My song today is ‘Free Bird’, which is sometimes known as ‘Freebird’. This is a power ballad that was written and performed by American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. The song first featured on the band’s debut album in 1973 and has been included on subsequent albums, including the unfaded-ending version of the original recording (featured on ‘Skynyrd’s Innyrds’).
Released as a single in November 1974, ‘Free Bird’ entered the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ on November 23 at Number 87 and became the band's second ‘Top 40’ hit in early 1975, peaking at Number 19 on January 25. A live version of the song re-entered the charts in late 1976, eventually peaking at Number 38 in January 1977.
‘Free Bird’ achieved the Number 3 spot on ‘Guitar World’s 100 Greatest Guitar Solos’. It is considered to be Lynyrd Skynyrd's signature song and is used as a finale during their live performances. It is their longest song, recorded at nine minutes long but often going well over fourteen minutes when played live.
According to guitarist Gary Rossington, for two years after Allen Collins wrote the initial chords, vocalist Ronnie Van Zant insisted that there were too many for him to create a melody in the belief that the melody needed to change alongside the chords. After Collins played the unused sequence at rehearsal one day, Van Zant asked him to repeat it, then wrote out the melody and lyrics in three or four minutes. The guitar solos that finish the song were added originally to give Van Zant a chance to rest, as the band was playing several sets per night at clubs at the time. Soon afterward, the band learned piano-playing roadie Billy Powell had written an introduction to the song; and upon hearing it, they included it as the finishing touch and had him formally join the band as their keyboardist.
Collins's girlfriend, Kathy, whom he later married, asked him, "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" Collins noted the question and it eventually became the opening line of ‘Free Bird’. Also, in an interview filmed during a fishing outing on a boat with Gary Rossington, an interviewer asked Ronnie Van Zant what the song meant. Van Zant replied that in essence, that the song is "what it means to be free, in that a bird can fly wherever he wants to go". He further stated that "everyone wants to be free...that's what this country's all about".
The song is dedicated to the memory of Duane Allman by the band in their live shows. During their 1975 performance on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, Van Zant dedicated the song to both Allman and Berry Oakley, commenting, "They're both free birds".
‘Free Bird’ is included in ‘The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll’. The song is also Number 193 in Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’. In 2009, the song was named ‘the 26th best hard rock song of all time by VHI’.
It has become something of a humorous tradition for audience members at concerts to shout "Free Bird!" or "Play Free Bird!" as a request to hear the song, regardless of the performer or style of music. For example, during the Nirvana 1993 ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’ show, a shout-out for "Free Bird!" eventually resulted in a lyrically slurred, if short, rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama’. In 2016, an attendee of a Bob Dylan concert in Berkley, California shouted for "Free Bird" to be played, and Dylan and his band unexpectedly obliged. The phenomenon continues today as numerous groups face shouts to play a song that very few guitarists are accomplished enough to adequately achieve.
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I suppose that ever since a very bad accident left me near death’s door as a boy aged 11 years, I have had to learn to be my own man and to take charge of my own life without being dependent upon anyone else. In fact, my wife ,Sheila Forde, is the only person in the world to whom I have surrendered some of my independence since I contracted a terminal blood cancer three months after we married on 10th November, 2012.
I had been knocked down by a learner-driver in a large wagon. The wagon then ran over me and stopped on top of me. For over an hour, my body was twisted around the main drive shaft as workers with planks tried unsuccessfully to raise it and get me out. I remained in great pain but was conscious throughout. On my way to the hospital I passed out. I remained in and out of a comma for around three weeks as surgeons fought to save my life. I would remain as a hospital inpatient for nine months, followed by two years at home unable to walk, while having been medically told that I would never walk again.
By the time I was received into Batley Hospital, I was on the critical list for a month with severe and extensive life-threatening injuries. At the top of the list of my injuries was a damaged spine, followed by a collapsed chest, where all but two ribs had been broken and enmeshed, puncturing my lung in the process. Both legs and arms were broken. My left leg was broken several times at the knee. I required over fifty operations on my left leg, leaving it three inches shorter than my right leg (whose five breaks had merely left that leg crooked in appearance).
Hearing a hospital doctor tell my parents one night during my first week in the hospital that I would be dead by the following morning (as I lay on a nearby bed in a semi-conscious state), led me to silently resolve, “ Oh no, I won’t mate!”. Then, after I fully emerged from my unconscious and critical state and lived, the medics told me and my parents that my damaged spine which had left me with no feeling beneath the waist effectively meant that I’d never walk again. This led me to say to the doctor, “Oh yes, I will!”
When no hope is offered to any person in one school of thought, it is only natural to seek hope from another direction. The English medics offered me no hope of ever walking again. This was a message I did not want to hear or was prepared to accept. So, when Western medicine offered me no hope, I looked to Eastern medicine, practices, and disciplines for my answers. I also turned closer to my God. For my remaining time in the hospital, I started to become a disciple of eastern methods.
I first read all about the body’s physiological functions and all about the connection between a person's brain and body muscles. I read, studied, and learned eastern disciplines of pain control, transcendental meditation, deep relaxation, along with the power of positive thinking, the power of imagery, how the mind controls the body, and the importance of muscle control, breathing patterns, body posture, and stance, to improve one's sense of balance and wellbeing.
Between the ages of 12 years and the present day, I have continued to read, practice, instruct, study, and research such subjects. I am now 77 years old. The upshot was that western medical knowledge told me that my spine damage would remain permanent and would prevent me from walking again. I also learned that having 'no feeling beneath my waistline' was the prime indicator of such a permanent handicap.
So, I used the visual exercises of eastern disciplines to imagine pain below my waistline (where no pain existed after my spinal injury); until one day, around seven months after my accident and hospital admission, I started to feel pain below my waistline. My spine had somehow reconnected and was once more transmitting messages to my brain. Feeling in my legs had returned! The pain I now felt was a more intense pain than I had ever felt, but I did not mind. To me, the pain was a good sign. Pain in my legs, however intense and hurtful, meant that life and feeling had returned to my legs. This inexplicable change strengthened in me immeasurably, my belief that one day I would walk again!
I was discharged from the hospital unable to stand or walk. I refuse to use a wheelchair to be pushed around in and my father made me a bunker which ran on four large Silver Cross pram wheels and which my sisters Mary and Eileen would push me around the estate in for the next two years. I was not too proud to use crutches to hold my weight when I needed to stand inside the house, and I used the shoulders of my sisters, Mary and Eileen, whenever I wanted to get inside my bunker(a form of unmotorised sledge on wheels that could be pushed).
For two years following my discharge from hospital I became a reader of books that dealt with body and mind subjects which many adults would have the greatest of difficulty understanding. I had the added incentive, however, of knowing that any increased knowledge I accrued would help me to walk again,
I had always been a clever pupil at school and was usually the top in most subjects. When my sport's teacher, Mr. McNamara visited me and saw the type of books I was reading, he knew that this was not normal in a boy just turned 12 years. So he arranged to have me Mena tested and I came out pretty high (140 IQ level). The Mensa test is not about intelligence levels; it is more reflective of the way one thinks, and is able to apply one's mind. For the remainder of my hospital stay, my teacher, Paddy McNamara was able to obtain my more unusual reading material.
When I lay in the hospital dying, my dear father who knew that I had always wanted a new bicycle promised he would buy me one if I pulled through. He probably believed that the bicycle would never need to be bought. When I did live, my father was true to his word, and even though he thought I would never walk again, he still went ahead and bought me a brand-new top of the range bike. It was a Raleigh bike with a sturmey archer three speed. My new bike stood in our house hall for four months as I looked at it and cleaned it every day. I had learned to ride a bike at the age of 7 years, but then I could walk, mount the bike unaided, pedal it, and keep my balance on it, and safely stop and unmount it! Now, I was unable to stand unaided and could neither bend nor straighten my left leg to propel the pedal 180 degrees.
For almost two years after having been discharged from the hospital, I would have my parents lift me onto the saddle of my bike and hold me steady until I was ready to move off on it. My father had attached a block of wood to my LHS pedal so my left foot would be able to reach. I was able to bend my right leg enough to propel the pedal 180 degrees, but only do this halfway with my more damaged left leg.
From my bedroom window, I could see in a clear skyline, 'Castle Hill' in Huddersfield, six miles away. This was an old castle ruin on the top of a large hill which could be seen from advantaged points up to 15 miles away. Cycling to and reaching the base of 'Castle Hill' in Almondbury, Huddersfield was my ultimate destination in my journey that would assist me to walk again.
It took me over two months to be able to cycle one-footed towards the edge of Windybank Estate (about 1000 yards)
During the first four months, I would have to stop at every road junction I reached, and being unable to balance the bike long enough, I would invariably fall off it. Once on the ground, I would have to lay there until a broad-backed stranger came along and would help me back on my bike.
Please note that there was very little traffic on the country and minor roads during the early 1950s. Also note that my parents had enough trust in me, to allow me to attempt to ride my bike, even if I fell off it and some stranger brought me back home. I have also been brought back home by a police car on one occasion and even twice in an ambulance. Each day I fell from my bike whenever I stopped it and could not steady myself or safely dismount my bike. Falling off my bike daily and bruising my bones became par for the course in my path of progress.
It is difficult to comprehend today, what a child or a parent could do in the early 1950s compared with 2020, In today's world, I would have automatically been removed from my parent's care and control because of their presumed negligence regarding my safety, and swiftly taken into the Care of the Local Authorities!
It took me two years before I could cycle to the base of 'Castle Hill' and back. In the meantime, my father had adapted my bike into a ‘fixed gear’ bicycle. This kept the pedals going around and used less energy to pedal them. I would pedal with one right leg and allow my left leg( that could still not bend or straighten fully) to push the LHS pedal around half a full cycle before being obliged to remove it. Whenever I forgot to lift my left leg from the pedal at the correct moment, I would receive a very painful jolt that would lead me to cry out loud in pain.
I will never forget the day ‘it happened’. It was about two years after my hospital discharge. I could now withstand my weight, and I had also started to hobble about in an ungainly manner on my two legs. That day was the very first time I had managed to reach the base of 'Castle Hill'. On my return journey home, I was as pleased as punch having finally achieved my goal when I passed the halfway juncture by the I.C.I. chemical plant on Leeds Road. Suddenly, something marvellous happened. It took a minute or so to register the significance of the happening in my mind. My bicycle pedal had turned 180 degrees and I had forgotten to remove my left leg from its pedal. I realised that both my legs had remained on their pedals throughout the full rotation. Even though my left leg painfully felt the turn of the pedals, it was able to turn full cycle also.
From thereon in, my walking ability and balanced progressed in leaps and bounds. I was able to return to school in my 15th year of life, although I was not able to engage in sporting activities.
Between the ages of 15-21 years of age, I engaged in every activity and sport I was able to do, such as boxing, wrestling, lawn tennis, table tennis, weight lifting, judo, dancing,, and long-distance running. I spent four evenings every week and half a day on Saturdays doing these sporting activities. I performed this rigorous exercise routine religiously for six years to increase my body balance and body stamina. I was left with a limp but I was able to walk and to engage in my favourite activity of all; rock and rolling (a more individualistic form of dancing with no set movements). While I was unable to play football again without falling on my backside whenever I turned suddenly, I was able to; play rugby on a Saturday afternoon for four seasons.
From the start of my personal journey at the age of 11 years when I lost all feeling in, and mobility of, my legs, to that day almost three years later when I was able to ride my bike properly, I knew that my life had been blessed. The very first time I reached Castle Hill in Huddersfield and was returning home on my bicycle and discovered that both my legs could pedal my bike a full 180 degrees, I knew that I was on my way and was determined that no person or any set of circumstances would stop me going and doing whatever I wanted to do.
That was the day I became a ‘Free bird’, and after gaining my wings there was simply no way that I would ever allow another person to ever clip them. The land, the sky, the heavens were no longer beyond my reach. I was a liberated spirit; a free bird who would fly where he pleased.
Love and peace Bill xxx