First time hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird"

boing
21

Leave him enjoy. Best that he just never know about the plane crash.

1 Like
22

You need to relisten the they lyrics of Sweet Home Alabama and the lyrics are quite the opposite. It is reply to Southern Man from Neil Young saying not everyone in the south is a racist shit.

5 Likes
23

♪♫♬Oh, I’m as sick as a dog now…♪♩♪

3 Likes
24

Well, let’s take a look at those lyrics:

In Birmingham they love the Gov’nor, boo hoo ooo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth

That Gov’nor was George Wallace, whose great applause-getting line was I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Tell us again how this song isn’t (to repurpose your words) racist shit.

1 Like
25

"A lot of people believed in segregation and all that. We didn’t. We put the ‘boo, boo, boo’ there saying, ‘We don’t like Wallace,’ " Rossington said. But he also added that there were “a lot of different interpretations. I’m sure if you asked the other guys who are not with us anymore and are up in rock and roll heaven, they have their story of how it came about.”

It’s nuanced, and there are many more clear-cut racists out there.

Racists who claim Lynyrd Skynyrd are racist.

3 Likes
26

Whaddaya mean, ‘jokingly request’?

1 Like
27

Well, the other interpretation of that verse is that they don’t like George Wallace (hence the “boo, boo, boo”) and opposed him, but don’t bear any more responsibility for his actions than northerners do for Nixon and Watergate.

9 Likes
28

For me the song always had a sarcastic undertone. I always took it as a mockery of exactly these southerners. But as I said above: You can’t control how the song is interpreted, especially when the irony is lost on those targeted by it.

2 Likes
29

He had the same experience I do listening to that song… “Hmm… yeah, OK breakup tune…getting repetitive but we’ll see where this goes… oh, picking up… jamming out a bit, fine g’head… hey, are we done with this jam yet? … Hello?.. Think we got it!.. Guys let’s wrap this up, okay! DUDE, YOU DONE?! WTF?! Okay, that was a song that could have ended well enough half way through.”

1 Like
30

This guy listening to RATM for the first time is my go-to:

6 Likes
31

from

6 Likes
32

A variation on this theme is vocal coach reacting to _______ .

2 Likes
33

Artistic License Not Hate

or something like that.

image

That sure looks like hate back there to me. The band may be a bit nuanced about it’s use but, their audience sure AF isn’t.

5 Likes
34

To be fair, “their audience” includes folks like Neil Young and the people you’re conversing with here on BB. Skynyrd made some incredible music that contains some complicated politics. There’s some room for nuance there.

8 Likes
35

I don’t think the Confederate flag can or should be reclaimed for any use. It’s a symbol above all of a failed slaver’s rebellion and most often pushed by modern racist nostalgics.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t some people trying to make it stand for more than slavery in the 1970s.

There are a lot of racist Skynyrd fans. There are also racist fans of Depeche Mode and Taylor Swift.

5 Likes
37

Yeah, I think anyone who thinks the song promotes racism as its first mission is dreaming, or racist, or both. Having said that, it’s still always felt like left-ish neutrality at best.

It is crypto-progressive against Wallace. Great, but there are great songs that don’t leave everyone confused about whether the band supports racism. This one spends more time defending the reputation of the South, than just singing the kind of song that proves the South cares more than about its reputation. (Waylon Jenning’s America did the same kind of thing without sounding super-defensive.)

It’s a solidly built song that irritates me for it’s failure to be clear and better. Another song that makes me feel the same way is Minor Threat’s Guilty of Being White which misses the point so hard that I’m surprised they don’t use it at KKK rallies.

3 Likes
38

That’s a fair take. Personally I like their anti-gun song much better. Alas no links as I am on the phone and lazy.

2 Likes
39

While I’m sitting here complaining that they were making weak political stands, I realized they were on the charts at the time. I’m struggling to find any trace of an explicit political stand taken in any of this:

https://www.billboard.com/charts

2 Likes
40

I am sort of sorry for derailing the discussion with my own personal distaste for “Sweet Home Alabama” and its superficial support of George Wallace, the infamous governor. It doesn’t really have all that much to do with “Freebird”, other than that I feel no desire to have anything to do with the band. They are in the same pile as Ted Nugent in my personal rating.

And yes, I am well aware that musical geniuses can be real flaming assholes. After all, I lived in Bayreuth, home of the Richard Wagner festival and that guy was one of the biggest assholes around. And, now that I think of it, a guy whose works also were overly long.

4 Likes
41

Here’s that one. Just as good, and musically a far better song IMHO.

Free Bird is the kind of song that as a musician I can recognize the craftsmanship of it but as a listener I have little interest in slogging through the whole thing, so the extent that I’ve only ever done so once. Anything from Dark Side of the Moon on the other hand I’m here for. Different strokes.

6 Likes