Neil Young | Southern Man
This song is about racism in the American South, with references to slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. Neil Young claimed the song was more about the civil rights movement than the South in particular, but many Southern men (and women) didn't appreciate the generalization. In his 2012 biography Waging Heavy Peace, Young apologized for the song, writing: "I don't like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue."
Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" as a response to this song. Young is mentioned in the line "I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don't need him around anyhow." Lynyrd Skynyrd were big fans of Young. "Sweet Home Alabama" was meant as a good-natured answer to this, explaining the good things about Alabama. Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt often wore Neil Young T-shirts while performing. Young was quite happy with "Sweet Home Alabama." He said, "They play like they mean it, I'm proud to have my name in a song like theirs." After the release of "Sweet Home Alabama," Neil Young wrote several songs for Lynyrd Skynyrd as means of reconciliation, including his eventual standby "Powderfinger." However, the band had their infamous plane crash before they could use the songs, and Young ended up keeping them for himself.
In the liner notes for his greatest hits album Decade, Young wrote: "This song could have been written on a civil rights march after stopping off to watch Gone With The Wind at a local theater."
Young was backed by his band Crazy Horse on this track: Danny Whitten - guitar Jack Nitzsche - piano Nils Lofgren - guitar Billy Talbot - bass Ralph Molina - drums Nils Lofgren, a guitarist by trade, played piano on this song, an instrument he never played before After The Gold Rush. Young tasked Lofgren with playing piano as a "special trial," according to Jimmy McDonough's Shakey. In trying to get the piano down, Lofgren tapped into his background with accordion. "I used to be an accordion player, and accordion's all 'oompah oompah,'" he said. "So I started doin' the accordion thing on piano." To Lofgren's surprise, Young loved it. "That's the sound I was looking for," Young said. "I didn't want to hear a bunch of f--kin' licks. I don't like musicians playing licks."
Young summed up the alleged "feud" instigated between him and Lynyrd Skynyrd in a 1995 interview with Mojo Magazine: "Oh, they didn't really put me down! But then again, maybe they did! (laughs) But not in a way that matters. S--t, I think 'Sweet Home Alabama' is a great song. I've actually performed it live a couple of times myself."
Director Jonathan Demme first cut the opening sequence of his movie Philadelphia to this song in an effort to get Young to write a song like it for the film. Young gave him "Philadelphia," which he used over the end. Bruce Springsteen's contribution, "Streets Of Philadelphia," was used over the open.
Young was married to his first wife, Susan Acevedo, when he wrote this song in his Topanga Canyon studio. They were not getting along, and Young's foul mood translated into this track, which he described as "an angry song."
Randy Newman felt that "Southern Man" was one of Young's least interesting songs. "'Southern Man,' 'Alabama' are a little misguided," he said. "It's too easy a target. I don't think he knows enough about it."
During a filmed performance of this song at London's Hammersmith Odeon, Crazy Horse's Billy Talbot and Frank "Poncho" Sampredro dropped acid. "I can vividly remember 'Southern Man,'" Sampredro's said in Shakey. "It was wildly out of control - fast, slow, up, down, everywhere. At the end we were singing, I had my eyes closed and I hear this little tiny voice and I turn around and it was just me. Everybody else had quit even playing."
Source: Songfacts
Album: After The Gold Rush
Released: 1970
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