I think Kid Rock might be an idiot. He displays a Confederate Flag at his concerts. This became a contentious issue when the Detroit chapter of the NAACP decided to give the Kid an award for his work in support of the city. With demonstators outside burning a Confederate Flag in protest, he explained that the flag is flown in honor of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song Sweet Home Alabama. Apparently, Kid Rock samples that song in one of his own.
“I’ve never flown that flag with any hate in my heart,” he said at the ceremony. “Not one ounce.”
Now, I have no real reason to think that Kid Rock is lying. But he really ought to understand something. Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote Sweet Home Alabama as a response to a song by Neil Young called Southern Man. Neil Young’s song is about the injustice of slavery and Jim Crow. Here’s just two verses from the song:
I saw cotton
and I saw black
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?…
Lily Belle,
your hair is golden brown
I’ve seen your black man
comin’ round
Swear by God
I’m gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
Now, maybe that’s offensive to a white southerner. All I know is that the following lyrics are in the song Sweet Home Alabama.
Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singing songs about the Southland
I miss Alabamy once again
And I think its a sin, yesWell I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow…
In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth
Don’t get me wrong; it’s a catchy tune. And I don’t begrudge someone singing about the love they have for their home state. But singing about how you love the vicious segregationist George Wallace is a bit much. I won’t even get into that bit about not giving a shit about Watergate.
If it’s not clear enough from the context of the lyrics that this is not exactly a black-friendly song, Kid Rock has a Confederate Flag to fly to make sure the message comes through.
And, yet, maybe he really is so dense that he hasn’t got a clue what kind of message he’s sending.
has the same meaning as the swastica flag. I won’t patronize anyone, anything, anybody that shows that flag.
I have never, in my entire life, been as shocked as I was in 1978 when I was visiting my uncle in Greenville, SC. My uncle was a medium size cheese there, and served for a period as county executive. I was for some reason in his bedroom and saw a picture of him in a Confederate uniform, my uncle from Illinois. A moment of total amazement.
I’ll concur with your statement about the ‘stars and bars” being equivalent to the “swastika flag.” And I say that as a Southerner.
Have you ever seen him discuss politics? Of course he’s an idiot; he’s pure white trash.
And I’ve seen that damn flag all of the time down where I live. In fact, a major part of Confederate History happened where I live (Spotsylvania/Fredericksburg). I can find numerous Civil War artifacts right around the corner; the Battlefields are right across from the entrance to my house. People around here hold reenactments, and there’s a lot of Confederate sympathy. It’s unnerving, but that flag is always on the houses of the most “patriotic” Americans you’ll find, along with the “I’m not racist, I have black friends.”
I hadn’t seen this comment when I wrote mine. Ah well, not a surprise.
I mean, he endorsed Bush in 2004. Fine, you make a mistake in 2000 and realize the error of your ways. But no, he decides that frat-boy-cowboy was just great for the first four, so let’s give him four more.
Also, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-q8dwvajOg
I agree with dataguy that the stars-and-bars is on par with the swastika. I’ll even add the “Nobama” bumper sticker to that list, in terms of what it says about the person who chose that.
However, Kid Rock may just be dumb. I doubt most people realize the subtext of “Sweet Home Alabama”, and the guy’s biggest hit was basically built around SHA (while also borrowing from Werewolves of London, oddly). So, he quickly got a fan base of Lynyrd Skynyrd fans and he may have just tried to accomodate them. Being from lily white Northern Michigan he may just be totally clueless about the stars-and-bars.
And I’ve always been conflicted about “Sweet Home Alabama”. It’s a great song with a bad message. It was actually in response to two Neil Young songs: Southern Man and Alabama (similar themes). The third verse, about the Swampers, is about an all-white group of musicians who weren’t exactly civil rights activists.
And yet … and yet … and yet … Lynyrd Skynyrd had a number of songs that weren’t red neck at all. “Saturday Night Special” stands out, but there is also “Ballad of Curtis Lowe” about a black musician. And Neil Young himself said something about it being great to hear his name in a song that good, regardless of the context.
Still, Kid Rock is now in a bad position, since he’s now embedded himself with teabagging racists whether he meant to or not. Will be interesting to see what he does about it.
And Neil and Ronnie Van Zant were at least friendly towards each other. In fact, legend has it that Ronnie was buried in his Tonight’s the Night T-shirt.
I guess I’m an idiot too — I never listen to the lyrics of most of the rock songs I like. With me it was always just “Sweet Home Alabama — Lord I’m comin home to you ! — dah dah dah dah duh duh”. Seriously, those lyrics stink. Way to ruin that song for me , Booman!
Sorry. I used to like the song, too, before I understood why it was written and what it was saying.
I went to see Lynyrd Skynyrd a few years ago and had a weird, head-shaking moment of them showing the stars and bars and the stars and stripes as a backdrop for successive songs.
Probably because it was Connecticut, I wasn’t the only person that had a WTF moment.
Kid Rock is a northern redneck, no more needs be understood.
you “think” he’s an idiot? Dude, read the lyrics to the sing KR’s talking about, and you’ll KNOW he;s an idiot. he samples “werewolves of london”, which has the same key and chord progression of “sweet home alabam”, mixes it with “sweet home” and then sings his own moron lyrics over it.
he rhymes “things” with “things”. he thinks it’s strange when leaves begin change: maybe if he’d taken a fucking science class it wouldn’t be such a fucking mystery. seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to it, just to experience the awful for yourself.
and this gets constant rotation on the local cuntry station.
oh, yeah. I remember hearing about the combo of those two songs and thinking that Zevon was probably vomiting on his harpsichord.
OT, but since you mention the lyrics I’ve noticed that a lot of radio stations bleep out the word “smoking”. So typical of our overly puritan America. Illegally drinking whisky, making love — those things can be sung about. But smoking “funny things” (what? clove cigarettes?) can’t be mentioned.
I swear, there is no way back in 1980 that I could have imagined we’d be still so uptight as a nation about marijuana. But then, I couldn’t have imagined that most of our nation would believe in torture either. Sad what 30 long years of conservative propoganda can do to a nation.
Good lord, lots of hatin’ on the Kid in here, yikes!
I’ll go ahead and put myself firmly in the camp of believing that he does not fully understand the significance of the flag. For a couple reasons:
a) he’s from the North, and there is clearly a different, if more ignorant, sentiment towards the flag here than there is in the South
b) he’s obviously not “black-unfriendly” since he’s befriended / worked with / collaborated with many, many black people. And it’s not the same as the “I have a black friend so I’m not racist argument”…you simply do not get popular in the Detroit music scene if you have those kinds of sentiments.
For those saying he’s an idiot because his lyrics are dumb…they’re fucking songs. The Beatles are generally considered musical geniuses but if you look at their lyrics they’re some of the most shockingly mindless drivel you’ll ever read.
And for those saying he’s just white trash, fuck off. Don’t bitch that someone’s being a racist by flying the confederate flag and then turn around and use a slur like that, it’s hypocritical bullshit.
Well, it’s not just the flag. It’s the song, too. But mainly it’s the combination. I agree with your observations though.
Fair enough. Even given the combination I still take him at his word and think it is done out of ignorance and not malevolence.
I agree, but I want to emphasize something.
Wallace was reelected in 1970 and was serving as governor in 1974 when SHA was released. Let’s talk about the 1970 campaign, okay?
Here’s a contemporary Time piece from before the election (which Wallace lost] and the run-off [which he won].
This is from the Wiki:
Now, obviously, the casual radio listener has no idea who the governor in Birmingham was in 1974 or what he had done throughout the Civil Eights Era right through his 1970 reelection.
But, you know, if you are going to make a song part of your whole image you might want to know what it means. Thus, he’s an idiot.
After reading this comment I got to wondering about the mention of Wallace and the “boo boo boo” afterwards. Not the first time I wondered about that, but this time I looked it up. Per wiki:
In 1975, Van Zant said: “The lyrics about the governor of Alabama were misunderstood. The general public didn’t notice the words ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’ after that particular line, and the media picked up only on the reference to the people loving the governor.”[3] “The line ‘We all did what we could do’ is sort of ambiguous,” Kooper notes “‘We tried to get Wallace out of there’ is how I always thought of it.”[3] Journalist Al Swenson argues that the song is more complex than it is sometimes given credit for, suggesting that it only looks like an endorsement of Wallace.[3] “Wallace and I have very little in common,” Van Zant himself said, “I don’t like what he says about colored people.”[3]
Also, regarding Watergate, the song was written in 1973 before the full impact of Watergate was known.
Also, this site claims the song is meant to support Young:
http://thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm
And if you keep on looking you can find all kind of interesting band quotes giving different views of this. I’m sure some are even real. 😉
Call me skeptical of a lot of this, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems.
If they wanted to say, “Hey, our governor is a racist asshole but our state is still awesome” they should have said it a LOT more clearly. I know the story of the band is complex but I’m not letting them off the hook for what they were and what they became.
The fundamental point of the song is that Neil Young is a jerk. And why is he a jerk? Because he wrote a song about how the South had treated black people and said they ought to pay them back for their suffering.
If he was trying to boo the governor, he came up with an epic fail.
And the Confederate imagery that is inseparable from the band is as important as their lyrics. There are ways to be proud of your southern heritage without being an a-hole.
The “Boo boo boo” redeemed the song for me, but it took me about 20 years to figure out that that’s what was being said, so it could have been clearer. “Epic fail,” however, is a little harsh.
As for the Confederate battle flag, the bottom line for me (a white Yankee) is that it was flown by enemies of the United States – enemy combatants, if you will. Under this banner, people committed treason and took up arms against the United States because they loved their (ersatz) right to own other human beings as property more than they loved being Americans. As such the flag, like the “N” word, is utterly irredeemable. Simple as that. KR needs to recognize this.
Its tasteless but honestly I think Kid Rock has introduced hip hop to a lot of white kids who might be drawn to the flag for whatever reason. He did a tour with Run DMC I think. So he kind of cleverly appeals to southern iconography then hits them with having a good time with black people. So it’s complicated.
I always interpreted the song SHA differently than what I’m seeing in the comments here.
I might be wrong, but to me the line, “In Birmingham they love the Governor, now we all did what we could do…” meant that Wallace was the governor despite them voting against him. Birmingham being the seat of power and more or less beyond the control of the common man or citizen. They don’t like it but have to live with it. That’s where the line, “does your conscience bother you” ties in. You know, saying to Young, and by extension, any northerners who wag a finger at all southerners because of what racist southerners did and still do…. ‘what did you do about Nixon and Watergate?’ ‘Is your conscience clear?’
As far as Kid Rock goes…well, we’re living in a Gaga world. So, the idiot door is wide open and no one cares to slam it shut.
I had to come out of lurking to say this… I believe Kid Rock is a simpleton and what makes it even worse, is that his 17 year old son is half black. Kid Rock wrote a song about the woman who had his son.
Who knows what type of message this is sending to his son?!
Well that was fun. Now let’s talk about how ignorant someone needs to be to name their group Lady Antebellum.
No kidding! But they sing so pretty! When they were winning all those awards at the Grammies, my mind was reeling. Maybe it’s a homage to Scarlet O’Hara and having the grit to pull yourself up out of poverty after losing all of your undeserved privileges. I dunno, haven’t cared enough to Google and find out what their justifications are.
he has a BLACK CHILD.
I…just…can’t get past that along with the Confederate flag.
So did Strom Thurmond. And your point?
I post this for the record. I think we should be aware that there is such a thing.
http://www.dixiecom.com/blackneo.htm
http://www.civilwarnews.com/archive/articles/edgerton.htm
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2000/summer/confederates
-in-black
This is a bit like the people who think Springsteen’s Born in the USA is a patriotic anthem. Listen to the words! Never ceases to amaze me how people will display the Confederate flag as a symbol of patriotism.
Kid Rock IS an idiot. Anyone proudly displaying, promoting or identifying with the Confederate flag TODAY, AT THIS POINT IN TIME, is an idiot and actually worse than an idiot.
BUT, unlike yourself, I was a full adult when Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd had their musical discussion. I just didn’t HEAR what you SEE in those lyrics thru TODAY’s lens. Young did what continues to be done today and promoted the idea that only one part of our country had/has a race problem that needed/needs to be addressed. The whole country didn’t/doesn’t need to “pay them back,” only Southerners did/do. Let’s call this the Blame the South Game that conveniently overlooks the slave ships pulling into New York harbor.
As a white Southerner, Neil’s song didn’t offend me. at. all. But singing it after the race riots in Detroit, in Watts, in Boston… well, you know, we never had a race riot in Atlanta, now did we? So why call out the South specifically? It was a pretty song and I sang along with the lyrics while thinking he was being a bit of a simpleton.
What Lynyrd Skynyrd was saying to Neil Young was: don’t look down on us, don’t put the whole burden on us, look at the bigger Watergate picture. They didn’t like Wallace or support segregation. They were friggin’ stoner-cracker-hippies who probably bought their dope from a black guy; they were totally counter-cultural.
Okay now, let’s look at Skynyrd’s use of the Confederate flag. They were a stoner redneck rock band that identified themselves strongly with their home fan base. At the time, the Confederate flag was part of almost every state flag in the South! They used it simply as a regional identifier not to support any kind of political agenda.
Saying that SHA is “not exactly a black-friendly song” misses the sarcasm entirely. It is NOT a we-support-rascism/we-hate-black-people song. It is a don’t-make-it-only-a-Southern Man-problem song. I’ll say it clearly: The South has problems with race but, dude, so does the rest of the country!
I was rather shocked at just how many comments in this thread showed a complete lack of understanding behind the SHA song. And no, the Confederate flag is not the same as the Nazi flag. There are many, many people in the South who believe their ancestors fought honorably for their states and not because of slavery or animus toward black people, and to declare that someone from the North just knows better is arrogant. Lincoln understood it best when he refused to treat the South as a simple nest of traitors, instead arguing that North and South should set aside their differences and seek all to be Americans again. The Confederate flag is seen by many Southerners as part of their heritage. That many are in denial about its role in suppressing black Americans and promoting hatred is true, but that’s because it truly does have a different meaning for them, just as the swastika has a radically different meaning than the one we associate it with among Asians, Indians, and even Native Americans. It was a coopted symbol, just as the Confederate flag was a coopted symbol. So yes, some people fly the Confederate flag out of racial animus, but others fly it out of pride in their heritage or from fascination with the myth of heroic, outnumbered homeboys fighting a lost cause and going down with dignity and pride intact.
Thanks for this comment sjct, that is a side of this discussion that I had not heard before.