The Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash movie - thoughts of the real survivor / Hanging Out With Gene Odom

[Music] [Applause] hi gene how are you doing today pretty fair good how was the traffic to here it's like immediately it's coming up here horrible yeah no wrecks today thank god yeah thanks because it's saturday i mean everybody likes to you know crush their cars on saturdays but anyway so um today we're gonna have a specific topic that we're gonna talk about and um i don't really like to get you back to those moments of the plane crash but many people were asking some questions even after our first interview so we're just gonna try our best to answer those questions today so um before we start i just want to know what was the tone of that evening before the final flight like how did people you know were people like freaking out because i know that the first accident happened you know before the actual crash so how are people reacting how how are they dealing with the stress where they're like okay let's just fly or they were like panicking and trying to get you know other alternative ways to get to the concert well some of them were i wasn't in the room at the time you say panicking there were a couple of them several of them were scared of the plane after the incident leaving lakeland when it backfired out the right engine a couple of the girls you know they wanted to fly commercial a couple of the guys i think maybe billy maybe and dean um they were scared of it you know and they they didn't want to fly on it and in that conversation they were having at that time i wasn't there they were having a band meeting and whatever else and they were talking about the about the plane and some were scared and you know um it's called the management side the management side was feeding them the wrong information keep them on the plane and um some of them were upset and they had a um at the last the last minute you know ronnie just told him you know either get on the plane or you fired you know but that was he was getting management and the pilots feeding him information and so he didn't know um and they didn't none of them knew actually what was really going on and ronnie at the last minute told him you know get on the plane or you're gone but they were some of them were upset okay and uh talking about the management um was it peter uh roots who was the manager back then for leonard skynyrd peter rojo yeah did he ever mention this crash in his like maybe next projects that that he did did he ever like consider that it might be like his fault that the plane crash happened not that i know of and he was kind of like truthfully speaking unaware of the situation the road manager is the person that got the people to get the plane and the road manager is the one that actually wrote the contract with the leasing company and actually he was leaving on the plane flying to jacksonville when they stopped him and said you haven't give us the contract you haven't signed the contract and he had to turn the plane around and go back and sign the contract and it was in this briefcase we never knew that nobody knew the contract i wish i had known it but nobody knew it so is it true that authorities found like piles of cash in the suitcase of one of the pilots i think i believe it was a walter mccrary he may have had some cash but he wouldn't have piles of cash because the way the contract read that we found out later when the lawyer our lawyer got a hold of it the contract put the band in charge of the plane everything flying the plane fueling the plane maintenance of the plane which was all bs you know when our lawyer saw that when he finally got the contract from ron eckerman he went we read it he went who would do this who would sign a piece of paper who would put up try to put a band in charge of a blank you can't do that he said this is not what the paper's written on yeah and he didn't know who signed it and then he says whose signature is this another ron eckerman's signature he went okay so uh basically authorities found some cash on the crash side of the plane and fans were just wondering was this cash like could have been could have it been used for like maybe i don't know the fuel for the plane well the ron eckerman was paying for the fuel paying for the fuel stops and the fueling and stuff like that and we had done a couple of shows and he he would have cash on him in his briefcase ban money and he would have um um i doubt he would have any of his own money in his briefcase but he would have banned money in there to pay stuff with and collect from the show the night before in a couple of shows there was quite a bit of cash money in the briefcases and he says some of the cash money was stolen no because you see in the movie they show one scene when there is a tent and in a tent they have like everything they were like piles of cash a bunch of drugs also in the suitcase now where you where you see this from uh the street survival small when the street survivors movie oh that's all bs everything that whole movie is bs capital b capital is yeah so uh yeah that was no drugs on the plane why did they show it in the i mean maybe it's for the cinematic effect and if it would have been any drugs on the plane that had done all the drugs before they got off the ground exactly that's what i was thinking there was no believe me in the fba report there was no drugs found on the plane there may have been some prescription pills sleeping pills because when ronnie had taken the two sleeping pills he got one of the girls and i'm sure there was prescription medication but there was no illegal drugs fell off like maybe a little bit of marijuana but nothing to be registered okay and uh do do you remember who else was sitting basically in the area of the cabin was ronnie because uh in the movie artem was mentioned that ronnie was actually stuck by the unsecured tv which is uh he explained it that like it was basically i think with the rock bands that they they didn't have like you know like regular planes atmosphere it was all like insecure and shaky and all of that so he mentioned that uh ronnie was struck by the tv screen is that true or no um on the airplane if my memory served me right there was no tv on the airplane there was no electronic stuff on that old plane none of that no no games nothing there was no tv on the plane that i'm aware of there was boom boxes but there was no tv and ronnie wasn't struck by anything except he had a little bang behind his ear and a fractured femur he hit the table that he was laying under when i got him up off of the floor um and sitting between alan and gary and um start this story from the beginning when we started when we like you were talking about they were having a meeting the night before drinking and tooting and whatever else they were doing jojo had been calling up because she knew everybody as an alias she was calling the rooms trying to get with ronnie to talk with her right about trying to get her job back she had been fired and um he'd been up all night they've been up all night and so when we got on the plane he told me he said i got to get some sleep i've got two sleeping pills from one of the girls he says man i've been up on i've got to get some sleep i gotta lay down and i can't lay on these seats so on the couch i wish i had a piece of paper i could draw you the picture there was a couch there that would hold actually four people at the time kevin nelson was sitting against the bulkhead allen and gary and kevin nelson and there was about a two by six table in front of the couch that you could set a drink on or whatever the table basically yeah and you could put your feet on it so i told the boys i'd pick your feet up put your foot on the table and later on it down underneath their feet and give him his hat and he went to sleep zonked out under their feet so we started running out of fuel and having the problem with the plane he was zonked out had no idea nothing was going on and me going back for it to the pilots cussing them out and um i would kick him in the ribs i go but get up man get you know go in there and argue with the pilots and uh come back and they said strap everybody it makes everybody strapped in i think artemis came and he's all i'm gonna remember getting up and going to the cockpit and speaking briefly with the pilots and he came back white face with a horrible look on his face horror and he went back to his seat and um everybody gets strapped in and i went back up there arguing with him again cussing with them cussing them out and i'd kick ronnie i said get up man and i went up there and um argued with him i said well you know and they were trying to make this field and they were paddling the plane talking to houston on their things and they were fighting the plane and uh i i run back this was the third time and i um get up man get up and so i went back to the cockpit because i was mad i was i was mad and i seen the plane 45 degrees already it had lost its air speed and so we wasn't coming down slightest it started the nose dive down and i seen we weren't gonna make the field and i said see we're not gonna make it we're not gonna make it see what you've done i said now we're you know and so i said i hope you two guys lived through this so i can beat you to death and i see we wasn't gonna make it i knew ronnie was still on the floor i just run and grabbed him you know and he was unconscious unconscious grog is hell well you know i gotta get some wrists and i push him between the hungary he's fighting fighting because i mean i gotta get some sleep don't be messing around he thought i was messing with him and he didn't use that word and he was ready to fight and i said man the plane's crashing and i got his seat belt snapped and i picked this pillow but his head was at that time i got her i had a pillow there and you know i put your head down man and he was fighting me trying to get up he was trying to get up he was ready to fight because he didn't know the plane was crashing he thought i was joking the whole time i was saying it and i slapped him i said i'm not the plane's crashing about that time somebody said trees we started hitting the trees but you know so i started to run back to my seat but i was actually running uphill and the plane hit the ground at a 52 degree angle and so a step or two was all i could make and then wherever the part of the plane with the plane fractured and opened up is where i went through it and obviously i made it far enough that when i went through the fuselage i went up under the engine the right wing and that's where i laid before a couple hours before when they when they started getting the people out the plane um they got billy and set him on part of the the wing that was there and billy's the one i crawled out murder of the wing and billy is the one that hollered for help to come help me because he said yes you know them you know and it was a couple hours after the the crash that i had came out crawled out on my own and people walked by the responders said it was of course it was pitch black dark dwayne easily the responders said we walked by and we didn't see you under the wing you know and when you crawled out and billy then billy cried for everybody to come somebody helped me you know then they come over and started helping me so as far as i understand from what you were saying there wasn't like stuff like you know i don't know hippie handshake when because in the movie ronnie was going around the plane and he was like i love you guys and then he was drinking i believe whiskey or something no i mean that doesn't mean when i got him out of the floor and set him in the couch within three or four seconds to play into the ground and he was knocked uncut ronnie actually died from the fixation when when he unsnapped his seat belt if he hadn't snapped to see but he'd probably still be alive but the forcing impact forced him down on top of that table and then the other guys were on top of him and and loose stuff and he was under the bottom of them actually he was forced on top of stephen dean of the crunching of the impact of the plane because alan and gary and kevin nelson were kind of tilted upward because of the plane twisted and that's what we're holding them in was your seat belts and i knew i wasn't sure yesterday after seat belt for years until i seen the stuff that the guys have there the airplane crash um cockpit and and souvenirs that they have they had seat belts that had been cut and the four seat belts was on the couch and the front were red and the other seat belts for the plane were gray and three of those red seat belts that they had were cut allen gary and kevin nelson's the whole seat belt red seat belt was the one ronnie unsnapped and if he hadn't unsnapped a seat belt he would quite possibly still be alive but he was so mad and he was ready to fight he was coming up out of that chair because he thought i was messing with him and he was groggy so groggy that he didn't know what was going on he didn't know that he died not knowing the plane was crashing but not realizing the plane was maybe that's for the best maybe but um also in the movie artemis mentioned that the pilots were completely incompetent i would say because there was a scene with uh like a junior pilot i think and i if i remember correctly in the scene he stated that this is his first time flying the rock band but i'm not sure if he also said that this is his first time flying at all you know in general our main pilot had quit went to work for a big airlines so they moved the co-pilot up to pilot status and they made the mechanic engineer guy which would have been john gray co-pilot and that was the first time that he was an actual co-pilot but the co-pilot wasn't flying the plane walter mccreary was flying the plane he was he was the pilot he was the one that was fighting control of everything trying to find out why he was out of fuel he was he was flying the plane and again i had to reiterate and his [Music] i only want to use this name i want to say delmer's movie street survivors movie nothing i haven't saw it because i won't see it but what people have told me and everything is that nothing in his movie is real it's not nothing in it it's true nothing that i've been told in his movie is true so you can't believe nothing in that movie you know that you have a character of yourself in that movie as well somebody said that there was a guy playing me in there i think me and ryan were playing poker or something yeah but it just came so fast that you cannot really you know see because it's like you blink and then it's gone like the scene started that movie was about autonomous it wasn't about the leonard skinner plane crash or the leonard's kennedy when he first started it i called it a psychotic fairy tale that's exactly what it turned out to be because i know the guy nothing nothing in his movie is is real or true also i really wanted to ask you again consider and this is like i was interested about it because it just seemed a little bit weird so in the movie when they had parties uh they were like uh topless girls you know walking around the hotel the hotel rooms or anything did this really happen in real life like did they have party like that yeah oh they did oh rock and roll bands that part is like that i mean because when you're when you're a star or a rock and roll musician there's all the women and girls you want are available and all the parties and stuff like that i mean it's the lifestyle although you know i'm a rock star party like a rock star there was women women and girls who just oh yeah that if that was in the movie that would be true okay did did you ever had to deal with like for example crazy girlfriend that like wanted to stay with ronnie by ronnie's side or something like that and she needed to go already because yeah a lot of times you know some of them get on stage and they want to meet leonard they want to see leonard and uh ronnie and uh yeah how would you how would you usually handle it a general you know okay you need to this you can't be on the stage or in in public you know if if when i was with him he spent years and years and years and years without gene odom i was on with him a short time um you handle them you know say hey okay you want to do an autograph yeah okay you know yeah i'll do it okay no problem or you know hey speak for a second but we're busy you know and a lot of times if we were if we were eating or whatever the rest or whatever i would i would tell people he was mostly i don't know what he did before i came with him but he wanted to change and uh they were handled gently now how did frowny actually behave with the fans like especially with the crazy one like would he ever like notice that the person is like super obsessed with him or something well i can't speak for the times i wasn't with him but um you keep security you have other security or hotel security or or whatever or generally when you when you're a star like ronnie was when you like going to the hotel someplace you didn't lollygag around you know and the other band members i.e delmar and those people that aren't stars they like to you know make attention you know they you know like you know i'm a rockstar but the real stars they avoid the crowds and they avoid the attention because with the tension that they'll draw the other people that aren't the stars want to draw the attention and then you kind of avoid being in that situation like you can stop that situation before it starts you know get on it go get in there go straight to the elevator or go straight to your room you know and then later on they're coming out of the bar the first place the other people go to the hotel is the bar they go to the room take their bags and they go to the bar you know it's a routine they have and is there anything else you would like people to know about uh october 20th of 1977 did anything special happen during that time limousine drivers didn't show up at the hotel and that put us an hour an hour and a half behind schedule and we finally when leslie did my movie leslie mentioned of limousines of course you forget but the limousine drivers never showed up so we took taxi cabs we piled everything and they're buying taxi cabs and went to the airport ready to go and then artemis he lived in the area he wasn't there he didn't show up for 45 minutes or an hour or so with his entourage of people and that left the little little john engine in the back running and it also ran out of fuel so um he finally showed up [Music] we took off but um as for anything else but on the 20th that's the only thing that i can think of is that nightmares airplane crash we had and getting to the airport that that whole that whole package is a horror horror story in itself can you also talk a little bit about the legacy of the band is there maybe any one two three or even five memories that you can share that are really important to you about leonard skynyrd or two memories whatever you have which are like the most most important yeah um there's a lot of memories you know of uh alan gary ronnie you know steve and his ones by steve um he was moving into his new house just as we were going to leave and they had a white van and um ronnie had asked him um we were helping him move and uh ronnie had gave him stockholder agreement to sign and it was on the table and we moved everything in there you know and and that stockholder agreement was on the table and he never had a chance to sign they forgot to sign it and so on the plane leaving he told ron he said i am saying i said don't worry about it you excited when you come back you're a member of the band he didn't sign the stockholder agreement but um we were moving in about a day or so earlier their cat had a bunch of kittens and so uh we had loaded the van up with furniture and stuff to take to the new house and theresa got in the van and started um you know went to arlington and that mother cat had put the babies in the cow of the engine cattle of the fan and when she cranked the truck up the man up he just slaughtered them cats oh this cat for you and she was she was all upset but that's a horrible thing too oh god rescued get rid of catchy cats at one time but um that's a hell of a memory that there and that we were moving them to the new house and steve um really didn't get a chance to move into his new house you know yeah that's that's really really good barely moving in it and uh he got and we went on tour and the other memories and stories there's just millions of them that i could come up with but it would we could stay here for a month now coming back to the movie so you mentioned that artemis actually went to the pilot's cabin and then came back and sat down one time that i cannot that i can remember he came we went up there one time when we were coming down it was just before i got run up off the floor was he like when on his way back to his seat was he like you know telling people to fasten the seat belts and prepare for the impact did he do i don't remember him saying that only i remember his him coming back with a white face and a look of shock on his face that's what i remember and then uh were anybody drinking on the plane there was always beer you know coca-cola's and beer um had anybody had a beard i'm sure you know and billy powell always had a bloody mary so he had his own bloody mary mix and stuff like that so i'm sure he had a buddy billy powell was i'm going to say hi to affect the term drunk tipsy whatever every every afternoon every evening so on the plane he was [Music] i would call drunk and if they they smoked a lot of marijuana and cigarettes oh they were smoking in the plane on the plane oh yeah um i'm sure they did because a couple times playing poker one of them make a remark like jeans gene's got a uh i would be i'd be laughing or doing something because those guys are easy to beat if you sit in a room with somebody smoking marijuana or whatever contact high i think he called it i said i ain't high i'm just laughing at you fools taking your money you know but yeah they smoked marijuana on the plane and they did other stuff i'm sure they did if it was available on there go in the bathroom or whatever but i didn't see them do no cocaine or nothing like that on a plane but smoke marijuana yeah now did you have any flight attendants flying with you or you were just like by yourself no the flight attendant would have been dean kilpatrick because he was everything for the man i mean dean was he was cool he was a good guy but mixing their drinks doing this doing that getting no there was no flight attention no no turns on the plane okay that's interesting and then can you also tell um our viewers what to expect from the future videos just expect the unexpected you know yeah because there's a lot of great stories you know stuff and own video this leonard skinner's stuff is gets harder and harder and it's easier when victoria is delivering the questions but this is difficult after all these years trying to talk about this and everything and then especially talking about delmer's movie i knew from day one it would just be a smoke and mirrors it's all about artemis and that's the stage name the guy's name is thomas delmer pyle and i don't like to use the stage name but um what was i saying what to expect in the next videos in the next video we're going to do a couple of more and uh y'all are going to come up with questions for her and patty patty's in new york to deliver the questions and we're going to do a couple more and then we're going to start doing genotum gone wild youtubes so guys make sure you like subscribe and comment on the section below and ask your questions so i'll be more than happy to ask those questions to gene

Channel: Hanging Out With Gene Odom

Views: 55,041

Rating: 4.8587284 out of 5

Keywords: gene odom, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Interview, rock music, rock, rock bands, Jacksonville, Florida, Ronnie Van Zant, The Street Survivors Movie, movie review, podcast, facts vs fiction, Entertaiment, 1970, Music, Plane Crash, Stories, Conversation

Id: P-zA7KbyyOU

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020