Nice rendering of the song, Dale. I see you doing the pedal board stretch!
And now my historical memories: by the time that this song and the album containing it,
Street Survivors, were released on October 17, 1977 I had been listening to them and following their careers four years. As a latent rock n' roller living in the South I considered them to be the second generation of trail blazers - very few in the South made it in the biz. I had played their hits in cover bands and had begun to really respect the amount of discipline it took to do their thing. This song was written by Ronnie Van Zant as he began to dry out from all the boozing and drugs and became alarmed by the realization that his band buddies were still living a very fast and dangerous life and might not survive it. Three days after it was released, at 6:52pm cst on October the 20th, the band's Convair CV-240 ran out of fuel in flight and crashed into a wooded swamp near Gillsburg, Mississippi.
The times and technology being what they were (we had no 24-hour news cycle) and the area being as remote as it was, word didn't get out to the nation until the next morning. The next morning, 470 miles away at my remote college in Georgia, I got up and went to breakfast, blissfully unaware of what had happened. After breakfast as I prepared for classes I switched on the radio to a rock station and immediately heard the headline, though there were nearly no details available.
I immediately commenced my own little vigil, cutting classes, sitting by the window of my mountaintop dorm room with the radio, waiting for word, and praying for the band member's safety. Of course, as the day rolled on the terrible and good news eventually came out to the country: three members of the band as well as three crew members were killed and all twenty survivors were badly injured.
In probably the only funny anecdote to come out of the situation, drummer Artimus Pyle describes being injured (several broken ribs, separated chest cartilage, cuts, and lacerations) but crawling out of the swamp and up to a farmer's house to get help. Upon arrival he was accidentally shot by the farmer who was attempting to fire a warning shot over his head. Artimus said he couldn't blame the guy - a long-haired bloody apparition crawled out of the swamp and advance upon him. Once Artimus' intentions were known the farmer rendered aid.
Street Survivors had hit the stands with a picture of the band members facing the camera with tongues of fire coming out of their heads. All copies still in the stores were quickly recalled by MCA and the album was reissued with a new, milder cover. Of the seven band members on the album cover only
two survive today. "That Smell," indeed.
And that's the way it was, Oct. 20-21, 1977. That will be forty years ago next Friday-Saturday.
Bob