THE ROCK ROAD CLAIMS ANOTHER TRAGIC VICTIM: RONNIE VAN ZANT OF THE LYNYRD SKYNYRD BAND

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"five years of alcoholism.,,Anyone who had heard his pained and snarling blues delivery in performance, seen his barefoot inebriated swagger and met him backstage afterward-often thickIidded and stuporous-would hardly have recognized him. Alert and athletic, he was trimmer than he had appeared in years and exuberanily personable in conversation. It was a jolt to meet the new Van Zant, legendary trasher of hotels, when
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to Rock'n'Rott,

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fo Die is just a sardonic song by the Jethro Tullgroup. The terrible reality of this 2S-year-old art form is that a disproportionate number of its stars have died in their creative prlme. Some OD'd on the instant fame and the temptations of too much disposable income. Some artists confused drugs and drink for a muse until they became a

LP, Street Survivors, whlch just hit the stores gold, had been recorded, uncharacteristically, cold sober. Similarly, they joklngly dubbed the threemonth, 50-city journey they launched last month as "the torture tour,,-their first in years when they would try to face audiences without being dead

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fatal addiction, especially in combination with overpowered motorcycles and cars. Life in the fast lane (as the Eagles hymned it) only worsened the actuarial odds. The more money that was spent on dangerous pursuits, the more that had to be earned on merciless touring schedules in which the all-night travel miles-and the risk-inexorably mounted. Sometimes, admittedly, the blame was greedy management or perverse fate. But major
igures f rom Buddy Hoily (1959) to Otis Redding (1967) and Jim Croce (1970) were lost in plane crashes. The latest was buried near his native Jacksonville last week. He was Ronnie yanZanl,Zg, co-founder, writer and lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd. lt had supplanted the
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drunk. Then, between Greenville, S.C. and Baton Rouge, en route to their fifth

date, the band's chartered Convair 240 prop jet, reportedly low on f uel, nosedived into a swampy thicket in southwest Mississippi. Van Zant was killed instantly. Also dead at the site were guitarist Steve Gaines; his backup vocalist, sister Cassie Gaines; the assistant road manager, and the two-man flight crew. There were 20 survivors, but many were hospitalized. lf ever reconstituted, Lynyrd Skynyrd could not be the same. Stunned and mournful, the rock world had lost one of its most colorful and distinctive artists. A few days before his finat week on the road, Van Zant had invited PEOPLE 3 rm Jerome for a rare interview at his home in Doctor,s lntet, Fla. Jerome's report: The most devastating irony of the Skynyrd tragedy was that Ronnie Van Zant really seemed to be recovering from what he himself described as

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Allman Brothers as the reigning Southern boogie band and as a leading U.S. challenger to the British hegemony of the concert coliseums. The group members who eight years ago were working 9100-a-week Florida honky-tonks this year reached a new peak of commercial importance-and threat of drunken self-destruction. Single-concert guarantees ranged up to $150,000. Three of their LPs sold a million. At the same time Van Zant was noting, "We made the Who look like church boys on Sunday. We done things only fools'd do." Ronnie, after a dozen arrests for brawling and misconduct himself, helped convince Lynyrd Skynyrd this summer that ,,we had one last chance to get it together-we ain't getting any younger." Their latest
The Yan Zants kept the chape! from becoming a media ecene. One of the few

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FAA officlal, but the whole group did except Van Zant (center), Steve Gaines (upper right) and hts sister Cassie (lower right).

ttlt's a miracle anyone walked out,,' said

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ctars attendlng: Krlc Krletoffeneon.

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