LYNYRD SKYNYRD NEIL YOUNG FREE
The jumbled history of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the band’s relationship with both the Old South and the New South are an aging quilt, but the threads of that quilt are being disturbingly re-spun in support for Trump by reinvigorated white nationalists in the U.S.Īnd while conservatives have long clung to “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” as right-wing anthems, Republicans have also co-opted Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”-seemingly (mis)understood with the same sort of empty-headedness I practiced as a redneck singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama” in the 1970s. The Southern-apologist strategy is alive and well in 2020 even as states have taken more aggressive approaches to renaming buildings and removing statues honoring Civil War figures who unequivocally were racists and slavery enablers. Over five decades, however, there really is nothing simple about that choice because it is 2020. Like others who replied, my first thought was there is no choice here it is Young because of the many problems surrounding Lynyrd Skynyrd, including “Sweet Home Alabama” and their embracing the Confederate Flag. At first, it seemed out of place in 2020.
Recently, I saw a post on social media asking people to choose between Neil Young or Lynyrd Skynyrd. In Young, the Self I constructed out of the shell that chose to walk away from my racist upbringing found the music and lyrics that resonated with the person I wanted to become. It took a great deal of critical introspection for me to slay that past, deconstruct and then reject it, and it took too much time for that process, a transition occurring while I was an undergraduate (a racial awakening overlapping with many nights at O’Sullivan’s singing along to “Free Bird” and holding a long-neck Budweiser). Both are steeped in a sort of jumbled logic about tradition and pride that refuses to acknowledge the harsh realities of racism that created the South but also lingers in the South and its traditions (such as the Confederate Flag and idealized mythologies about Dixie and the Lost Cause whitewashing of the Civil War). I was born and raised in the racist, redneck Southern culture that embraced and celebrated Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Confederate Flag. Young has noted that his songs may have painted with too broad a brush, but Lynyrd Skynyrd’s revisionist explanations stretch credulity.īoth the tension and controversy surrounding Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd were grounded in a sort of regionalized ideological divide that remains today-Young as the liberal Canadian and Lynyrd Skynyrd as the conservative Southerners. Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama,” of course, took square aim at those Southern sins, prompting (as some have tried to clarify) Lynyrd Skynyrd to write “Sweet Home Alabama” as a rebuttal anthem along the lines of “Not all Southerners.” While the band’s relationship with the Confederate Flag is complicated, Lynyrd Skynyrd as a band and MCA Records were certainly intentional about fostering a strong relationship with some of the worst realities about Southern pride. Young sing about her (Southern man)Ī Southern man don’t need him around, anyhowĪnd that band’s iconic single cover art also sent a pretty strong symbolic message: The songs that are permanently intertwined are Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama” (which Young has distanced himself from in moments of self-criticism) that spurred Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” with the infamous lines: But like most people, I was always aware of the so-called feud between Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. My deep and careful affection for Neil Young did not develop until the 1980s. I was a very conflicted, insecure, and anxious-to-near-paralysis teenager, and my musical tastes reflected the jumble of the mindlessness (Tom Petty, Eagles) with my late-to-develop serious interest in music that I didn’t just know the lyrics, but began to think about their implications (Parliament, Pink Floyd). I never owned a Lynyrd Skynyrd album, but I knew every word to both songs and gleefully (and mindlessly) sang along to them in my car or holding a long-neck Budweiser on 25-cent beer night at O’Sullivan’s. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” were persistent background music on the radio and in dance clubs well into my college life. My empty-headed adolescence spanned the 1970s-I turned 18 and graduated high school in 1979-in rural upstate South Carolina, only about 25 minutes away from where I live now. Lynyrd Skynyrd feud is as much a debate as anything. “Harlem,” Langston Hughes The Neil Young v.
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