Post by B on Apr 5, 2015 13:54:41 GMT -5
Former Lynyrd Skynyrd Drummer Dies in Crash
Bob Burns, 64, died late Friday evening in a single-vehicle wreck along Tower Ridge Road in Cartersville.
patch.com/georgia/cartersville/report-former-lynyrd-skynyrd-drummer-dies-crash-0
By Kristal Dixon ( Cartersville Patch Staff)
April 4, 2015
"Bob Burns, the original drummer for the iconic 1970s rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, was killed late Friday in a
single-car wreck in unincorporated Cartersville, Bartow County, according to the Georgia State Patrol.
The crash occurred about 11:56 p.m. April 3 when Burns was driving northbound on Tower Ridge Road and his vehicle
left the westside of the roadway while approaching a right curve, said patrol spokesperson Tracey Watson.
“After leaving the roadway, the driver struck a mailbox and a tree with the front of the vehicle,” Watson said.
Watson said the 64-year-old Burns was not wearing a seatbelt and was the only occupant in the vehicle.
Watson added “it was raining heavily at the time of the crash,” and there’s no probable cause to suggest
Burns was under the influence at the time of the accident.
Robert Lewis “Bob” Burns was born on November 24, 1950, according to his Wikipedia bio, and helped
form what would become Lynyrd Skynyrd while still a teen.
Named in 1968 following stints as The Noble Five and One Percent, the band helped popularize southern rock
in the 1970s with signature songs “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird.”
After three band members were killed in a 1977 plane crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd re-formed for a reunion tour
in the late 1980s and continues to play around the country.
Burns remained in the band until 1974, playing on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s earliest demos, recorded in 1970, though
conflicting reports have him taking a hiatus sometime during the early ‘70s. In a 2011 interview with The Examiner,
he said he left for nine months in 1969 because his parents moved from their Florida home and he was barely a teenager.
“Yeah, I had no place to stay,” he said at the time. “I was 15 and 16 years old, I was crashing in people’s bushes.
I was crashing wherever I could ...I was borrowing clothes from the roadies to play shows with. I didn’t even have
any shoes and it just got to me.”
In that same interview, he revealed that at about age 18 he left the band briefly when he was hospitalized because of
unexplained and severe mood swings.
“And they found the problem,” he said. “They found that I was Bi-Polar. They gave me medication and I’ve been a
free man ever since.”
He left the band as a full-time member in 1974, his bio says, because he was “overwhelmed by life on the road.”
He sat in with the band during its 2006 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, playing alongside Gary Rossington,
Billy Powell, Ed King, Artimus Pyle and the Honkettes.
Gary Rossington wrote on the band’s Facebook page that he will remember Burns as a “funny guy” whose skits made "us laugh all the time.”
Rossington told fans he made a stop to a cemetery near Jacksonville on Friday to visit band members who were laid to rest
at the location as well as his parents’ grave sites.
“On the way back, we went by Bob Burns’ old house,” he said. ”It was there in the carport where we used to first start to practice
with Skynyrd. My heart goes out to his family and God bless him and them in this sad time. He was a great great drummer.”"
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We're going to have to re-name this section "News and Current Events and Obituaries"!
