Nearly fifty years after it was written, “Free Bird” is still the signature concert closer for the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose final farewell tour wraps up in October in Manchester, Tennessee. Founding members Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins wrote the song in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1970, and it wasn’t long before “Free Bird” and its extended guitar solo near the end became one of the band’s most well-known tunes and a live-show favorite.

After Van Zant died in a plane crash in 1977, the song took on new meaning. Guitarist Gary Rossington, who survived the crash, recruited Ronnie’s younger brother Johnny Van Zant in the 1980s to help reform the band and—eventually—sing his brother’s words for thousands of fans.

†Meets FreeBird® brand’s humane policy for raising poultry on family farms in a stress-free environment. ††Organic poultry raised exclusively on Certified Organic, Non-GMO grains in compliance with National Organic Program regulation. Watch Lynyrd Skynyrd's live performance of 'Free Bird', taken from the album 'Live In Atlantic City'!Get the album here: https://lynyrdskynyrd.lnk.to/LiveInA. A Free Bird TM is a non-profit arts education organization dedicated to helping young people, ages 4-18, affected by cancer, fight their disease through the therapeutic benefits. .Minimally processed. No artificial ingredients.Federal regulations prohibit the use of added growth hormones and steroids in poultry. †Meets FreeBird® brand’s humane policy for raising poultry on family farms in a stress-free environment.

We spoke with Johnny Van Zant, Rossington, and guitarist Rickey Medlocke about the origin and evolution of the song, why fans insist on yelling “Free Bird!” at concerts, and what it feels like to perform it in a different city each night for the final time.

The Origin

In 1964, a group of teenaged friends including vocalist Ronnie Van Zant and guitarists Gary Rossington and Allen Collins started jamming together in Jacksonville, Florida. They cycled through a few band names, eventually landing on Lynyrd Skynyrd in joking reference to Leonard Skinner, their high-school gym teacher who railed against boys having long hair. By the seventies, the band had developed a following, and the friends were writing what would become some of Skynyrd’s most popular songs, including “Free Bird.” Multi-instrumentalist Rickey Medlocke joined for a time shortly thereafter, playing drums and recording.

Gary Rossington: One rehearsal day, Allen started playing the chords to “Free Bird” at the house where we used to hang out after school and after we quit school. Ronnie used to always lie on the couch after two or three hours of rehearsing. He’d lie there and hear mistakes and say, “Let’s fix that.” When one of us would get a good idea going, he’d say, “Play it, play.”

Allen had these chords, and he’d play them over and over, but at first Ronnie thought there were too many chord changes to write lyrics to. This time Ronnie said, “Play that again.” Allen played the chords, then I’d play them, and Ronnie just sat there and wrote the lyrics, a love song. How we were traveling on the road. We hadn’t really made it yet. We were playing everywhere we could play. It wasn’t so heavy or nothing to us at first.

Rickey Medlocke: 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.

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Ronnie Van Zant in 1975 at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta.

GR: We started playing it, just the slow part, at clubs. Then, after a few sets, Ronnie would say, “Y’all play a little longer, my throat’s hurting and I need a break.” 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. One guy at this club in Atlanta said, “Would y’all play that song ‘Firefly’ that has a big ending? That one we can all dance to at the end?”

RM: It wasn’t until they added that ending that “Free Bird” was let loose. The song took off at the clubs.

In 1972, Lynyrd Skynyrd signed with MCA Records, which produced and released the band’s debut album, Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), in 1973. “Free Bird” was the second side’s final track.

RM: We cut the very first recording in Muscle Shoals. The band already had the ending worked up by the time I joined. They showed me the full version, and I think it was like seventeen minutes long.

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1973.

GR:MCA said we couldn’t release the full song because no one would play it on the radio. It was too long. They said to do the slow part and fade out, and we were like, “No, you’re not going to change our song because we like the end part.” We did a full version, but MCA had the power to do it as they wanted.

“Free Bird,” with its extended ending, became a live-show signature for the band throughout the seventies.

GR:During our shows, Ronnie would dedicate it to someone. After Berry [Oakley] and Duane [Allman] had passed from motorcycle crashes, we would dedicate it to them, because as Ronnie said, they were free birds. They were our friends, our big influences, and it broke our hearts. We would say, “This song is for them tonight.”

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1977, shortly before the plane crash that killed six passengers, including Ronnie Van Zant.

The Return

Free Birdhouse Plans

On October 20, 1977, as the band was flying between shows in South Carolina and Louisiana, the charter plane ran out of fuel and crashed in a Mississippi forest, killing six passengers, including Van Zant. Collins survived the crash with serious injuries. He passed away in 1990. Rossington also survived the crash and today is the band’s sole living original member still performing. In 1987, Rossington and other pre-crash members organized a reunion tour and approached Johnny Van Zant, a solo artist at the time, about joining as lead vocalist.

Johnny Van Zant: I had never wanted to be in the band. Lynyrd Skynyrd was going to go on with my brother forever. Ten years after the crash, I was called into a meeting. I walked into a room, and here are these guys who survived the crash with my brother. They wanted me to come on for a tribute tour.

Van Zant felt uncomfortable singing “Free Bird” on the tour, until Rossington said something that changed his mind.

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Johnny Van Zant performing with Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2018.

GR: After the crash, we just had Ronnie’s microphone with a hat on it, and we played “Free Bird” instrumental and let the audience sing it. But I knew people wanted to hear the song. And I knew Ronnie wrote it to be sung.

JVZ: I told Gary, “Ronnie is the guy who should be singing this.” Then one show, we came off the stage after “Alabama,” and Gary said, “The crowd’s raising heck and I’m not going back out there unless you sing it.” He told me, “Ronnie was a singer and a songwriter and the song needs to be sung.” That hit me, and I’ve been singing it ever since.

Following Collins’s death in 1990, Medlocke, who had been the front man of the band Blackfoot, re-joined Lynyrd Skynyrd on guitar.

RM: As it happens, Allen’s style and my style were similar, so it was pretty well laid out that I was going to play Allen’s parts. The easiest one to work up was “Free Bird” because the ending is put together in sections. I take Allen’s basic lead and stick pretty well to it, but I put a different little twist on it here and there. Every night “Free Bird” is a little different. The audience can’t tell it, but I can. There’s not a night that has ever gone by that they don’t stay after the whole set’s done to hear “Free Bird.”

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Rickey Medlocke in 2014.

The Legacy

Concertgoers yelling “Play Free Bird!”—whether at a Lynyrd Skynyrd show or not—is just one way the song has seeped into rock music lore.

GR: 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!”

JVZ: One time, I went to a Cher concert here in Jacksonville with my wife. We had a few cocktails, and the next thing I know I’m out in the audience hollering “Free Bird!” “Free Bird!” at Cher. [Laughs.] My wife told me to shut up.

GR: Ronnie and Allen didn’t live long enough to see it turn into a classic. They didn’t get to see that everybody everywhere knows “Free Bird.” It’s played at graduations, weddings, and funerals, and a lot of people say we got them through college with “Free Bird.”

Every night, we look out at the audience and you see people singing every lyric with Johnny. At the end, everybody starts jumping up and down, and it’s emotional to watch the audience do that. The song lets you think about your love or people you’ve lost.

photo: Courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd in the 1970s.

JVZ: Being that this is our final tour, I’m thinking on stage each time, this is the last time I’m going to sing “Free Bird” in this city. I’m looking out at the audience, and I’ve been with the band for thirty-one years, and honestly it feels like it’s thirty-one seconds gone by.

We have a big screen with pictures of everyone who has been in the band, and sometimes we have a video playing where Ronnie sings it with me. It’s very cool. I have had people say that when I first started, I wasn’t as good as Ronnie. I never wanted to be as good as my brother. I just wanted to carry on his music. I’m Johnny, he was Ronnie, and that’s what kept me going. We’ll never forget the ones who started this.

The first recorded instance occurred at a concert in Atlanta, Ga., in 1976. Now, in 2011, you can still hear it from the back of a smoky bar, at a baseball game, in church, even at a presidential inaugural ball. Usually it's late in the evening. A lull has come over the audience as the guitar player tunes up between songs, the choir shifts between hymns or the new president is about to take the stage [source: Shapiro]. Then, the quiet is shattered by a voice at the back of the crowd. 'Freebird!'

It's a scene that plays out across the country decades after the Southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd released their song 'Freebird' in 1973. (The band spelled the song title as one word.)

Advertisement

Advertisement

What makes people (some call them obnoxious morons, rednecks, hicks or worse) request 'Freebird' at indie-rock concerts, churches, President Barack Obama's youth inauguration ball, baseball games, even classical performances -- all inappropriate places people report having heard 'Freebird' hollered from the audience to musicians who aren't likely to have the song in their repertoire?

It could be because of the song itself -- a nine-minute piece in the studio version, but often 14-plus minutes when Skynyrd (as the band is known to fans) performs it live, as they do to this day. It starts out as an almost-ballad, a song about a man who's getting out of a relationship because he's 'as free as a bird,' and builds to a rousing battle between two lead guitars. It's an epic sound consistently named one of rock's greatest songs. On this Aol Radio list, it comes in at No. 7.

Or maybe yelling 'Freebird' is considered a shout-out to the band itself, which has suffered many losses over the years, including the deaths of Ronnie Van Zant, the lead singer on 'Freebird,' and other band members in a 1977 plane crash.

So, how did this tradition of hollering 'Freebird' at any and all public venues -- appalling to some, a funny joke to others -- get started? We'll take a trip back to the 1970s and '80s on the next page to find out.

Advertisement

Free Bird Chords

Let's go back to 1976. Skynyrd was performing at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Ga., when deep into the concert lead singer Ronnie Van Zant asked the crowd, 'What song is it you want to hear?' The answer was a resounding 'Freebird.' The epic, nearly 15-minute-long live version of 'Freebird,' including the question and answer, appeared on the Skynyrd album 'One More From the Road.' This recording is often cited as the reason 'Freebird' is shouted at concerts [source: Fry].

The other often-given explanation comes from an unlikely place considering the band's Southern roots -- Chicago, Ill. Kevin Matthews, a Chicago radio personality, claims to have originated the whole 'Freebird' phenomenon when he called upon his fans, known as KevHeads, to yell the song title out at a Florence Henderson (she played mother Carol on 'The Brady Bunch') concert in the late 1980s. KevHeads did their master's bidding, and a tradition was born. Matthews insists that he never intended for it to be yelled at every concert, however. 'It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert -- it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame,' he says in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. 'If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell 'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert.'

Advertisement

Advertisement

Freebird Boots

But Matthews' idea spread across time and genres and has by now produced as many responses from bands to the request 'Play Freebird' as there are bands (we'll take a peek at some of these on the next page).

Derek Phillips on his blog Glorious Noise calls yelling 'Freebird' the 'joke that isn't funny any more.' His informal poll of people who yell it out at concerts, basketball games and more seems to suggest that it is now viewed by screamers as a joke that the whole world -- including the next generation -- is in on. Phillips is ready for the joke to end [source: Phillips].

But what do musicians who hear the same request night after night think about it? We'll explore their various responses on the next page.

Advertisement

So, how have bands dealt with this strange musical phenomenon? Some have added unusual covers of the song to their repertoires, while others rant and refuse to play it.

And some respond in the way of all people of the early 21st century, with a Facebook page. Colin Meloy of the Decemberists started the page Musicians Against the Calling Out of Freebird (MACOF). On the group's page he says, 'This is a serious issue facing today's culture. How can musicians around the world ever feel appreciated when people throw out a request as appalling as Freedbird [sic] at concerts?' Of course, in the best (if short) tradition of social media, a counter page, Keep Yelling Freebird, also exists [source: KYF].

Advertisement

Free Bird Song

Advertisement

Some bands rant. Modest Mouse, for example, has a famous, if not family-friendly, one. Some bands put their own spin on the tune and play it when asked. Here are examples of responses given by several bands that you might not expect to have a version of 'Freebird' available on immediate notice:

• In 2009, Jackson Browne did a 4-minute acoustic version while performing in North Carolina.
• The band Phish has performed a humorous, a cappella version (complete with guitar solo) on many occasions since 1987. A recent performance in 2009 got the Portland, Maine, audience on its feet.
• In 2007, Capitol Offense, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's band, performed it in New Hampshire, calling it the 'Southern national anthem of rock.'
• Dry County, a Chicago-based band, plays it every time it's requested at a concert. One night, the band played it three times [source: Phillips].

Neither the stories about the origin of 'Freebird' nor the idea that it has become a joke that won't die addresses the lingering popularity of hollering 'Freebird' at any and all musicians (and live events in general) well into the 21st century

But maybe that's OK. Maybe the song's lyric, 'I'm as free as a bird now,' explains it all. We're all free to respond to the phenomenon as we choose -- whether we find it annoying or inspiring.

Links to lots more information about Skynyrd, 'Freebird' and the folks who request it in crowded concerts can be found on the next page.

Advertisement

Related Articles

Sources

• Capitol Offense, Former Gov. Mike Huckabee's band. YouTube. (Aug. 18, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkeflmkFCj0
• Facebook. 'Keep Yelling Freebird.' (Aug. 18, 2011) https://www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-Yelling-Freebird/108063582607816?sk=wall
• Facebook. 'Musicians Against the Calling Out of Freebird (MACOF).' March 1, 2006. (Aug. 20, 2011) https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2226485269
• Fry, Jason. 'Rock's Oldest Joke: Yelling 'Freebird!' In a Crowded Theater.' Wall Street Journal. March 17, 2005. (Aug. 17, 2011) http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,SB111102511477881964-ZkAKwALO87RaHLbFJrSJSA_i9xg_20050415,00.html?mod=blogs
• Jackson Browne. YouTube. (Aug. 18, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8hxgfO3R1g
• Phillips, Derek. 'That Joke isn't Funny Anymore.' Glorious Noise blog. Jan. 27, 2004. (Aug. 20, 2011) http://gloriousnoise.com/2004/that_joke_isnt_funny_anymore
• Phish. YouTube. (Aug. 18, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EBlSJWM1QA
• Shapiro, Andrew. 'To The Dude Who Yelled Out 'Free Bird' During Obama's Inaugural Youth Ball: For Once, It Was Funny.' MTV News. Jan. 21, 2009. (Aug. 25, 2011) http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/01/21/to-the-dude-who-yelled-out-free-bird-during-obamas-inaugural-youth-ball-for-once-it-was-funny/
• Simmons, Lee. 'Death to Freebird? One Facebook page wants just that.' Bizmology blog. Feb. 10, 2011. (Aug. 18, 2011) http://www.bizmology.com/2011/02/10/death-to-freebird-one-facebook-page-wants-just-that/
• Wilkening, Matthew. 'Top 100 Classic Rock Songs.'Aol Radio blog. June 5, 2010. (Aug. 25, 2011) http://www.aolradioblog.com/2010/06/05/top-100-classic-rock-songs-part-five-of-five/