The Tale Behind The Tune: “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
During the fall of 1977 I was a year out of high school and Lynyrd Skynyrd released their fifth studio album, Street Survivors. Buried on the record was a slow-burning, ominous track called “That Smell.” Written by Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins, the song delivered a stark message about the perils of drugs and alcohol. Its haunting chorus warned of death closing in. Just three days after the album hit stores, a plane crash in Mississippi killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines. The tragedy gave “That Smell” an eerie, prophetic weight it never fully escaped.
The real spark for the song, however, came a year earlier from a very different kind of crash.
On night during the Labor Day weekend of 1976, guitarist Gary Rossington got behind the wheel of his brand-new Ford Torino in Jacksonville, Florida. He had been drinking and had taken Quaaludes. Somewhere along Mandarin Road, he passed out with his foot still on the gas pedal. The car slammed into an oak tree, knocked down a telephone pole, and damaged a nearby house. Rossington survived, but he suffered serious injuries that included multiple broken bones. The accident forced Lynyrd Skynyrd to postpone several dates on their One More from the Road tour.
Ronnie Van Zant was furious. He visited Rossington in the hospital and did not hold back. In a later interview, Van Zant described the wreck in blunt terms: Rossington had passed out at the wheel of a brand-new car and caused thousands of dollars in damage. “That’s just being plain stupid,” he said. The band fined the guitarist five thousand dollars to cover lost income from the canceled shows. Allen Collins had also been involved in a separate car accident around the same time, adding to the tension inside the group.
Van Zant had already sensed that the group’s heavy partying was spiraling out of control. Members were using cocaine, heroin, Quaaludes, and plenty of alcohol. The pressure of constant touring and rising fame only made things worse. Van Zant later admitted he sometimes turned to drugs himself to cope with the stress of performing. After Rossington’s wreck, Collins suggested they write a song about what was happening and Van Zant readily agreed. He felt a growing unease about the direction things were heading and decided the time had come for a direct warning.
The lyrics came together quickly and pulled no punches. The opening lines referenced the crash head-on: “Whiskey bottles and brand new cars / Oak tree you’re in my way.” Another verse took aim at Rossington’s condition after the accident, calling him “Prince Charming” who could not speak when he was full of Quaaludes. The chorus drove the point home with chilling repetition: “Ooh that smell / Can’t you smell that smell? / The smell of death surrounds you.”
“That smell” was both literal and metaphorical. It captured the stench of excess and the sense that death was getting closer with every reckless choice. Some accounts suggest the title also nodded to the smell of heroin being cooked on a spoon, a detail that would have been familiar in their circle. Van Zant was not preaching from a place of clean living. He was speaking as someone who understood the pull of the lifestyle and had watched it nearly kill one of his closest friends. The song was meant as a wake-up call for the band and for anyone else living the same way.
The track was recorded during sessions for Street Survivors with producer Tom Dowd. The band worked on material in Miami and later refined it at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia. Backing vocals from The Honkettes added a ghostly layer to the already dark arrangement. When the album came out in October of 1977, “That Smell” stood out as one of the most serious and sobering songs Lynyrd Skynyrd had ever recorded. It was released as a single but did not become a major hit at the time.
After the plane crash, the song took on new meaning. Lines like “tomorrow might not be here for you” and “the smell of death surrounds you” felt almost clairvoyant. Band members and fans alike noted the eerie timing. Keyboardist Billy Powell later said it seemed as if Van Zant may have sensed something bad was coming but the song had not been written as a prediction of the plane crash. It had been written about car wrecks that had already happened, Quaaludes, and the daily reality of a band pushing too hard and partying too much.
Gary Rossington survived both the 1976 wreck and the 1977 plane crash. In later years he spoke about the song with a mix of acceptance and perspective. He knew it was about him and the trouble he had caused, but he also recognized that it spoke to a larger problem affecting many people in rock music at the time. The band eventually cleaned up their act on the road after the incidents, at least for a while. Van Zant had pushed for a cleaner tour, and the message in “That Smell” reflected that effort.
Decades later, “That Smell” remains one of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s most recognizable and powerful tracks. It stands apart from their anthems about Southern pride and freedom because it looks inward at the cost of the rock and roll life. The song did not stop the excesses overnight, and it could not prevent the tragedy that followed. What it did do was capture a moment when the band finally stared at the damage they were doing to themselves and tried to say something about it out loud. In that sense, “That Smell” is less a prophecy than a hard-earned warning that arrived almost too late.
