It doesn't matter where you come from: You know the song "Sweet Home Alabama." The lyrics are probably burned in your brain, and we doubt you can resist the urge to dance when that main guitar riff starts up. But do you know the true meaning behind the Southern anthem's words?
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.
In 1972, the band, then comprised of lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, drummer Bob Burns, guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, bassist Leon Wilkeson, and keyboardist Billy Powell released their first self-titled album, followed by another, Second Helping, in 1974. The first track was a huge hit. Called "Sweet Home Alabama," the single reached number eight on U.S. charts—its popularity due, at least in part, to a controversy hidden in the verses.
Well, maybe hidden isn't the right word. Lynyrd Skynyrd directly name-dropped their supposed adversary, Neil Young, in the song.
Young had expressed his disappointment with racism in the South in two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama".
"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."
"Sweet Home Alabama" was allegedly a response to those words.
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".
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. "We're Southern rebels but, more than that, we know the difference between right and wrong." In fact, those "boos" are thought to imply that the band disagreed with Wallace's politics—and that bit about Watergate seems to be a pointed remark about the hypocrisy of the North, which had its own problems, too.
By all accounts, there was no real "feud" between the artists. "We wrote 'Sweet Home Alabama' as a joke," Van Zant clarified a few years following the release. "We didn't even think about it. The words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell and said, 'Ain't that funny.' We love Neil Young. We love his music."
Van Zant grew up listening to Young and regularly rocked a "Tonight's the Night" t-shirt—most notably, on the cover of the band's album Street Survivors. 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."
And for what it's worth, Young came to regret the song that started it all. "'Alabama' richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record," he wrote in his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, in 2012. "I don't like my words when I listen to it today. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, too easy to misconstrue."
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.
Rossington, the sole remaining original band member, gave the last word on the matter in an interview with Garden & Gun in 2015. "Everyone thought it was about Neil Young, but it was more about Alabama," he said. "We had toured there, going all around playing clubs and National Guard armories. Everyone was real nice. 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. And so Ronnie just said, 'We need to show people how the real Alabama is.'"
"We loved Neil Young and all the music he's given the world. We still love him today. It wasn't cutting him down, it was cutting the song he wrote about the South down. Ronnie painted a picture everyone liked. Because no matter where you're from, sweet home Alabama or sweet home Florida or sweet home Arkansas, you can relate."
