Free Bird
| "Free Bird" | |
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| Song |
"Free Bird" is a power ballad by American Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Despite not being their biggest hit (that honor goes to "Sweet Home Alabama"), the song has gained a prominent place in music history over the years next to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" , The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a classic rock radio staple.
History
Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins came up with the basic chord sequence for "Free Bird" in 1969, when he would play it at rehearsals and other band hangouts. Vocalist Ronnie Van Zant thought at first that, "It had too many chords to write lyrics for it", Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington commented in an interview with Blender, "but after a few months, we were sitting around, and he asked Allen to play those chords again. After about 20 minutes, Ronnie started singing, ’If I leave here tomorrow,’ and it fit great. It wasn't anything heavy—just a love song about leavin' town, time to move on."
They put together a rough version of the song, and added it to their live playlist, playing it at bars and clubs in the South. "At first, we didn’t have the fast part at the end, with the three guitars jamming," Rossington comments. "It was after playing it in clubs, where we needed to extend the material because we didn't have enough songs, that it started to evolve. I think I came up with the three chords at the end, so Allen could play some lead." Skynyrd first recorded the song in Jacksonville, Florida but "that didn’t have Billy Powell's piano part on it, because Billy wasn't in the band," Rossington continues. "He was our roadie back then. After about a year with us, he showed us how he played Free Bird on the piano, and it was beautiful. So we got him in the band." At live shows, the song took on a special poignancy after October 1971, when Duane Allman, leader of The Allman Brothers Band, was killed in a motorcycle crash. "It wasn’t written as a tribute to Duane Allman, but when we would play it, we would dedicate it to Duane, and Ronnie would say, ’He’s a free bird now’", says Rossington.
As the song became popular at their performances, Skynyrd decided to re-record it now with Powell's piano part in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. They included this recording on a demo. Alan Walden, Skynyrd’s manager at the time, recollects how the song got rejected by nine record companies to Blender: "Atlantic, Columbia, Warners, A&M, RCA, Epic, Elektra, Polydor and even Capricorn all passed after hearing ’Free Bird,’ ’Gimme Three Steps,’ ’Simple Man,’ ’I Ain’t the One’ and about 12 other originals. Their comments were, ’They sound too much like the Allman Brothers!’" Finally in 1972 they signed with MCA, after producer Al Kooper witnessed them perform in Atlanta, Georgia. "As far as I was concerned, they were green, recording wise," Kooper remembers. "I taught them how to use the studio."
Kooper was particularly interested in polishing up "Free Bird," but he met with some hostility from the band. In 1976, Van Zant told Britain's Melody Maker that Skynyrd and Kooper fought incessantly: "Al was very hard to get along with in the studio. It had to be his way, or that was it. No compromise, and that just wasn’t cuttin’ it with us." Even so, Rossington acknowledges that Kooper made some significant contributions to the song. "Al put the organ on the front, which was a very good idea. He also helped me get the sound of the delayed slide guitar that I play –it’s actually me playing the same thing twice, recording one on top of the other, so it sounds kind of slurry, echoey."
What had begun as a simple love song had become a baroque masterpiece featuring detailed keyboard parts, studio trickery and an extended triple-guitar jam session that added up to an uncommercial 9 minutes. Against the band's wishes, MCA edited the song down to four minutes for its radio release in 1973, although, as Rossington points out, many FM stations ignored it and played the full-length version from the album. "Free Bird" was a hit on FM radio, but failed to make the pop charts in its original run. After the single "Sweet Home Alabama" caught the public's attention and soared the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1974, "Free Bird" was re-released and reached #19 in January 1975. A live recording was released as a single in 1976, reaching #38 on the charts.
After the tragic plane crash in 1977 that killed Van Zant and other band members, Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded. Collins and Skynyrd co-guitarist Gary Rossington formed The Rossington-Collins Band, performing "Free Bird" without vocals as a tribute to Van Zant. The vocal version returned to the live arena in 1987 when Skynyrd reunited with new lead singer, Van Zant's youngest brother Johnny Van Zant.
Reception
"Free Bird" is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time, included in such lists as The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, and the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song—half ballad, half up-tempo guitar boogie—quickly became a staple for Lynyrd Skynyrd at their live performances. It is perhaps most recognized for its nearly five-minute triple guitar solo section that closes it out, often turning into an extended jam session at concerts. The band would consistently play it as the last song of every show, as it was arguably their biggest crowd pleaser. While the live version as played by the original band would include soloing by Gary Rossington and third guitarist Ed King as well as Allen Collins, the recorded version is triple-tracked by Collins alone. Gary Rossington plays the slide-guitar part in the song's first half. The song has also been turned into a tribute song after the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt.
Popular culture cliché
The popular culture cliché of "Free Bird" is the shouting of a request to hear the song by audience members at almost any concert, regardless of the performer or style of music. This can be traced back to Skynyrd's first live album, 1976's One More From The Road. This is due to the fact that Skynyrd did not play the song during the main portion of the concert, or even in the encore performance. Instead they saved it for their second encore. After leaving the stage following the first encore of the concert, the crowd was riled by the apparent omission of Skynyrd's signature song. The crowd then began chanting "Free Bird, Free Bird ...". No one left the auditorium. The band then returned to the stage for a second encore and upon taking taking the microphone Van Zant asked the crowd, "What song is it that you wanna hear?", which was immediately followed by several more shouts of "Free Bird". This interaction is recorded as an intro to the song on the album, and the band responded with a 14-minute version of the song.
One example is at a Nirvana concert, the first live performance of their hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on April 17, 1991 at the OK Hotel in Seattle, Washington. Frontman Kurt Cobain says "This song is called 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'"; a crowd member yells "FREE BIRD!" immediately before the song begins. Some artists have actually played the song or a version of it if it's shouted at them. Ben Folds for example has been known to play some of the song on piano and part of the guitar solo on a mouth organ and Phish performed it a cappella. Mike Doughty refuses to perform the song, and insisted on his live album Smofe and Smang that audiences should request The Weather Girls's "It's Raining Men" instead. Doughty then refuses to play "It's Raining Men," as he claims he does not know how. Comedian Bill Hicks once launched into an angry tirade against an audience member who shouted "Free Bird" at one of his gigs, calling the song's title "the mantra of the moron" and eliciting the now infamous outburst: "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever; kill everyone, Adolf, kill them all!"
The song is also featured at the end of the film "The Devil's Rejects." The song is perfectly synchronized with the three murderers' actions. As they are dozing off in the car, the ballad began. As the three surviving murderers are blocked by a police barricade, they begin to shoot and drive full throttle at the cars. It is at that exact moment the song speeds up to the fast guitar solo. This finale of the movie is done in complete slo-mo to stay with the pace of the song. Another use of the song in film occurs in Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown"... a great moment similar to the "Danke Shoen" / "Twist and Shout" scene in "Ferris Beuller's Day Off."
Even the avant-garde Blue Man Group gets into the act. After they play riffs from Devo's "Whip It" and other rock songs on their plastic-tubing instruments, an audience member shouts out "Free Bird." Blue Man's back up band starts to play the song, the Blue Men sway to the rhythm, and one of them whips out a cigarette lighter to wave. Another member douses him with a fire extinguisher. In the popular Playstation 2 game Guitar Hero, during a loading screen, a message appears that states that the crowd is not calling for you to play "Free Bird", an obvious reference to the calling of the song to be played at various concerts. This cliché is also in the new Pixar movie Cars when the main character has to give a speech about his sponsor.
A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever - it's stupid."
The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the "Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was the Word - 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of the moron."