Former NAZARETH Guitarist Manny Charlton - "We Were Nearly On The LYNYRD SKYNYRD Plane That Crashed"
June 26, 2007, 17 years ago
Former NAZARETH guitar legend Manny Charlton spoke to BW&BK; recently about a number of topics for an upcoming feature. Charlton, who left Nazareth in 1990 reminisced about LYNYRD SKYNYRD and the horrific plane crash that occurred on October 20, 1977, three days after the release of Street Survivors. According to Wikipedia, a chartered Convair 240, N55VM, carrying the band between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana crashed near a forest in McComb, Mississippi. The crash killed singer/songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. Other band members were injured, some very seriously. Drummer Artimus Pyle crawled out of the plane wreckage with several broken ribs, but was ambulatory, as were road crew members Kenneth Peden Jr. and Mark Frank.
"Lynyrd Skynyrd; we used to party with them quite a lot," Charlton remembers. "A wild bunch of boys (laughs). We were nearly on the plane as well. We were nearly on that plane that crashed. What happened was, we were doing dates with them, and they had a couple of days off. And they said, 'Come down.' to wherever they were, Gainesville, Florida or something. 'Come down and party with us, and we'll have a BBQ' and blah blah blah. And we said, 'No, we can't do that. We've got gigs.' Because we were putting in dates on the days off. They had days off, and we would put in another show, to pick up some money, and to keep the tour on a cost-effective basis. And we said we're going to have to pass. So we get to where we're going to go to play our show, and there's a message waiting at the hotel that the plane had went down. And God, we could have been on that, you know?! We were that close. If we took a day off, we would've been on it. Kind of scary."
