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Kid Rock's 2008 song "All Summer Long" interpolates "Sweet Home Alabama" on the chorus and uses the guitar solo and piano outro, as well as the "turn it up" shout before the guitar solo; Billy Powell is featured on the track. "All Summer Long" also samples Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London", which has similar chord progression to "Sweet Home Alabama". Consuming that many calories required activity, so that morning we did what we always do — we took a long walk, this time up on the "mountain" as we call the steep, rising slope of Monte Sano, which you can see from Mother's backyard.
Not long after three of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd tragically died in a plane crash in 1977, Young performed a medley of "Alabama" and "Sweet Home Alabama" as a tribute. According to Rolling Stone, he's never played "Alabama" again since. But others interpreted the lyrics as a reminder to Young that not all Southerners are the same. "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," Van Zant later said. The portion of the song referring to Governor George Wallace in particular made some believe that Lynyrd Skynyrd disagreed with desegregation, seeing as how the governor stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".
Sweet Home Alabama: Southern Rock Songs
"Southern man better keep your head," went the chorus of the former. "Don't forget what your good book said/ Southern change gonna come at last/ Now your crosses are burning fast." Young had expressed his disappointment with racism in the South in two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama". The song is credited to Matthew Shafer, Waddy Wachtel, R.J. Ritchie, Leroy Marinell, Warren Zevon, Edward King, Gary Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant. Since "All Summer Long"'s release, the original song has also charted at number 44 on the UK Singles Chart.
The 2002 hit movie Sweet Home Alabama stars Reese Witherspoon as Melanie Carmichael, Josh Lucas as Jake Perry, Patrick Dempsey as Andrew Hennings, and Candice Bergen as Mayor Kate Hennings—Andrew's intimidating and oftentimes controlling mom. While you might think this all-star cast is enough to secure blockbuster success, it is really the script that the film is best known for. Sometimes cheesy ("What'd you want to marry me for anyhow?") and sometimes razor-sharp ("You can't ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean"), it always captures that unmistakable charm of something said with a Southern accent. For that reason, it has climbed the ranks as one of the most quotable movies out there.
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The light, that wonderful golden light, played across the forests and the rocks. The day was so sunny, so clear that I can remember every vista, every glorious blue-sky moment. We gazed into a rich valley of trees from the rock wall of the overlook in the picnic grounds and walked across a dry creek bed, stubbing our toes on sharp-pointed Alabama shale.
We had toured there, going all around playing clubs and National Guard armories. When we were out in the country driving all the time, we would listen to the radio. Neil Young had “Southern Man,” and it was kind of cutting the South down.
Five Unique State Park Stays in the South
It’s a great thing to have to play a song that people like so much. We just had a dream that we could make it in a band and it came true. Everyone thought it was about Neil Young, but it was more about Alabama.
According to Rolling Stone, he was even rumored to have been buried in it. Neil Young, too, owned a Lynyrd Skynyrd Florida Whiskey shirt, and once said, "I'd rather play 'Sweet Home Alabama' than 'Southern Man' anytime." The story of "Sweet Home Alabama" begins not in Alabama but in Jacksonville, Florida. That's where, in 1964, five teenagers formed what would eventually become the iconic rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. It wasn't until five years after getting together that they finally settled on the name Lynyrd Skynyrd though, after their former P.E. Teacher Leonard Skinner who penalized guitarist Gary Rossington for his long hair because it was against the high school's policy.
This band was always about just playing the music, but those songs have become a soundtrack to a lot of people’s lives. “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. If you can write a song that makes people have emotions and show their feelings, that’s a powerful thing and a beautiful thing. Now there are people saying roll tide with it and there is a new generation who hears it and relates.
We travel all over the world and it seems like the South is the place where the people are nicest and they think of the fellow man more. 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. The teenager’s shaggy mop was a brazen violation of Robert E. Lee High School’s dress code. 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. Lynyrd Skynyrd (vowels changed “to protect the guilty”) was born. It seemed like you could see North Alabama with a wide-angle lens from that spot.
"Indian Love Call" was one of our favorites, but we liked other, more "modern" songs, too. They were complex, and we spent a lot of time practicing to get the parts exactly right. My cousin Linda and her husband drove through Cincinnati from Detroit and picked me up on Friday morning, and we set off with high energy. We were glad to see each other and instantly at ease, like slipping into warm bath water. This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. In May 2006, National Review ranked the song #4 on its list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs.
Monte Sano is part of the foothills of the Sand Mountains, and according to a local legend an Indian maiden jumped to her death from its peak, but I can't remember why. Looking back, we were as amazed that we'd mastered these intricate pieces as we were surprised to have survived as a family through geographical separations, marriages and the deaths of our elders. Everyone else drifted in a few minutes later, and all of us — sisters and cousins, nephews, nieces and grandchildren, hugging and kissing — moved on up the hill to my sister's house for dinner.
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