i suppose myths draw us to them because they're stories. stories explaining things, things we don't really understand. & we humans, we do love a good story. in ms lovelace's 7th grade advance english class, we spent a whole 6weeks on the greek & roman myths. i made an a+ that term but that wasn't the point to me. i loved those stories: evil versus good, creation, death, desire & its sad results. those guys knew what they were writing about.
i suppose myths operate as defense mechanisms too. they're stories we tell ourselves when we know we've fucked up, missed the boat, hurt others for no good reason. & when we're on the wrong side of history too. that's a big deal, esp for southerners. we have tried so hard for so long to rationalize what's really a sad but undeniable fact: we were on the wrong side of history. now, don't get me wrong here, the whole country was. the onus that was put upon the south has always been bogus but damned if we didn't try to respond & once we did, that was that. we were stuck w/"the southern thing."
i came back to lynard skynard through the drive-by truckers. patterson hood & mike cooley's majestic "southern rock opera" was an astonishing work of revisionist history... w/a thundering beat. they work hard to rehabilitate a number of aspects of southern culture, particularly from a specific era. this is modern myth-making at its finest. wallace, guns, racism, drinking, killing, bear bryant & the football mentality. it's all here. & so is lynard skynard "in all their misunderstood glory."
i remember over 30 years ago sitting in the northrup's basement, playing "sweet home alabama" w/rex. my tongue was kind of in my cheek. not rex's. what did i know? 30 years later, rex & i were talking very very seriously about what a marvel those boys were, 20 years old & making music like that. their sense of a musical "hook" was extraordinary, ronnie van zandt wrote precise story-telling lyrics, & those 3 guitars wailed during the whole thing.
forget the songs everyone used to mock, at least at first. "free bird" & "sweet home alabama" are nowhere near their best songs(tho they did place in the charts). "gimme 3 steps," "what's your name?," "you got that right," are great songs, written around "snap-shot" stories & built on great guitar hooks(those "statements" the guitarist makes that sticks in your head & upon which the melody is based). "that smell" is all of that while also speaking directly to "deeper" issues(drugs & failure) & life in the band(drugs). primarily, there is a profound sense of place that comes through in these songs & a deep longing in the vocals(richard linklater used "tuesday's gone" to perfect affect in "dazed & confused" when he ended the party scene w/it). for the most part, music, at least radio music, hadn't really sounded like this, grounded as this music is in a specific history & place. radio music worked hard to sanitize music's unsavory roots & connections. lynard skynard was as southern as hell & based on all the black rhythm & blues & corn pone country(try out "four walls of raiford" if you don't believe me) we'd denied ourselves or been so long denied by others.
what i hear now in lynard skynard really is the "southern thing." what's funny is that "the southern thing" has become recognition of roots & connections, balance of tensions, reconciliation of difference. it's right there in the music. i wish we'd heard it sooner.
micea eliade says that myth eats history. i believe him. this is the last picture of the band. 6 of these folks died several hours later when the plane went down in mississippi. that was in 1977. they were inducted into the rock & roll hall of fame the same year as miles davis, 2005.
No comments:
Post a Comment