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Lynyrd Skynyrd’s real opinion on Neil Young
Lynyrd Skynyrd, one of the most important Rock and Roll bands of all time, said in their hit song “Sweet Home Alabama” in 1974 that a Southern man didn’t need Neil Young around. That mention made millions of fans believe they didn’t like the musician, but the story is actually quite different, their real opinion of him was quite the opposite.
What was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s real opinion on Neil Young
The members of Lynyrd Skynyrd actually were big fans of Neil Young. “We wrote Alabama as a joke. We didn’t even think about it. The words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said ‘Ain’t that funny’… We love Neil Young, we love his music,” the band’s original singer Ronnie Van Zant said in an interview featured on Skynyrd’s “The Box Set” collection. The tragic airplane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and other band members and crew happened only a few days after Lynyrd Skynyrd released the album “Street Survivors”, the final one with the classic line-up. Interestingly, Van Zant was wearing a Neil Young T-shirt featuring the album “Tonight’s the Night” on the cover. He also wore it during concerts to show fans that they appreciated Neil’s work.
So why did they decide to mention Neil Young and say that a Southern man didn’t need him around? It was after hearing the songs “Southern Man” and “Alabama”, who criticized some aspects of the South of the United States, that the band had the idea to mention him. According to Ronnie, they were surprised with the success of the track: “We knew that by doing that song, writing these lyrics, we knew in the beginning we would get a lot of heat from it. I’ve said this a million times before, Neil Young is one of my favorite people. We never played with Neil Young but we know a lot of people who have talked to him about that.”
Ronnie Van Zant continued:
“‘Neil thought it was very clever and cute, he just laughed, you know. It was a joke, we did attack him in that song (saying) ‘What are you talking about, you know? I’m told you were born in Canada’. It was a joke, that song wasn’t meant to be a single and the song was just a party time one. It was one Sunday afternoon we just got into that thing. (We) started laughing about it, finished and we decided to put it on the album.”
“After that album was out for several months it was falling off the charts and all that, they decided to (put it out as a single). I said at the time I expected that they would put out 6 copies and we would have to buy three of them. But when it when to the Top 10 we were just as shocked as anyone else. Whatever that combination was, I’d like to write another one like that,” Ronnie said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
That was confirmed by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s guitarist Garry Rossington, who survived the plane crash and was a member of the band until his death in 2023. “We love Neil Young, always did, still do. We just heard ‘Southern Man’ and ‘Alabama’, his songs kind of putting the south down. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was a magic song, it just toured through all the back roads of Alabama. It’s beautiful, ‘Big Wheels Keep on Turnin” is just about us travelling through Alabama and loaded,” Gary Rossington told Sirius XM in 2018.
Neil Young said that “Sweet Home Alabama” is one of his favorite songs of all time
As Ronnie Van Zant once explained, Neil Young wasn’t bothered by the negative reference in the song. In fact, he had already said that “Sweet Home Alabama” was one of his favorite tracks. He even called Lynyrd Skynyrd the greatest Southern Rock band of all time.
“Lynyrd Skynyrd was the greatest Southern Rock band ever. Amazing band and they were so great, it was such a disaster when they died in that plane crash. (I didn’t know them personally), they were looking for a song (once). I sent them ‘Powderfinger’ and I think they really liked it. They wanted to do one of my songs that everybody knew, that was like ok (there was no bad blood between us).”
“(There was) a lot of respect as far as musicianship and everything, it’s just the roles we played, you know. I said what I said and they were from the south and they loved the south. They are talking about ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and everything. It’s ok, I mean, it’s part of the world we live in. It was good (to have this dialogue through our music)”, Neil Young said in an interview with Howard Stern in 2014 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Neil said Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t “put him down”
According to Neil Young, they really didn’t “put him down” by mentioning him in the song. In 1979, he told Rolling Stone that he would prefer to play their song rather than Southern Man anytime. “I’d rather play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ than ‘Southern Man’ anytime. I first heard it and really liked the way they played their guitars. Then I heard my own name in it and thought, ‘Now this is pretty great,’” Neil Young said.
“Oh, they didn’t really put me down! But then again, maybe they did! (laughs) But not in a way that matters. Shit, I think Sweet Home Alabama is a great song. I’ve actually performed it live a couple of times myself,” he said in an interview with Mojo magazine in 1995.
Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Dean Kilpatrick, and both pilots died in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tragic plane crash on October 20, 1977, in a wooded area in Mississippi. They were heading to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when the aircraft ran out of fuel. While attempting to land, it struck trees and broke apart.
The group was reformed in 1989 with Ronnie’s younger brother, Johnny Van Zant, on vocals and remains active to this day. However, the current line-up no longer includes any original or classic-era members following the passing of Gary Rossington in 2023.
