Sweet Home Alabama
| "Sweet Home Alabama" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by Lynyrd Skynyrd | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Second Helping | ||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Take Your Time" | |||||||||||||
| Released | June 24, 1974 | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7-inch | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | June 1973 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Southern rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 4:45 | |||||||||||||
| Label | MCA | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | ||||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Al Kooper | |||||||||||||
| Lynyrd Skynyrd singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"Sweet Home Alabama" is a song by Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd that first appeared in 1974 on their second album, Second Helping.
It reached number 8 on the US chart in 1974 and was the band's second hit single. The song was written in reply to "Southern Man" and "Alabama" by Neil Young; Young is name-checked in the song's lyrics.
At a band practice shortly after bassist Ed King had switched to guitar, he heard fellow guitarist Gary Rossington playing a guitar riff that inspired him (in fact, this riff is still heard in the final version of the song and is played during the verses as a counterpoint to the main D – C9 – G chord progression). In interviews, King has said that during the night following the practice session, the chords and two main guitar solos came to him in a dream, note for note. King then introduced the song to the band the next day. Also written at this session was the track that followed "Sweet Home Alabama" on the Second Helping album, "I Need You".
A live version of the track on the compilation album Collectybles places the writing of the song during the late summer of 1973, as the live set available on the album is dated October 30, 1973.
The track was recorded at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, using just King, bassist Wilkeson, and drummer Burns to lay down the basic backing track. King used a Marshall amp belonging to Allen Collins. The guitar used on the track was a 1972 . However, King has said that the guitar was a pretty poor model and had bad pickups, forcing him to turn the amp up all the way to get decent volume out of it. This guitar is now displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
The famous "Turn it up" line uttered by Ronnie Van Zant at the beginning was actually not intended to be in the song. Van Zant was simply asking producer Al Kooper and engineer Rodney Mills to increase the volume in his headphones so that he could hear the track better.
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Wikipedia