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Free Bird should NOT have been a hit
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
Free Bird is the song that well and truly cemented Lynyrd Skynyrd into rock history. However, Ronnie Van Zant himself originally thought it wouldn’t be a hit. And, I’d be inclined to agree with him - it really shouldn’t have been. This is the story of how Free Bird defied the odds and became an anthem of Southern Rock.
Lynyrd Skynyrd formed in 1964 in the most American way possible; at a baseball game in Jacksonville, Florida. Named after their gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who they all hated, the band soon became a well organised unit.
Singer Ronnie Van Zant became the unelected leader of the band, him being a bit of a perfectionist with a clear vision of what he wanted them to sound like, but guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington formed a valuable partnership. Rossington told Loudersound in 2022:
“Me and Allen played all the time. Even when we weren’t practising with the band, we would play together at his house.”
The band’s rehearsal space was a tin-roofed shack, nicknamed the ‘Hell House’, which would get uncomfortably hot in the Florida heat. This shack would become home to some of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s greatest, if not slightly sweaty, work.
One day,, Collins rocked up to the Hell House with the bare bones of a song he had come up with. At first, Van Zant was not convinced. It seemed too complex. It was only after he made Collins play it again and again that he was able to begin to string together some lyrics and a melody.
Rossington told Garden & Gun in 2019:
“Allen had these chords, and he’d play them over and over, but at first Ronnie thought there were too many chord changes to write lyrics to. This time Ronnie said, “Play that again.” Allen played the chords, then I’d play them, and Ronnie just sat there and wrote the lyrics, a love song. How we were traveling on the road. We hadn’t really made it yet. We were playing everywhere we could play. It wasn’t so heavy or nothing to us at first."
So at first, the band didn’t see anything particularly special about this song. Nonetheless, they introduced it to their setlist. It was only when they played it for the first time at the South Side Women’s Club in Jacksonville that they realised its potential.
At this point, they hadn’t written the famous guitar solo that sees the song out for the final four minutes of the recorded track. It was just the slow bit at the start of the song.
However, the band was still met with a positive response and it soon became a regular part of their set. They recorded a demo of this version which totalled about 4 minutes, a far cry from the final version.
The famous solo only became about, if you can believe, because of Ronnie Van Zant’s sore throat…
Rossington said:
"We started playing it, just the slow part, at clubs. Then, after a few sets, Ronnie would say, “Y’all play a little longer, my throat’s hurting and I need a break.” We’d play a minute longer one night, then the next night two minutes or three, and then we’d jam out for five minutes or more."
The famous instrumental outro began to take form, and suddenly fans started to request this song wherever they went.
Lynyrd Skynyrd began to gain traction, and in 1972 they signed to MCA Records. It was this label that produced and released the band’s self-titled debut album in 1973. Free Bird grabbed a spot on this album as the final track on the second side.
It had been a bit of a fight to get it on the album. They recorded their first version of the track in the famous Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Ricky Medlocke, who had joined as a guitarist around this time, was quickly shown the ropes of this mega track. The band played him the full version, which was a lot longer at the time, which they eventually managed to reduce down to about 9 minutes.
However, MCA Records felt the track was still too long. They felt it would suffer commercially because it was too long for anyone to play on the radio. The label requested that the band do the slow part and then fade out and finish there.
Luckily for everyone with ears, Lynyrd Skynyrd put their foot down and said they wanted to include the instrumental part. They settled on a compromise; the album would get the full track, and the radio stations would get the shorter version without the instrumental outro.
Free Bird became the much anticipated last song at every gig. Fans went wild for, loving how the song transitioned from a slow lovey-dovey track to something they could dance and let loose to. During the shows, Van Zant would dedicate it to friends they had lost along the way. For example, when Berry Oakley and Duane Allman died in motorbike crashes, the song was played in their memory. The idea was that in their death, they were now ‘free birds’.
Sadly, Lynyrd Skynyrd was also soon struck by tragedy. On October 20th, 1977, the band were flying between shows in South Carolina and Louisiana. The charter plane ran out of fuel part way through the journey and crashed into a Mississippi forest. Six people were killed that day, including Van Zant. Collins initially survived the crash with serious injuries, although in 1986 he was involved in a car crash that paralysed him from the waist down and put an end to his musical career. He later died from complications of his paralysis in 1990.
Rossington survived the plane crash, although he suffered some severe injuries. He had to have steel rods inserted into his arms and legs and had to relearn how to play guitar. However, he did eventually make a full recovery, and in 1987 organised a Lynyrd Skynyrd reunion with surviving pre-crash members.
They approached Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie’s younger brother and a solo artist at the time, to take up the vocals. Van Zant the younger was unsure about this offer to begin with. He told Garden & Gun in 2019:
I had never wanted to be in the band. Lynyrd Skynyrd was going to go on with my brother forever. Ten years after the crash, I was called into a meeting. I walked into a room, and here are these guys who survived the crash with my brother. They wanted me to come on for a tribute tour.
Van Zant eventually agreed to join the reunion tour, but at first he felt uncomfortable singing Free Bird. It wasn’t until Rossington said something to change his mind that he willingly took up the mantle.
I told Gary, “Ronnie is the guy who should be singing this.” Then one show, we came off the stage after “Alabama,” and Gary said, “The crowd’s raising heck and I’m not going back out there unless you sing it.” He told me, “Ronnie was a singer and a songwriter and the song needs to be sung.” That hit me, and I’ve been singing it ever since.
In the wake of Allen’s tragic death in 1990, Medlocke also rejoined the band. It was him who was deemed best suited to replicate Allen’s nifty guitar work. Medlocke mostly stayed true to Allen’s composition, but at each performance would change something subtle to put his own twist on it.
Unsurprisingly, Free Bird meant a lot to the surviving members of the band. Ronnie Van Zant and Allen didn’t live long enough to see it become a classic, but it took on a new meaning for their bandmates. In the same article, Rossington said:
"Every night, we look out at the audience and you see people singing every lyric with Johnny. At the end, everybody starts jumping up and down, and it’s emotional to watch the audience do that. The song lets you think about your love or people you’ve lost."
The song is played everywhere from graduations to funerals, and really does take on a new meaning for everyone who listens to it.
The band continues to tour to this day, but not once have they forgotten the members they’ve lost along the way. At every gig they display pictures of their fallen bandmates during the set as a reminder, and Free Bird, to no one’s surprise, is always emotional.
So despite Ronnie Van Zant and MCA Records not being convinced at first, Free Bird became a classic in the rock genre, taking on new meanings at every corner. Johnny Van Zant sees it as almost a memorial track, a way to remember his older brother and help him live on. I’ll leave you with a quote that shares that idea:
I have had people say that when I first started, I wasn’t as good as Ronnie. I never wanted to be as good as my brother. I just wanted to carry on his music. I’m Johnny, he was Ronnie, and that’s what kept me going. We’ll never forget the ones who started this.
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