Why Skynyrd instead of Aerosmith

Amongst many other memories shared by @joeperry in his book that you all know about already, he mentions backing out of renting a plane that crashed with Lynyrd Skynyrd on board a week later. Talk about chills, right? Was it luck? Did God decide to kill at least one dirty rock n’ roll band off the face of the Earth? No. It was an opportunity.

This is how The Law of The Truest Wish works, or, in my own words, the Law of the Truest Wish. To be a rock star is to be a little bit of a drama queen, and death is one of the most dramatic of events in anyone’s life, not only rock stars… But rock stars have always loved making a flashy, flamy exit… Or die of drugs or booze at the age of 27 like so many stars did, latest of whom Amy Winehouse who was known to have a wish to go like Jim Morrison, who always had a fascination with death, and indeed she did.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was the one who chose to take the exit that was first offered to Aerosmith, who, to my greatest joy, declined the offer. If it had been Aerosmith on board, who do you think would have gone? Joe or Steven? They would have never passed off the opportunity to die like a boss. They would have raced each other to meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, screaming at each other on the way: “you’re not going to take this away from me!!”

But luckily, Aerosmith had other ideas. They are tough to kill. They took all the drugs known to mankind (“and invented a few” intercepts the voice of Steven Tyler in my head) and lived to tell the tale of what would have killed any other, more death-driven rock n’ roller. They’ve driven Ferraris off the road into a flame, avoided fatal STD’s (the other kind, not Steven Tyler Disease, which is incurable, but non-fatal), fallen off stages, nearly fell off the sky, but they won’t die. They are beating the odds, and now probably competing off the title of oldest still performing rock n’ roll star of all time, considering the band is still together in it’s original form; no deaths, no permanent splits. (Edit in 2016: That Farewell tour must be cancelled… The name of it, namely!)

I, for one, cannot wait to see what they’ll come up next, while waiting for Joe and Steven to get over the shock of the very book that spurred this post. In the mean while, I’ll be enjoying Nuno Bettencourt’s little fling with Steven Tyler, and hope to somehow magically to wind up in the middle of that sandwich.

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