"What they were trying to do when they wrote it was say, 'Everybody's talking about the South, but there are some wonderful things about the South,' " he says. He's a composer and professor of music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who recently arranged the song for marching band and symphony orchestra. I don't think you can go to a party and play that song without everybody singing along."ĭr. "I feel like that personifies a lot of America. "It's honestly an American anthem - it really is," he told NPR. At a concert featuring the reconstituted Lynyrd Skynyrd in Kansas City, fan Nick Paul was tailgating outside before the show. Some still insist that Southern pride, absent the racism, is what "Sweet Home Alabama" is all about. I asked Clayton if appearing on the record was a way of laying claim to it - of saying, "My experience is part of the Alabama experience as well." Her response? "Absolutely. And I went on and on and on."Īnd yet, there she is on the finished track. I said I don't want to sing anything to do with Alabama. "I said four little girls lost their lives, and it just broke everyone's heart. She remembers her reaction when she got the call to do the "Sweet Home Alabama" session: "I really don't want to sing anything about Alabama after what happened in Alabama."Ĭlayton is African-American, and says she could not stop thinking about the infamous 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in Birmingham. She was an in-demand background vocalist who famously recorded with The Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker and Ray Charles. Ronnie Van Zant was among the dead, and he remains the ghost in the room when the intent of the song is discussed.ĭeceptive Cadence How The 'New World' Symphony Introduced American Music To Itselfįor Merry Clayton, the song's meaning was crystal clear. In 1977 - just three years after the song hit the airwaves - three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their road manager, as well as a pilot and copilot, died when their chartered plane went down. That's another thing: The definitive take on the meaning of "Sweet Home Alabama" may have left the world decades ago.
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." But he also added that there were "a lot of different interpretations. We put the 'boo, boo, boo' there saying, 'We don't like Wallace,' " Rossington said.
"A lot of people believed in segregation and all that. Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington co-wrote "Sweet Home Alabama," and in the Showtime film he addressed that line. In 1963, when he was elected to his first term, Wallace famously said, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." "In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo! boo! boo!) It's an integral part of our nation's history." "At the root of it is a very human dilemma of bigotry and stereotyping," Kemp says. Mark Kemp, originally from Ashboro, N.C., offers one perspective he's the author of a book called Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South, a memoir about his relationship with rock and roll from the region. And in the documentary, Van Zant offered this: "Everybody thinks we're a bunch of drunken rednecks. Back then, Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in front of a large Confederate flag - at the suggestion of its record label.
" From what I'm told you were born in Canada."Įven as the song was positioned to dispel some stereotypes of the South, the band was embracing others. "What are you talking about, you know?" Van Zant said.
They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.A Southern man don't need him around, anyhow I don’t like my words when I listen to it.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD NEIL YOUNG FULL
In his 2012 biography Waging Heavy Peace, Young finally recanted “Southern Man,” a full thirty-five years after LS frontman Ronnie Vant Zant’s death. People often believe Lynyrd Skynyrd to be typical, Southern Conservatives because of where they come from, but let’s keep in mind here that these guys named their band after a gym teacher who thought they were flowery hippies who needed to cut their hair. Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” as a response to “Southern Man” and as a way to show rock fans that the South was not the racist land of protracted slavery that Canadians at the time felt that it was. On his 1970 album After the Gold Rush, Neil Young wrote a song called “Southern Man,” which described the racism in the South as he saw it after visiting there.
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