Book review by Lee Ann Sharp
This book begins with a quote by Ronnie Van Zandt on October
20, 1977. “Ron, let’s keep the plane. Look, if your number’s up your number’s
up. Don’t matter if were in a plane or a bus.”
Ron was an unwitting member of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band. He
was the manager who oversaw the day-to-day operation of both the lighting and
technical crews as well as the transportation and housing of the band getting
from venue to venue. It started out as a temporary position until they could
find a new manager. But the band proved to be difficult and most managers would
run from this responsibility. So Ron ended up in the position of band manager
for many years. He saw them through the early years of struggle, the middle
years of destruction of hotel rooms and illicit drug use, multiple personality
conflicts, and the later years where success proved difficult for many of the
band members and their families.
Ron does an excellent job of describing how success along
with excessive alcohol and drug use created tensions and destroyed friendships
among the band and crew as well as their families. Even within his own life,
Ron experience the hardship of trying to maintain a relationship with his wife,
with frequent separations for long periods of time and the excesses available
to both of them when apart. Eventually, his wife found another man and he began
a new relationship with a friend.
Part of his responsibilities included the financial
accounting of each concert. Everyone seemed to want a free pass into the venue
and backstage with the bands. Counting up the number of passes against the gate
earnings always frustrated him. Dealing with the public backstage before and
after a concert posed its own set of problems. Ron was often put in the
position of being the bad guy saying no to passes or throwing out people
backstage so the band would have time to get in the right frame of mind to
perform. Once the earnings from a concert were funded it was Ron’s
responsibility to pay off the hotels for damages inflicted by the band members
and the fans who partied too hard and
often totally trashed their rooms. Forking out $15,000 or more a night was not
an unusual event. One of the crew was designated as the bartender and ran up
huge bills for liquor and drugs supplied to the band. The fact that they were
able to perform under such conditions is pretty remarkable.
Ron uses a technique to describe the events leading up to
the bands untimely death aboard a small aircraft crashed after a concert. At
the start of each chapter he would describe a few more minutes of that flight
which he survived. He had a feeling from the very beginning that he didn’t
trust the plane. They had also taken on a new pilot when the old pilot had
recently retired. New plane, new pilot, unusual circumstances all added up to a
nervous flight. He described how when the plane began having problems everyone
reacted in different ways. One ran up and down the aisle, others in their seats
,their heads down in their laps. He described how each shaking of the plane
echoed in the synchronous shaking of each person in their seat. When the crash
finally happened, he was blacked out off and on several times. Finally awakening
he saw his friends lying dead on the ground in a surrealistic scene that was
like a dream. How he survived he could never guess. The crash was the end of an
era and a life he never knew again.
Eckerman does a good job of painting a detailed picture of life
was like in the world of rock and roll. Anyone interested in the band, their
music or the era will enjoy this read.
