Sweet Home Alabama is melodically, rythmically very cool. The lyrics drove me away for decades, but then I found out Neil Young was a pallbearer at Van Zant's funeral.
Coupla quotes on the history --
But the ultimate irony of "Sweet Home Alabama" is that for so many, the song's implied put down of Neil Young was NOT meant as criticism but as support of Young's anti-racism. Thus, for those who think it's so clever to put down Neil Young using the phrase "Hope Neil Young will remember, a southern man don't need him around anyhow" little do they realize that they have the meaning backwards. Every day, someone blogs or tweets the "Neil Young putdown" without comprehending that they've actually praised him. Similarly, with the State of Alabama using the phrase "Sweet Home Alabama" as an official slogan on license plates, one truly has to wonder what they were thinking the song was about.
George Wallace, who fought for segregation, was the governor of Alabama when this was released. He loved the song, especially the line, "In Birmingham they love the governor," and he made the band honorary Lieutenant Colonels in the state militia.
Wallace may not have listened very carefully however, as Ronnie Van Zant explained: "The lyrics about the governor of Alabama were misunderstood. The general public didn't notice the words 'Boo! Boo! Boo!' after that particular line, and the media picked up only on the reference to the people loving the governor." Van Zant added, "We're not into politics, we don't have no education, and Wallace don't know anything about rock and roll."
The reference to Watergate in a song about the South mystifies some people: "Now Watergate does not bother me, Does your conscience bother you?" Although it is open to interpretation, Shmoop.com says if taken to mean northerners have their own problems and therefore shouldn't throw stones, this reference might be heard this way: "Van Zant ...wasn't judging all individual northerners to be bad people because their president had committed bad acts; they shouldn't judge him for the things George Wallace did either."
I can listen to it now without flinching. They were Southern potheads, not racists.
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