Artimus Pyle's Bad Night

Lynyrd Skynyrd were an American Southern rock band who are best remembered for two things; their epic song Freebird and for the fact that three of their original band members were killed in a plane crash in 1977.

Flying between venues on an American tour, the band's chartered plane ran out of fuel and crashed in to a forest in Mississippi.

The band's drummer, Armitus Pyle, crawled out of the plane wreckage with several broken ribs, yet ran nearly a mile to a farmhouse to try to get help. The farmer Johnny Mote, on first seeing the wild-haired blood and mud encrusted drummer babbling incoherently, greeted him with a (fortunately non-fatal) shotgun blast to his shoulder. Only when Mote realized that this person was connected with the plane crash he had just heard did he call for help.

Artimus Pyle survived to join a reformed Lynryrd Skynyrd and continued to drum with them for many years. He now fronts the Artimus Pyle Band