Released just three days before Lynyrd Skynyrd’s problem-plagued Convair 240 plowed into the trees of a Mississippi forest and buried itself in a swamp some sixty miles short of their destination in Baton Rouge on October 20, 1977, Street Survivors instantly become notorious due to its macabre-in-light-of-subsequent-events cover, which had the band engulfed in flames on a city street.
There were no flames at the crash site—the band’s seemingly cursed plane ran out of fuel, which is why it ended up busted into pieces in the mud outside tiny Gillsburg, Mississippi in the first place—but it didn’t matter. The flames were foreshadowing, as was Van Zant’s “morbid” (his word) “That Smell,” the eeriest song about death ever written by the band’s death-obsessed frontman and de facto dictator, who died in that Mississippi swamp along with guitarist Steve Gaines, Steve’s sister and backing vocalist Cassie, and several others.
I remember hearing the news of that plane crash, and I remember feeling real sorrow, because Lynyrd Skynyrd was a great band, one of the best rock and roll bands America ever produced, and one minute they were there and the next, finis. Go ahead, call me crazy, but if it were up to me America would declare October 20 National Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash Remembrance Day and you wouldn’t have to go to work and even if you don’t give a shit about Lynyrd Skynyrd and can’t even spell their name wouldn’t that be great?
None of this has anything to do with Street Survivors, which was quickly reissued with a cover sans flames and is one hell of a parting shot—Lynyrd Skynyrd’s strongest outing since 1974’s Second Helping. The two albums in between—1975’s aptly titled Nuthin’ Fancy and 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets—were so-so affairs by Skynyrd standards, the result of a multitude of factors—chiefly road fatigue and insanely tight recording schedules that left the band to churn out new songs in a rush in the studio. Gimme Back My Bullets was recorded in seventeen days by a band that walked into the studio unprepared. Don’t try that at home, kids.
Then there was the loss of token Yankee and Strawberry Alarm Clock alum Ed King, one of the members of Skynyrd’s legendary three-guitar army. King slipped off into the night mid-tour before the recording of Gimme Back My Bullets, finally having had enough of Van Zant’s propensity, when drunk, for engaging in jaw-dropping acts of ultraviolence against friends and foes alike.
The list of his infractions against common human decency is too long to list here, but suffice it to say he knocked out piano player Billy Powell’s teeth (twice), savagely gored the hand of guitarist Gary Rossington with a broken bottle during a fight over the correct pronunciation of the word “schnapps” and, on one truly memorable occasion, attempted to eject a roadie from an airplane—at 13,000 feet. During the fracas Van Zant sank his teeth into the roadie’s stomach. That’s some mad dog shit right there. The consensus is he was a true Southern gentleman when sober.
But back to Street Survivors. Lynyrd Skynyrd had both pride and career at stake when it come to time to record it, and for once they did things right. Took a hiatus from touring, walked into the studio with songs they’d already worked out, and even switched studios and producers when they didn’t like what they were hearing. They even curbed some of their legendary bad habits. They didn’t wing it.
Just as importantly, they’d finally found a replacement for Ed King, who did far more in the studio than just play his parts. Steve Gaines was a whiz-bang Oklahoma kid from a band you’ve never heard of and Ronnie Van Zant’s idea of an audition was bringing him on stage to show his stuff on “T for Texas.” The Gaines kid crossed that T and dotted the “i” in Texas to boot, and he went on to play on 1976’s live One More From the Road. Come time to record Street Survivors, Van Zant did something unprecedented—he gave Gaines carte blanche to write two songs all by his lonesome and to sing solo on one of them. It was a remarkable show of confidence by an old campaigner in a young guitarist, and if the results were mixed there’s no denying that Gaines rejuvenated the band. What’s more, Skynyrd’s legendary three-guitar army was back.
Street Survivors boasts a stronger set of songs than its two predecessors, but like them the songs fall into a gamut of styles. “What’s Your Name” is a road song and groupie salute that is uncommonly big-hearted for the genre—not only does Ronnie actually care what his groupie’s name is, he gets her a taxi home. The song boasts get up and go—the uncredited horns add both verve and color, as do Billy Powell’s fancy piano fills. The song has bounce, Van Zant’s unperturbed about getting kicked out of an Idaho hotel bar (the boys just took the bar upstairs), and Allen Collins plays a guitar solo that will have you doing the Boise boogie.
It serves as a great intro to “That Smell,” a song about the ‘ludes and the damage done worthy of inclusion on frenemy Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. Written chiefly about guitarists Rossington and Collins’ near suicidal predilection for driving while blind, it includes the great line “Oak tree you’re in my way” but was really directed at just about everybody in the band, including Van Zant himself. You name it, the boys in the band were abusing it, and Van Zant runs down the list, getting some help from the Honkettes (Ronnie: “One more drink will it drown you?” The Honkettes: “Hell yes!”)
But it’s the guitar work by Rossington that makes the song, with Gaines joining in to take it out. This is fire and brimstone, the wages of sin are death stuff, and haunting as hell. Like all good anti-drug songs it made the younger me want to do drugs, and in the end it was a utility pole on the road to Gettysburg that got in my way, but that’s how it is when you’re young—that utility pole couldn’t kill me because I was immortal!
“One More Time”—which the band resurrected from pre-fame annum 1971—is slow and sweet as molasses. Dreamy, too, but deceptively so because Ronnie’s singing about a wicked, lying, no-good woman he may as well sleep with again even if every time he sleeps with her he gets burned. It’s one of the prettier songs he ever wrote, “Tuesday’s Gone” without the fireworks. But it has backbone too, to say nothing of a nice build and a killer guitar solo gratis song co-writer Gary Rossington. And the final guitar storm is Lynyrd Skynyrd doing what nobody before them or since has ever done.
“I Know a Little” is a jumpin’ boogie and Steve Gaines’ first solo songwriting credit with the band. Everything coheres—Van Zant’s vocals are all sly insinuation (he nails that “Baby I can guess the rest” every time), Gaines is all jazzy flash, like he has the ghost of bebop howling in his bones, and when Powell takes a turn on piano what you’re hearing is a band that can jump and jive every bit as well as it can hit you upside the head with hard rock.
“You’ve Got That Right” is another first—a duet between Van Zant and Gaines. Like “I Know a Little” it’s a feats don’t fail me now boogie, but with a harder edge thanks to Rossington’s slide guitar and the touch of belligerence in the vocals—Van Zant says you won’t find him in an old folks home and he got that right—together they sing that should they find themselves in a fix they’re not afraid to fight, and you don’t doubt it.
The guitar work is classic Skynyrd, tough and soaring at the same time, and as always Powell plays a piano so fancy you’d think he was in a Western saloon, pulling high notes from his sleeves. The lyrics may lack the telling details that made Van Zant an unreconstituted Jacksonville bard, but the sentiment is universal, which in the end is a good part of what made Van Zant one of the finest wordsmiths of his era.
After “You Got That Right” the song quality falls off a bit, but five straight winners out of the starting gate is Beatles and Stones at their best impressive. Track six is the impeccably played but otherwise pedestrian “I Never Dreamed,” with its long instrumental intro, which is followed by a so-so Van Zant lyric about love taken for granted and its inevitable cost. What it is, and I hear it more every time I listen to it, is the template for at least half of Dire Straits’ songs. And the guitar work, which is fine indeed, has Mark Knopfler written all over it. Which is to say it’s mid-tempo no thrill that doesn’t spark up much until Gaines’ parting shot of a solo.
Van Zant sure did love him some Merle Haggard, and he pays tribute to the Hag with a cover of “Honky Tonk Nite Time Man” that ain’t no disgrace. In fact it’s just the opposite, a galloping country rave-up, with Gaines, Powell, and guest dobro player Barry Lee Harwood all taking their turns at showing off. But (always the buts with this guy) falling where it does (between the LP’s next to sorriest track and its sorriest one) it doesn’t exactly do what a strong original might have done, namely keep the end of the album from fading away the way the band most certainly didn’t. Almost gives you the notion the boys ran out of steam, it does. Happens a lot on very good albums, but it never fails to irk me because what, do these guys think we’re not paying attention? That they can tack on any old thing at the end and we won’t notice?
We are and we do, but that didn’t stop Skynyrd from closing with pedestrian blues “Ain’t No Good Life,” which is all Gaines. He wrote it, he sings it, he plays lead guitar, and while he sings it and plays it with passion it’s simply not a very good song—the boy had work to do before he was going to be a crack songwriter. It’s your standard blooz bore, and while it was a remarkable demonstration of Van Zant’s confidence in the new guy it doesn’t belong on a Lynyrd Skynyrd album. Even Billy Powell’s piano lacks sparkle. Gaines could write—“I Know a Little” is the proof. But this one plods, and it was a sorry note for the band to go out on—the last real Skynyrd song on the last real Skynyrd album (don’t even get me started on the band that would later pick up their banner and carry on until every last original member was dead, and then some) should have been “That Smell.”
Street Survivors was a comeback album writ large by a rejuvenated Lynyrd Skynyrd that had big plans—if they’d been just muddling around before it, they weren’t muddling around no more. Which is what makes that plane crash in a Mississippi swamp so tragic. They were once again on their way up when they went so finally down. It’s a haunted album, Street Survivors, and that will always be part of its allure. There were people out there hearing it for the first time when they heard the news they’d hear no more. Death has a pretty darn good quality assurance team, and death chose to take the one man whose words and music and vision made Lynyrd Skynyrd Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The sun was setting when that plane crashed, and Ronnie rode off into it towards the dead lands without so much as a wave and a fare thee well. We’ll never know what would have become of him had he stuck around. He could have curdled into a redneck reactionary like Charlie Daniels, spouting hate as his gift atrophied. Or he could have become the closest thing rock has ever come to producing its own Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennings. He had it in him. As it is, all we have are a half-dozen LPs, and Street Survivors is one of the best of them. Turn it up.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
