Allen Collins
After the crash, the extended band suffered trauma. But it looks like the founding guitarist Allen Collins took the biggest blow. Collins was the lanky one dressed in white, with long bushy hair, shredding his guitar during “Freebird” in one of the most famous guitar solos ever done. Freebird, which was first conceived by Collins and Van Zant in the late 60s, was the precursor to other epic rock songs like Stairway to Heaven and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Source: Twitter
Legend has it that it was Allen Collins’s girlfriend, Kathy, who asked him once: “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?” Fans know that this became the famous opening line of the song. The band was at the height of their stardom when they played for a stadium crowd at The Oakland Coliseum in July 1977 – two months before the tragedy.
The thing is Collins was never the same after it.