Lynyrd Skynyrd had just made the most confident album of their career, and they had three days to enjoy it. Street Survivors, the fifth studio record from the Southern rock band, arrived on 17 October 1977 on MCA Records. Ten days later it had already gone gold. Yet by then the group itself had been torn apart in a Mississippi forest.
Steve Gaines joins the lineup
The record was built around a new face. Guitarist Steve Gaines had joined the band a year earlier, recommended by his sister Cassie. Ronnie Van Zant, the group's singer and leader, admired what Gaines could do and said the band would one day be in his shadow. Street Survivors is the only studio album Lynyrd Skynyrd ever made with Gaines.
Gaines did not arrive empty-handed. He had written the song I Know a Little before joining the group, and on You Got That Right he and Van Zant share the writing and the vocals. On Ain't No Good Life, Gaines takes the lead voice entirely — a rare break from Van Zant's dominance in the early Skynyrd catalogue. The sessions themselves had been slowed by trouble away from the studio. Both Allen Collins and Gary Rossington were recovering from serious car accidents while the band worked on the record. The album also carried a warning in That Smell, a song about the dangers of drug abuse that seemed aimed at the group's own members.
Chart peak and double platinum
The album also carried the band's sharpest radio hook. What's Your Name became a hit single, reaching 13th place on the airplay charts in January 1978. The record itself climbed to 5th place on the Billboard 200, the highest chart position Lynyrd Skynyrd ever achieved. It later went double platinum.
Then came 20 October 1977. Three days after Street Survivors appeared, the band's chartered Convair CV-300 ran out of fuel on a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The plane went down in woods five miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie were killed, along with assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick and both pilots.
The other band members and crew survived with serious injuries. The album that had just introduced a thrilling new guitarist became the last one recorded with original members Van Zant and Allen Collins. The record's success now sounded like a eulogy.
The cover MCA replaced
Even the cover turned ominous. The original sleeve, shot by photographer David Alexander, showed the band standing on a street surrounded by flames. After the crash, MCA Records replaced it at the request of Steve Gaines's widow Teresa with a plain image of the group against a black background.
The fire version of the cover returned in the Deluxe Edition released in 2008. By then the image had gathered a grim urban legend: that only the members touched by the flames on the photo died in the crash. It is not true, but it shows how tightly the album and the disaster became fused. The 2008 Deluxe Edition brought more than the fiery cover back. It included alternate versions of songs and five live tracks recorded at Selland Arena in Fresno, California, on 24 August 1977. Among the extras was Jacksonville Kid, an alternate take of Honky Tonk Night Time Man with autobiographical vocals by Ronnie Van Zant, considered his last studio vocal recording.
Street Survivors stands as both the band's commercial peak and its accidental goodbye. The record that was meant to launch a new era instead marked the exact moment Lynyrd Skynyrd lost its original heart.