For most of my childhood we lived on the far side of a small city that also featured a big industrial area on its opposite side. The location of our house in relation to that area was important because it meant that we didn’t have to play the daily game practiced by residents closer to it — trying to guess which of a variety of bad smells was dominating the breeze that particular day.
There were a lot of candidates for the source, including a big chemical plant, a sewage disposal works, a paper mill, and a place that made creosote-soaked railroad ties. Folks who lived on that side of the city — many of whom had much nicer houses than ours — didn’t always have stinky air, because some of them were actually quite far from the industrial area. But they always had to live under the threat of changing winds and the arrival of a sudden miasma, causing people to gasp and ask, ‘What is THAT SMELL?’
Which brings us to the musical part of today’s post — a song of that name, performed by southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd back in the 1970s. It was written by the group’s leader, Ronnie Van Zant (along with Allen Collins), and it emphatically did not refer to industrial aromas. It was instead about a peculiar feeling that heroin addicts sometimes experienced — the smell of the stuff they were cooking seemed to echo the actual act of shooting it.
Because of its lyrics, the song seemed especially prescient for the group, which was like many rockers of the era in terms of drinking, drugs, and reckless behavior. Key phrases like, “tomorrow might not be here for you”, and that “the smell of death surrounds you” proved prophetic — three days after the album containing the song was released, a plane crash took the life of Van Zant and several others.
Geezer Music Club 