Allen Collins, Guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dies at 37

Allen Collins, who lost fellow members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd in a 1977 plane crash and was paralyzed four years ago in a drunk driving accident, has died of pneumonia.

The guitarist was 37 and died Tuesday at Memorial Medical Center here where he had been hospitalized since September.

Collins began his rise to success as the lightning-fingered guitarist for the Jacksonville band formed in 1966 by a group of high school students. The band enjoyed national fame in the 1970s with such hits as “Free Bird,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Saturday Night Special” and Ronnie Van Zant’s feisty “Sweet Home Alabama.”

In 1977, lead singer Van Zant, guitarist Stevie Gaines and Gaines’ sister, Cassie Gaines, were killed in a plane crash. Collins and other members of the “blues and booze” image band were severely injured.

Two years later, Collins, Gary Rossington, Bill Powell and Leon Wilkeson, all founding members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, joined with Barry Harwood and Dale Krantz to form the Rossington-Collins band. The group split in 1982, and Collins formed the Allen Collins band.

In 1986, Collins’ car ran off a road and crashed into a culvert, paralyzing him from the waist down and killing his girlfriend, Debra Jean Watts.