SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
Neil Young took his lumps, eventually. In his autobiography, he stated that he deserved that musical jab, writing, "I didn't like my words when I wrote them. They are accusatory and condescending. And yet, maybe Young wasn't completely off-base. Now we all did what we could do".
In , when he was elected to his first term, Wallace famously said, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. We put the 'boo, boo, boo' there saying, 'We don't like Wallace,' " Rossington said. But he also added that there were "a lot of different interpretations.
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I'm sure if you asked the other guys who are not with us anymore and are up in rock and roll heaven, they have their story of how it came about. The definitive take on the meaning of "Sweet Home Alabama" may have left the world decades ago. In — just three years after the song hit the airwaves — three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their road manager, as well as a pilot and copilot, died when their chartered plane went down. Ronnie Van Zant was among the dead, and he remains the ghost in the room when the intent of the song is discussed.
For Merry Clayton, the song's meaning was crystal clear. She remembers her reaction when she got the call to do the "Sweet Home Alabama" session: Clayton is African-American, and says she could not stop thinking about the infamous Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in Birmingham. I said I don't want to sing anything to do with Alabama. And I went on and on and on. And yet, there she is on the finished track. I asked Clayton if appearing on the record was a way of laying claim to it — of saying, "My experience is part of the Alabama experience as well. Some still insist that Southern pride, absent the racism, is what "Sweet Home Alabama" is all about.
At a concert featuring the reconstituted Lynyrd Skynyrd in Kansas City, fan Nick Paul was tailgating outside before the show.
KIRKUS REVIEW
I don't think you can go to a party and play that song without everybody singing along. Henry Panion III thinks so, too. He's a composer and professor of music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who recently arranged the song for marching band and symphony orchestra. Panion is also African-American.
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Do yourself a favor. Get comfortable and start reading. Set in the deep south where Magnolias, catfish, the Bible, guns, alcohol, racism and carnal knowledge collide, Tena's story confronts the heartbeat of America's identity crisis. A crisis of faith, family, freedom and truth. This story will make you laugh out loud, cry, and hope that one day you can stand as tall as Tena. A triumphant journey and an inspiring read!
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Add to Cart Add to Cart. Southern Discomfort Prologue Where I grew up, girls like me knew our place. We were expected to smile politely and keep our white-gloved hands folded neatly in our laps when we sat in church.
We spoke only when spoken to. We did not ask: As we grew up, we understood that stepping off the prescribed path in any way meant risking it all, and probably losing.
The family lived on a sprawling farm and had the only swimming pool in town; Tena was given her first car—a royal blue Camaro—at twelve. The characters, Tena's mother and father were so developed that I felt I stepped into her life -- growing up in the south in the civil rights era. Aug 19, Megan Bell rated it it was amazing Shelves: What a perfect title for this book! He's a composer and professor of music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who recently arranged the song for marching band and symphony orchestra.
Women like my mother—beautiful, charming, educated only in how to entertain—ran the houses. If these women had any dreams beyond tending to their husbands, babies, and barbeques, they kept those thoughts to themselves. And if word of your sympathies spread, your family feared waking in the middle of the night to a burning cross on the lawn, or a brick thrown through the dining room window during supper.
Southern Discomfort: A Memoir
If your glamorous, tortured wife became an alcoholic, like my mother did, you sent her away to the state mental hospital in a straitjacket to dry out. If your husband was a notorious skirt-chaser, like my father was, you might pull your. And if you were a lesbian, before you even knew there was a word for the feelings you had had for as long as you could remember, you suppressed this fundamental part of yourself for as long as you possibly could. You lived a lie. You kissed boys and wore their fraternity pins, curled your hair, entered beauty pageants, joined a sorority.
You and your friends talked about wedding cakes, honeymoons, and how many babies you wanted, just like you were supposed to. Appearances mattered above all. No one I knew ever ventured farther north than Memphis or maybe Nashville, and that was just fine with them. My roots ran deep into the red earth; the land felt as much a part of me as my limbs, my heart. I hated it with a fury. I loved it with an all-consuming passion. This is the great paradox of the South. For a time, I assumed I had no choice but to stay on the straight and narrow path that had been laid out for me since birth.
And the cycle would continue.