsey Russell: In fact, Ronnie Van Zant sometimes would just come back and turn on Movie Channel?
Gene Odom: Turn on TV. And when you get New York you love to go to New York because they had movies till dawn. Played all old movies and he sit down at bed and just watching old movies because he’d go out to eat sometimes if you had a business or whatever, but when it was Ronnie van Zant time, most of his time, sitting in that bed watching television.
Ramsey Russell: Because the cycle was they toured and they practiced and they recorded and they toured and they practiced and they recorded and it just really wasn’t much a whole lot of life once they hit it big was it?
Gene Odom: No and then like I said you have certain band members such as crew members that like to hang around the band because I’m with the band and some band members, the front man that aren’t the superstar they got to go out, hey look at me I’m with the band, you know, I’m a rock star that kind of attitude.
Ramsey Russell: Just an interesting question because they just get bored from Jacksonville, Florida. What did they eat? I mean, did they go to five star restaurants in New York City?
Gene Odom: No, they went to fancy restaurants if you had like MCA, people with whatever have, you know, the promoter or the record label? They’re not going to take you to McDonald’s if they don’t talk business or take the band that you go to these fancy restaurants and I remember the famous ones in San Francisco back then, Goldman’s office still there now and Elio toes were on at the wharf Fisherman’s who are fanciest restaurants in the world. We’d go there and they were, when you got that kind of money in and you got that kind of aura you want to be seen some of them, you want to be, I’m with the band, you know, Ronnie and blue jeans and a flannel shirt like this going into a fancy restaurant, he didn’t care about being with the band, the other people, the front man is the band and some band members have trouble realizing that they’re not the front man, so they want to look at me, I’m with the band, you know.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard of those kinds of issues, but when I look back at pictures of the band in front of the hell house or on the album covers or on stage, they didn’t have big ideas to day in and day out some of the footage. I’ve seen they didn’t have great big ensembles of clothes it looks to me, you know, Ronnie Van Zant wearing bell bottoms and a T shirt that he just pulled out of his shirt, he just went to the closet like I would grab a T shirt and jeans.
Gene Odom: Ronnie was just as he’s buried in a flannel shirt just like this was, was his favorite fishing pole. And he wasn’t no flash and Gary would wear a coat jacket sometimes but they wasn’t Alan Collins he’d put on some fancy white clothes or something but those guys wasn’t like your normal band want to be rock stars and where all these goofy clothes, no. You can look at any picture of them and you’ll see him wearing no goofy clothes. They might be having a jacket on, right? Might be wearing a Japanese thing you know something that the time to deal with throw him to put on but no just regular old country boys.
Ramsey Russell: But they were a huge band like, I mean, they were a huge band they were opening for some of the top shows on tour but they were at a top show too. I heard a story one time about them. Opening for somebody out, I think in California and man went to Walmart band ended and FreeBird replied and curtain went down so to speak. Everybody’s got him laugh, they didn’t care about who else was there.
Gene Odom: And they didn’t open for bands that they did on that Peter Frampton, who was a co-head of two shows. But when Skynyrd played and opened up for the second show, Peter Frampton was headliner. When Skynyrd played 50,000 people walked out of this open Coliseum before Peter Frampton came home. Peter Frampton started crying what’s going on, come back, I’m Peter Frampton, I’m the headliner.
Ramsey Russell: All said, we don’t see Skynyrd, we are going home.
Gene Odom: They haven’t seen that. Then Skynyrd kicked everybody’s butts are no big bands that were bigger than them and back then would play with it. And the Rolling Stones held the record at Madison Square Garden. Five consecutive nights to stone sold out Madison Square Garden. The Fall tour that we were on, the Lynyrd Skynyrd band had sold out Madison Square Garden for seven consecutive. They would have broke that record.
Ramsey Russell: Broke that record. That’s just how big they were.
Gene Odom: At that time. It would have been bigger. When next year when to add to the album had kicked, but it would have been bigger.
Ramsey Russell: It happened so quick. They practice for let’s say a better part of a decade. They got to record they started touring. They blew up. They absolutely blew up. They stayed on the road. I mean, what were some of the sizes of their audiences. I mean, they played in front of audiences that were 90,000 to 100,000 people at times.
Gene Odom: Yeah. And when it’s played with the stones over there in Europe before our tour started. On that tour with the stones there was a quarter million people, Skynyrd kicked their butt and Peter Frampton, they had these big tones on the stage. And they told Skynyrd don’t – that’s for Mick Jagger to walk out on. Skynyrd we’re not there, we’ll run out there on that tone, kicking their butt. And nobody else would rebel. Ronnie van Zant, Mick Jagger, don’t want me to walk out of this tongue Skynyrd kicked their butt.
Ramsey Russell: Out like a bear didn’t it.
Gene Odom: Yes sir. And I’ll tell you a little secret. The Peter Frampton show, it was actually it was co headline, it was two shows. Anaheim and Oakland in between was the Willie Nelson picnic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Almost 100,000 people 97,000 or 98,000 people. And so but they didn’t want Skynyrd to do no encore, it was Sweet Home Alabama, then boom, they’re off the states and limousines ready, I had them, they were gone. And so within 30 seconds there was no reminisce of Lynyrd Skynyrd and band on that property. And people started stomping screaming Freebird Freebird Freebird Freebird. And so the band didn’t come out, the band was gone. And this 100,000 people went crazy. They run the security of, I’m talking about ran the security off, pull the barricades down, pulled the monitors offstage was destroying everything. And people were freaking out and I’m waiting on a limousine to come by and get me. I walk out there on stage in front of 100,000 people and I took the microphone. I said listen, my name is Gene Odom. I’m Ronnie Van Zant’s bodyguard and security for the band. I said the band has gone there wasn’t contracted to play no encore. They’re at the hotel. You all need to stop this. I said Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings coming out here. That’s the show. You all need to give them some respect and stop this and let them come out and you all enjoy the rest of the show because the band’s not here. That whole crowd backed up. They let the security come back, put the monitors and everything back up. When Willie Nelson walked down those days, he went who in the hell was that, that’s a hell of a band I had to follow. The crowd went crazy.
Ramsey Russell: The thing about Lynyrd Skynyrd, it happened so quick. I mean, just, basically after 10 year, after just really laid into they blew up they were big, they were that. But they never really got to come home and sink their teeth into being rockstars. They were rockstars on the road but they never really got to taste true, let it sink in did they. I mean it kind of ended before they realized and could build big houses and buy big cars and live like rockstars. They were just down the road and then it ended.
Gene Odom: And then right before they got that opportunity, yeah, it ended is that quick. But they come home – they wouldn’t – I mean, a couple of them played the rockstar syndrome go out and party party party. But no most of them they had a family and Ronnie, he’d come on, go fishing and call me up. Hey, man, let’s go, come on. And what’s your normal? What you would call rockstars? Where they are? They weren’t like that.
Ramsey Russell: They weren’t like it. They were just like me and you. He showed his restaurant last night. It was his favorite place to eat here in Jacksonville. Fried fish.
Gene Odom: Fried fish. He loved fried catfish, bait potatoes. He was a steak and potato man. He didn’t eat no greens, he called greens rabbit food. He didn’t eat no rabbit food. But he was his country as you can be and be a rockstar on top of it. Barefoot rockstar.
Ramsey Russell: Gene, did you have a fight with Lynyrd Skynyrd song?
Gene Odom: The battle with Curtis Loew.
Ramsey Russell: Gene, whose idea was it to put the Confederate flag behind the stage was that the music industry, because they were Southern rockband or was at band members idea to use the Confederate flag back in those days.
Gene Odom: Ronnie Van Zant, he got that flag and hang up flag he loved the South and at that time the South was different, politics was a whole lot different back then than it is now, a Democrat Party was different than it is now.
Ramsey Russell: Well it was different time and growing up in the 70s myself. The flag didn’t mean to me then what it’s become to me now. It hadn’t been radicalized it hadn’t been politicized it was just a beautiful flag, you know, that we saw a lot down here in but you know growing up to me, it didn’t represent a political statement, it didn’t represent black and white, it didn’t represent none of that. What it meant to me was, it was almost like a middle finger to folks around the country that judged me or people like me, for my accent, for bare feet, for hunting, for fishing for my way of life in the deep south. It was just like it was, hey, screw you. I’m proud of my heritage and my culture.
Gene Odom: That’s exactly what he felt. That’s exactly how he felt about that flag. Same way. Heritage in the south.
Ramsey Russell: It was heritage. It was pure day. I am who I am.
Gene Odom: Yeah, no doubt about that.
Ramsey Russell: What kind of guy was Ronnie Van Zant?
Gene Odom: He was special. I got a story for you. It may have been 76 or 77. But in Mobile, Alabama, I’ll never forget. There’s a park there a downtown park, we’re walking across that park, Ronnie and Gary and me going to get something to eat. As we walk across that park, there was a bench there and a couple of homeless guys were sitting on that bench, as we walking up toward them, one of them came up to us and asked do you have a quarter that me and my buddy there can get some coffee. And so we just got a perdiems, which was been about $120 each and whatever money we had in our pockets, Ronnie turned to us and said, give me your money, give me all your money and I said, why, he said, give me all your money. And Gary and Alan, so that would have been $500 per diem. And so whatever money we had, I would bet you to say there’s probably easy $1,000 there. So Ronnie took that money, and started to hand it to that guy and he pulled it back and he’s pointed over was a restaurant, and there was a clothing store side by side in that mall and Ronnie says, you see that store? You’re going to take this money over there and you go buy you some clothes. But first, you’re going to go over there to that restaurant and you can sit down and have something good to eat. And I’m going to stand here and watch you go in there. No, we will they weren’t no, no, yeah, we’re going, we’ll do what you want. They went into restaurant, Ronnie says come on, let’s go and get something to eat and we got no money. No worries, we got a credit card. We’re good. And they said I’ll give you money back. But I’ll get money from Roman. I’ll give you money back. It will come out of your pocket. He said I’ll take care of this.
Ramsey Russell: On October 19th, 1977 they played what turned out to be their final concert in Greenville, South Carolina. Was there anything to stand out? Or anything un normal? Anything different about that concert at all?
Gene Odom: No, not to me. It was full house sold out. They just come in there and kick their butt. And we got into limousines and went to the hotel, I would say normal, you know.
Ramsey Russell: And they were off that night. They had October 20 off and decided they wanted to you know, hey, we’re going to have a night off. We’d rather be in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. First night off. Is that right?
Gene Odom: That’s partially right. What has happened is that when we had that engine malfunction, come into Greenville, South Carolina live in Lakeland. The girls and a couple other ones didn’t want to fly on the plane. They were scared and they were telling Ronnie that they didn’t want to fly and they wanted to fly commercial. And so Ronnie had fired Jojo. And so she was gone but she knew all the alias names about how the Alias Name. She knew the aliases and so she was calling the rooms trying to get Ronnie on the phone, trying to get her job back. And Ronnie was mad and aggravated that she’s calling rooms. And so he was aggravated about the plane that people don’t want to fly on the plane and then they were drinking and doing other stuff. I was asleep. Ronnie then told them don’t wake Gene Odom up. And they were having a kind of like a band meeting. And the girls and two of them said we won’t fly. We’re scared of plane and so Ronnie would go on and our old manager was actually keeping them on the plane. And they were calling and that morning I had went out to the airport to talk with the policy to see what was going on and they were working on the plane and I told him I said fix it here we got a day off. And they said no, we will fly to Baton Rouge. And so the Baton Rouge scenario is that some of the people that want to fly and the management wanted to go to Baton Rouge because of the bottom line is do you want to party in Hicksville, South Carolina or do you want to party on a day off in Baton Rouge. Oh yeah, we want to Baton Rouge on and pump them up, you know, and then so and at the last minute when the fire broke, Ronnie just said, listen, get on the plane. If you ain’t on the plane, you’re fired. Because if it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go and he had other people putting that in his ear about wanting to party in Baton Rouge and now that you don’t worry about Gene Odom, we don’t know nothing about that plane. You don’t know about nothing. Don’t worry about Gene Odom, we’re going to Baton Rouge. And the last thing that pilots heard was don’t you wish he was on the tarmac like asked you to do.
Ramsey Russell: Let’s talk about that. On the fly, you all flew together you all had active card game? I mean, what was it like on tour plane, I mean, what was going on the flight, a lot of times just regular days? Just card games, drinking, smoking, partying, sleeping?
Gene Odom: Well, there would be some beer and Coca-Cola and stuff on the plane. And people would smoke sometimes and drink and most of them would just try to relax, sit there with I think a boombox is backed in the complete whatever and there wasn’t no TVs on a plane and now that video game none of that stuff was back then. And we would play poker, some of us, you know, whenever now and then in a different one would come and sit on the table mostly it was me and Greg Reed, Ronnie would come in and when we play sometimes, and Ronnie would play every now and then. He just, you know, and when you’re fine, you don’t have all that time as you going from New York to LA four hour flight, usually an hour flight, two hour flight hour and a half whatever the minute flights on like that and you don’t have a whole lot of time on the plane when you jump over city to city though, and it’s just do what you do. Sit back and relax and Ronnie had taken two sleep and bills, because he’d been up all night and so he says, I need to get some sleep. This is when we got up in the plane and I got to get a couple hours sleep. I was up all night I said, yeah I heard. And there was a couch. Kevin Nelson, Allen and Gary was sitting on the couch with those four people could sit there. And there was a little like a two by six table in front that you could set your drink on or your cup or your Coca-Cola or you could lay back and proper feet on the table. So I told them to move their feet and I laid Ronnie down there and under their feet, so he could lay there and people could walk by and go to the galley. And he went to sleep on the floor right there under your feet.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. Let’s talk about there were motor issues that were going to Baton Rouge. One of motors went out, one of the motors quit, is that right?
Gene Odom: It didn’t quit. It ran out of gas.
Ramsey Russell: Ran out of gas.
Gene Odom: So it didn’t quit both of them didn’t. What happened was they had a problem with the engine that they didn’t know what it was they thought it was a Magneto and it’s what they say. And so they were mixing the fuel mixture to rich or which is called auto rich. You can make it make the engine perform more richer with put adding more fuel to air. Yeah, it’s called auto rich. And I found out over the years that by running that engine in auto rich position, it burns 29 gallons an hour extra fuel in auto rich position. And normally the engine burns 89 gallons per hour. And so we don’t know, nobody alive knows how long they kept that burn that plane in auto rich position, burning that extra 29 gallons per hour. And over all the years of my investigation and checking with everybody is that the auto rich mechanism on that right engine maybe both engines was burning extra fuel. More than 29 gallons, maybe 5 – 6 – 8 gallons an hour more. By doing that, we found out that the right fuel gauge didn’t work. So they estimated and they were they would fuel the plane up is they knew how many gallons the engines should burn from point A to point B and even with that engine in auto rich position. So they would put fuel on the plane at every location, thinking they had X amount of gallons on the plane when they added fuel. i.e, they added 400 gallons in Greenville, South Carolina, thinking they had approximately 170 gallons of fuel on the plane, meaning they would have 570 gallons to go to Baton Rouge. What I found out and to my investigation is that the FAA even thought they should have had 170 gallons when they added the 400 gallons. The 400 gallons should have flew that plane from Greenville to Baton Rouge. So we ran out 10 minutes short. So what that tells me is that when we landed the plane from Lakeland to Greenville, South Carolina, the plane was out of gas. When we tax it up to the area. The engines, didn’t know, what engine to run it. But that plane was out of gas and they didn’t know it. So they added 400 gallons thinking they had 570 gallons. And so they ran out and that’s why they were so shocked. Is that, you know, and Billy Powell said when he saw them dumping the fuel that’s what buddy managed to do to you. They were trying to figure out why we are out of fuel. And so the engines started sputtering. And then when one engine would suck up some fuel, it would actually spin the plane sideways. And that’s up there. 12,000 – 10,000 feet that’s a horror story. And then finally the engines they ran out of fuel, but they had hydraulic power and flap control because the little joint engine in the back was eight horsepower engine and they had it running and in their situation. And they’re on a phone talking to Houston and they’d already turned one time. Houston tells – they tell him we have a few problems and then the engines would pick up some fuel and he said, we’re not out of fuel, but we need to get back to the nearest airport.
Ramsey Russell: So they had turned from going to Baton Rouge they had turned over a mid county heading over toward McComb airport that is what you are talking about they turned?
Gene Odom: They turned coming down. They turn some because they were trying to find an area to do barely land and so they had turned at that point. So when Houston tells them to turn around and go to McComb, they couldn’t turn around at that point because a little joint engine and then ran out of fuel. So we had no flap control, no electrical power. You couldn’t turn – if you could turn without that kind of flap control, at that time with no flap control, if that plane would have tilted to turn left or turn right, hit the nose right into the ground. They had to stay on a flat plane with no flap control. They couldn’t manipulate those flaps at any time with that going on because the plane would just nose dive to the ground. So there was a glider and they saw this field at a distance that they wanted to try to make. And we’re up here and.
Ramsey Russell: It was silent because if thinking in their mind that we were going to do a belly landing. What was the you all were coasting. Both motors out of gas you all are coasting. This plane we’ll coast pretty good way but not forever without power. What was the demeanor of everybody at this point when it’s quiet and you all are now coasting. What could what a pandemonium or would it silent? Everybody getting your mind wrapped around that. Do you remember that? Do you remember the sound or the leaf grape in the belly of the plane or the land is hitting the side of plane? It was coming in because it was coming in.
Gene Odom: I’m running back towards the cockpit and then that did last trip. But I see that we lose our airspeed that the stall speed of that plane was 55 to 65 miles an hour. If you could maintain 55 or 65 miles an hour, you can fly. That plane weighed 30,000 pounds, without any kind of propulsion is going to lose his airspeed. And that’s why we come in at 52 degree angle, because it didn’t run out of airspeed, it was a it was a brock, it was a ball of metal coming out of the sky and without propulsion as soon as it loses its airspeed or what do you call it, it’s coming down like a baseball. You can throw a baseball real fast from here to that truck. But if you throw it up over that truck and it’s going to find the point where it loses its steam and that’s what would happen because when it lost his airspeed, we started just coming in at a nose dive, actually, and we tried to hidden the trees at 150 feet. No, I can’t. I know they said trees, because they were thinking we were going to a belly land. And they said trees and then we started hitting the trees and then I tried to get Ronnie, you know, to stay in a seat. And I’m sure he unsnap the seat belt. If he hadn’t unsnapped the seat belt, but he’d probably still be alive. He was trying to get up the fight because he thought I was messing with him. I mean, he was so groggy from mostly sleeping pills. He knew he was trying to get up the fight. I’m going to teach you to wake me up and he died not knowing the plane was going to crash. He didn’t know we had run out of gas, he died not knowing anything about that.
Ramsey Russell: What’s the last thing you remember? The last cognitive thought you had? You had told me you were running back to your seat. You were running up hill because that thing is coming in.
Gene Odom: Last thing I remember was turning away from him to try to run up to my seat. That’s the last thing I remember.
Ramsey Russell: It’s already pitched at an angle coming in so you’re running uphill in the cab.
Gene Odom: It hit the ground at the 52 degree angle.
Ramsey Russell: And then you don’t remember being thrown out of the plane?
Gene Odom: No, I don’t remember going through the fuselage. But see the reference to the airspeed of the plane to stall speed. If we’d have been higher up when the stall speed disappeared, we would have come nose diving and straight down because that thing weighed 15 tons. 30,000 pounds. We came at that angle because when we started coming down, I mean that planes coming down, there’s no force behind it to push it. We’re coming down and while they were having a little joint engine and they had flap control, but once that little joint engine ran out of fuel, they was no flap control, and you can’t turn the plane then it’s just you just are on a dead run to whatever you go hit. And I don’t know how many or how far away we were from the field that they didn’t make.
Ramsey Russell: About 350 yards.
Gene Odom: 350 yards. We came up short around 50 yards.
Jamie Wall: My name is Jamie Wall of Galesburg, Mississippi. And my story here is about the Lynyrd Skynyrd crash, October 20 1977. I was the first person at the crash site. That afternoon I had been bow hunting with my brother and we had come in from hunting had a friend of mine on the volunteer fire department steered him to call me and said a plane had crashed between Magnolia and Galesburg. And that we all get to fire department and I said, that’s a good idea. So I told him I was going to ride in my truck from Galesburg to Magnolia down the road, just looking. That afternoon, I saw a small plane putting out and I thought it was a small plane with one person on board. When I got to hear the easy roll, I could see the helicopter down in a woods and I said to myself, that’s where the airplane crashed where the helicopter would just sit her hovering above the woods. And I stopped at Johnny Mokes house to let them know I was going to go through their pastor to the woods and when I got to the house, there were three survivors at the house had walked out. Out of that was pilot, the drummer one of them and Mark Frank was one and I don’t remember the third person. And Johnny Neil will tell him to get off their land. And now you’re trying to tell John that I was in a plane crash and I need to help and there were some more people in the woods. And I said, Johnny, he’s telling the truth the plane did crash and if you step off your porch, and look behind your house because that field you see this helicopter and I feel sure that’s where the plane is and I would also a volunteer deputy sheriff. And I showed him my bad I said I’m going to go across your pasture and help the people and I had my brother with me and we got to the woods I left my brother in the truck. I had a radio on the truck I could talk to people and I was telling people where to come I think you stay in a truck and talk. While I crossed the creek, went to the light in the woods it was dark by this time. And the first person I saw when I got to the plane crash with the pilot hanging upside down at his seat. The plane was upside down the front of it was. I got down on my hands and knees and pray to God to help me, give me strength to go up and help. Well, the first thing I want to do is find the wings, that’s where the gas is. I didn’t want to walk up into a pile of gas and I walked around the plane twice, and the wings were ripped off and there was no gas, I felt safe. But while I was walking around the plane, I stumbled on top of two people that were alive. One of them was Paul Welch. I talked to him and I took two hunting coats. And I covered him up with the hunting coats and told him help was coming. Just stay awake, we’re going to take care of you. The other second person I found was Steve Lawler and he was the same way he was kind of hurt his legs and stuff. But he could kind of stand up I cut him up and hunting coat and told him help was coming. That was a third person on the ground, but I didn’t find him, that was Gene Odom. And the back of the plane, the plane had twisted. The back was out right and I knew most of people don’t be up front. But you couldn’t see the doors or the windows and it was a crack in the plane. But I didn’t go through that crack. I went through that back door, it wasn’t up my suitcases and stuff up in there at the time and I didn’t see nobody else. Nobody answered when I called out loud. And you can’t hardly hear calls at the helicopter. Well, for some reason, I climbed up on top of the helicopter and was walking on the belly of the airplane upside down and it was a crack in it. And I got down to pray again. But I stuck my hand in that crack and I poked somebody there, his name was Mark Howell. He was electrician on the plane and I talked to him and I told him I’m going to somehow get him out of that plane through that small crack, which was about a foot long. But for some reason, I took a hatchet and I took a hatchet and started cutting a hole in that plane around that crack I told him close his eyes. When I got the hole big enough to pull him out, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and it was been lying on the highway patrol when he said Jamie helps coming, there’s people here and I looked around and I can notice there were people on the ground below me helping other people had come. I hadn’t noticed them to that point. And I don’t remember who helped me pull Mark out of that hole. I said Mark, I’m going to pull you out of this hole and it’s going to hurt like hell. I said, alright, is grit your teeth. And I reached out his arm and pulled him out. And when I handed him down the thigh up on the ground, I hand him to steer field, you got to call me. Well, after that I’d never met Mark. But 40 years later, I met him and I’m going to tell you that story in a minute. But I climbed up in the future last year with Duane Easley and my brother Joey. Dennis Wilson was up in future lie and we were trying to, its like a jigsaw puzzle who to get out next, this is upside down, you walking on the ceiling you try not to step on nobody. Some peoples hung up in the seat belts, you had to cut them out and we got 18 people had their future lives and out of the eighteen we got out, all were dead besides the two pilots may six all the rest of them were alive, we got them out alive.
Ramsey Russell: Did you know Lynyrd Skynyrd at the time of the read?
Jamie Wall: No sir I didn’t. Later on that night, when we had got everybody out of the plane, need a lab a day from Channel Nine news out of Baton Rouge come up here and I knew her. I had recognized her from TV. And she wanted to know where the crash was, I told her across the creek and she waited across the creek and I sent her to talk to my brother Jarol wall for interview and he where he sent her back to me and we had an interview and at the end she asked me, did I know who was on the plane? I said well they tell me it’s a rock and roll group and she said it was Lynyrd Skynyrd and I said which one was he. So I knew the name Lynyrd Skynyrd but I didn’t realize that it was the name of the band and I thought it was a person. Then she explained to me who’s Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Ramsey Russell: Do you know who they are now all these years?
Jamie Wall: Oh yes. Oh yes. I’ve seen them in concert never find it since then.
Ramsey Russell: You know, having talked some of you all down here, just regular folks, hunters and farmers just jumping at the need to help other people whether you knew them not whether they were famous or not you all jumped. When you look back all these years, did that touch your life that’s what I’m trying to say, how did that affect you?
Jamie Wall: I would have done it to anybody. I would have cared, it didn’t matter to me and like I said, I didn’t stop to even think about that all I stopped for is to ask God gave me strength to help them do the right thing. And I reckon I might have done the right thing for Mark, me and he was good friends. Now, if I hadn’t cleaned up or looking at crack, we might have never found him in time. But he was the only one airlifted to Jackson, Mississippi. He had broke shoulders, he was in bad shape. So I might have done right thing to climbing up on that plane for some reason, and getting him out so quick.
Ramsey Russell: A lot of folks around here have said that forever nobody talked about it.
Jamie Wall: For 40 years, I really never talked about it too much. Some people would have and I said, you all look better and that’s about it. I met a man from Pennsylvania years ago and said he was writing a book and I did an interview for him but I really never talked to nobody about four or five years ago. And really the first part I really did a lot of talking to Mike Ralph. And he said he was writing a book about the rescuers. So I talked to him and I talked to a news reporter after that and since then, since the minute I’ve talked to a lot of interviews that I don’t do with everybody I do it people who are really interested in Lynyrd Skynyrd trying to promote them or something and they’re not in it for money.
Ramsey Russell: No. What’s the – how do you feel about this monument and what kind of people have you met seen it’s coming I know people from all over the world come here.
Jamie Wall: I’m glad we did it. We always wanted to do something. And when we started out a couple of years ago we all finally got together and talking about it we’ll do a little sign I love sign got bigger code we got more money and donations coming in we got more money. A sign turned into three granite stones what we got now and I’m proud of it. I thank all the fans should be proud of it come see it. If we’re not asking for money and stuff and I come over here every night and I don’t mind talking to the fans. I don’t want nothing from it. I’m just that I’m on HKT and they are very interested if their fan shows me they really interested and want to know what happened to her band, I’ll talk to them.
Ramsey Russell: Have you got a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song.
Jamie Wall: I like, what’s your name.
Ramsey Russell: What’s your name?
Jamie Wall: But I’ve seen them in concert and I got some albums and stuff from – I even got original album about right after crash I went found one of the original band, you know, but I bought it after the crash. I like to always like tell a story on Mark Hall that when I got out of the plane, you know, which I think I told you didn’t I?
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s right.
Jamie Wall: Me and Mark good friend. He lives in Pasadena, Texas now.
Ramsey Russell: Would you say your contact with Mark Hall is that one of the most long lasting memories you’ve got? Like when you just think back to that night, what was the one thought you have thinking back to an initial impression or when you got back home and woke up the next morning the first thing you thought about all that?
Jamie Wall: The side of the plane walking up to it. I remember getting Mark put of that plane. Now, after we got up in the plane I helped get other people out. But I had no idea who I was getting out. Like I didn’t know who Mark was till three years ago. He came down here to go see the crash site and he got out his truck. And he got to tell him his story that night. And he was telling about how this guy said, look, I want you to grit your teeth I’m going to pull you out is when he said it, I knew who he was. I said, fella you’re looking at the guy that pulled you out that night. When he told me I told him grit his teeth I said it’s going to hurt like hell. I told him what I need to get him out. I didn’t know what was wrong with him said he was hurt. He was between the floor and the belly of the plane up into hydraulic lines and electrical lines. The plane was upside down.
Ramsey Russell: How long afTer that day was it before people started piling in and carving on the tree and things like it?
Jamie Wall: I can’t answer that. That happened the Thursday. I went home Friday and took a bath at night for about four hours. I come back I didn’t go home to Sunday. My drone was pumped up I kind of camped out. I can talk to my wife on radio from the credit side to the house and she would bring me stuff to eat and stuff. I just slept in the car. We just camped out for a couple nights. And I didn’t come back then from four years. I mean, I heard about the tree and I people talk about it, but I didn’t know anything about it. I never went down or.
Bobby McDaniel: Bobby McDaniel. I have a nickname, governor.
Ramsey Russell: Governor.
Bobby McDaniel: And I was born and raised just about a mile from here. Before I moved into the town of Magnolia and later into McComb, but our family still has the farm here that I was raised in.
Ramsey Russell: Where were you around dinner time October 20 1977, what happened?
Bobby McDaniel: I was a young business person, 22 years old had started my own business. And I was working, a lot of my friends and all were still in college that did, go to college or, but I had come back and started a business.
Ramsey Russell: You got to somebody college or you got a radio call. You were in a volunteer fire department, is that right?
Bobby McDaniel: No, no, not the volunteer fire department. And the first time the first report would have been closer to around 6:15 to 6:30. The plane crashed around 5:46. But I was in the K&B drug store which has been long gone. But most people remember the K&B purple. And it probably was the first time they broke in on the AM radio inside the store that a plane crashed outside of Magnolia of which is where I spent most of my childhood growing up. And so I ran out to my car, and I was a member of the Civil Air Patrol. So I switched my CP radio to channel 12 and reported in and asked for the directions or the location. And they gave me the location and I had them to repeat it a total of three times because they was directing me exactly to our family farm.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Bobby McDaniel: The plane crashed 2000 feet from the corner of our farm through the woods.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. How long did it take you to get there?
Bobby McDaniel: It’s very funny story. I could see where it looked like somewhat of a command center being set up. And I walked up in it quietly and a friend of mine’s father was one of the ambulance drivers. A great big man Eddie Warren Smith. And he grabs me by the back of the neck and starts dragging me to his ambulance telling me, telling everybody this boy knows the way around and explained to me that they were having to go across the field that the other ambulances had gotten stuck and had to cross a creek and they wanted to find a way around that they didn’t have to go across the creek. And so I rode in the ambulance and we did go around easily branch and turn in on a rage on the back side. The ambulance didn’t make it, I’m going to say about 200 feet into the woods, which was a logan road until he determined he was not going to be able to go any further. And I bailed out of the ambulance and continued on to the crash site and he and Tommy doll draw the other person on the ambulance backed them, let’s back out.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. Describe it what it was like when you got there, when you got to the site?
Bobby McDaniel: I have said this from the very beginning is the greatest thing on this rescue was the fact that the Louisiana Coast Guard helicopters happened to be in the area returning back from a training mission. And of course, they heard it over the air, turn their locator zone, and they started making circles looking for the plane crash and located the plane crash before the first rescuer ever showed up. So whenever I bailed out of the ambulance, I went toward the helicopter lights. And the first thing I did was I came across the wing of the plane. And I thought that was the plane crash until I realized that there was more commotion for their own up. I had no idea the size of the plane that we were searching for.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. How much further ahead did you have to go find it?
Bobby McDaniel: I would say about 200 feet, the plane hit the top of the first pine tree at 497 feet until it hit the base of the oak tree that actually split the plane open.
Ramsey Russell: How long it took to get everybody to going by the time you all got everybody out across the creek and off the town, sound like a pretty arduous situation here?
Bobby McDaniel: We have gone over this in our minds numbers times. And I cannot tell you what the timeline was. You know, some of the passengers of the plane was up and walking around. Of course, they were in shock. Some of them, you know, we were getting out and laying them out and that was kind of my position of helping from Dwayne handing them out of the plane onto the ground and several hours, we get them over and somewhat triage them and decide what injuries or what order they were. And of course, when we did get the deceased out, we kind of lined them up in the same little area. There was no stretcher. And the helicopter, which I want to say something about the two helicopters. One helicopter did go and land. The second helicopter was immediately over with a spotlight and a prop wash and a noise. And it was just hectic. And he at some time another had one of the crew members propel out of the plane and it was in conversation, he instructed the helicopter to back on off and back up. So he gained altitude and backed out to where the propwash was not over us. The noise was not as bad. But that spotlight was perfect on the plane. And if it hadn’t been for that spotlight from the helicopter, and of course the helicopter finding the plane that rescue could have gone on much longer.
Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir. He seems insane from talking to a lot of people down here at the monument that there were a lot of community people involved. It was a lot of rescuers, a lot of landowners there were people on the side there were people inside the plane or people doing triage there’s people transport and there are people as I understand donating their trucks to run to town and take these people. If you had to guess, how many people might have been involved in this whole process?
Bobby McDaniel: Well, about living here for another 40 years and running into people. Half of the people in southwest Mississippi was here that night and helped that night. I mean, everybody said I was there, everybody was doing this and that, you know, the people that was actually at the plane, getting the people out of the plane was between 6 and 20. But then we transported them across the creek and put them in the back of the pickup trucks that was able to drive across the muddy bottom. But they were all kind of law enforcement people. You know, it was hard. I cannot tell you if it was 100 people involved or not. I could say probably so, but at one point of time there was at least 100 people that helped in the rescue. But it’s been said that they was X amount of rescuers, and several 100 spectators. Because they were spectators. And they were some people that was a souvenir hunters. And a lot of stuff got picked up that night that I’m ashamed to say. But I’m proud to say that some of it did get given back to the families of the people on the plane within the next week or two as they were in town. They did come back and bring certain artifacts or family pictures or even the guitar. Yes it was brought back.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. What did a lot of people say it wasn’t really talked about that much around here. You know, people will just real quiet about they didn’t talk about it was that the case or were people talking?
Bobby McDaniel: I walked out of there that night with my dad. Actually, one of the neighbors had came and got him and got his tractor in front end loader to bring over thinking it would be able to help. And he had cut a tire down on the tractor. And someone had told me about it and so I found him and he and I were walking out together. And that’s whenever someone came up to me and told me it was Lynyrd Skynyrd plane.
Ramsey Russell: Had you heard of the band at that point?
Bobby McDaniel: I had been to three concerts.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?
Bobby McDaniel: And ladson went on to say, but don’t worry Bobby. I think Lynyrd’s all going to be okay. But to answer your question, it was 25 years before I walked back into those woods. I done seeing all I wanted to see. And actually it was people, friends of mine that had moved into the area and stories were told, and people say, well, that’s out near Bobby’s farm. And people actually encouraged me to take them back to the crash site and that was the first couple of times that I did go back.
Ramsey Russell: Well, you probably had a lot of folks coming in over the year just sneaking in and looking and trying to find it.
Bobby McDaniel: People all the time had come searching for it. And they would stop on the road, they would stop people you’d be on your tractor bush hogging or plowing and they’d come out there flagging you down, want to know where to crash site was. And Johnny Moat, which owns the land that the pasture that we came across only a rescue, he got tired of people flagging him down and stopping him from his work. He couldn’t even get cow’s milked. So he built a big Arbor archway, and hung rebel flags off the top of it that you could see from the road here. And he would just pull it and they would take off across the pasture to that area.
Ramsey Russell: That’s incredible. How would you describe the events of 43 years ago having affected the Galesburg community or affecting you?
Bobby McDaniel: I’d say that in Mississippi, even people had never heard of Galesburg, but now, Galesburg is a pretty common word, especially in Skynyrd, and then rock and roll. But I had always been a fan of the band and like I said, I’ve been to three other concerts. And one of the concerts was the top best concert I had ever been to. I mean, it’s still number one to this day. I do a little bit of work in our community as far as community services and community support, community advertising and I think that is something that this community has not used as far as an asset. And some people don’t agree with us on making it publicized about where they crashed and where they died. But rock and rollers that’s the greatest band we had and that this is just something that can attract us to the band or make us feel like we are somewhat closer to the band.
Ramsey Russell: I agree. A lot of people are connected to the music and in this way they can find their own closure in their own connection to the band and to the music. Last question, do you have a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?
Bobby McDaniel: Curtis Loew.
Ramsey Russell: Where were you on October 20 1977 around dinnertime?
Duane: Okay, this is Duane Esely. I’ve lived here all my life and around noon that day, I was baling hay actually square bales of hay just right through the woods here. And later that afternoon, I and a friend of mine, Wayne blades went bow hunting and it was a really warm day, too warm for hunting so we came back early and stopped over my mom dad’s house and that’s when we heard a helicopter go really low and we wondered what that was about. And about that time, the telephone rang. Mom answered it and she called in to us and said there’s a plane going down behind our house. That was my aunt that called and they saw it coming our way. We’re serious we heard, while she told us that, we knew that the helicopter was about there. So we jumped up and went around to the Hayfield. I could see my hay hauler down in the field but we didn’t have any idea where the plane was because it’s several 1000 acres of timber back here. So it was kind of a dilemma, where the heck will we look, and then we saw the helicopter coming back. So it came back making circle big circles will spotlight. Well, it wasn’t dark. I can still see my hay hauler but it was dark in the woods. So they were shining the light down into the under store the forest trees, because you couldn’t see down there. Sun was already set. But I could still clearly see my hay hauler, so when we stopped circling us, we knew that was it. And we were maybe maybe a quarter of a mile away from the plane. So we took out running, looking back and thinking about the times and the plane went over my uncle’s house, and then the phone call, we had to be at the site within 15-20 minutes of the crash, I mean, we had to be. And we got there, of course, in the woods is dark, but the light from the helicopter has made it like daylight in there.
Ramsey Russell: Where you all the first ones on the same.
Duane: I saw some guys coming from the other direction and when we came in from the east side, I could see people coming from the west side out of the woods at same time. I mean, that’s what I saw. And so I’m thinking that it seemed like maybe five or six of us got there at the same time. I don’t really know somebody was there before that or not. But yeah, we got there pretty much same time, I guess.
Ramsey Russell: What exactly did your aunt say on the phone? I know it was explained to me earlier today that we’re right in the flyway, I mean, we’re right at the planes coming out of McComb airport flying toward Baton Rouge you all right under it, but what did she say that made her think something different about that plane?
Duane: Well for one thing, people out here in the country in Galesburg we know where everybody’s house is within a few miles which direction and they knew exactly which direction that plane was in and they knew was headed straight to our house and they also knew it was going down because the engines were not running so you know they called us because there’s not any other houses between their house and our house really through those woods, I mean we’re the first house.
Ramsey Russell: I wonder how old trees are at that time, they were probably pretty low to those trees.
Duane: Well, I can tell you this the first tree that hit, the pine tree they were really tall pines the very first one they hit and to the where the nose hit the ground was almost a quarter of a mile. They were clipping trees as they went more as they went. But I know those woods that was affected crashed on the backside of our family property and that’s what we call it the back 40 was called mile square. Well they started hitting the tree top, the first tree top just about on the property land on the south side and when they hit the ground there were only a couple 100 feet from the other private land on the north side, so they went almost a quarter mile hit hitting trees before they hit the ground and it probably didn’t take but a few seconds.
Ramsey Russell: You all showed up within 15 to 20 minutes and some of among the first handful of folks on the site. Describe it. I mean, I’m just imagine you have never walked up on the crashed airplane.
Duane: Well, first of all, we thought it was a small plane like a Cessna or something you know, and when we broke through the underbrush and then we see this really big plane, I’m going dang, you know, this is a lot bigger than I thought. So I walked up to the plane and I could hear people inside saying help me get me out, help get me out of here and then I could see a hand sticking out and so I walked around —
Ramsey Russell: Because the plane kind of broke in half.
Duane: Well, it didn’t really actually for the wing to world I was actually that what I saw that hand. So I walked around toward from the plane, I could see people on the other side, some guy with law enforcement because he had some kind of uniform on. And so I walk back and tell I said, well, there’s a guy over here. Let’s go, he’ll probably tell us what to do, we don’t know what to do. So I walked back around and looked at the guy and he’s just standing there with his hands in his pocket and I said, I went back to work and I said forget that. Let’s just – because you could hear the people in there begging for help. I’m not going to stand there. So I said help me up here and he did. I got up and where the wing was torn off was just ripped open. But I had to pull that visualize back to shine my light up in there, so but I couldn’t do anything. They had one hand like this hole in holding the fuse light up. I couldn’t do anything. Well, finally, some guy came up and got a broken limb of a tree and propped it up. That was perfect. I mean, well then I went and is that.
Ramsey Russell: What was the angle of the plane coming in from the top, I guess with laying on the side? You had to come down?
Duane: Well, it was tilted a little bit, yeah. It was tilted slightly so it made it a little higher, I couldn’t just get there climb out there without some help. But that split was probably this is how am I assess about seven feet probably. And now anyway, I got up in the plane and now I found out later I was in the main passenger section. I didn’t know at the time I didn’t know who they were of course. So I started pulling on people and I mean they wouldn’t budge at all. And probably another guy jumped up there and he looked around and saw a dead person and he jumped out and left. Well finally Gerald Wall came and got up there with me and I tried to get several people out but couldn’t budge him. He got up there he said, look, we got to get them out. I said, Man, I’ve been trying they won’t budge. So they got seatbelts on get your pocket knife out. So I did and when we started cutting belts, they just started popping out, we could pull them out then, of course it took two of us to pull one out because these people this dead weight they’re not even trying to climb or pull or nothing. They just I don’t know, I guess they’re in shock and brain trauma from hitting the ground about what 200 miles an hour, but it was really strange that they were not helping, us help them. And then like handling a 200 pound of sack of feed. Well, we started pulling them out and we pull one person out and be another one under them. When the plane hit, all the seats just kind of went together like an accordion in that section at least for sure. So there is people on top of other people. As matter of fact I couldn’t find out, one of the last ones we got out, the whole time I was standing over back of his legs. He was laying on his face, his feet sticking up. I kept seeing feet go like this. And somebody holler and I didn’t know what it was, but it’s good. Every time I pull somebody out, I was pushing on his legs and didn’t know it. Because there’s sharp metal all up in there. I mean, it’s aluminum but it’s sharp. So wound up my hands were all caught up – they were caught up, my blood, their blood on everything.
Ramsey Russell: You all were bringing them out and just helping people and kind of get them rested it up somewhere nearby.
Duane: Gerald and I were pulling them out and handing them down. The first one or two, I think we handed down to Wayne plays by itself. But then some other people got there. So we were handing them down to a couple of guys. And they were passing them down a line. That’s what they told me later. I didn’t see all that. Dr. Louis was had them triaged on the west side of the plane. I couldn’t see that was up in the plane. But when I did finally come down out of the plane, I walked around and I saw everybody was on the plane laid out, bandaged, you know, most of my all of them bandaged and of course the pilot and co-pilot were pinned in, we couldn’t get them out. We had to have heavy equipment to get them out. I think that one of the local farmers, Mike Wilson got his farm tractor in, I believe I was gone when he got them out. But I left the woods about 2:30, I got home at about 2:30 but I think they said he pulled into the tree or the plane to get the pilot out because he was pinned against the tree. The co-pilot was in a little room behind the pilot and you needed a crowbar or something to get the door and we couldn’t get the door open. So there was only two people left, two bodies left in the plane when actually the Transport Fares Fire Department got there, there was no rescue, been over with about 30 minutes. The only thing left was a recovery of two bodies, staff, but they came in with the news cameras.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m thinking that one a quick job. I mean, a grown man lifting dead weight 200 pound feed sacks, as you call it, getting people going very slow going and you said something about the community and the local and everybody, man I’m sure by then a lot of folks start to show when.
Duane: Yeah, I looked it out at one point. Actually, after I came out from the flight, because I couldn’t see on the west side while I was in the plane, but then, like several 100 people, it was but they were standing back. And my thought at that point was why aren’t these people helping us, we need help. But later on, I found out that the law enforcement people made them stand back because they were afraid somebody had a cigarette that would might start a fire so they wouldn’t let them come close.
Ramsey Russell: They didn’t know the plane was out of fuel.
Duane: No, they didn’t know. Nobody knew that and I didn’t think about it but that a wound up but it was really only maybe six – eight guys actually doing the actual rescue, pulling people out of plane, bring them to the back. But that’s why they wouldn’t let them come up. But so most of everybody that was just watching, looking at seeing what’s going on.
Ramsey Russell: What do you remember when you think back all those years, what do you remember, the smell or the sound?
Duane: Two things. All I can smell was hydraulic fluid. I mean, it was strong and I smelled that for a couple of weeks. The other light from the helicopter was made like daylight of course. And the sound of that helicopter, wings, probably the rotors. I mean, that stayed with me a long time, you know. And it was it was constant all night that sound.
Ramsey Russell: What time did you get back home that evening?
Duane: Well, we got home about 2:30 that next morning. And I’ve went into woods, it does dark. And I had no concept of time while we were doing that. Rescue I had no idea at all what time it was.
Ramsey Russell: Kind of involved in the moment.
Duane: It’s just like, it’s kind of like it took forever but it didn’t also seem like it didn’t take long at all, you know, it’s just weird.
Ramsey Russell: Were you a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan at the time?
Duane: I liked their music. But I was not a group, I never went to a concert, didn’t know what they look like. You know, I just kind of liked the music, but I’m kind of person. I don’t need to be entertained. I’d make my own entertainment by hunting and fishing and farming, you know.
Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.
Duane: So yeah, I knew who they were and I like their music still do of course. It’s good Southern rock, but I didn’t know it was Lynyrd Skynyrd and play up band until we got them all out, set them loaded on the ambulance and they were headed back to the hospital. And his 15 year old boy walked up and asked me did I know who this is? I said No, I don’t. He said that’s Lynyrd Skynyrd man and I said what, it started make sense then did they now look like a bunch of hippies and you know, inside of the plane was like dozens at least of what we call hippie bags, the leather, go bags, it was lots of those in there were a whole bunch of tennis shoes and tennis shoe boxes all over the place. Little like hundreds at least maybe, you know, more playing cards. And every single thing inside that plane had blood on it. I mean, there was nothing – and another thing that observation I made while we’re pulling them out. When we got to Cassie Gaines, she was down in about two or three deep. When we pulled her out, she didn’t have a speck of blood on her. None. And while we were pulling around, I was thinking, wow, this is first women, I’ve seen a no blood. None. And we knew she was deceased though because obviously her neck was broken, it appeared to us anyway. Dean Kilpatrick was the first person was out there was deceased. The aluminum bar stuck up under his rib cage. It was this but yeah, that’s what I remember the smell of fuel. I mean, hydraulic fluid.
Ramsey Russell: I’d heard that all my life growing up, I’d heard about the wreck, you know, in Mississippi specially we currently claim Lynyrd Skynyrd in our home. And I’ve heard it like it was on private property, the secret site, but I’m sure over the years, you all probably had folks from all over the world just crawling around talking through the woods trying to find a site. I mean, did you did you ever see that?
Duane: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m sure we did – I didn’t see them all, I saw some of them, you know, but you around the 20th anniversary. If you get out around here, you’d see cars, driving through real slow and looking you know exactly what they’re doing. I see, I’ve stopped some people that were headed back in there and told him the best way to go, showed him the best way to go over the years, you know, so, but there’s been a lot that I didn’t see, you know, I just didn’t get out and look for them every time.
Ramsey Russell: And it was your property on which the Lynyrd Skynyrd monument is located, you donated this piece of property. Why was that? I know it affected you. I know now your personal involvement with that event. Why was it important to you to donate that land for the monument?
Duane: Well, I’ll tell you why because I was inside that plane. And I saw those people in pain and dying and bleeding to death, or bleeding. And I heard him calling for help and I just thought that they need to be remembered some way.
Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. How did how did the monument idea get started?
Duane: The very first mention of that was made by Mark Frank, who was a road crew guy. We had to get together here lots of survivors, and bunch of us folks that’s actually on the board. Rescuers, we kind of had a little get together before one may have been I don’t remember, this year last year. I mean, the 19th or 18th, but Mark Frank just mentioned, the fact that most famous plane crashes had a monument or marker or something, to that effect and that the Lynyrd Skynyrd band did not and we just everybody kind of looked at each other, yeah that’s right. We need to do it. So we started talking about it. And it just started growing and people started saying, look, we’ll pitch in and you all do it. And so we started making plans, and we tried to put it on the State Highway, but going through the government is like impossible sometimes. Red Tape it takes years, we want to do it only in 2019. But they just they were dragging around and so Bobby McDaniel approached me one day, so what if we put it on Easily property. And I thought for just a second and I said you know what, yeah, because that way we eliminate the state and then we can do whatever we want. And we don’t have to go through all the red tape. And we can get this done this year. And that’s how it started and we got together made a group of folks to get this project done. And I think just 14 in the group. The board we call it the board. So we were thinking about just the roadside, but Miss Christine Anderson over here, she said, go big or go home.
Ramsey Russell: Go big or go home?
Duane: Yes. We were looking at a big monument or small monument signs. She didn’t want anything small. She wanted it big, and so that’s what is big and beautiful.
Ramsey Russell: That’s why I got one last question for you. Do you have a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?
Duane: Oh, it’s got to be Freebird.
Ramsey Russell: Freebird, I agree.
Duane: I mean, everything about it is the music the, you know, it’s so long lasting. Some really good music in it.
Ramsey Russell: Where were you on October 20 1977?
Dennis Wilson: First of all, I’m Dennis Wilson. I’ve lived in a community of Galesburg all my life. I was making my living at a feed and seed store in October of 1977, I was 27 years old. Part of my assignment in October, I was driving shredder truck and I had been on shredder trucks written ryegrass and oaks for fall planting. Most of the day, I don’t know but one particular feeling though I don’t know why I remembered it, I think because a bird hit me in the face that afternoon and I was discouraged because I was hurting a little bit and I while I was going home about five o’clock 5:30. And shortly after then I got a call from a good friend of mine Stuart Hemphill. He said a plane was in trouble. You just call the Fernwood airport, no, McComb airport, is what we call it Fernwood, that he had seen the plane a little bit too low and he called them and they confirmed to him that there was in deed a plane in trouble. And 20 or 30 minutes later, he called me back. reason he called me I was a local fire chief for the volunteer fire department Galesburg Fire Department back then, he said we may have to get together and go see if we can find a plane if it crashed. Well, a few minutes later sure enough, it did indeed crash. I was living on PP Wilson road. Probably not knowing all the time only two and a half miles the way crow flies from the actual crash site. So that was my first knowing’s was getting that phone call and then immediately there after I left my house to come to this area because he gave me the general area of the intersection of PP Wilson and highway 568. I got there, probably I would guess 6:40 – 6:45 just dust dark. There was a highway patrolman Mr. Sam McKean from McComb, Mississippi who kind of knew because he was our patrolman. He was at the intersection of PP Wilson and 568 with blue light zone. And I stopped right behind him in 1977 GMC short wheel base truck base truck that I’d just recently purchased and we were small token, wonder what’s going on what kind of plane is it course nobody knew. About that time see and hear a helicopter. And it’s kind of good and sure enough dust dark or better. Right out in front of us heading south parallel with 568. It flew about a mile and a had below us down toward Gene’s grocery, made a U turn and started going back northeast kind of behind us. And we’re still just sitting there talking and the helicopter has a giant spotlight shining straight down under it and we hearing the noise of the blades and watching the helicopter. Shortly thereafter, he crossed PP Wilson behind us and advanced about another quarter or three eighths of a mile. And all of a sudden, he stopped and hovered in midair. And that’s when we stopped talking. Everybody knew he had located the crash and we jumped in our vehicles. I followed patrolmen, we came up, it was right on 568 in here came up a quarter mile turned on easy road, went about 150 yards turned in open gate, went out in the corner of open Bahia grass field that belonged to Johnny Moat and we could see the helicopter we got within, I would guess a quarter of a mile and we had to park our vehicles and then we got out and certainly in a fast run, climbed the fence ran down through the woods because we could see and hear the helicopter. And that vision is still in my mind in that swampy area of that helicopter with this giant floodlight shining down on an airplane that to me at the time, a country boy from a mid county looked like a Boeing 747, of course, it wasn’t nothing new that everybody knows it was a smaller plane, but it just looked like a plane and it literally broke in half. And I said, hey, I’ve opened and there it was in the woods, and it was almost like a scene from Twilight movie to me at the time.
Ramsey Russell: And then what?
Dennis Wilson: How many people were there already? I didn’t see anybody. There was a group of I’m guessing four to six or eight people kind of moving rapidly to get there. But I don’t remember seeing anybody. I was toward the front of the line, because the opening in the plane was about 12 feet where it literally broke and open six or eight feet, behind the pilots. And when I got the plane, somebody gave me a push up and I think it was Gerald Wall, pushed me up. And I’m sliding up the plane pulling myself up. And somebody pushed me over and I literally went in the plane. And as soon as I did, to my left the pilot and copilot are pancaked in their seat, and there was no way that I knew we could get them out. I was already hearing people say, help me, help me, help me. And, and that’s when we started trying to get people out. Certainly the ones that were able to help themselves. And I’ve been told there was probably somebody already out of the plane. Before we got there, either that I can’t verify that I can’t remember there very well could have been somebody that had got out on their own.
Ramsey Russell: Gone for help or something.
Dennis Wilson: Yes, sir. And I went down in the plane, and it was, I guess, my assignment for the lack of a better word to get people to loose and help slide them up to the next man, which I think was Gerald Wall. And then he would get them to the opening and then he would slide them down to the people waiting. And soon shortly thereafter, people came from all around there were I think I’ve been told three to five hundred people wound up here that before midnight that night.
Ramsey Russell: With the size of the plane and the positioning of it. And where the opening was, I mean, were you having to lift them up?
Dennis Wilson: The plane was the tail in the plane that I started toward that was, I want to say it was at a 45 degree angle with the ground. So it was a slant, but it wasn’t a steep incline. So I was going down but it was not a tremendous incline.
Ramsey Russell: Was the whole interior of that plane and I’ve heard some of these documentaries and stuff like that from the cockpit towards the back, was it all kind of an open floor plan where they’re like barriers and walls and stuff in there.
Dennis Wilson: There was a few barrier from what I remember, there were still some regular seats that I was using my feet on each side, I was coming out using my feet, using those legs to those feet seats as a ladder maybe to help me get down and get up. The one thing I remember and I still remember and there was a guy named Ron, he was the most conscious guy that I was around. Some of them were unconscious some of them were moaning, some of them are groaning. I’m sure several of them but I had a more of a conversation with him. His name was Ron Eckerman and he was the band manager or assistant manager. He was in charge of the money. He paid the bills and carried the money and took up the money but his name was Ron Eckerman. And he told me he was from Houston, Texas. And if you’ll check your records LSU was playing Ole Miss that Saturday night. And somebody told us along the way the plane was headed to Baton Rouge. And all I had on my mind if I go on to Baton Rouge, it must have something to do with the football game Saturday night. And they said, No, we’re a band. Maybe Ron said that, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Well, that didn’t mean anything to me. I’d heard of Sweet Home Alabama, but just welcome players. I didn’t know who Lynyrd Skynyrd was. I like classic country music and I wouldn’t know what I call hard rock or whatever they were. But it took me about three days to learn. Lynyrd Skynyrd but I had a long Ron from what I remember was the last person alive. That I got out of there because I left him alone because he was kind of conscious. He was worried too far out of me want to know where his briefcase was. He said he had to find that briefcase. And I said we’re going to find it, we’re going to get you fixed up. But we helped and I don’t know, six or eight I guess maybe more, it was at least six and no more 9 or 10. And we got him out and then there was 1 or 2 deceased individuals and then we had left them alone and we got them out, slid into the top. And then when we got everybody except the pilot and copilot that I could see out of the plane, I came out of the plane and I think I was down in that plane at least 45 minutes. I don’t know that. I don’t know it could have been 30 could have been an hour I really don’t know but when I came out of the plane, the pilot and copilot was still in their seat and they were pancaked. We knew we couldn’t get them out without and I was told a neighbor went got a tractor and because there was some oak trees right there and they had just came down at an angle and clipped. I looked at the opening after I come out and it was near I always say 45 degree but it was it was a slant angle where it started cutting those limbs in those trees, oak trees and pine trees until it got so low it wound up between two oak trees or something. And then that’s when it literally knows that and dove in and crushed those that pilot and copilot and then the impact, just snapped it open. I’ve described it like you break a pencil half in two and it was part of it kind of stayed together, but the top portion was open enough for me to get down in there and help pushing people out. You all had to go a quarter mile into the woods across a branch and how far away from the hospital in McComb. I mean, just getting out to the field, I guess what was chore. I really wasn’t involved in that. So I can’t give you a whole lot of information about that. I do know when I came out of the plane, more and more people come in and I saw blankets, sheets and a few cots by then. But to answer your question, I think we’re probably 16 to 18 miles from the hospital in McComb and only maybe eight or nine air miles from the airport that they were trying to get back to. So he came pretty close to getting back to the airport. But they were still wounded on the ground when I came out of the plane, but people were busy with cots. And as I say, and we got they did carrying people out the wounded in it and that took them say another hour because they’re ambulances came from McComb and several other places. And we got all the injured out. And by then it’s 10 o’clock. I think all this started about 7:15. So by then its 9:30 or 10 o’clock. And we look over there and there’s three bodies still on the ground and as reverently as we could we got made us a little hammock type thing to carry them out. And we brought three of them and slid them like I said as reverently as we could In the back of my truck because it was new truck and I hadn’t jumped it up yet, but we put them in there and covered them with a canvas or a blanket or something that somebody brought and I took them in the back of my truck to McComb because I knew they didn’t need to be on the ground any longer but when I turned in the police that ever intersection and I have my flashers on so they knew I probably had injured or diseased but I remember turning in the hospital and say there’s no worry on these three and they routed me to the low quantization hood maintenance building behind the hospital that had been set up already as a morgue and then there’s plenty help there I guess a corner or some of his people were there and we on unloaded those guys and kind of set them on the table in the in it maintenance village
Ramsey Russell: Wow. What do you remember, just a thought, a smell, a description of a memory that just the most about that night. It’s just a feeling. What is there just one thought you, say I just, I don’t mean nothing gruesome, I’m not asking that but I’m just asking, it’s funny when I look back some of my personal experiences just something stands out.
Dennis Wilson: I kind of hit on this a while ago. The thing that stands out to me was we were in a forest in a mid county and here’s this well-lit area not very big with a giant airplane in it and all that light and that white shiny airplane was just like a scene from a horror movie. And then when I got out of the plane there were several people that they had kind of sit up against a tree, the ones that were able to sit up and then someone were talking and I walked back trying to do what little I could to help anybody and one guy grabbed me on Rich’s leg and pulled it. He said, hey buddy what about my nose? And his nose was cut on one side and laid over and I said it’s just a little cut we’ll get your bandage up you’ll be fine. Was it Leon Wilkerson or Billy Powell, but I had a horrific nose cut but it was literally almost cut his nose all the way down one side and it was laid over another but I tried to reassure him and say, oh you are alright, it’s just a little cut, you’ll be alright. But that and talking that with Ron Eckerman, he mentioned that well the word briefcase a 100 times at night.
Ramsey Russell: It must have been important whatever was in it.
Dennis Wilson: I think there’s some money and some chips in it. I never did see it, but I heard about it.
Ramsey Russell: Have you since listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Do you have a favorite song?
Dennis Wilson: Sweet Home Alabama I guess and I had heard the song before then I think but that Sweet Home Alabama is one of my favorites. And we’ve rarely mentioned it for as we hit on this earlier for years and years and years. And about 2014 redneck from Charleston, Mississippi come down and started asking me questions and everybody else and we’re in a steel, whoever he could, and its wind up to be a good thing. What started out as a thought for maybe a little sign on the highway that we couldn’t get any help for, turned into one because a few individuals, one beautiful monument. And so I am really proud that even if it took 42 years that we stepped up and get fixed this monument for them.
Ramsey Russell: How long were you in the hospital after the wreck? And I know they got everybody over to McComb, how long were you in the hospital? Could you sustain some pretty serious injury?
Gene Odom: A little over three weeks, a week out there, Mississippi, and then a couple of weeks, three weeks into Jacksonville. And then many, many, many, many weeks after that.
Ramsey Russell: And while you were while you were in the hospital, nobody told you if anybody died, what happened? It just kind of just want you to focus on getting well and getting out.
Gene Odom: Yeah, I didn’t know. I was not told anybody passed away.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. So you were discharged from the hospital and you told you want to go to visit Ronnie. What was that like?
Gene Odom: Yeah, my girlfriend picked me up and first thing I want to do is I want to go visit Ronnie and see how he was doing. So we’re driving at Orange Park, going toward his house, and she pulled into the cemetery and I asked her, what are you doing? Pulling into cemetery here, you know? She says we’re coming to see Ronnie, he didn’t make it and that’s the first time I knew about it.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, how did it hit you? Childhood friend.
Gene Odom: I was shocked. I was just speechless and she pulled up he was in a temporary mausoleum area because the judge had ordered the thing. And there was, I don’t know the right words I don’t know the surreal. I don’t know what that word really means, but it was a horrible shock. I mean, everybody on that plane that could have been killed. Why in the world was Ronnie Van Zant. And then it took me a long time to find out exactly what happened when I put two and two together. Him unsnapping his seat belt and still, why him? Why Ronnie? Tragedy. I mean, a force up above that makes all the decisions and you can change them and you don’t know they’re being made.
Ramsey Russell: Ronnie was a young man. All those guys were young back then. Young and you know, when you’re late 20s you don’t think about mortality. You don’t think about not waking up tomorrow. You just don’t give those things thought, you’re young, you’re bulletproof. You got a long life ahead of you. I’m sure you all probably never talked about this, but how do you think Ronnie Van Zandt would have wanted to be remembered?
Gene Odom: Without him being a rock star that wouldn’t have mattered to him one bit. The way he’d be remembered as a southern country boy barefoot country boy who likes to fish any loved life, that’s how he’d like to be remembered. Rockstar would make a bit of difference to it.
Ramsey Russell: What would if he had a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song, what would it have been?
Gene Odom: I would say Curtis Lowe would probably be right at the top of his list and sample man because that’s what he was a simple man, and Gary Rossington actually wrote those lyrics but help rewrite those lyrics and sample man and Gary came up with the simple man’s lyric and him and Ronnie sit down and wrote the words to it. But that just as he was he was a sample I mean, and the story of that, everywhere he went, no matter who you were, your money would no good. He used to pay everything finally one day, you know, we just got per diem money which we got $20 a day back then. We’re somewhere he paid I said, hey let me pay for something. He went, Gene he said you see these jeans. These jeans cost $17. I ain’t going to let $1 bill burned a hole and $17 jeans and that’s kind of guy he was.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t know what to attracted me to this story. Maybe it’s just that my whole life I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd suffered a tragic fate in my home state of Mississippi. Decades later, their authentic music and lyrics still resonate. Almost half a century later, their music still speak to many of us. They were absolute top of the world rock star legend and the whole world remembers. What song is that you want to hear? That’s right FreeBird. But you know what in meeting with these guests, visiting the sites, hearing their stories, I found myself wondering how will we be remembered? Inevitably we’ll all spend the attorney staring at the bottom heads down, figuratively speaking. And I’m reminded that his parents, spouses, business owners, and hunters, each of us are influencers. Our words and actions affect our family, friends and entire community because that is our legacy. Likewise, we’re all the songs of our past, places, event and even music.