News & Press
Adam and Artimus Pyle chat one-on-one in the second half of today’s podcast. Adam begins by congratulating Artimus on his film, ‘Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash.’ The guys talk about the difficulty of getting a movie made, some of Adam’s favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd tracks, and what Artimus’ personal experience was like during the devastating plane crash that killed his friends. In the last part of the show, Mike Dawson asks Artimus some behind-the-scenes questions about the music, and the guys talk about how many great things have happened in Artimus’ life because of his involvement with the band.
Long considered the “wild man” of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Artimus Pyle’s powerful and distinctive double bass drumming helped define the legendary Skynyrd sound.
Artimus got his first real break at the Charlie Daniels band’s Volunteer Jam. His first recording lists — Artimus Pyle, percussion. Then with other work for the Marshall Tucker Band, Artimus became known as a powerful session drummer.
On Oct. 20, 1977, three days after releasing their album Street Survivors, Lynyrd Skynyrd performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina, and boarded a Convair CV-240 airplane to take them to Baton Rouge, where they were to perform at Louisiana State University.
This week, the film Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, was released digitally, and on DVD and Bluray. The film has a stormy legal history, but director and writer Jared Cohn was at the center of defending the film’s chances for release to tell the story of drummer Artimus Pyle’s life. Pyle was one of the survivors of the 1977 plane crash that killed members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, including Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, and also others from their entourage, and was also someone who pulled other survivors from the plane before seeking help in the Louisiana swamp where the plane went down.
It may be a blessing of sorts for anyone interested in checking out “Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash” that its VOD release is coming in the middle of a pandemic, when not very many people are rushing to get back on planes again anyway. The film delivers on the promise — or threat — of its title in a big, vivid way, with enough drawn-out suspense once engines start backfiring and enough grisly carnage on the ground to give most viewers at least a second thought about flying again soon, at least on a prop-engine plane, and especially one with musicians on board. Despite its probably modest budget, “Street Survivors” is actually first-class as convincingly harrowing aeronautical disaster movies go, if you’re a follower of the genre that has Peter Weir’s 1993 “Fearless” to live up to.
The tragic story of rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd has been told many times in news reports, feature articles, books and documentaries, including the 2018 documentary film “Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow.” Most of these versions of the band’s story respectfully tiptoed around describing the explicit, gory details of what happened during and after the plane crash in 1977 that killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer Cassie Gaines (Steve’s older sister), assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. The tragedy occurred because the faulty Convair CV-240 chartered plane ran out of fuel and crashed into a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi, on October 20, 1977.