Free Bird

According to guitarist Gary Rossington, for two years after Allen Collins wrote the initial chords, vocalist Ronnie Van Zant insisted that there were too many for him to create a melody in the belief that the melody needed to change alongside the chords. After Collins played the unused sequence at rehearsal one day, Van Zant asked him to repeat it, then wrote out the melody and lyrics in three or four minutes. The guitar solos that finish the song were added originally to give Van Zant a chance to rest, as the band was playing several sets per night at clubs at the time. Soon afterward, the band learned piano-playing roadie Billy Powell had written an introduction to the song; upon hearing it, they included it as the finishing touch and had him formally join as their keyboardist.

Allen Collins's girlfriend, Kathy, whom he later married, asked him, "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" Collins noted the question and it eventually became the opening line of "Free Bird". Also in an interview filmed during a fishing outing on a boat with Gary Rossington, an interviewer asked Ronnie Van Zant what the song meant. Van Zant replied that in essence, that the song is "what it means to be free, in that a bird can fly wherever he wants to go". He further stated that "everyone wants to be free...that's what this country's all about".[15]

The song is dedicated to the memory of Duane Allman by the band in their live shows.[16] During their 1975 performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, Van Zant dedicated the song to both Allman and Berry Oakley, commenting, "they're both free birds".[17][18]

"Free Bird" is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and at number 193 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2009, it was named the 26th best hard rock song of all time by VH1.[19]

External video

Live performance of "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Oakland Coliseum, February 7, 1977

It has become something of a humorous tradition for audience members at concerts to shout "Free Bird!" or "Play Free Bird!" as a request to hear the song, regardless of the performer or style of music.[8] For example, during the Nirvana 1993 MTV Unplugged in New York show, a shout-out for "Free Bird!" eventually resulted in a lyrically slurred, if short, rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama". In 2016, an attendee of a Bob Dylan concert in Berkeley, California shouted for "Free Bird" to be played, and Dylan and his band unexpectedly obliged.[20]

The phenomenon began earlier in the 1970s with The Allman Brothers Band's "Whipping Post" and Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" but then took off with "Free Bird" by 1979. On Skynyrd's first live album, 1976's One More from the Road, Van Zant can be heard asking the crowd, "What song is it you wanna hear?" The calls for "Free Bird" led into a 14-minute rendition of the song. During the beginning of the song he would make the comment about "playing it pretty" (e.g., "Play It Pretty for Atlanta"). Kevin Matthews claimed to have further popularized it in the 1980s from his Chicago-area radio show.[8]

"Free Bird" is also the traditional closer for US air guitar competitions, where competitors, judges, and spectators are encouraged to go on stage and perform air guitar to the song together.

The song has sold 2,111,000 downloads in the digital era, as of 2013.[21]

Studio version

Live version

The American dance-pop group Will to Power created a medley of this song and the 1976 Peter Frampton song "Baby, I Love Your Way" in 1988. Titled "Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley", it spent one week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[27]

Molly Hatchet covered the song on their 1985 live album Double Trouble Live. It was released as a promo single.[28]

It was also covered by Wynonna Judd on the 1994 tribute album Skynyrd Frynds.

The song was also covered by Bronx Casket Co. on their 2005 album Hellectric in goth style.

American jam band Phish has performed an a cappella version of the song live, most frequently throughout 1993–94 and 1998.[29]