by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 09, 2008

.38 Special rose to fame in the 1980s, helped by some great videos on MTV.

23-year-old Donnie van Zant formed the band with his neighbor Don Barnes in Jacksonville, Florida in 1975. His older brother Ronnie had been playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd for 11 years, and it was just three years earlier that they'd released their famous song "Freebird". After Ronnie's death in a plane crash (along with two of the band's other members), new attention was focused onto Donnie and his band .38 Special.

Their most familiar song is probably "Rocking Into The Night," a song in the wild Southern rock tradition. ("Well I swear we were doin' eighty, when we saw those motel lights...") But the band failed to score any top 40 hits until 1981, the year MTV launched and .38 Special began switching to a more mainstream sound. "Caught Up in You" reached the #1 spot on Billboard's ranking of rock singles, and the band also enjoyed another hit with "Hold on Loosely (But Don't Let Go"). The band was greatly aided by their early use of music videos. ("If I'd Been The One" featured a well-synchronized showing a herd of horses running nearly in time with the music.)

.38 Special songs always seemed to include some genuine pain, and they remained popular throughout the early 80s, racking up four platinum records (though only one gold album). Even as late as 1989, the band had racked up another top ten single titled, appropriately enough, "Second Chance." But despite a distinctive guitar, the song shows the band almost completely transformed to an "adult contemporary" sound. This brought them a great deal of success. (They even performed the theme song for the movie "Revenge of the Nerds 2" and contributed to the soundtrack of the 1984 movie "Teachers.") But rock radio continued to find a home for their harder songs like "Rock and Roll Strategy."

Van Zant's vocals gave a unique sound to .38 Special's songs, and they remembered their southern roots, saying record sales was never the goal. "Our focus is to try and make it better in our hearts and soul," Donnie said last year. He'd reunited with a third brother, Johnny van Sant, to record an album of straight country songs - ultimately returning to his Southern Rock roots after an amazing 30-year career.

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