What is the lore behind the “Free Bird” call?
No song in rock history has personified itself into an entity of its own beyond its origins quite like Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s ‘Free Bird’. With their particular Southern rock strain of Americana, they reached their peak with the era-defining tune, one that lives on in the calls of music fans everywhere looking to rile up audiences with a nod to the Floridian band’s classic.
‘Free Bird’ was written from basic chords of a jam by guitarist Allen Collins during a session at their rehearsal room, nicknamed the Hell House. Ronnie Van Zant, thinking that there may be too many chord changes for him to write lyrics to coincide with, slowly but surely wrote a love song over the course of two years. Anchored by the band’s life as a constantly touring band, the song became an ode to life on the road.
As Rickey Medlocke (then a sometime-member of Lynyrd Skynyrd as a session musician and drummer), explained to Garden & Gun, “The way Ronnie wrote lyrics, you got out of it the meaning in your own way. ‘Bye bye, baby, it’s been a sweet love’, doesn’t mean a final goodbye to me. It means goodbye until I return.”
By guitarist Gary Rossington’s account, Lynyrd Skynyrd began playing the initial shell of ‘Free Bird’ on tour, testing the waters among a live crowd. They debuted the song at the South Side Women’s Club in Jacksonville, Florida, with only the slower part, just before the guitars’ solo moment began. Soon, the song became a surprise rescue for Van Zant onstage. “After a few sets, Ronnie would say, ‘Y’all play a little longer, my throat’s hurting, and I need a break,’” Rossington recalled, “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.”
Recorded with its sprawling ending, the track had grown to be about 17 minutes by the time of producing their 1973 debut album, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd). Working at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, ‘Free Bird’ would be the only song revisited, from an album that would otherwise be kept in the wings until 1978, revived in the sessions for their debut. The song’s signature ending, however, was less favourable to the ears of their label, MCA Records, who reportedly asked the band, “Why would you ruin a pretty song like that with a wild ‘LSD-type’ ending?”
Lynyrd Skynyrd wanted to stay true to their song, having refined it to a nine-minute length on record, but MCA eventually took the reins, making it radio-friendly in the process. But, as Medlocke asserted, “It wasn’t until they added that ending that ‘Free Bird’ was let loose”, and the extended version of the song, with its howling guitar solo, continued to be a staple of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s live gigs.
Before diving into the song’s unforgettable opening piano, written by their roadie-turned-keyboardist, Billy Powell, Van Zant would often dedicate ‘Free Bird’ to someone, particularly those whom the band had lost. “After Berry [Oakley] and Duane [Allman] had passed from motorcycle crashes, we would dedicate it to them,” Rossington remembered, “because as Ronnie said, they were free birds. They were our friends, our big influences, and it broke our hearts.”
‘Free Bird’ became a hit in 1974, a year after the debut album release, and clearly, the contentious length of the song proved to be no matter. A performance of the song from their final tour, Tour of the Survivors, captures the rapturous effect it had on live audiences: women hoisted onto shoulders, waving their arms in the air, to waves of bodies clapping and jumping along in time, nearly propelled into the air.
Tragically, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tale would end prematurely after the passing of Van Zant, who was killed in a plane crash in a Mississippi forest, along with bandmates and siblings Dean and Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Deal Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William John Gray, while other band members, including Rossington and Collins, survived with severe injuries. Lynyrd Skynyrd would subsequently disband for a decade, until 1987, save for one performance, an instrumental version of ‘Free Bird’ at Charlie Daniels’ Volunteer Jam in January 1979, played with a microphone onstage adorned with Van Zant’s hat, while the audience sang the words.
Today, ‘Free Bird’ persists as one of rock history’s most emphatic anthems, a song that has that inexplicable quality of being universally known, even if you’ve never listened to another Lynyrd Skynyrd song in your life. The chant of “Play ‘Free Bird’!” resounds at any given show, not just a rock one, but beyond, shouted as a means to catch the attention of a crowd and inspire a laugh or two.
To Rossington, the ‘Free Bird’ chant was commonplace. “We weren’t aware of people yelling ‘Free Bird!’ at other shows till after it was a thing, because during our shows, when we would stop, they’d go ‘Free Bird! Free Bird!’,” he explained. But the phenomenon had, indeed, caught on, and the calls for the audience’s favourite song extended to other artists, too, met with either a well-spirited nod or annoyance, depending on the circumstance.
To some, the yell is nothing more than a nuisance, and to others, it’s a sort of call to arms. Regardless of its concrete origin, the “Free Bird!” call continues today: go to any show, regardless of the band and particularly in the States, and you’re bound to hear the shout, ironically or not.
