After listening Sweet Home Alabama 10,000 times ...

Alabama?

Pocahontas?


no clue. i'm just a foreigner.

i think it just may have been about the south in general

in response to neil's southern man

"Southern Man"

Southern man
better keep your head
Don't forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man

I saw cotton
and I saw black
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin'
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?

Southern man
better keep your head
Don't forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man

Lily Belle,
your hair is golden brown
I've seen your black man
comin' round
Swear by God
I'm gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin'
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?




This is about racism in the American South. It makes references to slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.
Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" as a response to this. Young is mentioned in the line "I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don't need him around anyhow."

Lynyrd Skynyrd were big fans of Young. "Sweet Home Alabama" was meant as a good-natured answer to this, explaining the good things about Alabama.
Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt often wore Neil Young T-shirts while performing.

Director Jonathan Demme first cut the opening sequence of his movie Philadelphia to this in an effort to get Young to write a song like it for the film. Young gave him "Philadelphia," which he used over the end. Bruce Springsteen's contribution, "Streets Of Philadelphia," was used over the open.
Young wrote this in the Fillmore East dressing room in 1970. He was actually on the toilet in the dressing room when he came up with chord progression. (thanks, matt - Cranford, NJ)
In the liner notes for his greatest hits album Decade, Young wrote: "This song could have been written on a civil rights march after stopping off to watch Gone With The Wind at a local theater."
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=23

No I don't think it's Pocahontas (you dern ferginers) and I don't think it's nobody either.

Southern Man says:



Could Lily Belle be "her"?

Could that be Niel Young "putting her down"?

If so, and this might be a stretch, could "SHA" be defending slavery?

What other interpretation can you come up with?

Oh wow, dadpad! Thanks for the great research and answer!

Yeah Dadpad, that's some cool info!

Thanks a bunch for sharing :-D

her is the south.... I heard mr. young is their way of saying f**k you if you don't like us we don't need your canuck ass... don't try to make too much of it.... sometimes you just have to let art flow over you...

"Her" is the South! Yeah!!!! I get that. Okay.

I have let the art flow over me with this song so often lately (It is Mo's current favorite) that I really have to give myself something else to think about.

I like the song though so it's okayish to listen to it so much.



Can you think of any other song that mentions a singer of another song or references another song or was written in response to another song in the same way?

Range Life
Pavement

after the glow, the scene, the stage, the set
talk becomes slow but there's one thing i'll never forget:
hey, you gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent.
over the turnstile turn out in the traffic
there's ways of living it's the way i'm living
right or wrong, it's all that i can do,
and i wouldn't want to let you be

i want a range life, if i could settle down,
if i could settle down, then i would settle down
[x2]

run from the pigs, the fuzz, the cops, the heat
pass me your gloves, there's crime and it's never complete
until you snort it up or shoot it down
you're never gonna feel free
out on my skateboard the night is just hummin'
and the gum smacks are the pulse i'll follow if my walkman fades
but i've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame

don't worry- we're in no hurry
school's out, what did you expect?

i want a range life, if i could settle down,
if i could settle down, then i would settle down
[x2]

out on tour with the smashing pumpkins
nature kids, they don't have no function
i don't understand what they mean
and i could really give a f**k.
the stone temple pilots,
they're elegant bachelors
they're foxy to me are they foxy to you?
i will agree they deserve absolutely nothing
nothing more than me

dreamin' dream dream dream....

Acoustic Guitar
The Magnetic Fields

Acoustic Guitar,
I'm gonna make you a star,
Get your picture all over the world

Acoustic Guitar,
You can have your own car,
Just bring me back my girl

She always loved the sound of your strum
You made her think, maybe, I wasn't so dumb
She tends to faint at the sound of a drum
Cuz she's folk so play and maybe she'll come

Acoustic Guitar, how lovely you are
With your inlays of mother of pearl
Be a good guitar and you could go far
Just bring me back my girl

She always said that you were the one
That could make her move her cute little bum
You understand where she's coming from
Which I obviously don't, or she wouldn't be gone

Acoustic guitar, if you think I play hard
Well you could of belonged to Steve Earle
Or Charo OR GWAR, I could sell you tomorrow

So bring me back my girl
You'd better bring me back my girl

Well done, djjd! Very impressive.

Now I'm going to have to put my head to it.....

The only thing I can think of right now is Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" which says....



....refrencing Ronnie Specter.

i love both songs

their's a rumour that pavement got bounced from lollapalooza, after the pumpkins, who were a headline band took umbrage with their song

and as for the magnetic fields, my god, steve earle, charo and Gwar all in the same sentence, let alone the same song, it don't get better than that

one from warren zevon about lynard themselves and their famous song

Play It All Night Long
Warren Zevon

Grandpa pissed his pants again
He don't give a damn
Brother Billy has both guns drawn
He ain't been right since Vietnam

"Sweet home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long

Daddy's doing Sister Sally
Grandma's dying of cancer now
The cattle all have brucellosis
We'll get through somehow

"Sweet home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long

I'm going down to the Dew Drop Inn
See if I can drink enough
There ain't much to country living
Sweat, piss, jizz and blood

"Sweet home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long

I have never heard Sweet Home Alabama referred to as a 'good natured response''. I have always thought it was a quivering lip "Watch out, boy" aimed at Neil Young.

Joe(and yes, it may not have been written as a racist song, but the rednecks turned it into as racist a song as ever been sung)Nation

http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm

Okay.

Well crap.

What kind of can of worms have I opened for myself?

Mo just likes the guitar riffs.

I would have never really noticed the lyrics if I hadn't had to listen to it so much. I had absolutely no idea that it was considered a "racist anthem".

eBeth, that looks like a fascinating article. I'm cooking dinner right now so I'm going to have to come back to it.....

And honestly, I had no idea that so much had been written about this song.

Just got done reading and I'm amazed that I never knew all this!

Thanks for the link, Beth. Worth reading :-D

The hell of all of this is...

Ronnie Van Zant was a liberal.

He was a proud son of the south. A hard drinking, dope smoking, badass, with long hair in a time when that could get you killed in the south.

If you take the time to read all of his lyrics, you get a much better picture of what he was all about, without the modern spin put on him by the forces that be.

Check out "Saturday Night Special" for his take on guns.

"The Ballad of Curtis Lowe" for race relations.

"Workin' for MCA" for the music industry.

Ronnie was a liberal rebel in a way that's sorely needed now, and I have to think he's spinning in his grave, at what people make of him now.

Ronnie had no use for bullshit.

That was a great link, eBeth. Thanks!

I still have a lot of clicking around to do within the article. Interesting stuff.

Okay then. I guess I don't really have to worry what people might think of us blaring "SHA" over and over at Mo's insistance. I'll accept the "good natured" part of it.

Strange that it should become a conservative anthem, though. That is yet another aspect of the song I did not know about.

I'd never really paid attention to the lyrics until forced to listen so many times. I thought it said:

I heard Mr. Young sing about her.
I heard the needle pulled her down.

That's why I started wondering about "her" and who they might be talking about. When I looked up the actual lyrics I was surprised to see that it so directly addressed Neil Young.

Live and learn. Then relearn. And then repeat.

don't forget to rinse between repeats....