If you think this stuff is good, you have drunk the Koolade, my friend. So they wrote this silly song, which many musicians considered to be pretty good. Nevertheless, this didn't sit well with the White boys of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Neil Young may be Canadian but he sure knows a thing or two about the South. The motivation behind lyrics was a response to Neil Young who wrote "Alabama" and "Southern Man." Both of these songs CORRECTLY explore the South's racism toward Black Americans. I mean, when you read the lyrics you'll probably be wondering to yourself if it was written by a 10 year racist who's dying to get his racism out of his chest. I, on the other hand, believe it's got a nice guitar solo, but lyrically, the song is garbage. "Sweet Home Alabama" is considered by many to be the best song off of their second album, Second Helping. Lynyrd Skynyrd, too, rose to fame in the mid 1970s with their debut album, Pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd. These themes may not be explicitly stated in new songs, but they were very apparent when the genre was at its peak in the 1970s. Themes of a typical southern rock song include condoning slavery and segregation, use of the confederate flag, condescending upon Black people, and the general backward-thinking mentality. What is southern rock music, you might ask? Well, it's just a sub-genre of rock music with a little more emphasis on the southern culture of the United States. Even though some of it was straightforward, Sweet Home… was in a class of its own.Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for popularizing southern rock. We never cared that much about being tagged as a ‘southern rock’ band. For a band who had begun in the late 60s it was, says Powell, “like overnight success. This was their first and biggest US hit single. When Skynyrd released Sweet Home Alabama in 1974, it tore into the US Top 10. “I’ve actually performed it live a couple of times myself.” “Shit, I think Sweet Home Alabama is a great song,” he once said. Skynyrd’s impassioned defence of the south even caught the ear of Neil Young. He had a great way with a simple story, a song you could relate to.” He was all about the working-class man, the everyday guy in the street. Rossington: “Ronnie’s lyrics could be very profound. And if the band lost the groove the next day, the song would be lost.
I asked him once how he remembered the lyrics and he told me he just put the syllables together that fit into the groove of the music. King was similarly astonished: “It was always in his head. Then he’d memorise it I never saw him write anything down.” “He had this ability to immediately write lyrics to each idea of every song. “Ronnie was one of the most gifted lyricists I ever knew,” keyboard player Billy Powell told Classic Rock in one of his very last interviews. Once Van Zant had added the lyrics, Skynyrd had a ready-made Confederate classic. Kooper says he’s grown to like the solos since.” Though they were overdubs, I’d recorded them both on the first take anyway with no mistakes. But the guys in the band, being from the south and believing in superstition and dreams, told Kooper the solos needed to stay as I’d played them. “Four days later, in the studio,” King continues, “Al told me he couldn’t use the solos because I had played them in the wrong key. Producer Al Kooper had his reservations, though. At rehearsal the next day I just plugged the solos into the spots where we had rehearsed them and they fit perfectly.” I immediately woke up, got the guitar and started playing what I’d seen in the dream. The night after we wrote Sweet Home Alabama I had a dream in which I played both the short and long solos.
King says the song took just half-an-hour to write, but the solos had an altogether more mystic origin: “I used to sleep with my guitar next to the bed. But Gary’s part was the catalyst that started the ball rolling.”
“I put my guitar part on top of his as a counterpoint. “Gary was playing a pattern that you can hear behind the verses,” King says. Ed King had become intrigued by a guitar rhythm that Rossington had been tinkering with in the studio.
What really propels Sweet Home Alabama is its burning guitar riff. We didn’t know that song would be so big, or turn into such a big deal with Neil Young fans.” Those lines about Southern Man were almost like a play on words. “Ronnie used to wear Neil Young T-shirts all the time. Gary Rossington, the only surviving original member in the current Skynyrd line-up, is keen to play down any talk of a Neil Young stand-off.
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