"Free Bird"

Lynyrd Skynyrd

"Turn It Up"

The cry goes up whenever a rock show hits a slow patch. Somebody shouts "Free Bird," and all within earshot understand the message: This band better take things up a notch, and pronto. The natives are restless. If only Skynyrd were here to show these pikers how to rock out properly.

A hit that became an allpurpose parody of rock excess, Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1973 "Free Bird" remains a polarizing artifact. Depending on whom you ask, it's either the dumbest contrivance to ever thrill an arena or the perfect rock odyssey, an instant cliché or a Southern stoner jam par excellence. Some have even argued that the nine-minute song is the American answer to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."

Underpinning the rebel-rock abandon is a fairly conventional build-to-the-climax song structure. "Free Bird" begins with a weepy and almost grand guitar melody; it takes several verses for the rhythm section to dislodge the ballad and start kicking ass. It's in this second episode where the musicians of Lynyrd Skynyrd (several of whom would die in a 1977 airplane crash) show their resourcefulness: They don't have the jazz dexterity of the Allman Brothers or the boogie-blues foundation of ZZ Top, so they keep the groove locked on a sturdy, dependable three-chord attack. This creates the perfect setting for guitar solos of epic proportion, and the band's three (!) lead players don't disappoint: The instrumental passages are a feast of harpooning long tones and whammy-bar hijinks that overlap into a torrid three-way conversation. Hearing the studio original and the even longer jam on One More from the Road, it's easy to dismiss the charge that Skynyrd traveled the same road to rowdy every night. But when the route's as engrossing as this one is, why mess with detours?

Genre: Rock
Released: 1974, MCA
Appears On: Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd; One More from the Road
Next Stop: The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East
After That: .38 Special: Wild-Eyed Southern Boys
Book Page: 460

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

This is an online version of the list (published alphabetically in the book). The entries in the book break down genre bias and broaden every listener’s horizons—think Miles Davis to Claude Debussy to the melodic story-songs of The Decemberists. And the writing is passionate, informed, opinionated.

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