The session men there-a group of musicians known as the Swampers because they sounded like they were playing swamp music-perfected a bluesy, authentic sound that backed a staggering number of rock, soul, blues, and country hits in the 1960s and '70s. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was a tiny recording studio in a small town in northern Alabama that had an outsized impact on modern music. The last verse of "Sweet Home Alabama" gets a lot less attention than the controversial earlier bits that deal with Neil Young, George Wallace, and Watergate, but Ronnie Van Zant's shoutout to "the Swampers" in Muscle Shoals refers to another profound influence on the band's sound. (Ronnie Van Zant said he owned every record Neil Young ever released.) Lynyrd Skynyrd also loved his music, and the band's grungy, straightforward, hard-rocking sound owes something to the countless hours they spent listening to Young's work with Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, and as a solo artist. Young's strident criticism of southern racism prompted Skynyrd's response in "Sweet Home Alabama," but Young's influence on the band wasn't limited only to disputatious lyrical content. Young offered a medley of “Alabama” and “Sweet Home Alabama” as an emotional tribute to the group weeks after the incident.Influences on Lynyrd Skynyrd Influenced by Lynyrd Skynyrd The most obvious influences for "Sweet Home Alabama" are invoked in the song itself-Neil Young's social criticism tunes "Alabama" and "Southern Man," and the music of the Muscle Shoals session musicians known as the Swampers. This wasn’t possible, however, as a tragic plane crash claimed the lives of Ronnie and other members of the group before they had the chance to touch the material. Whether if this was just a case of backpedaling or is actually the truth, all was well in the fact that the two parties have made up.Īfter making up, Young sent Lynyrd Skynyrd a demo of “Powderfinger”, which he allowed the band to record on their next album.
The folk rocker also took the song positively, praising it for its content and musicality. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.”
I don’t like my words when I listen to it. “ ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. Young, realizing that his point wasn’t received clearly by the listeners, apologized for how he wrote his songs in the 2013 autobiography Waging Heavy Peace. “I hope Neil Young will remember, a southern man don’t need him around anyhow,” the lyric sings. The result was the classic hit “Sweet Home Alabama”, which was meant to irk Young more than it was to be a great rocker for casual consumption. Ronnie Van Zant felt obliged to represent his people and prove Young wrong. He explains that it was more of a personal idea rather than the state itself, and he only used it as a placeholder for whatever it pertained to. Young was in for strike two with “Alabama”, justifying that it wasn’t really about the state but he just felt like it was an appropriate title to get his message across. It was even brought up on his Decades record, the liner notes reading: “This song could have been written on a civil rights march after stopping off to watch Gone With The Wind at a local theatre.” Of course, Young tried to defend it and said that it was mostly about the Civil Rights Movement more than anything else, but it was too late.
0 kommentar(er)
