In the nearly 49 years since the tragic plane crash that took Lynyrd Skynyrd down, killing the band’s singing/songwriting frontman Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines, time has done its due diligence on the musicians who got out alive.
Guitarist Gary Rossington was the last surviving member of the Florida-founded southern rock band; he died in 2023. Today’s Lynyrd Skynyrd, based in Nashville, doesn’t include a single musician who ever played on the same stage when Ronnie Van Zant was singing “Free Bird,” “Sweet Home Alabama” and “What’s Your Name.”
There is, however, a last man standing. By Oct. 20, 1977, when the band’s chartered aircraft ran out of gas and crashed into a Mississippi swamp, Thomas “Artimus” Pyle had been Skynyrd’s double-bass drummer for three years…