The hit led to two TV rock show offers, which the band turned down. "Sweet Home Alabama" was a major chart hit for a band whose previous singles had "lazily sauntered out into release with no particular intent". Then Ronnie wrote the lyrics and Ed and I wrote the music." Ronnie and I were sitting there, and he kept saying, 'play that again'. "It’s the little picking part and I kept playing it over and over when we were waiting on everyone to arrive for rehearsal. In an interview with Garden & Gun, Rossington explained the writing process. Sound off in comments below and tweet us | Read More…į*** Yeah It's Summer.None of the three writers of the song were from Alabama Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington were both born in Jacksonville, Florida, while Ed King was from Glendale, California. What do you think about Sweet home Alabama?
We just laughed like hell, and said Ain't that funny' … We love Neil Young, we love his music…" We didn't even think about it – the words just came out that way. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue," he wrote in his 2012 autobiography Waging Heavy Peace.īut, let's leave the final say to Van Zant-who is tragically unable to comment any further on the controversy, as he died in a plane crash on October 20th, 1977. We're southern rebels, but more than that, we know the difference between right and wrong."Įven Young himself claimed his lyrical takedown of the South was somewhat heavy handed.
Van Zant backed up that sentiment, explaining, “We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two. Don't condemn southerners now for what their ancestors did." However, once again, nuance is the key-as journalist Ross Warner wrote in Glide magazine, "When Skynyrd criticized Neil Young's Southern Man, it was for the sweeping generalization of all southerners as rednecks. The band was vocal about the origins of, and motivation for, the track. There's absolutely zero doubt Sweet Home Alabama was a revenge song-a rebuttal to Neil Young's Southern Man. In defense of Sweet Home Alabama point five: It was useful at first, but by now it's embarrassing except inĮurope, where they really like all that stuff because they think it's macho American," he said, going on to claim that initially it wasīearable to be perceived as rednecks, but a whole different matter to subsequently be categorized as racists. “That was strictly an MCA gimmick to start us off with some label. Now, there's no doubting the band was proud to be southern, and that the musicians frequently played up to their “good old boys" image-however, as Van Zant confessed in 1975, the whole confederate flag thing was solely down to their record company, not their own, personal, choice. The fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd was known to play with a confederate flag in the background has only added fuel to the “they must be racist" fire.īut, much like how the American flag emblazoned all over Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA cover helped wrongly convince people the song was a patriotic anthem-when in actuality it was a scathing takedown of the American government over how they mistreated Vietnam veterans-it seems Lynyrd Skynyrd also did not stand firmly for the values a flag is supposed to convey.
In defense of Sweet Home Alabama point four: Others however, see it as as a nod to the civil rights movement, specifically the infamous march from Selma to Montgomery, led by Martin Luther King. Some take the line as the band's clear support for the laws and the racial caste system they maintained. In defense of Sweet Home Alabama point three:įor those who don't know-Montgomery, the Alabama state capital, is credited with being the catalyst for the American civil rights movement-its where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of a bus in 1955, and the city was a staunch enforcer of the Jim Crow racial segregation laws.