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"We wrote 'Sweet Home Alabama' as a joke," Van Zant clarified a few years following the release. "We didn't even think about it. The words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell and said, 'Ain't that funny.' We love Neil Young. We love his music." Lynyrd Skynyrd had recorded demos in Muscle Shoals with Johnson as a producer/recording engineer in 1971 and 1972, and Johnson helped refine many of the songs on the Pronounced album.
Not long after three of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd tragically died in a plane crash in 1977, Young performed a medley of "Alabama" and "Sweet Home Alabama" as a tribute. According to Rolling Stone, he's never played "Alabama" again since. But others interpreted the lyrics as a reminder to Young that not all Southerners are the same. "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," Van Zant later said. The portion of the song referring to Governor George Wallace in particular made some believe that Lynyrd Skynyrd disagreed with desegregation, seeing as how the governor stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".
Sweet Home Alabama: Southern Rock Songs
"Southern man better keep your head," went the chorus of the former. "Don't forget what your good book said/ Southern change gonna come at last/ Now your crosses are burning fast." Young had expressed his disappointment with racism in the South in two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama". The song is credited to Matthew Shafer, Waddy Wachtel, R.J. Ritchie, Leroy Marinell, Warren Zevon, Edward King, Gary Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant. Since "All Summer Long"'s release, the original song has also charted at number 44 on the UK Singles Chart.
We loved Neil Young and all the music he’s given the world. It wasn’t cutting him down, it was cutting the song he wrote about the South down. Because no matter where you’re from, sweet home Alabama or sweet home Florida or sweet home Arkansas, you can relate. We spoke with Rossington—at age 63, the sole living original member who still plays with the band—about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s place in Southern music history. More than forty years ago, on August 13, 1973, Lynyrd Skynyrd released its debut self-titled album (helpfully subtitled “Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd.”). They were an instant hit, opening for The Who on their Quadrophenia tour, and charting “Free Bird,” which would go on to become one of the most iconic power ballads of the era, if not all time.
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The light, that wonderful golden light, played across the forests and the rocks. The day was so sunny, so clear that I can remember every vista, every glorious blue-sky moment. We gazed into a rich valley of trees from the rock wall of the overlook in the picnic grounds and walked across a dry creek bed, stubbing our toes on sharp-pointed Alabama shale.
We had toured there, going all around playing clubs and National Guard armories. When we were out in the country driving all the time, we would listen to the radio. Neil Young had “Southern Man,” and it was kind of cutting the South down.
Five Unique State Park Stays in the South
"The Swampers" is a reference to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. These musicians, who crafted the "Muscle Shoals Sound", were inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995 for a Lifework Award for Non-Performing Achievement and into the Musicians' Hall of Fame in 2008. The nickname "The Swampers" was coined by producer Denny Cordell during a recording session by singer/songwriter Leon Russell, in reference to the band's "swampy" sound. I love being Southern because of the people and the fans we have.
Ronnie and I were sitting there, and he kept saying, play that again. The next morning she made her country breakfast, with sausage, country ham and bacon accompanied by eggs scrambled so lightly they had to be anchored to our plates with biscuits and two kinds of gravy. We sang complexly written and arranged music by Broadway songwriters with four- or five-part harmonies. In those days, music stores were everywhere, and they sold a lot of arrangements for small vocal groups, pieces from composers like Sigmund Romberg and Rodgers and Hart.
Best Southern Soup Recipes
Everybody pitched in with the work; when we were done, we moved through the house like nomads, lighting in different places for a time, talking to first one, then another. When we got to Alabama, Mother was in her kitchen just like I'd imagined her, smelling like Ivory soap and Jergens lotion. Her great-grandson was in the backyard looking for the rabbit who lives there. "Some people might call 'em spoiled, but I think that these almost ruined ones sometimes make the sweetest jam."
We travel all over the world and it seems like the South is the place where the people are nicest and they think of the fellow man more. In the late 1960s, in Jacksonville, Florida, a clean-cut gym teacher named Leonard Skinner sent student Gary Rossington to the principal’s office because his hair touched his collar. The teenager’s shaggy mop was a brazen violation of Robert E. Lee High School’s dress code. When Rossington and some of his friends and schoolmates—singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins, drummer Bob Burns, and bassist Larry Junstrom—were searching for a new name for their fledgling rock group—they drew on memories of the incident. Lynyrd Skynyrd (vowels changed “to protect the guilty”) was born. It seemed like you could see North Alabama with a wide-angle lens from that spot.
"Indian Love Call" was one of our favorites, but we liked other, more "modern" songs, too. They were complex, and we spent a lot of time practicing to get the parts exactly right. My cousin Linda and her husband drove through Cincinnati from Detroit and picked me up on Friday morning, and we set off with high energy. We were glad to see each other and instantly at ease, like slipping into warm bath water. This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. In May 2006, National Review ranked the song #4 on its list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs.
The band remains connected to Muscle Shoals, where it has recorded on numerous occasions and where it regularly performs during concert tours.
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