Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd by Mark Ribowsky

Author:Mark Ribowsky [Ribowsky, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, Non-Fiction, History, Biography
ISBN: 9781569761465
Google: bHb7BgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1569761469
Barnesnoble: 1569761469
Goodreads: 23281445
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2015-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

While MCA had gotten down with the flag and was feasting on “redneck chic,” fashioning the band’s name in promotional materials and record jackets out of pieces of the Confederate flag, Ronnie began to feel the heat over it. Asked to explain what the flag meant to the act, he did his damndest to deflect the issue by folding it into his general beef about the “establishment”—the “gimmick”-hungry record company. “It was useful at first,” he allowed, “but by now it’s embarrassing.” Years later, Rolling Stone’s John Swenson bought into this construct that by flying the flag Skynyrd was actually making their own antiestablishment stand, the Old Confederacy being among that establishment. The flag, he wrote, had “some kind of complex relationship to the Confederacy, but it’s not about states’ rights or slavery; it’s something very personal. It’s closer to the whole idea of the Declaration of Independence. This was their version of it, being a rebel.”

It was a tortuous rationale, assuming a whole lot, but it did make some sense given the Skynyrd inferiority complex that would never end; as high as they got, they always saw themselves as mutts—dirty dogs—never accepted as anything more by the cultured rock Brahmins and thus never under any obligation to act like anything else. It was a self-serving prophesy and shield, giving them license to act like dogs. If the problem areas of the flag and “Sweet Home Alabama” were thorny, Skynyrd might deflect criticism but embrace the notoriety. In fact, rather than merely let the flag be an avatar, they went even further. Soon their sound equipment was painted battleship gray, a “Confederate” hue that blended in with the backdrop of the flag. Ronnie even strode onto the stage one night clad in a Confederate officer’s coat and hat—though he later laughed it off as a “showbiz stunt,” his way of sending up the whole kerfuffle about the flag.

With so much at stake, all they could do was follow along with it and hope that lame clarifications about the “gimmicks” would keep the fallout off their backs. However, as time went on they almost became prisoner to that flag, even consumed at times by it. The first time Skynyrd took their show across the pond to Europe—a two-month trek beginning in mid-November 1974 with dates in Glasgow and Edinburgh, two weeks in England, three days in Germany, one day each in Belgium and France, and the finale at the Rainbow Theatre in London on December 12—the flag came too, though Europeans had not the slightest notion of the mortal insult it was to African Americans. As Ronnie reported, patrons such as those the band played for at venues like Britain’s Saint George’s Hall, Theatre Royal, the Kursaal, Theater An Der Brienne Strasse, Jahrhunderthalle, and Ancienne Belgique “really like all that [Confederate] stuff because they think it’s macho American”—which of course it was in a good part of America as well.

On one night during the well-attended and well-received tour, Ronnie happened to

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