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June 16, 2016 12:18 PM   Subscribe

The origins of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird' are pretty brief. In this 1970 demo (source), you can hear a short version, with the opening question but no piano intro and extended jam at the end. Though they recorded a long version for their debut album, they also cut a short version for the single. But people want "guitar sagas", such as "Whipping Post," by the Allman Brothers Band,and "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple, or maybe it was a silly thing to heckle Florence Henderson and other uncool cats. Decades later, people are still yelling "Freebird!" Sometimes people snap back, like Bill Hicks (NSFW), and sometimes people oblige, like Bob Dylan recently. In case that's not enough, there's (always) more!

A short history of Freebird with Lynyrd Skynyrd: As noted in the 2009 Chicago Tribune write-up (syndicated on Pop Matters in one page instead of two), shouting 'Freebird!' is almost separate from the memories of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but not completely. It's enough of a pop culture reference that it snuck into a quiet moment in Pixar's Cars and people shout it at Blue Man Group concerts, so they played a bit of it. Flight of the Conchords play a bit more. Aimee Mann sings about the song and do a slow little jam to it, while Built to Spill go all in. Will Ferrell performed Freebird on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," after Conan announced the end of his time on The Tonight Show.
posted by filthy light thief (65 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Final links

Glorious Noise had a piece on the song and that guy who shouts it in the audience -- Freebird: that joke that isn't funny any more, with the response One More From The Road.

Previouslies: Yelling "Freebird!"; Old Grey Whistle Test
posted by filthy light thief at 12:18 PM on June 16, 2016


And there are a ton of covers, with only a handful captured by Second Hand Songs, and also by the Covers Project. I'll leave it at that.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:21 PM on June 16, 2016


Bill McCluskey of the Slut Boys, the great 80s garage based in Tallahassee, used to give audiences the finger whenever someone screamed "Freebird," explaining that was the only free bird he was prepared to deliver.
posted by layceepee at 12:25 PM on June 16, 2016


*flicks bic*

As someone stuck behind a counter all of today, this song hits the spot, thanks.
posted by jonmc at 12:26 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


The best version of this kind of interlocution is recorded on the bonus disc for Orbital's "In Sides"... as "Satan" is about to begin, a gentleman shouts in an extremely loud but very clear voice "PLAY SOME MOTHERFUCKING DEF LEPPARD!!!!"

Closer to the topic at hand, it does seem like certain musicians find this 'joke' incredibly irritating. Particularly I can remember John Darnielle being super pissed about it at a concert a few years ago. Initially he just said "Fuck you, eat death!" but then after the next song he took some time to explain why he was so pissed (IIRC he REALLY doesn't like Lynyrd Skynyrd). I love John Darnielle but I'm just not sure you can reason with drunk dumbasses.
posted by selfnoise at 12:31 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also the one recorded pre-debut album at Muscle Shoals with the Swampers (They've been known to pick a song or two.)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:31 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


for a bit of semi-irritating meta-irony, when you have a few tunes to sit out, wander to the back of the crowd and parody an audient aggressively yelling "Freebird!" at your band. Wallow in the sweet pleasure of said band-mates eyes darting about to find you and give you a strongly disapproving glare. And maybe also the Finger.
posted by j_curiouser at 12:32 PM on June 16, 2016 [6 favorites]


One of my favorite moments of listening to the radio came when Freebird, American Pie, and Stairway to Heaven got played in a back-to-back set. At the very end of it, the DJ came back on to announce "As you may have guessed, I have diarrhea right now."
posted by radwolf76 at 12:35 PM on June 16, 2016 [34 favorites]


I've seen The California Guitar Trio perform a sort of reggae version of it. They said they learned it because people would yell it out so they would do it as sort of a "be careful what you wish for" thing.
posted by bondcliff at 12:36 PM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


radwolf76: One of my favorite moments of listening to the radio came when Freebird, American Pie, and Stairway to Heaven got played in a back-to-back set.

Back in my college radio days, a friend played "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" so he could run across our (smallish) campus to get a soda or something. Skynyrd had the same idea - the jam session was added to give Ronnie a break on vocals.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:49 PM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


The band I was in many years ago, Torey Anos, did two different versions of Freebird, on request, depending. If we liked the audience, we did a one-and-a-half-minute power-chord thrash version, no guitar solo. If we didn't like the audience, we kept playing the song, badly, and with many, many guitar solos, until most people left.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:53 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


FLT FTW.

Stellar post, as always.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:53 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


isolated bass is surprisingly great
posted by thelonius at 12:58 PM on June 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


I am old enough to have seen the original band live. Great intense show. Here is a version from a show in Wales. The dedication is to Gregg Allman, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley. Listen to the entire show. It is a great one originally released on a bootleg vinyl. The band finally released it themselves in 2009.

I never could get myself to see the band again. The survivors just weren't the same to me without Ronnie. Loved Donnie Van Zandt's band .38 Special before they sort of went commercial. Their first two albums were southern rock. After that, not so much.
posted by AugustWest at 1:04 PM on June 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


I saw Bright Eyes leader Conor Oberst go into a petulant little fit when someone yelled out "Freebird".
posted by octothorpe at 1:06 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


When I worked at Kenny's Castaways I'd mess with bands that I was friends with by calling for Stairway to Freebird.
posted by Splunge at 1:15 PM on June 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


I always liked Built to Spill's version, as well as their version of Cortez the Killer. Wailing guitar solos! My brothers listened to November Rain too much when I was a kid and now they're part of me
posted by dismas at 1:21 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


I used to think "We Built This City" was the worst song ever, but I've come around to the idea that maybe, God help me, the absolutely baffling Will to Power medley of "Baby I love Your Way" and "Freebird" is worse.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:21 PM on June 16, 2016 [10 favorites]


If you're too cool for Free Bird, then you're too cool full stop. I saw the classic Skynyrd line-up do it live at Knebworth in 1976 (the year the Stones headlined there). Here's what I wrote in my diary next day:

"By the time Lynyrd Skynyd came on the delays had snowballed to about 90 minutes. But that was instantly forgotten because, by God, they were good. They were the first band today to get the crowd on its feet, jumping around, dancing, clapping. Their closing number was Free Bird, of course and that was just fantastic. The triple-threat guitars kept getting faster and higher and louder till you expected the whole band to spontaneously combust. It seemed like that was the only way they’d ever be able to stop."

If I absolutely had to choose just one Skynyrd number, I'd still pick Sweet Home Alabama just for the gorgeous piano in that song, but I'll always love Free Bird too.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:22 PM on June 16, 2016 [6 favorites]


Frank Zappa famously knew how to handle this sort of thing...
posted by thelonius at 1:22 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


obligatory phish version
posted by PugAchev at 1:22 PM on June 16, 2016


The acapella version by Phish is my favorite.
posted by gauche at 1:23 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Dammit.
posted by gauche at 1:24 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Back in my college radio days, a friend played 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' so he could run across our (smallish) campus to get a soda or something."

Thirty-three years ago, when I was a commercial radio jock working the overnight shift by myself, one night I prerecorded a half-hour of my show simultaneously as I was doing the live show by doing it in separate studios, running between the two, timing everything carefully so that I wouldn't have to ever be in both studios at the same time, and I set the clock in the studio I was recording in to the future time so that everything (such as the break to live satellite AP news) would be timed perfectly to the second -- all so that I could put the recorded half-hour reel on the air and drive my car to the nearby convenience store and get something to eat. I listened to myself "live" on the radio on the way and back. The station itself was outside of town so the whole trip took almost the entire half-hour.

I later tried this trick again, though staying within the station while I was doing something else. I had all the speakers throughout the station turned up so I could hear, and about eight minutes in the tape ran off the capstan/pinch roller and then freely (but still across the head) at high speed (pulled by the take-up reel) on the air, during a portion where I was supposedly speaking live, and I had to frantically run back to the studio. And I thought to myself "THANK GOD I wasn't ten minutes away in my car. What the hell was I thinking?" This was the top AM radio station in the market.

Okay, actually, I have to disclose the part I left out. There was a shower in one of the bathrooms and I had gotten it into my head that I really wanted to take a shower for some reason. So what happened is that I was in the shower when I heard the reel-to-reel malfunction and I ran wet and naked through the station to the studio and somehow didn't break anything or electrocute myself.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:27 PM on June 16, 2016 [37 favorites]


That's right up there with another one of my favorite radio moments, when after a very conspicuous 5 minutes of dead air, the DJ came on and without missing a beat, rattled off "This moment of silence has been brought to you by your local public library."
posted by radwolf76 at 1:34 PM on June 16, 2016 [13 favorites]


"Freebird" is also the traditional closing to most US Air Guitar events.
posted by SansPoint at 1:41 PM on June 16, 2016


Before "Freebird!" it was "Whipping Post!" I'm told.
posted by jonmc at 1:45 PM on June 16, 2016


And "Smoke on the Water," so I'm told, which that old(er) WSJ link calls "guitar sagas."
posted by filthy light thief at 1:56 PM on June 16, 2016


Remember that time that Giles sang "Freebird" on Buffy, all by himself in his apartment one night, as you do, and then got interrupted? And I wanted to kill Spike? As you do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdipD8FATJw

html is hard
posted by allthinky at 1:57 PM on June 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ahhh memories. Gold & Platinum was the first (vinyl) LP I ever bought with my own money, and Skynyrd the first band I devoured as a teen.

Song is hard as hell to play on RockBand even on easy setting!
posted by terrapin at 1:57 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


A crusty old pirate plays Stairway to Freebird Island (Stairway to Heaven + Freebird [I guess] instrumental guitar + Gilligan's Island lyrics).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:01 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


I grew up in the deep South. I cannot separate this song, or this band, from the demographic that is drastically overrepresented in their fanbase in MS/AL/etc. It was a demographic also typically very hostile to weird kids like me, and so: Yuck.
posted by uberchet at 2:20 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Do Stonehenge!!!
posted by petebest at 2:29 PM on June 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


My first live concert was at a small club in Macon, Georgia. Sister Machine Gun opened for Gravity Kills. (Mortal Kombat soundtrack era, for those keeping score at home.) During a short break in SMG's set, while the singer complained about their label, someone shouted, "Play Freebird!"

The singer stopped his rant and looked at his feet, probably thinking that's the last time he'd play in Georgia. After a few seconds, he said "Okay. You asked for it," called a slow 4-count, and crooned, "If I leeeeeave here..." as the drummer fumbled around. The guitarists did nothing.

The singer stopped abruptly. "Yeah. We don't know that song. But someday, you're gonna say that to someone who does."
posted by Boxenmacher at 2:34 PM on June 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


I love John Darnielle but I'm just not sure you can reason with drunk dumbasses.

People get drunk before Mountain Goats concerts? Weird.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 2:45 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


"This telethon is so important we've even exhumed the bodies of Lynyrd Skynyrd."
posted by Palindromedary at 2:55 PM on June 16, 2016


Hey man, is that Freedom Rock?
posted by spilon at 3:01 PM on June 16, 2016 [7 favorites]




and sometimes people oblige, like Bob Dylan recently

I was hoping that was going to be in response to someone shouting "Freebird!"
posted by iotic at 3:20 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


"...In a little while the ambulance came
And the sound of its siren mixed with the sound of the
Screaming girl and the spinning wheel
But when the story was told the next day at the graduation ceremony
Everyone said that when the paramedics got there
They could still hear "Free Bird" playing on the stereo
You know it's a very, very long song."
posted by mojohand at 3:26 PM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


The P.E. teacher the band is named after

He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner!
posted by Spatch at 3:26 PM on June 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


From allmusic.com's review of Dave Alvin's live album Out In California:

At the very end, there is a hidden track; an audience member calls for "Freebird" in an ironic tone of voice, and Alvin responds, "What, you think we can't play that?" With that, the band rips into "Freebird" with a (mercifully brief) vengeance. It's the perfect ending to a very impressive album.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:49 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Drunk fan: Smoke on the water!
Our guitar player: sorry, don't know that.
Drunk fan: what? Its a very popular song!
Our guitar player: sing a few bars for me
Drunk fan makes slobbery fool of himself...
posted by hal9k at 3:54 PM on June 16, 2016


There aren't too many tunes that will make me switch to another station when it comes on the radio, but Freebird is solidly one of them. Maybe I just got burned-out on it due to the local rock station seemingly playing it at least once every hour for about thirty years and counting?
posted by Thorzdad at 4:10 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]




Paul Slade: I saw the classic Skynyrd line-up do it live at Knebworth in 1976

I was there too; it was quite an occasion. I’m not sure I had really even heard of Lynyrd Skynyrd at that point as I had gone to see the Stones, but I remember being very taken with them for a while after that.

My brother and I only ever went to two rock concerts together: the Beatles in 1966 and then Knebworth in 1976. We had this notion that if we didn’t go and see the Stones then we wouldn’t have too many more chances, after all they had already been together for over a decade and the Beatles had broken up several years before so how much longer could they possibly last? Little did we know (though I guess, as it turned out, we were unknowingly right in the case of Lynyrd Skynyrd).
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 5:26 PM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


I used to keep a list of the top 50 songs that bad DJs play constantly.

Today's DJs don't know those songs. Jes' wait 'em out, people.
posted by Twang at 5:45 PM on June 16, 2016


Andre Braugher of all people singing the holy hell out of this a cappella from the film Duets

Holy shit, that was really good. In fact, that was the best version I've ever heard, including the original. I've always compared "Freebird" to the Allman Bros.' "Ramblin' Man"; they're about exactly the same thing lyrically--sorry babe, gotta scoot--but "Ramblin' Man" is just so much more joyful musically.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:05 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Lynyrd Skynyrd was a great band and great, solid live band. I listened to the original-lineup albums and One More for from the Road a lot recently and loved it.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:17 PM on June 16, 2016


I used to think "We Built This City" was the worst song ever, but I've come around to the idea that maybe, God help me, the absolutely baffling Will to Power medley of "Baby I love Your Way" and "Freebird" is worse.

Not as baffling as their smooth-jazz sax-filled version of "I'm Not in Love."
posted by blucevalo at 7:31 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Was Bill Hicks ever funny? I can't see why that schtick worked. Of course he wanted someone to yell Freebird after his little rant. What else did he have?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:01 PM on June 16, 2016


Ah, good, I can cross this off the list of FPPs I never got around to assembling. (You did a better job than I would have, too!)

I'd add a couple of other songs named "Free Bird," written by singer-songwriters in order to have another way of replying to such requests:
Marian Call
Marc With a C

And the Doubleclicks have some words for The Guy Who Yelled Freebird.

Later, as the result of an extreme stretch goal in a Kickstarter, they gave in and covered the song.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:04 PM on June 16, 2016


Bong hits in Ronnie's van, Freebird - how I spent my senior year in high school.


Oh, and fuck Gregg Allman.
posted by sfts2 at 9:34 PM on June 16, 2016


If I were ever in a band/group/unit/position to play live music in front of an audience, I'd make a cover of Freebird. Could be anything: if I were in a metal band, we'd make a black metal Freebird. Shoegaze? Shoegaze version of Freebird. Electro house? Electro house version of Freebird.

Other folks in band hate Freebird? Make a really shitty noisy version that takes the piss out of Freebird but is super fun to play.
Other folks in band love Freebird? Make a really nice version that is super fun to play.

Either way, create a version of Freebird that I/we like and enjoy playing.

Then if someone shouts "Freebird" it would just be like "Okay" or "We have that planned for later in our set," with no need to get pissed off.
posted by Bugbread at 9:41 PM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


That, or name the band "Freebird."

Audience: "Freebird!!!"
Me: "Thank you! Thank you very much!!"

Audience: "Play Freebird!!!"
Me: "We will!! That's what we're here for!!"
posted by Bugbread at 9:43 PM on June 16, 2016 [9 favorites]


Freebird Rescheduled
posted by bonefish at 12:24 AM on June 17, 2016


Zeppelin would NEVER beseech the crowd for requests. They never cared what you wanted to hear.

Trouble is, that's the haughty attitude of every third-rate indie landfill band now.

I know who definitely would have played the ancestor songs to 'Freebird' when they were yelled at them by smartarse drunks: The Beatles in Hamburg.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:37 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Greetings, Quinbus. Always nice to speak to another Knebworth veteran. You may care to check out my reminiscences of the day by scrolling down to August 21's entry here.

Also: I love that Doubleclicks version and the band's experience that led to it.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:07 AM on June 17, 2016


Freebird: that joke that isn't funny any more

In 9th grade, I had a teacher named Jim Rex who told us that a joke was only funny the first and third time you hear it; only the first and third and never again. If only everyone could be as wise as Mr. Rex.


How could one ever hope to debate humor theory against a source as unassailable as some guy's 9th grade teacher?
posted by fairmettle at 3:32 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I remember hearing as a kid some comedy writer or other saying, "If something is funny once, it's funny three times." He was talking about the way dialogue works in a sitcom, like:

Initial punchline: "They used a banana" (everybody laughs, new to the joke)

A character reacts: "They used a banana?!" (everybody laughs; see, Bob thinks it's crazy, too!)

Later, another character hears all of this for the first time and before the punchline arrives, jumps ahead of it and deadpans, "So they used a banana" like it's the most obvious thing in the world (everybody laughs because whaaaaaaat?)

But after three, the joke isn't funny anymore. Leave it at two, it feels incomplete. Leave it at one, you just aren't being economical. How many jokes do you think you have, anyway? Waste not, want not.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:57 AM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


every third-rate indie landfill band now.

The Seagulls aren't like that
posted by thelonius at 5:13 AM on June 17, 2016


When I was a college DJ with an early Sunday morning summer spot (our station was so understaffed in the summers that we turned it off overnight, which you're not really ever supposed to do) I would put on entire Grateful Dead live albums and just wander off for a bit, too.
posted by Inkoate at 6:04 AM on June 17, 2016


People get drunk before Mountain Goats concerts? Weird.

I saw them in Buffalo earlier this year at a venue with a bar and there were plenty of people getting drunk during the concert. I was in the second row and one very happy gentleman had to be removed from where he was being a gleeful nuisance in front of the stage. And then after the concert, as I was driving away, there were two guys in the street outside the venue so drunk and/or stoned that they literally could not comprehend the significance of the cars driving towards them. They were removed from the street by some other MG fans who had been waiting to cross the street.

I saw them again a week or so later in Grand Rapids, where they played as part of the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin College—John Darnielle had spoken at the festival, about his novel. That was an interesting concert—it seemed to be mostly made up of people who weren't familiar with the band, including a lot of middle-aged academically-minded liberal Christians who were attending the festival, and lots and lots of undergrads from Calvin, a conservative Christian college, who got their tickets for $5 because it was a campus event.

The crowd seemed pretty into it, so I had started questioning my assumptions about who were and weren't in the audience, until, late in the concert, they got to Up the Wolves and, while the entire audience got onto its feet, there were only pockets of us here and there singing along. They didn't do No Children as the final encore, which they've done when I've seen them before, which felt a little bit like seeing a Springsteen concert without Born to Run.
posted by not that girl at 7:18 AM on June 17, 2016


Was Bill Hicks ever funny? I can't see why that schtick worked. Of course he wanted someone to yell Freebird after his little rant. What else did he have?

Yeah, well it wasn't really a schtick so much as symptoms of cocaine psychosis. This was the beginning of the infamous 45-minute Chicago Meltdown. He was much funnier when he wasn't hitting rock bottom.
posted by vibrotronica at 8:23 AM on June 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


>Was Bill Hicks ever funny?

LOLWHAT.
posted by uberchet at 8:48 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


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