10/20/2026
Fly high, Free Bird 🦅
October 20, 1977
On This Day in 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd Played Their Final Concert with Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines — The Next Day, They Were Gone
On October 19, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd walked onto the stage at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in South Carolina. Nobody in the building knew they were watching the final concert Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines would ever play.
It should have been the beginning of a triumphant new chapter. Just two days earlier, the band had released Street Survivors, an album that captured Lynyrd Skynyrd with a revitalized three-guitar attack built around Gary Rossington, Allen Collins and Steve Gaines. Gaines had brought something special to the band — not only as a guitarist, but as a songwriter and vocalist.
That night in Greenville, Skynyrd tore through “Workin’ for MCA,” “Saturday Night Special,” “That Smell,” “Travelin’ Man,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Call Me the Breeze,” “Sweet Home Alabama” and, finally, “Free Bird.”
Then the music stopped.
The following day, October 20, the band boarded its chartered plane for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie Gaines were killed, along with assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick and the two pilots. The surviving members suffered serious injuries.
Lynyrd Skynyrd would never again take the stage with that lineup.
Looking back, there is something almost unbearable about that final “Free Bird” in Greenville. To everyone there, it was simply the last song of another Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
Twenty-four hours later, it had become a farewell.