It’s difficult to separate artistic triumph from human tragedy with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s fifth studio album Street Survivors. A transatlantic Top 20 success, the record was a sizable hit, but also released just days before the horrific air crash that claimed the lives of frontman Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister, backing singer Cassie Gaines, on October 20, 1977.
In fact, it’s all the more poignant when you consider what might have been. The Floridian band was hitting a whole new peak. Recruited to replace the departed Ed King, guitarist/songwriter Steve Gaines injected a new energy into Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Ronnie Zan Vant even encouraging him to sing lead vocals on one of Street Survivors’ highlights: the tough, street-level blues workout “Ain’t No Good Life.” “There was a freshness that Steve brought to the sessions,” guitarist Gary Rossington recalled in 2003 interview with Classic Rock. “He was a great [guitar] picker and such a great guy to hang with. His natural enthusiasm rubbed off on all of us.”
Even with Gaines’ presence, the initial Street Survivors sessions in Miami’s Criteria Studios in April 1977 were fraught. The band fought with producer Tom Dowd, who ducked out of the album’s later sessions (and mixing) at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia. The group eventually completed the record with help from (uncredited) producer Kevin Elson and Dowd’s engineer Barry Rudolph. “We didn’t like the tones and sounds Tom [Dowd] was getting,” Rossington recalled. “There wasn’t a fight, but there was a big disagreement. Booze and drugs had been creeping in a little bit. But Barry was a tremendous help and when we put him together with Kevin…damn, those tunes started to come out great!”
Rossington wasn’t wrong. Street Survivors contains some of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s most enduring and well-executed songs. Hitting the U.S. Top 20, the potent, brass-enhanced “What’s Your Name?” became the album’s signature hit, but it was just one of many highlights. The menacing “That Smell” cautioned against the worst excesses of the rock’ n’ roll lifestyle, while Steve Gaines again proved his worth on the nifty blues-rocker “I Know A Little” and the punchy, Rolling Stones-esque “You Got That Right,” wherein he traded verses with Ronnie Van Zant. Elsewhere, the superior, Southern soul-imbued ballads “One More Time” and “I Never Dreamed” proved emphatically that there was far more to Lynyrd Skynyrd than bad-assed boogie.
Indeed, the consistently excellent Street Survivors made it abundantly clear that Lynyrd Skynyrd were heading right to the top if fate hadn’t so cruelly intervened. “[The crash] was a rude, rude awakening,” keyboardist Billy Powell said in a 2003 Classic Rock interview. “We were starting to realize that our career was heading to a peak and that soon we’d be up there alongside The Rolling Stones and The Who, when the carpet was torn right out from beneath us.”
