Lynyrd Skynyrd released Street Survivors on October 17, 1977. Their fifth studio album gave guitarist Steve Gaines a substantial role as a songwriter and singer alongside Ronnie Van Zant. His contributions included “I Know a Little,” a lead vocal on “Ain’t No Good Life” and shared vocals on “You Got That Right.”
Gaines had entered the band through his sister Cassie, one of Skynyrd’s backing singers. She kept urging the group to hear him while they were looking to restore the three-guitar lineup following Ed King’s departure. In a 2003 Classic Rock interview, Gary Rossington recalled inviting Gaines onstage to play “Call Me the Breeze.” The band chose its straightforward chord progression as a test, then watched Gaines impress both Rossington and Allen Collins with his playing and slide work. They offered him the job immediately.
Once Gaines and Van Zant began writing together, their proximity helped the partnership develop. Rossington told Classic Rock in a 2012 interview that Gaines lived about a mile from the singer, while the other musicians were spread farther across town. The pair could meet daily when they were home and sometimes write two or three songs in a day. Rossington also identified a musical difference: he and Collins leaned toward blues, while Gaines had grown up with soul and Motown. Some of his ideas initially met resistance before the band worked them into songs.
That expanded role carried into the performances. Van Zant encouraged Gaines to take the lead on the blues number “Ain’t No Good Life,” while “You Got That Right” let the two singers exchange verses. Gaines was contributing material, singing it and helping shape arrangements within a group whose frontman had previously handled the lead vocals.
Getting those songs onto the finished record required another round of work. The band had recorded with producer Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios in Miami but was unhappy with the results. Engineer Barry Rudolph recalled that Dowd sent him to Atlanta while tied up with Rod Stewart sessions. Rudolph arrived expecting to represent the producer for a week and instead found musicians ready to record again. Working with Rodney Mills, he recorded four songs apart from their backing vocals and brass overdubs: “What’s Your Name,” “You Got That Right,” “That Smell” and the Merle Haggard song “Honky Tonk Night Time Man.”
“That Smell” drew on trouble the band had already experienced. Van Zant’s warning about drinking and drugs included references to Rossington’s 1976 car crash, something the guitarist initially resented hearing in a song. “I didn’t like it, because it was about me,” Rossington told Classic Rock in 2012, though he said he eventually appreciated its humor. Rudolph approached the recording with another cautionary song in mind: the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” He cited its treatment of excess as a production reference and singled out the guitar recording as work he was particularly proud of.
On October 20, 1977, the band’s chartered plane crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi, while traveling from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, crew member Dean Kilpatrick and both pilots were killed. The surviving band members suffered serious injuries, and Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded. The new album had been in stores for just three days.
The original sleeve, showing the musicians surrounded by flames, was replaced after the crash with an alternate band photograph. Street Survivors remained the final studio album Van Zant and Steve Gaines completed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
