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New Book Revealed New Details of Ricky Nelson’s Plane Crash
A new book is exposing startling new facts about Ricky Nelson’s plane crash, which claimed the pop star’s life.
On December 31, 1985, Nelson, 45, and six other people lost their lives when the artist’s band plane crash-landed. A Douglas DC-3 aircraft, the plane, caught fire mid-flight near De Kalb, Texas. The pilots remained uninjured.
Besides being a hit television series star, literally playing a son to his parents on the show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Nelson was also a major recording star, with such singles as “Poor Little Fool” and “Travelin’ Man” ranking him among the idols of the 50s and 60s.
The death of the musician was tragic, and it was even more tragic when drug rumors, which alleged that it was cocaine free-basing that caused the fire and then the crash, started circulating.
But in their upcoming book What Happened To Your Hair, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson make it clear that the band was innocent of such accusations.
Ricky Nelson’s Sons Want to Clear Up the Record of the Plane Crash Which Killed Their Father and Rename the Family Legacy
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE one of the brothers revealed that they didn’t only write the book because of the plane crash but they also want to dispel the rumors regarding it.
“Basically from a youth we were being misunderstood but … you have to think that the Nelson family, going back over 100 years of entertainment, have pretty much been the ones who have tricked people into forgetting reality,” Gunnar reflects. “The whole world has seen our family do that, help people forget about the bills they had to pay, or the relationship they had which was crumbling and all that.”
He also said that the book is “basically the first chance to set the record straight” — not only regarding the fatal plane crash of their father but also their family’s bigger legacy.
Ricky Nelson’s Sons Deny Cocaine Rumor, Call It “Completely Fabricated Conspiracy”
It was just a “completely fabricated conspiracy” that got a journalist blamed for at the time, the cocaine rumor, as they narrate in their recently released book.
The brothers — who are identical twins and have made their own successful careers after the release of their hard rock group Nelson in the early 1990s — explain that the journalist was “apparently wandering through a farmer’s field just outside Texarkana where the remnants of the plane were still smoldering about a week after the crash, engaging with one of the National Transportation Safety Board investigators. The investigators were at the point in the investigation where they were disassembling the wreckage of the plane to take it to a local warehouse. In this place, the investigators would try to reassemble the plane as best as they could to figure out the exact cause of the accident.”
Ricky Nelson’s Sons Talk About the Chill Rumor That Spread After the Crash
“At that time, they were going through the cargo hold, and they also checked everyone’s luggage that was stored at the back of the plane. The review included shampoos. Conditioners. They even found cans of Aqua Net hairspray,” they say.
They add: “The reporter noticed what they were doing and asked, ‘Will you be checking for free-basing cocaine on the plane?’.”‘ The NTSB person replied, ‘We check for everything.'”
“Just based on that alone the reporter fired his salvo that was spread through the AP wire. Something like ‘COCAINE FREEBASING BEING INVESTIGATED AS THE CAUSE OF RICKY NELSON’S PLANE CRASH!’ The media was brutal in those days for what seemed like forever.”
The Sons of Ricky Nelson Reminisce About the Time When the Rumors of Plane Crash Finally Ended – and Talk About His DC-3
According to them, the rumors only ceased when Dan Rather, during a broadcast, went off script and said that he would not be stoking the rumor any longer.
Gunnar and Matthew in another part of the book are talking about the plane itself, a “vintage World War II era DC-3 that he had purchased from Jerry Lee Lewis.”
“There were many reasons why our dad was crazy about the plane,” they go on writing. “Firstly, it was the aviation version of a beautiful classic ’65 Mustang. Fine and classy. Secondly, it had the Jerry Lee Lewis charm, which, I am sure, did play a significant role in Pop’s simply ‘having to have it’. The third reason is that owning his own plane enabled him to perform at shows that he would otherwise have to refuse, because when you own the plane, you can obviously set your own flight schedule.”
Ricky Nelson’s Children Recall Their Father’s Fear of Flying – and How They Almost Were on the Fatal Flight
Although their dad was “deathly afraid of flying,” he still trusted the DC-3 and even nicknamed it “the flying bus.”
“His logic was that if both engines failed on the plane, you could always just glide down and make a safe landing in any field around. It must have been like he never thought there could be other kinds of problems with a plane besides the engines going out, but that was just typical of him. He was such a straightforward person.”
The kids were actually going to be on the plane on the day it crashed – recounting in the book that they were going to fly commercially to Alabama and take the plane with their dad to Dallas for a concert at a Holiday Inn with him and his band. But just before that, Ricky phoned them to say he had changed his mind.
Ricky Nelson’s Sons Remember Their Last Talk with Their Father That Changed Their Lives
The two sons say that just a few days before their father’s passing — on December 27, 1985 — they had “one of the father-son best (and last) conversations” “that would change us forever”.
They had done their first concert with their band The Nelsons, and it was sold out for the first time. Their father was there secretly, he was hiding at the back.
He first told them that he loved them, but then he continued, “No, what I really mean is that after tonight, on top of loving you as my sons, you are my peers whom I admire”.
“You could have bowled us over with a trouser cough,” they write. “Most kids go their whole lives without ever earning, let alone hearing, that from their parents. It was one of the best gifts we’ve ever received.”
