Southern Man and Northern Man: Ronnie and Neil, The Un-Civil Wars & Rebels with Causes

Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant wearing a Neil Young "Tonight's The Night" T-shirt
Oakland Coliseum Stadium, July 2, 1977
Photographer: Michael Zagaris on Wolfgang's Vault
As today's un-Civil Wars continue to heat up and totally eclipse what really matters, all sorts of scapegoats are being dragged out of closets in futile attempts to distract, distort, entrain and inflame.

Everyone -- it seems -- has an opinion. Everyone is an expert. Everyone has the right solution.

So along comes the following article The Problem with Southern Rock by Barney Hoskyns, author of Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons.

The hideous events unfolding in the U.S. over the past week prompted me to dig out this Guardian piece from April 2012. Titled Titled “Southern rock’s passion and romance is marred by racism and bigotry”, the article served as a preview to James Maycock’s BBC4 southern-rock doc Sweet Home Alabama. Here’s praying a few more southern rockers (and country singers, for that matter) stick their heads over the parapet and condemn Trump’s revolting collusion with racists and neo-Nazi supremacists. Even if Alabama is their sweet white homeland.
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Was Skynyrd’s anthem of the same name a song of defiant pride cocking a snook at Neil Young’s ‘Southern Man’ (not to mention his ‘Alabama’) or was it something much worse – a strutting defence of old Confederate values, complete with egregious tip of the Stetson to segregationist governor George Wallace? ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was and is a stonking song but Ronnie Van Zant wanted it both ways: to be both a bourbon-chugging rock rebel and the Yankee-baiting bigot that Young was decrying.

“Those of us who have characterized [Van Zant] as a misunderstood liberal,” wrote Mark Kemp – one of Maycock’s interviewees – in his excellent Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South (2004), “have done so only to placate our own irrational feelings of shame for responding to the passion in his music.”
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“To the young white Southerner, black music always appealed more than white pop music,” Walden, who died in 2006, told me. “Certainly the Beach Boys’ surfing stuff never would have hacked it in the South. It was too white and it just wasn’t relevant. The waves weren’t too high down here.”

Sweet Home Alabama doesn’t shirk the regrettable fact that Southern Rock was born partly of the deepening racial divide that opened up after the 1968 assassination – in Memphis, of all the musical places – of Martin Luther King. “By the end of the decade, a lot of the results of the civil rights era had served to urbanise black music,” Walden said in my 1985 interview with him. “A lot of the people we had considered friends were suddenly calling us blue-eyed devils.”

Following Duane Allman’s stinging slide-guitar cameos on landmark tracks by Clarence Carter and Wilson Pickett, the racial cross-pollination of the southern soul era in Alabama hotspot Muscle Shoals (namechecked in Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home’) came to a shuddering halt. Black music got blacker while white southern rock went back to its first principles of melding country music with rhythm ‘n’ blues.

“In a sense the evolution of Southern rock was a reactionary attempt to return rock ‘n’ roll to its native soil,” suggested the Texan writer Joe Nick Patoski. “After the decline of interest in rockabilly, white rock in the South had taken a back seat to country & western and soul.”

The theory that music has been used to further divide the races is not a unique idea -- one which even Bob Dylan affirms is the reality. Rock ‘n’ roll was racially integrated in the 1950's until becoming commercially segregated in the 1960's into white (British Invasion Beatles and Rolling Stones) and black (soul, James Brown) music.

Rock ’n’ Roll: "The black element was turned into soul music and the white element was turned into English pop."
AARP - February/March 2015

For our longtime, regular readers, you know that the subject of Ronnie VanZant and Neil Young is quite dear to us. We have delved into the subject ad infinitum so many, many , many times before.

So, long time Thrasher's Wheat readers, please bear with us about one little factoid that our less frequent readers may not know about us.

"Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
a southern man don't need him around anyhow"

Growing up in the American South in the 1970's as a Neil Young fan wasn't exactly easy. It seems as if all of our life that whenever the subject of musical tastes came up and we revealed our appreciation of Young's music, almost invariably it was met with those lines above from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" -- or worse, as in, the punches came fast and hard, lying on our back in the school yard, just to be blunt about it.

You see, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" is more than just an anthem for many -- it serves as a statement for a way of life that is intensely protected such that when threatened -- it can produce some very uncomfortable results.

"Sweet Home Alabama", written by Lynyrd Skynyrd partially in response to Young's "Alabama" and "Southern Man" contains the apocryphal line: "I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don't need him around anyhow". In his recent book Waging Heavy Peace, Young writes of his "Alabama" lyrics:

"I don't like my words when I listen to it today. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue."

It would seem that hardly a day goes past, where we come across a blog post, Facebook status update or tweet, that attempts the "Neil Young putdown" without seeming comprehension of the context or the true story of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young.

For us, understanding the fascinating backstory of Ronnie and Neil and laying to rest the "Feud Myth" has proved to be quite challenging in these polarized times. But to know the full story is to know the true meaning of "Powderfinger". To know what is the color when black is burned. To know a trip isn't a fall.

Sweet Home Everywhere:
The Life and Times of an Unlikely Rock and Roll Anthem
by Jonathan Bernstein
(Please note that instead of the stars and bars, the stars have been replaced by hearts, ok?)
Which brings us to the actual news that Lynyrd Skynrd have taken a stand and denounced the Confederate flag. In the CNN clip from 2012, Gary Rossington, says that the band, recognizing the stars-and-bars flag's offensive and racist undertones, will cease using it as a stage decoration at concerts supporting its new album "Last of a Dyin' Breed."

So what could be the possible problem with what seems to be enlightened 21st century thinking? Well, it turns out that this decision has angered their fan base. Really. From Lynyrd Skynrd denounces Confederate flag, angering some fans - latimes.com by August Brown:

"Through the years, people like the KKK and skinheads kinda kidnapped the Dixie or Southern flag from its tradition and the heritage of the soldiers, that's what it was about," Rossington said. "We didn't want that to go to our fans or show the image like we agreed with any of the race stuff or any of the bad things." This apparently didn't sit well with some of the band's fans back in Dixie, who have taken to the comments section with pained vitriol. "Good luck with your next release 'Sweet home Massachusetts.' I am sure it will climb the charts with a bullet in Yankee-land," said one. "This isn't the real Lynyrd Skynyrd anyway. They should have taken a name like 'Obama's Politically Correct Sell Your Soul Make Believe Impostors' or something," opined another.

Somewhere, Ronnie is still having a good laugh at Alabama officials and Neil Young bashers. Such is the duality of the southern thing.

 MCA Records 45RPM Single  Is "Sweet Home Alabama" Really Sweet? And the negative reaction to the announcement continued in the article's comments:

G. D. Smith: It's a shame that instead of hiding the battle flag out of political correctness, they didn't attempt to help educate the public about the rich history and heritage of the South. The last time I saw a story about the KKK, they were flying the Stars & Stripes. Yet in almost every picture you showed of LS in concert, they had Old Glory out there on stage. Does that mean they're now KKK members? Of course not. But by ignoring and denying the flag that is part of their history, they are leaving a large segment of their fan base behind as well. It's a shame that money is now more important than honor and heritage.

L R Stover: So y'all admit during the interview that the Confederate Flag represents history, heritage and the Confederate soldier, then you stop flying it because some misinformed people equate the flag with racism instead of continuing to educate people on our Southern symbol? Quoting Johnny Van Zant, "We speak for our fans, we speak for ourselves." Well, you just lost a significant portion of your fans so continue to speak for yourself. Good luck with you next release.."Sweet home Massachusetts." I am sure it will climb the charts with a bullet in yankee-land.

Paul Cox: It's hilarious to me that old school Lynyrd Skynyrd fans conveniently gloss over the fact that the original band was actually left-leaning (they campaigned hard for Carter in 1976, wrote a pro-gun control song called "Saturday Night Special"). It's only after the replacements came in that they started spoonfeeding their conservative fanbase exactly what they wanted. The confederate flag may mean heritage to some people, but I grew up in Alabama and I know what it really means. It means that there was a point in history that states were willing to go to war with the union over the right to own human beings.

 “Star-Spangled Banner”  Jimi Hendrix - Woodstock, 1969  Jimi Hendrix was the ultimate cross over artist spanning the races with his incendiary groundbreaking music, changing rock ’n’ roll forever and making way for what was to come in the 1970's with the Allman Brothers and other southern rock bands. And on and on... Civil wars ... been there, done that. Civil Rights ... Civil Disobedience ... Civilization ... Southern Men and Northern Men ... and all the good women too -- we need them around anyhow, more than ever.

  Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie VanZant Wearing Neil Young T-shirt Oakland Coliseum, July 2, 1977  More on the true story of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young.

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The Story of Neil Young’s Short-lived Santa Cruz Band The Ducks | Good Times

Neil Young - August 1977
Catalyst Club, Santa Cruz, CA
PHOTO: RICHARD MCCAFFREY/BAM
(Click photo to enlarge)

The stories are legendary surrounding the brief existence of The Ducks.

Here is a very detailed recollection of that remarkable summer of '77 -- 40 years ago -- in a small coastal Northern California town -- The Story of Neil Young’s Short-lived Santa Cruz Band the Ducks | Good Times by Geoffrey Dunn (Thanks Mark!):

Like a lot of rock ’n’ roll lore, the history of Neil Young and the Ducks—the band with which he played here during the summer of 1977—is wrapped in myth and nostalgia. Some of it’s true, some is no doubt bullshit, and much of it is in between. There were plenty of good drugs in town that summer, and no shortage of whiskey and tequila, and they definitely took a serious toll on the collective memory.

Last year, before he died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 68, Johnny C. and I scheduled an interview about his summer-long tenure with the band.

“To be honest,” he said with a chuckle, “I don’t remember all that many details. It’s all pretty vague.” Indeed, there was one gig where Johnny C., who never met a party he didn’t like, passed out in the middle of a set from drinking just a tad too much.

All pretty vague, indeed.

I’ve heard a zillion versions of the legend—accounts vary wildly and considerably. And I was there for some of it. I’ve gone back to the original sources, and here’s the best I can come up with: The fledgling band played their first semi-gig on Saturday, July 9, at the Back Room bar in the New Riverside Hotel, at what was billed as a birthday party for legendary guitarist Jerry Miller of Moby Grape fame.

Performing on stage that night were several well-known musicians, including bassist Jack Register, keyboardist Dale Ockerman (from one of my favorite local bands of the era, Snail), singer Juanita Franklin, trumpet player John Maritano, Blackburn, Craviotto and Mosley. Young came out to play the final three songs.

From that point on, the Ducks played more than two dozen more shows (sometimes they played two shows a night) including at the Back Room, the Crossroads (a sweet little club at the Old Sash Mill), the Catalyst, the Veterans Hall, and the Pacific Coast Steamship Company (in Harvey West Park), until their final shows on Labor Day weekend at the Civic.

Full article The Story of Neil Young’s Short-lived Santa Cruz Band the Ducks | Good Times by Geoffrey Dunn.

Also, see Duck Tales by Patrick Mead posted to rust@fish.com on 06 Jan 1996.

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A Fan's Book Review: Stephen Stills: Change Partners by David Roberts

Stephen Stills - 1972
From Dutch Television Program Toppop
Photo by VARA Broadcasting Association

Here's an interesting book review of Stephen Stills: Change Partners by David Roberts.

The "book review" is actually a fan's meditation on the music of Stephen Stills and is a lovely read full of anecdotes, humorous asides and semi-gushing prose that constitutes the core of fan musings.

From the review in The New York Review of Books by Lorrie Moore:

Now it was March 2017, and a friend and I were waiting for Stills to step onto the stage of Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium with the Allmanesque Kenny Wayne Shepherd and an old hipster keyboardist, Barry Goldberg. The three of them have been playing together, in a blues-rock ensemble called the Rides, since 2013. (Stills once said that Crosby, Stills, and Nash called themselves by their names not just so they could be free to come and go but because “all the animals were taken.”) The Rides, which Stills has called “the blues band of my dreams,” got its name from Shepherd’s and Stills’s shared love of cars. (“We’re not Prius people,” Stills has said.) That he continues to play gigs at his age is evidence of his stubborn professionalism; from the time he was a teenager—from the early Au Go-Go Singers to Buffalo Springfield to Manassas—he was the one to organize his bands.

The Ryman audience was again primarily made up of the generation that came of age during the 1960s—a sea of snowy hair. Stills himself was twenty-two during the summer of love. Because of prodigies like him, whose careers were enabled by the radio—especially ones in cars—almost every kind of music remains emotionally available to an audience this age, except perhaps hip-hop (though Stills has even done some crossover with Spike Lee and Public Enemy for the film He Got Game).

Stills may be hobbled by arthritis—backstage he bumps fists rather than shakes hands with fans; he has carpal tunnel and residual pain from a long-ago broken hand, which affects his playing—and he is nearly deaf, but his performance life has continued. Drugs and alcohol may have dented him somewhat, forming a kind of carapace over the youthful sensitivity and cockiness one often saw in the face of the young Stills. Some might infer by looking at the spry James Taylor or Mick Jagger that heroin is less hard on the body than cocaine and booze, which perhaps tear down the infrastructure. (“Stills doesn’t know how to do drugs properly,” Keith Richards once said.) But one has to hand it to a rock veteran who still wants to get on stage and make music even when his youthful beauty and once-tender, husky baritone have dimmed. It shows allegiance to the craft, to the life, to the music. It risks a derisive sort of criticism as well as an assault on nostalgia.

The Rides’ Nashville concert comes on the heels of a “definitive biography” of Stills by the British author David Roberts. Titled Change Partners, after one of Stills’s own songs, the book is an act of hurried, sloppy, aggregated love. Ignore the typos—mistakes such as “sewed” for “sowed”; “daubed” for “dubbed”—and don’t go looking for any psychological depth. Roberts has collected most of his data from widely available interviews. A speedy checklist of girlfriends—Judy Collins, Rita Coolidge, Joan Baez, Susan Saint James—plus wives and children will largely have to do for an account of Stills’s personal life. The lovely “Rock and Roll Woman” is declared in passing to be a valentine to Grace Slick.

Full review in The New York Review of Books by Lorrie Moore.

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