This train of thinking started with two events. The contrast is to the modern world where youngsters are consumed by their college choices before they graduate elementary school and unquestioningly become cogs in the wheels of the machines that feed economic inequality in the United States. Now, admittedly those are all Southern Rock songs about not being tied down by relationships but I’d argue that these are expressions of a “freedom to act” that are embedded in the rock staple of the love song. Tryin’ to make a livin’ and doin’ the best I can. The Allman Brother’s Band in “Ramblin’ Man” wrote: We’ve been together so long now they both need resoled.Īnd it’s a good time for me to head on down the line. I ain’t never been with a woman long enough, for my boots to get old. The Marshall Tucker Band in “Heard it in a Love Song” wrote: Southern rock was big on promoting a sense of freedom from the everyday things that tied people down like relationships (gulp) and employment. The second half of the album is Kooper, Stills and the session players without Bloomfield. To digress one more degree, Al Kooper was a teenage studio guitarist and an early job was playing behind a group from New Jersey called the Royal Teens on a 1957 song Short Shorts (“Who loves short shorts… We love short shorts.”) That song was written by Royal Teen Bob Gaudio, who later played behind the Four Seasons and wrote many of their biggest hits. Kooper called Stephen Stills, who was in the deteriorating Buffalo Springfield, and asked him to sit in. But Bloomfield didn’t show up for the second day in the studio and couldn’t be found. On the first day Kooper, Bloomfield (of the Electric Flag), and the other session players recorded instrumental jams. Digressing, the Super Session project was intended to be completed in 2 studio days. On that album, Kooper played piano, organ, ondioline (a keyboard instrument), and 6 and 12-string guitars AND sang. He was a founder of Blood, Sweat and Tears (leaving after their first album) and recorded the boomer lost classic album Bloomfield-Kooper-Stills Super Session. King, The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Alice Cooper, and Cream.
Kooper has played on hundreds of records, including ones by The Rolling Stones, B. The producer’s real name is Alan Peter Kuperschmidt but everyone knew him as Al. The producer for the album is listed as Roosevelt Gook. An early recording from Muscle Shoals sessions (see video below) includes the piano intro, but the Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd version used an organ. Powell played an intro he had developed for Freebird and the shocked band hired him as keyboardist right there. They did a gig at a school and a piano was sitting on the back of the stage. The other story is that a roadie was working for them for a year named Billy Powell. Then inspiration came from an argument between Collins and a girlfriend where she asked him, “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?” Or at least, that’s the story that gets repeated. The song was kicking around for a while before it took shape because Ronnie Van Zant was troubled by the 6 chords that made up each verse (G-D-Em-F-C-D). If you aren’t moderately head-banging the guitar solo then check your pulse because it might be bad news. I listened to the song several times and in several versions and damn if it didn’t make me feel great. Then it became a mocking joke that at any performer’s concert a wise guy would yell out “Play Freebird!” But the theme I was thinking about was the differences in attitudes between twenty-somethings in the late sixties and seventies and today and it came to mind as representative of a sense of freedom and self-determination that was big in music in those olden times. – Written by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant (1974), recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd.įor many of us (I’m certain) the listen-by date on this song expired in the early 1980s. ‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.Īnd this bird you can not change, oh, oh, oh, oh.
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