Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Robert Burns Jr dies in crash

Robert Burns Jr, the founding drummer of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the southern US rock band known for the power ballad Free Bird and the anthem Sweet Home Alabama, died on Friday in a car crash in Georgia. He was 64.

Burns was driving alone in Cartersville, Georgia, where he lived, just before midnight on Friday when his car left the road and hit a mailbox and a tree, the Georgia State Patrol said.

Burns helped form Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1964 as a drummer in high school and left 10 years later, overwhelmed by life on the road. He played on the band’s debut album, released in 1973, and the multiplatinum follow-up, Second Helping, in 1974.

In 1977, three years after Burns left Lynyrd Skynyrd, several members died when a plane chartered by the band ran out of fuel and crashed in Mississippi. The crash killed six people, including the lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant, and the guitarist Steve Gaines.

Burns reunited with the band in 1996 to promote Freebird: The Movie, a documentary about the band’s early years, and again in 2006 for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Born in November 1950, in Jacksonville, Florida, Robert Lewis Burns Jr took up drumming after watching the Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

He is survived by two stepdaughters, Lauren and Kristen Burns; his parents, Jane Elizabeth Burns and Robert Lewis Burns Sr, two brothers, John Daran Burns and Michael Alan Burns; and two sisters, Patti Lynn Burns and Deborah Burns McGuire. His wife, Marsha, died in 2011 from complications of a hip replacement.

NYT