Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars (48 page)

Collins tried going on. But the old deliriously leaping beanpole was now a sullen, depressing figure. “He became real bitter, even with me,” Rossington said. One reason was that both men were still after Dale Krantz. As this love triangle escalated, the tour became unbearable, the two either avoiding or bickering with each other. They managed to cut the second RCB album in 1982; but during the tour for it Gary broke his leg in an accident, and the tour ended. By year's end, Gary had a victory, however, convincing Krantz to marry him. But when sales of the album lagged, MCA dropped RCB, and the band folded.

Collins subsequently formed the Allen Collins Band with Leon, Billy, Harwood, and guitarist Randall Hall. MCA took a shot on them, and they cut a 1983 album,
Here, There and Back
. It sold fairly well, but not only was the Skynyrd spinoff thing—which also included two albums by the Artimus Pyle Band—played out, so was Collins. He was arrested no less than eighteen times for drunk driving, but only after a DUI conviction in 1983 did he do any hard time, two months in a Duval County jail. Then, in January 1986, he was out in his new jet-black Thunderbird with his girlfriend Debra Jean Watts and lost control. The car flipped over on Plummer Grant Road and, not belted in, both were thrown from the car. Debra died of head injuries en route to the hospital. Allen lived, but his neck was broken, just centimeters from where it had been broken in the plane crash. He had gotten lucky then, but now he was left paralyzed from the chest down. After another long hospital stay, he was charged with DUI manslaughter, pleaded no contest, and served no time—a result that was, no doubt, out of pity, as he was confined to a wheelchair and barely able to speak.

His daughters had been living with Eva Collins, and now his home was sold. He moved in with Larkin, who played the role he never had when Allen was young, feeding and cleaning him; incidentally, Larkin also was given power of attorney for his son, and made executor of his estate. Allen was a pathetic and heartbreaking sight, the irony of which was that, in this condition, relieved of having to live the high life, he
actually seemed more at ease with himself. When people visited him, they could not help but be overcome with emotion, yet there he would be in his wheelchair, the least upset of everyone. The pressure was finally off, though there had indeed been one hell of a price to pay for peace.

MCA first broached a Skynyrd nostalgia wave only a year after the crash, releasing
Skynyrd's First and … Last
out of the old unreleased Muscle Shoals tapes. The label and the band enjoyed a huge profit when the LP climbed to number fifteen and went platinum. They did even better in 1979 with the double album
Gold & Platinum
, which hit number twelve and went triple platinum. Marking a decade since the crash, MCA released
Legend
, drawn from unreleased demos, which nonetheless rose to number forty-one and went gold. Now seemed the right time for the surviving band members to amend the injunction against ever playing as Lynyrd Skynyrd anymore. With enormous moneymaking potential staring at them, most readily agreed to reunite the band.

The holdout was Rossington. After his marriage to Dale, they settled down and had two daughters. In '86 they had formed the Rossington Band, and Gary hired Charlie Brusco as his manager. An album for MCA was put out entitled
Returned to the Scene of the Crime
. He wanted to believe he was well beyond Skynyrd. What's more, Dale saw a Skynyrd reunion as a threat to her. “Dale just really bitched me out,” Powell recalled. “She told me, ‘Why are you trying to take my career away from me and take my husband away from me?' Of course to this day she thanks me for it all the time.'”

Brusco, who favored the reunion, says, “It was very, very difficult for Gary. He knew how great the appeal of Skynyrd was, but at the same time he could barely think of Skynyrd. Gary knew the weight of Lynyrd Skynyrd would be all on him. So he needed all the assurances he could get.”

After being promised that his own band would open for Skynyrd, Gary signed up. Now, all that was needed was to amend the old agreement, now stipulating that the Skynyrd name could only be used provided three Van Zantera members were on stage. A new corporate entity, The Tribute Inc., was created for the reunion tour and concurrent album project. By then Judy had remarried, to Jack Grondin, a drummer
for .38 Special, with whom she had a son, and as she said, “For ten years I didn't even want to deal with the tragedy.” But now she did, mainly she said to safeguard Ronnie's name and legacy, to the point where she sometimes annoyed Gary, who was the new band's leader. Ed King also signed up, making for an impressive cast—not to mention a spooky one; when Johnny Van Zant, whose albums were being produced by Al Kooper, agreed to moonlight from his band to sing lead, people would do double-takes because of his eerie resemblance to Ronnie. And so Skynyrd was back, for better or worse.

After a few months of shaking off the cobwebs performing periodic one-nighters across the country, the Skynyrd reunion tour was ready for a fall kickoff. On September 6, they made their first official appearance at Charlie Daniels's Volunteer Jam at Nashville's Starwood Amphitheatre, on a bill with William Lee Golden, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Chapman, and Great White, the Skynyrd connection breaking attendance records for the annual event. The group had added guitarist Randall Hall to solo with Rossington and Ed King. They broke out the old Confederate flag imagery, but the rebel-redneck context was ameliorated by a teary sentimentality. When “Free Bird” again played, with no vocal, the arena would be dimmed save for a single spotlight illuminating Ronnie's old black Stetson sitting atop a central mike stand.

Artimus, his long hair and beard shaven, giving him a preppy look, acted as spokesman for the tour, introducing each member before each concert began. He would bring a bottle of beer on stage, not whiskey, and wore a T-shirt with a Confederate flag—perhaps brushing aside his stated loathing of the symbol—in the name of solidarity with the band, their fallen leader, and the South. Allen, who was billed now as the band's musical director, looked genuinely happy to be alive. He would pump a fist in his wheelchair when introduced at each venue, before wheeling himself off stage to thunderous cheers. Pyle introduced each band member, longtime roadies, Brusco, Bill Graham, Odom, Lacy, and various Skynyrd adjutants. He called for a moment of silence for Ronnie, Steve, Dean, and Cassie, and then handed the microphone to Allen. “Hello, Nashville!” he brayed. “I gotta introduce one of the best bands in the world—the best band in the world.” Then, before the opening bars
of “Free Bird,” Johnny Van Zant would tell the crowd, “We want you to keep Lynyrd Skynyrd music alive forever…. You gotta let 'em hear you in heaven tonight.”

The vibes were all good, and they rode a convoy of sympathy, nostalgia, and raves in the press that were reflected in the headlines:
LYNYRD SKYNYRD
'
S HAPPY ENDING
and
FREEBIRD RISES FROM THE ASHES
. The always smarmy
New York Post's
headline was
SMASHED & CRASHED BUT STILL RAISIN
'
HELL
. Sales of new, improved Skynyrd skull-and-bones T-shirts were brisk. And the money came pouring in—$8 million in profits. This made it obvious that one reunion tour wouldn't suffice; it would have to be extended, into an ongoing franchise, beginning with the Tribute Tour in 1988, dates for which Brusco began busily booking. That, however, sounded a sour note with Judy. She had not been consulted on these new proceedings, nor had the recently remarried Teresa Gaines Rapp. Apparently the Rossington faction had believed they could scare both women off by taking a vote ousting both as officers and shareholders. Not one to scare easily, Judy countersued, asking for sole control of the Skynyrd name.

This put the second tour on hold, and lawyers for the band and Judy battled it out for months. As it turned out, Judy was much more like the fighter she had married than anyone thought. She was resolute, calm under pressure, and ultimately she gained the upper hand. Indeed, both Pyle and Powell became so frantic that Judy would win and cut
them
out that they almost begged for mercy, Powell saying in a deposition that the IRS had already placed a $179,000 lien on his house. Powell would later say, Judy “sued our pants off. And I was mad at her like you wouldn't believe. I thought she was screwing us. Then I realized later, she had to do that to protect Ronnie's estate from Gary and them.”

The band in its defense claimed Judy was not a director at all since she had not actually signed the 1978 agreement; but that failed to resonate, and seeing the sympathy she generated, they settled, giving Judy and Teresa several hundred thousand dollars and a combined 30 percent of all future Skynyrd profits. As if out of spite, though, Gary refused to allow Judy and Larkin Collins, who believed he now had a say in such matters, to release any old Skynyrd recordings, including a session recorded at a Memphis radio station and a live concert recorded right before the plane crash. Skynyrd was a profitable enough concern now
for these squabbles to be fought over big money. Where it had once been all about the music and attitude, the business of Lynyrd Skynyrd was now all about business.

Allen Collins had become an effective, cheerful spokesman for antidrug and antidrinking public service campaigns, able to speak only a few words on the topic after being brought to the stage at Skynyrd concerts. By September 1989, however, he had deteriorated and had to be hospitalized with pneumonia. He lapsed into a coma, and on January 23, 1990, he died of respiratory failure, finally at peace after thirty-seven years of hell. He was buried in a grave beside Kathy in Riverside Memorial Park. His funeral had none of the fanfare or curiosity of Ronnie's—and none of his old bandmates, most glaringly Rossington. Even though Gary was forever to be linked with Allen for giving the band its metal credentials, their falling-out was an especially ugly footnote, and Pyle for one believes it was caused by the strong-willed woman who seemed to control Gary's thinking and never cut Collins any slack for breaking up RCB.

“Dale drove a wedge between Gary and Allen like you wouldn't believe,” Pyle told writer Marley Brant in the early 2000s. “I had to beg Gary to go see Allen the day he died in the hospital. I had to beg the whole band to go over and see Allen a couple of days before he died…. I shamed them into going to see Allen. He loved it, and it meant a lot to him.”