Lynyrd Skynyrd: Freebird, The Movie (1995)

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First thing’s first; this is NOT a movie. It’s for the most part various concert footage from the peak of Lynyrd Skynard’s storied career, around ’76-’77, right before the tragic plane crash. The video also contains brief interviews of band and family members reminiscing about the good ole days.   

As advertised, it all leads to “Freebird”, in this case filmed on the Fourth of July, 1977 at the Bill Graham Festival in Oakland, California. And let’s be honest, it don’t get much better’n that. When the late, great Ronnie Van Zant starts in with “if I leave here tomorrow”, the womanly screams from the crowd are no less than Cheap Trick “Live at Budakan”-esque.

Let’s not forget that rednecks at their best are renegades, and thus that’s what makes them attractive. “Lord, I can’t change.” Aw, you know how the women folk love them a challenge. In their time, Skynyrd came up as about the only longhairs among a Southern sea of crewcuts and Billy Bob beatdowns. That’s what had their songs begging “Gimme Three Steps” and deriding the “Saturday Night Special” and such.

The closing credits of the video are a thing onto themselves, interspersing clips from Skynard’s past as possibly the band’s most poignant song “Simple Man” takes you right back to that place and time when the ‘70’s were still the ‘70’s….when we spent more time outdoors, with family, making sure to smell the roses and putting smiles on the faces of children. Maybe you had to be there, including being from the South, but I’ll take Skynard as my background music to a grander life any day of the week.