In the Summer of '77 I was playing guitar in an all-girl band from Eugene, Oregon and touring several western states. One of our gigs was for two weeks at the Fresno Hilton on Van Ness. We learned there was a rock concert venue close by and the Hilton was where the musicians would stay the night.
One late evening Ronnie Van Zant and crew walked into the Hilton lounge in the middle of our set. Our lead singer suddenly forgot her lyrics and we almost stopped playing. We stared at them and then at each other in disbelief. We LOVED Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We talked with them during our break and they excitedly invited us to one of their rooms after our last set. They had been working hard on a new album, would we like to hear some of the tracks? OF COURSE.
We huddled around their portable cassette player and sipped on brandy. The song they were raving about was That Smell. Oooooh That Smell, Can't You Smell That Smell. All the while a couple of joints were being passed around the room. Oh, the irony.
On October 20, 1977, three days after the release of their album Street Survivors, a plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd and crew ran out of fuel and crashed. The crash killed singer/songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick along with the pilot and co-pilot.
We cried. We were still in shock from the passing of Elvis a couple of months earlier. Street Survivors was temporarily yanked from the market because the album cover showed the band members engulfed in flames. Those albums are still being hawked on the Internet today as collectors items.
When I'm listening to the radio, a song will play that releases a flood of memories. And that is what happened today. Oooooh, That Smell. Can't You Smell That Smell.
Yes, I can. I can smell that smell.
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