Because no matter where you’re from, sweet home Alabama or sweet home Florida or sweet home Arkansas, you can relate. It wasn’t cutting him down, it was cutting the song he wrote about the South down. We loved Neil Young and all the music he’s given the world. And so Ronnie just said, We need to show people how the real Alabama is. Neil Young had “Southern Man,” and it was kind of cutting the South down. When we were out in the country driving all the time, we would listen to the radio. The film tells the story of Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), a successful New York fashion designer who must return to her small hometown in Alabama to. We had toured there, going all around playing clubs and National Guard armories. The lyrics were a response to a Neil Young song, right?Įveryone thought it was about Neil Young, but it was more about Alabama. 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. What was the process like to write “Sweet Home Alabama”? Now there are people saying roll tide with it and there is a new generation who hears it and relates. If you can write a song that makes people have emotions and show their feelings, that’s a powerful thing and a beautiful thing. “Sweet Home Alabama” is still played on the radio a lot, and when people hear the first little beat of it, their reaction is to sing. This band was always about just playing the music, but those songs have become a soundtrack to a lot of people’s lives. No, of course not, we didn’t know at all. We spoke with Rossington-at age 63, the sole living original member who still plays with the band-about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s place in Southern music history.ĭid you ever think that half a century after Lynyrd Skynyrd formed, you’d still be playing “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama”? He’s still the frontman today, and the band recently released a live album, is working on a new studio album, and is on tour ( performing in Virginia next week). A decade later, the band reformed with Van Zant’s younger brother Johnny as the lead singer. In 1977, a tragic airplane crash in Mississippi killed three members of the band, including Van Zant. “Sweet Home Alabama,” off their 1974 Second Helping album, reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart-and earned an eternal place in the hearts of many Southerners, even beyond the borders of the Yellowhammer State.įrom left: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut and sophomore albums. They were an instant hit, opening for The Who on their Quadrophenia tour, and charting “Free Bird,” which would go on to become one of the most iconic power ballads of the era, if not all time. More than forty years ago, on August 13, 1973, Lynyrd Skynyrd released its debut self-titled album (helpfully subtitled “Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd.”). Lynyrd Skynyrd (vowels changed “to protect the guilty”) was born. When Rossington and some of his friends and schoolmates-singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins, drummer Bob Burns, and bassist Larry Junstrom-were searching for a new name for their fledgling rock group-they drew on memories of the incident. The teenager’s shaggy mop was a brazen violation of Robert E. Bound and determined to end their relationship once and for all, Melanie sneaks back home to Alabama to confront her past, only to discover that you can take the girl out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the girl.In the late 1960s, in Jacksonville, Florida, a clean-cut gym teacher named Leonard Skinner sent student Gary Rossington to the principal’s office because his hair touched his collar. But Melanie's past holds many secrets, including Jake (Josh Lucas), the redneck husband she married in high school, who refuses to divorce her. New York fashion designer Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) suddenly finds herself engaged to the city's most eligible bachelor.
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