Sweet Home Alabama: The Southern Rock Saga

This programme contains some strong language

At the dawn of the 1970s, a new sound emerged from the American Deep South.

It was unique, we didn't sound like everybody else that was putting out music.

There's certainly got to be an element of blues,

an element of country, a lot of respect for the music.

And a lot of drinking, a lot of anticipation of drinking.

I had the greatest time, I'm not even going to lie.

But it was pretty tough being a rock musician in the South.

"Now, that's some hippy, that's some hippy that walked in."

Back in those days you, kind of, stuck together for safety.

You could get killed in the South with long hair, if it was over your ears.

Risking everything, this generation of bands would transform America.

After a long, long period where people didn't want to be southern,

suddenly all of America wants to be a redneck.

For a brief moment, southern politicians and musicians broke down old prejudices

and put the south back on the map.

I think people saw freedom in the music.

We could do no wrong in those years,

everything we did was right,

even if it was bad, you know.

GUNSHOT FIRES

RADIO: 'We have information King has been shot...'

'We have information that King has been shot at the Lorraine.'

# Man lay dying in the street

# A thousand people fell down on their knees... #

In April 1968,

Martin Luther King was killed by a white man in the city of Memphis.

It was the South's darkest hour in the Civil Rights struggle.

'In the name of the greatest people that have ever crossed this Earth,'

I draw the line in the dust, and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny,

and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow,

and segregation for ever.

#..Blood came pouring from his head

# Women and children falling down...

# Crying

# For the man they love so well. #

Days after King's death, the 20-year-old Gregg Allman wrote

"God Rest His Soul".

# But Lord knows I can't change what I saw

# I say God rest his soul. #

That's the kind of song that, kind of writes you.

I mean, you've got no choice, you know...

The song just wells up in your head and, bang.

I remember I sat there watching the news and a tear dried up,

I was just appalled at the whole thing.

I mean, I thought, "What is this world coming to?"

Gregg was part of a new generation of white southerner

who was challenging the Old South's prejudices.

I think Martin Luther King made the whole world,

but especially the south,

especially us,

realise the injustice of what was going on.

MUSIC: "I Can't Turn You Loose" by Otis Redding

In the '60s, one of the few places where black and white

did mix in the South was in the recording studios.

# ..I'm in love now with this pretty thing... #

But after King's assassination,

white people soon discovered they were less and less welcome in soul music.

Brothers Phil and Alan Walden from Macon, Georgia,

had successfully managed Otis Redding and other soul acts.

The true decision to leave R and B music

and go in to white rock and roll,

we didn't know it was southern rock, we were just going into rock and roll.

And the main decision was the African American gangsters

decided they were going to take over the black music.

All of a sudden they're telling people,

"You don't want to mess with us, you know, we'll fuck you up."

Towards the end of the decade, there was an explosion of counter culture rock music

on the east and west coast of America.

# ..Whistlin' and singin' she's a-carrying on

# Laughing in her eyes dancing in her feet

# She's a neon-light diamond and she can live on the street

# Hey hey hey... #

This new rock music wasn't happening anywhere down South.

But the Walden brothers would soon discover a number of southern bands

that would transform the region,

propelling a fresh sound into the American mainstream.

Gregg and Duane Allman were born in Nashville in the late '40s.

Raised by a single mother after their father was murdered,

by 1960 they were living in Florida

and in love with Black American music.

Oh, listen, man, we wouldn't sleep, eat, we'd be on the guitars, man.

Older brother Duane was an idealistic teenager,

with a vision of what he wanted to be.

First thing he did was quit school, he was in, like, tenth grade,

he said, "Man, you ought to quit too,

"you know what we're going to do for the rest of our lives."

I said, "Wait a minute, don't jump the gun."

I said, "You know there's a lot of competition out there,"

"the Beatles have come out,

"and, Jesus, no pun, but everybody and their brother has a band, you know."

First time I saw Duane and Gregg, they were really striking looking,

I mean, just the visual thing,

these guys had shoulder length blonde hair,

and Duane was just the most alive person I ever saw.

He lived 100 miles an hour, and he carried his music that way too.

He was in full-tilt boogie at all time,

you had to have a lot of energy to be around Duane,

and you'll find yourself getting lost, if you don't step up.

Duane and Gregg's fledgling blues-beat combo, the Allman Joys,

played a gig in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1966.

Here, they bumped into a gang of teenage toughs.

We'd heard that they were really good, we'd never seen them,

and we went in there and they had long hair.

The crowd was a bunch of rednecks,

and anyone that had long hair was a sissy.

The Allmans played a song, and then one redneck hollered,

"Sounds pretty, Mary Jane!"

and then a whole bunch of them started going over to the stage.

We got in the middle of it too.

Gregg and Duane said, "Man, we appreciate you guys.

"Man, you guys are really cool."

We said, "Well, we got a band too, you know."

# Baby bad dressed in black... #

Larry had gone to the show with his friend and future Lynyrd Skynyrd bandmate Ronnie Van Zant.

They both came from the mean streets of Jacksonville.

We used to call it the kill or be killed neighbourhood.

There was always fights, if you didn't fight, you didn't survive.

Larry had recently joined Ronnie's local band.

They wanted to be the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

They wanted to go out there and kick the Rolling Stones' ass.

Ronnie was working hard when he was a teenager,

and just wanted it really bad, really, you know.

When you come from such poor surroundings,

you just want to get out of there.

And music was his way.

# The power of love can move a mountain... #

After Gregg and Duane Allman's Jacksonville gig,

they went on to form the Hourglass with Paul Hornsby in 1967.

Following a lucky break, they were signed to Liberty Records

who made the band move to Los Angeles.

# I know it's true

# There's nothing love can't do

# Talking about the power of love... #

But their time in this city was deeply frustrating.

Liberty Records primped and prodded these blues-loving southerners,

hoping they could transform them

into a derivative West Coast pop band.

You know, we weren't seasoned studio players,

but Duane knew where he was going, he had a mission,

and he didn't want anybody telling him what to do and what not to do.

I remember one time him saying, "I feel I'm pretty close to the top of my field,

"and I've got some clowns here still trying to learn how to be producers and engineers,

"trying to tell me what to do."

# Hey Jude, don't make it bad

# Take a sad song

# Make it better... #

Duane left California in disgust.

He returned to the South, getting a job at Fame,

one of the few studios where black and white still played together.

#..to make it better, ohhhh! #

Duane's very first recording was on Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude.

# ..Oh, oh, oh, hey, Jude... #

And on the end of this record,

you probably notice this long, great guitar solo

which no rhythm and blues song had ever done,

but Duane convinced Wilson Pickett to do that.

# It's going to be all right Jude

# Yeah yeah

# Na na na na na na

# Hey Jude. #

When Phil Walden heard Duane's guitar solo

he finally knew he'd found the white rock artist he was looking for.

Phil signed Duane to his new label, Capricorn,

which he'd set up with his brother Alan, and Frank Fenter from Atlantic Records.

Duane was now finally able to create his radical southern rock band,

integrating psychedelic blues-rock with soul.

One day, I asked Duane, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,

I said, "Why do you want to have two drummers, man?"

He said, "Because Otis Redding and James Brown had two drummers."

I never asked him again.

LAUGHS

Berry Oakley was added as bass player,

while Dickey Betts was the second lead guitarist

and Butch Trucks the other drummer in the band.

It was almost complete, but they still needed a vocalist.

Duane used to tell me, he said, "All the things that my brother is..."

He thought that he was a womaniser, and this and that and the other,

and some more things. He said, "But my brother is the only person

"that can sing in this band, that I hear in my head."

He was absolutely right.

With Gregg and Duane reunited,

the Allman Brothers Band moved to the quiet, conservative town of Macon, Georgia,

the southern home of Capricorn Records.

MUSIC: "Every Hungry Woman" by the Allman Brothers

When the longhairs came to town, that was a major crisis.

They had never seen anything like that, you know.

Only the Beatles on TV at that point.

It was just about looking the way you want to,

but I was more into music, make music and love,

you know, peace, not war.

# Went up on the mountain

# To see what I could see... #

The Allman Brothers' debut

was released at the very end of the 1960s.

Their spacious, soul-drenched, acid blues sound

brilliantly evoked the turmoil of the age.

# ..on dreams I'll never see. #

So, I laid Dreams on them,

and I mean, it sounded good,

and when it was over all of us looked round at each other...

and said, "Oh, man, we've got something strong here."

# Climb down off the hilltop, baby

# And get on back in the race

# Cos I'm hung up on

# Dreams I'll never see... #

To think that somebody could do that, somebody could play that,

somebody could put a band together that was that tight

and that all played together

and all did that good, blues-based music

that hit you right here every time you heard it.

GUITAR SOLO: "Dreams" by The Allman Brothers Band

By 1970, Ronnie Van Zant's roughneck band from Jacksonville

was now called Lynyrd Skynyrd.

That year, Alan Walden left Capricorn

after the Allman Brothers debut failed to explode

and struck out on his own.

I had to audition 187 bands,

and went back to band number 13,

who just happened to be Lynyrd Skynyrd,

and uh, the reason why I went back to band number 13

was because I heard a song called Free Bird.

# I'm as free as a bird now... #

I was also impressed with their leader,

Ronnie Van Zant, as a person.

Alan Walden signed Lynyrd Skynyrd to his new management company

as the young band hit the southern circuit,

playing to the juke joint crowds.

# Well Billy Joe told me, said, everything's looking fine... #

We were following the Allman Brothers,

which is almost the kiss of death on a southern rock band,

because people immediately compare you to the Allman Brothers.

Lynyrd Skynyrd doesn't sound like the Allman Brothers.

You know, Lynyrd Skynyrd's a juking band, we're jukers,

you know, juking music is drinking music.

Juking music is what you hear in a juke joint, it's popping,

it's hopping, it's burning, it's soaring,

it's mean and it's green,

it's that music that you just love to hear...

when you want to really get moving.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was just about boogie, you know,

let's turn up the guitars and drink the Jack Daniels

and fly the freak flags,

they just didn't care about trying to make a better world,

they were just trying to, you know, party.

Ronnie was a bad ass.

I mean, he used to say,

"I'm going to rule this band like Stalin ruled Russia,

"you know, with an iron fist."

And they'd go over the same two or three songs,

I mean, again, that's part of the reason why

I think they were one of the best live bands I've ever seen,

because they'd just rehearse so much, you know, they had it down.

They were tight as Dick's hat band, you know, it was amazing.

He wanted it right, and when it wasn't right,

he could get a little violent with some of them, you know.

Atlantic, CBS, Warner Brothers, A&M,

all of them turned Skynyrd down, cold.

I'm talking about cold turned down,

I'm not talking about one where,

"We like you guys but think you need stronger material," not anything that nice.

"We don't want you."

Not even Capricorn Records were interested.

My own brother, Phil, turned down Lynyrd Skynyrd.

He said, "Your lead singer's too cocky, he can't sing,

"and they sound too much like the Allman Brothers."

The reason I left the band was,

I was just literally starving to death.

We weren't making no money, we were just playing little gigs here and there.

# People can you feel it?

# Love is everywhere. #

After the commercial failure of their debut,

the Allman Brothers went back to the drawing board.

They hit the road, building a new fanbase of students

and longhairs from the ground up.

We played everywhere... twice.

# Love is everywhere

# People can you feel it?

# Love is everywhere. #

They set up and played wherever they could find a wall plug to plug into.

They did a lot of playing here at the local park in Macon

and the parks in Atlanta.

They'd set up on a Sunday afternoon and play all day.

All the hippies came out.

1970, we worked 306 nights and we were gone a whole year.

I had more energy than a damn freight train.

The Allman Brothers were sort of like the sperm of southern rock.

They were the swimmers.

Look at Georgia and Florida and Tennessee as this little womb.

They went to their womb and out came southern rock.

As the counter-culture infiltrated the region,

the number of southern longhairs multiplied

and the band was invited to play the festivals

sprouting up in the south in response to Woodstock.

The Allman's were becoming a people's band.

Duane Allman once said,

"This is a religion we're spreading."

The Allmans' concerts were like revival shows,

where people would just get all in a frenzy and go crazy.

When he talked about the Allman Brothers

being a religion that is spreading,

he was tapping into the mood of what was going on at their concerts

and the feel of what was going on in the south at the time.

We believe so hard into it, we really did.

and...

I'm guessing it came out in the music.

Doug Gray was a budding young singer from South Carolina

when he saw the Allman Brothers play in 1970.

One, two, three...

# Dum da tum da tum... #

It was rhythm and blues and soul and gospel

and everything all mixed together

and some guy coming in on that slide.

It was very amazing.

# Called up Judy on the telephone

# Sent her a letter in the mail... #

Another musician inspired by the Allmans was Charlie Daniels from North Carolina.

My dad was a timber guy.

If you were to go down through the band,

you'd find a lot of these blue collar type of people.

We were raised very much in working families.

They got up early in the morning and went to work

and never knew anything else but that.

After working as a session musician in Nashville,

he formed the Charlie Daniels Band.

We'd start our rehearsals in the morning

and go till we get out of gas.

The whole band, just sitting in a room,

just going at it and if it wasn't perfect

and we had to change the whole thing, we'd go back and do it.

It was that work ethic,

that blue-collar work ethic that I think bleeds over into the music.

# Kept a big fat fancy townhouse in Dallas

# And a hotel suite in New Orleans. #

Everybody had to be affected by the Allman Brothers.

They were the forerunners, the pioneers.

A British guitar hero noticed the talents of Duane Allman in 1970.

He invited Duane to join him on a track he was cutting in Miami.

Eric Clapton is a shy guy.

Believe it or not, Duane Allman,

as aggressive and gregarious and everything, is a shy guy as well.

When they play their instruments together,

they're both humbled by one another

and in that humility, there's just absolute genius.

# Layla you got me on my knees

# Layla

# I'm begging darling please

# Layla

# Darling won't you ease my worried mind

# I try to give you consolation

# When your old man had let you down

# Like a fool I fell in love with you

# Turned my whole world upside down

# Layla

# You got me on my knees. #

The Allman Brothers' first two albums didn't capture

the live brilliance of their wide-angle, cosmic blues blasts.

So in 1971, the band decided to cut their third record,

in concert, in New York City.

# I've been run down

# I've been lied to

# And I don't know

# Why I let that mean woman make me out a fool

# She took all my money

# Wrecks my new car

# Now she's with one of my good time buddies

# They're drinking in some cross town bar

# Sometimes I feel

# Sometimes I feel tied to the whipping post

# Tied to the whipping post

# Tied to the whipping post

# Lord - I feel like I'm dying. #

The Allman Brothers embraced that fusion jazz

and married it in the blues - in raw whipping post blues.

Then they'd go on with it forever and it was just mesmerising.

There wasn't a whole lot to look at.

They dressed in bell-bottoms, denim shirts and T-shirts

and whatever they had.

It was purely being so deeply into the music.

They were living it, they were feeling it,

it was all they were, all they did and all they cared about.

I think people saw freedom in the music.

It was an unbelievable sound and genius licks, that one night,

Duane and Dickey and all the guys were playing hard together.

It was like a heartbeat.

Like everybody's heart was beating together

and that was what touched everybody.

This song Dickey Betts wrote in memory of Elizabeth Reed.

That was a very important piece,

saying, yes, you can stay where you're from

and not downplay your accent.

Be proud of your heritage but still open to the realities

of integration and what's happening right here in this moment.

I knew goddamn well that it would influence

and put a hell of a lot of tiger into white musicians

that didn't have it.

With Fillmore East, the Allmans had finally broken out of the South

and onto FM radio with a huge hit album.

On the 29th October, 1971,

Duane Allman was riding his Harley Davidson down a Macon street,

when he hit a truck crossing a junction.

The young prince of southern rock died in hospital just hours later.

We were so bummed out, about him being short changed

and I was more than anybody

because I'd seen just about everything he'd been through.

One year later, the band had to cope with another death.

Their bassist, Berry Oakley, devastated by the loss of Duane,

was killed on his motorbike three blocks from where Duane had died.

Now, at this point, I'm going,

"hey, man, what the hell is going on here?"

"I'm going to be next!"

Believe me, those thoughts did go through my mind, that I was going to be next.

We lost the golden goose.

We didn't know if the whole thing would fall down.

The Allman Brothers band was obviously the flagship,

for Capricorn, and here was Duane gone

and everybody was scared that there might not be any more

Allman Brothers Band.

We came to the conclusion that if we didn't keep the band going,

then none of us were going to amount to shit.

Maybe dealers, maybe jail, or maybe crazy.

I said we got to keep going if for not us, for him.

This was his baby.

# Last Sunday morning the sunshine felt like rain

# A week before they all seemed the same

# With the help of God a true friend... #

I'll get going here in a minute.

Let's play some rock and roll for you.

In 1972, Lynyrd Skynyrd were still unsigned

and still playing the southern club circuit.

We go to this club every night and the second week,

this other band that we hadn't heard came in.

#..That's what I am

# Women, whiskey and miles of travelling

# That's all I understand. #

I went, "Whoa, this is good."

Al Kooper had played on Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone

and established Blood, Sweat & Tears.

This northerner was visiting the southern city of Atlanta,

checking out the music scene.

Al Kooper, he was starting a label called Silence of the South

and they asked the band if they'd be interested

in signing with the label.

Al Kooper produced Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album, Pronounced,

which included the classics Tuesday's Gone, Free Bird

and Gimme Three Steps.

Ronnie's lyrics vividly caught the rough and tumble

of white American blue-collar life in the South.

# I was cutting the rug in a place called The Jug

# With a girl named Linda Lu

# When in walked a man with a gun in his hand

# And he was looking for you know who

# He said hey there fellow with the hair coloured yellow

# What you trying to prove?

# Cos that's my woman there and I'm a man who cares

# And this might be all for you. #

I think he was singing for the working man.

That's what he was.

A plain-spoken guy, you know?

Truth is the truth and a lie is a lie.

Ronnie used to always say,

"Men like me because I speak my mind

"and women like me because I take my time."

Ronnie was a brilliant man, and amazing poet,

right on par with other southern luminaries in literature.

Unfortunately, isn't viewed as such because of his image.

He was short, rotund and performed barefoot.

He wasn't very glamorous or flamboyant.

In 1973, Lynyrd Skynyrd's classic debut album

climbed to number 27 on the American charts.

It was something to be proud of,

especially when you saw that this music became popular.

See, we've got some good stuff going on down here

that you don't know about.

As Lynyrd Skynyrd helped focus America's eyes and ears

on the South,

the Allman Brothers were now ready to return to the action.

# Lord I was born a rambling man... #

They headlined the largest festival of the era, Watkins Glen, in New York State,

and were building a huge community of fans.

The band proved they could remain faithful to Duane Allman's dream.

I think a lot of his energy stayed with the band.

# ..He'd wound up on the wrong end of a gun

# And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus

# Rolling down Highway 41. #

Their album, Brothers & Sisters, hit the number one spot

and made them one of the most popular bands in and beyond America.

The Allman's international success

focused media attention on their hometown.

Hello, I'm Gregg Allman, welcome to Macon, Georgia.

The Brothers have made Macon what it is right now.

Give Macon five more years and it's going to be the music capital.

If it wasn't for the Brothers, you wouldn't have all these freaks

cos when the Brothers came here, in '69, there were very few freaks.

Macon is just one big family, man.

Everybody that makes music is family.

We all know each other, one way or another.

Capricorn snapped up a number of southern rock bands,

including Cowboy, Wet Willie and the Marshall Tucker Band.

Capricorn Records allowed us to have a lighthouse,

it's like, out in the middle of the ocean.

Seeing that lighthouse over there,

because southern bands didn't have the place to go to.

We just did not.

Capricorn was always open door, because they listened to everybody.

# Meet some people travelling around

# But home's always been the best place to go

# And it's a lonesome feeling in my mind

# A feeling I can't seem to leave behind... #

Southern rock is a mixture of gospel music, southern loud guitar,

rowdy rock and roll music.

It's about the history, the land, and being connected

to where you came from and where the music came from.

It was the people that you felt like you knew,

that you'd grown up around,

the guys next door, the people that lived down the street,

the people you went to school with, went to church with.

Southern musicians play hard, they put more into it,

they feel it more, they drive it more.

The southern rock sound was moving beyond the Deep South

and across the sun belt.

How to describe southern rock boogie.

Going to have to show you.

Just can't tell you about it, just going to have to show you.

ZZ Top from Texas, Black Oak Arkansas,

the Atlanta Rhythm Section, and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils,

were spreading the gospel.

It was a time period of southern musicians loving southern musicians.

Um, because they all supported each other in those years,

they were all in it together.

It was a big movement, a solid plan to take over the world with a certain sound.

But first, southern rock needed a unifying, down-home anthem.

# Sweet home Alabama

# Lord I'm coming home to you... #

1974's Sweet Home Alabama was a huge hit single for Lynyrd Skynyrd,

breaking them internationally.

It was also Ronnie Van Zant's combative riposte

to Neil Young's Southern Man,

which reduced the South down to its troubled past.

They just said to talk about Neil Young, but I don't like to talk about the gentleman.

It's definitely got this in it.

# Sweet home Alabama... #

A lot of people were putting southern people down.

He made it to where they didn't do it any more

and he made it specific with Neil Young.

# Now Watergate does not bother me

# Does your conscience bother you? #

That line where he says, "Does your conscience bother you?"

It says more than a million protest songs.

It says, wait a minute,

who are you to be pointing the finger?

He turns the mirror around and lets the Neil Youngs of the world

look at themselves.

But Ronnie's response wasn't just a southern counterattack.

He appeared to be supporting the old reactionary ways of the south,

in particular the prejudiced George Wallace.

I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow

and segregation forever.

I tend not to think

that Ronnie Van Zant was supporting segregation with this song,

but liked this aspect of Wallace's demeanour

in telling off Northerners and other elites

that you have no right to come down here and tell us how to be.

# In Birmingham they love the governor

# Boo, boo, boo

# Now we all did what we could do... #

I'll never know if Ronnie liked George Wallace

because the lyric could go either way.

"In Birmingham they love the governor,

"now we all did what we could do."

What does that mean? Did we try and get rid of the governor?

Or did we support the governor?

You don't know what that lyric means.

# Sweet home Alabama

# Lord, I'm coming home to you. #

There's something enduring to the myth and the spirit

and the funk of Sweet Home Alabama

that transcends national and international boundaries

and everybody, no matter where they're from,

can identify with this longing for home and the beauty of home.

# Sweet home Alabama

# Lord, I'm coming home to you

# Sweet home Alabama. #

Sweet Home Alabama, was a game-changer for the band

and southern rock.

The movement was now about to take centre stage in American life.

# I never seen such a beautiful day

# Looked like everything is coming my way

# Feel like a bird just leaving a cage

# Looked like my luck is getting ready to change. #

The annual Capricorn Picnic was the high point of the year in Macon.

It celebrated the triumphs of Phil Walden and Frank Fenter's

Southern Rock label.

Me going there as a 17, 18-year-old kid, felt very special.

I felt pretty privileged to be there.

I saw and heard a good many things for the first time

at those Capricorn Picnics.

A bunch of beautiful people in a southern redneck town.

OK? It was great.

Food everywhere. Meat. Lots of barbecuing.

Dancing, drinking, partying down.

The party'd go on for two or three days,

and the headaches would go on for weeks.

It was the party of a lifetime, each year.

You'd go to these things and you'd say,

"Is that Andy Warhol over there?"

"My God, there's Jimmy Carter over here."

And so it was far-reaching,

the influence Capricorn had on the world.

Jimmy Carter announced he was running for president

at a Capricorn Picnic.

He represented a brand-new kind of southern politician.

He was not racist, he was liberal.

As far as musical taste is concerned, how could he help it?

That's where he was raised,

that's where he came from, you know?

He had to like Allman Brothers Band, he had to like Marshall Tucker Band.

he had no choice. It was part of his heritage.

The Allman Brothers and others have expressed in clear terms

to the young people a basic philosophy, I think,

of enlightenment, the search for peace,

it's had a profound effect on the consciousness

not only of young people but of old people like me.

We raised a lot of money to help Jimmy Carter get elected.

But at the same time it was helping two-fold.

It was helping Jimmy Carter to do it,

it was letting people know that the southern bands really weren't

a bunch of redneck, "cut ya and shoot ya" kind of guys.

For his 1976 campaign anthem,

Jimmy Carter chose Charlie Daniels' hit single,

The South's Going To Do It Again.

The South, there we go again.

It's like, we been kind of looked down on

the last many years,

but look at us now.

# South's going to do it again and again... #

As Carter hit the campaign trail, southern rock

and the new South were becoming positively fashionable.

You had people on Long Island dressing in cowboy hats,

going to see Lynyrd Skynyrd with bandanas around their neck, wanting to be southern.

After a long, long period where people didn't want

to acknowledge that, you know, the South had anything to offer

other than racists and rednecks, you know.

Suddenly, all of America wants to be a redneck.

Hollywood, too, was now popularising the Deep South.

'From Georgia to Texas and back, in 28 hours flat.

'Now who would do a thing like that?'

Ha!

Lynyrd Skynyrd were now the huge international rock band

they'd dreamed of becoming as teenagers in Jacksonville -

living the high life and jetting from show to show.

# Well, I've heard lots of people say they're going to settle down

# You don't see their faces and they don't come around

# Well, I'm not that way I got to move along

# I like a drink and to dance all night... #

I can't tell you how many millions of people looked up to Ronnie.

I mean, there were millions of people, not just in the South,

but in the north as well.

He represented that street guy. The street guy that had to fight.

Street guy that knew the tough part of life.

A track from their first album had now become a southern rock classic.

There are songs, once in a while, that come along,

that just transcend generations, just hits everybody right here.

It just hits everybody in their music-loving heart.

# If I leave here tomorrow

# Would you still remember me? #

Then when they hit that part, that instrumental part,

you watch people.

Unless you're catatonic, you can't stand still

and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd play the instrumental part of Free Bird.

I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear

that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.

With the support of southern rock bands,

Jimmy Carter won the presidential election -

the first man from the Deep South to do this

since before the 19th century American Civil War.

It was the pinnacle of the new South.

We are one, we are united, we are family.

And this is the spirit we want to see in the White House,

and it's what will help heal all of these rifts that have been

happening in the post-war period.

But the southern rock fraternity wasn't so healthy.

The Allman Brothers were splintering.

The new freedoms as well as the pain of losing two band members

played their part.

Too much personal things going on.

Too much drugs.

And the whole bit.

I mean, you see it every day.

It happened before us, and it still happens.

It'll be happening when we're gone.

All the pressures of what goes on in your life.

Stress, and all the rest of it.

The blues ain't nothing but a good man feeling bad.

All God's children got the blues.

The Allman Brothers Band broke up in 1976.

Lynyrd Skynyrd embarked on a major series of concerts in 1977

to support the release of their new album.

On the 20th October,

the band's tour plane flew from South Carolina to Louisiana.

MUSIC: "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

They knew that the plane had engine problems,

and yet they continued to fly.

What I understand is, they fired the two experienced pilots

and hired two young guys, and the young guys,

when they realised they were running low on fuel,

he went to swap to the reserve tank,

and he hit the wrong lever and he flushed the gas tank.

And so they gave out of gas on a damn airplane.

# Listen closely to what I say

# And if you do this it'll help you some sunny day... #

I actually sat on the couch with Donnie and his mom and dad

when the call came.

I remember looking at my family,

and, um...

and I didn't even have to say a word to them.

They knew by the look on my face. That it was bad.

And, uh, that was...

..that was tough.

# Troubles will come and they will pass... #

Three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in the crash.

"Say it loud and let it ring that we're all part of everything

"Present, future and the past

"Fly on, proud bird you're free at last."

And that was it. After I'd got that done,

it was kind of a catharsis for me, I felt like I've done all I can do.

Couldn't do anything else.

And I took it and I read it at Ronnie's funeral.

# Oh, be something

# You love and understand

# Baby, be a simple

# Kind of man... #

The southern gothic tale had, it had reached epic proportions.

It seemed that nothing else could happen.

And indeed, you know, it kind of began to die. It went corporate.

Everything kind of changed after 1977.

As a result, Donnie Van Zant and Larry Junstrom decided their band,

38 Special, should embrace a more mainstream, less southern sound.

We started writing with outside songwriters, not just ourselves.

You know, and started really paying attention

to what was happening with radio, you know.

And then we put Rockin' Into The Night out

and we had a top 40 single with Rockin' Into The Night,

which opened the door completely out for 38 Special.

By the late '70s,

Phil Walden's mighty Capricorn Records was in serious trouble.

They signed with Polydor,

who made it too easy for Phil to get a lot of money.

It's like, call up the record company,

request a million dollars and you get it.

At this particular time my brother was doing a lot of cocaine,

and it became, "Let's get another million dollars!"

And the next thing you know,

he owes Polydor 14 million or something like that.

They probably said they wanted some of their money,

because it was becoming a routine that he was calling, asking for more money.

And they went to put him out of business for it.

Capricorn Records folded in 1979.

When the doors were closing,

it felt as if it was the nicest club that you've ever been to

every night of your life and had the coldest beer,

and the nicest looking women,

and that door closed, and you'd never be able to go back there again.

MUSIC "Please Be With Me" by Allman Brothers Band

# So won't you please read my signs be a gypsy

# Tell me what I hope to find deep within me

# And because you can't find my mind

# Please be with me... #

The golden age of southern rock died

with the fading Carter administration.

That whole political thing is just, I mean,

there doesn't seem to be any truth in there at all.

Start to finish.

I mean, it's all, you know,

"I'll kiss your ass until I get elected, then you can kiss mine."

In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by a huge majority.

MUSIC: "Statesboro Blues" by Allman Brothers Band

Southern rock made the South

vibrant and alive after the darkness of the Civil Rights era.

Lynyrd Skynyrd and others that followed

took the sounds of the South to the world.

It all began with the energy and vision of Duane Allman and his band.

I don't care what colour you are or what creed you are,

if you hear Duane Allman play the opening bars on Statesboro Blues...

And maybe that's not your music, maybe you like Beethoven.

I like Beethoven, you know. But if you listen to that,

and that don't move you, you don't need to be listening to music.

You know, you need to be doing something else.

Go play golf or something.

If that don't touch you, there's something wrong with your heart.

# I woke up this morning I had them Statesboro blues

# I woke up this morning I had them Statesboro blues

# Well, I looked over in the corner, baby

# And Grandpa seemed to have them too... #

# Well, now, you want me to be your only man

# Said, listen up, Mama teach you all I can

# Do right, baby, by your man

# Don't worry, Mama teach you all I can

# Say I know a little

# Lord, I know a little 'bout it

# I know a little

# I know a little 'bout it

# I know a little 'bout love

# Baby, I can guess the rest. #