Allen Collins

  The Crash Test

When people think of Allen Collins and tragedy, their minds almost always go to October 20, 1977. That's the day the plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd fell from the sky. Against all odds, Collins survived.

He suffered serious injuries, but he recovered, picked up his guitar again, and tried to rebuild his life. It seemed as though he had escaped one of rock's greatest catastrophes. No one could have imagined that an even more personal tragedy still lay ahead.

On January 29, 1986, Collins was driving near his home in Jacksonville, Florida, with his longtime girlfriend, Debra Jean Watts, as a passenger. For reasons that have never been fully determined, his Ford Thunderbird left the road and crashed into a drainage ditch.

Collins survived. Watts did not. The accident shattered Collins' spinal cord, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

For a guitarist whose explosive playing had helped define songs like "Free Bird" and "That Smell," the injuries were devastating. He would never play guitar again.

Friends later described a man overwhelmed by grief and guilt. Surviving the 1977 plane crash had been difficult enough. Now he had survived another accident, one that claimed the life of the woman he loved while taking away his own ability to perform.

Many people in his position would have disappeared from public life. Allen Collins chose a different path. When Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited in 1987 with Ronnie Van Zant's younger brother, Johnny, handling lead vocals, Collins accepted that he could no longer stand beside Gary Rossington with a guitar slung over his shoulder.

Instead, he appeared onstage in a wheelchair. Officially, he served as the band's musical director, helping shape rehearsals and arrangements while remaining a visible part of the group he had helped build. Fans welcomed him with standing ovations before a single note was played. His presence reminded everyone that Lynyrd Skynyrd was more than the musicians holding instruments. It was also the people whose spirit had carried the band through unimaginable loss.

Collins' health continued to decline, and by the end of 1989 he was forced to step away from the spotlight. He died the following year at just thirty-seven years old.

The 1977 plane crash is etched into rock history. But for Allen Collins, the accident that truly changed everything happened nearly nine years later on a quiet Florida road.

His first crash tested whether he would live. His second determined how he would live. 

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