Needles & Grooves

and if you're trying to make a critical statement of the south while simultaneously playing in front of giant confederate flags, does your message really have any merit at all?

But Neil Young on more than one occasion has come out and said that he regrets the wide broad implications of Alabama and Southern Man. Basically acknowledged that he tarred half a country as bigots without exception. He’s also played SHA live and there are a shit ton of pics of hi, wearing Lynyrd Skynyrd t shirts.

i mean, I’m from the north east of England. I find the whole thing crazy anyway.

I dunno. I think it seems like you're projecting your (very reasonable) disgust of their use of the confederate flag on SHA. What in that song makes it sound like they are supporting post confederate culture?

I think that songs main message is "not all Southerners, Neil!" Which certainly isn't the best they could do but isn't glorifying what Neil criticized either.

Ignorance of the true implication of championing the Confederate flag was extremely common back then. No excuse other than ignorance but even when I was a kid in the 90s with the rampant misinformation it was hard to fully understand. I'm glad that is not nearly as common today.

I don't know if it is more reasonable to believe Van Zant in the 70s or Ed King in the 2000s about the Wallace verse. If they really were supporting Wallace that is fucked, especially having a black woman sing on there. If they were criticizing him then the "where the governor is true" line is real confusing. So I think fair to assume the worst but also reasonable to say it may be ambiguous or clumsy.

Sorry for rambling. Not trying to defend, just thinking out loud. It's hard for me to be sure either way.

Sweet Home Alabama is a complex, nuanced song that accurately captures the regional pride, conflicting politics, and outmoded morals of the era and the geography.

An Alabamian that gets it...

Not to sound off, but the original band members were unlikely to be what could fairly be considered as racist. As alluded to above, Van Zandt was pretty liberal and from what I know of the band, almost certainly ran in the same professional and social circles as black and white musicians.

Confederate flag waiving is troublesome (and on its face disgusting and not acceptable in this day and age), but in the South at the time, it was more socially acceptable and many, particularly of LS's economic and educational status wouldn't have really contemplated the racist nature of the flag. Heck, I grew up in Virginia in the 80s/90s and I'd say the same thing about a lot of the people I grew up around.

I'm not saying it wasn't a racist symbol then (it certainly was and used by many in that context), but that view wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. We get ourselves in trouble when we view the people of the past as if they are our contemporaries doing the same thing today and what that messaging would mean.

To give a musical recommendation as an explanation, I believe the best description of the complicated legacy of LS is given on the Drive-By Truckers' "Southern Rock Opera"

I will say that the post-crash band made some crass business decisions to identify themselves with the vocal portions of their fanbase and the rise of right-wing politics under Reagan and doesn't uphold the legacy of Ronnie Van Zandt in my opinion. Your statement is probably fair as to that iteration of the band.

Not to post a ton of comments in a row, but I drafted a response and then had to break it up due to character limits

I mean not for nothing, being Southern is complicated. Being a southern white male liberal is hella complicated.

I've never met one person who thought Dukes of Hazzard was racist, but they sure as hell had the Confederate Flag on their car. There was a carelessness with the symbols of the Confederacy in the South that wasn't necessarily tied to actual overt Racism. (con)

Sweet Home Alabama was a reaction to Southern Man because it paints the South in a wide swath. I find The Band more problematic for taking on the whole complicated matter of Southern Pride but you know, not being Southern (Helm aside).

We are fortunate enough to live in a time where we can see the harm that the celebration of the Confederacy does to others and have begun to strip that all away. (Not that I ever thought celebrating a bunch of seditious bastards was a good idea anyhow.)

I can be proud to be Southern and disgusted at its history. (Having grown up in the south, we got a skewed version of history in school.) Just like I can be a Patriot by being critical of our political mechanisms.

All that said, I don't know enough about the band and their politics to know whether or not the band is overtly racist or if any of them were. Sweet Home Alabama doesn't play as a racist song to me, it plays as a Southerner going what the fuck Neil, you don't know what you are talking about. I can identify with that.