I love this.
The Times has a piece today on<$NoAd$> the Republican convention and Southern Rock bands or Country-ish acts they’re having as entertainment in New York: Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Charlie Daniels Band, 38 Special, et al. ( Or maybe et y’al.?)
In any case, down in the piece they have this graf …
Throwbacks, maybe, but that does not mean they are uncontroversial: Charlie Daniels recently angered some Arab-Americans with a song that included the lyrics “This ain’t no rag, it’s a flag, and we don’t wear it on our heads.” And Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for waving a giant Confederate flag during their rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama.”
A confederate flag for “Sweet Home Alabama”?
Imagine that …
Do we need some remedial rock hermeneutics here? Look, “Sweet Home Alabama” is an amazingly good song. I’m listening to it right now. I have it on one of the top playlists on my Ipod. So I can have it at the ready when I’m jogging.
But let’s face facts: it is a paean to Southern defiance of civil rights revolution.
If you don’t know that, have you listened to the lyrics?
In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth…
Sweet home Alabama
Oh sweet home baby
Where the skies are so blue
And the governorâs true [i.e., then-segregationist Governor George Wallace]
Sweet home Alabama
Lordy
Lord, Iâm coming home to you
Yeah, yeah [Alabama state capital] Montgomeryâs got the answer
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve gotta go rock out to some Skynyrd.
[Late Update: I should note, as several readers have now reminded me, that several of the more deep-reading Skynyrdologists argue that the “Boo Boo Boo” which comes after “In Birmingham they love the guv’nah” is actually the band’s winking effort to signal their … well, disapprobation, shall we say, of Wallacite stand-pat segregationism. But I’ve never found that reading wholly convincing — given the rest of the lyrics in the song. It always seemed to me more likely that that shadow lyric is a mocking allusion to anti-Wallace protestors. But who knows? And of course there’s also the song’s back-n-forth with Neil Young’s ‘Southern Man’.]
