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Sat. Mar 19, 2005

The Curse of the Freebird

It’s a musical phenomenon, one that was going strong when I left the radio business two decades ago, and that continues today across the musical spectrum:

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show where it hasn’t happened,” says Bill Davis of the veteran country-punk band Dash Rip Rock.

“It’s just the most astonishing phenomenon,” says Mike Doughty, the former front man of the “deep slacker jazz” band Soul Coughing…

It’s as uniquely American as Elvis and apple pie. Where ever people gather to watch music be performed, the odds are extremely high that at some point, someone will stand and yell … “Play Freebird!”

But it has to be done properly (not that I’ve ever done this, nope). It helps if you know one or more of the people on stage (nope, never done it…), but that’s not required. Just wait until one of the mellower songs in the set has finished, and in that second or two of silence between the applause and the setup for the next song, from the bottom of your lungs, shout (with a slur if you can manage it) “Play Freebird, man!” (adding “man” at the end shows you’re not some drunken amateur, you’re a pro).

And what will happen?

Bands mostly just ignore the taunt. But one common retort is: “I’ve got your ‘free bird’ right here.” That’s accompanied by a middle finger. It’s a strategy Dash Rip Rock’s former bassist Ned Hickel used. According to fans’ accounts of shows, so have Jewel and Hot Tuna’s Jack Casady. Jewel declines to comment. Mr. Casady says that’s “usually not my response to those kind of things.”

Others have offered more than the bird. On a recent live album, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock declares that “if this were the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and you were going to die in 20 minutes — just long enough to play ‘Freebird’ — we still wouldn’t play it.” Dash Rip Rock often plays “Stairway to Freebird,” a mash-up of the Skynyrd epic and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” that Mr. Davis boasts lasts “less than two minutes. ... You’re finished before people get mad.”

Well, that “Freebird / middle finger” thing goes way back, too. I think it was first used on me about 1981, by a member of Doc Holliday in Warner Robins, after I’d laid a near perfect “Play Freebird” between songs in their set. I tell you all of this because I consider myself a bit of an authority on this most important topic’s history. But let’s see what the Wall Street Journal came up with for origins.

Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has exhorted his fans — the KevHeads — to yell “Freebird” for years, and claims to have originated the tradition in the late 1980s…

But did “Freebird” truly start with the KevHeads? Longtime Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot says he remembers the cry from the early 1980s. He suggests it originated as an in-joke among indie-rock fans “having their sneer at mainstream classic rock.”

Other music veterans think it dates back to 1970s audiences’ shouts for it and other guitar sagas, such as “Whipping Post,” by the Allman Brothers Band, and “Smoke on the Water,” by Deep Purple.

Indeed, in some areas in the mid to late 70’s, “Freebird” was “out-shouted” by calls for “Whip-pin’ POST!” The true source of it all was just partyin’ people callin’ for more jam, man. Back when the jam was still fresh. But, it done got old.

I started working part time in radio while I was in high school. The year after “Freebird” came out in 1973. By 1978, I was working at a rock station just outside Macon, Georgia … the home of Southern Rock. I started out there working the graveyard shift (12-6am) and then the night shift.

Every night … every single night … you’d get some variant on this call: “Hey, man, um, me an’ some buds o’ mine are partyin’ down over here, man [odd hooting sounds in background]. An’ it’d shore be a lot better if you’d play Freebird for us, man.” And you’d give ‘em the ol’ “sure, I’ll see if that can get that on for ya, man [click]”

15 minutes later or one beer later, they’d call back … “Hey, um, when are you gonna play Freebird, man?” Repeat until they get too drunk to dial anymore.

Every single night … for the eight years I was in the business. On Friday and Saturday night, you’d get a half dozen requests per hour for it. You could play it at the top of each and every hour, and by 15 minutes after, people would call to say “Play Freebird, man!”

Since I was constantly afflicted with it, I would therefore inflict it on others (like with Doc Holliday above). I was once passing through Macon, and heard my ex-wife doing her airshift. So I called in to push her buttons (and, trust me, I do a good “Freebird voice”) ... “Hey, darlin’, would you play Freebird fo’ me … sweetie?” I got a vocal tone in response that I was quite familiar with (the “cold day in hell” tone) as she replied “sure, I’ll see if that can get that on for ya … buddy [click]” and hung up on me. Ah, those were the days.

To this day, when I hear the opening organ note to that song, I frighten any cats and children nearby as I knock over all the furniture trying to get to the electronic device emitting the sound and shut it off. It is one of the deeper psychic scars I’ve accumulated in this lifetime.

And I’m not alone:

For his part, Mr. Doughty suggests that musicians make a pact: Whenever anyone calls for “Freebird,” play it in its entirety—and if someone calls for it again, play it again.

“That would put a stop to ‘Freebird,’ I think,” he says. “It would be a bad couple of years, but it might be worth it.”

Now there’s a man dedicated to his mission. No pain, no gain. You’ve got my support, Brother. But excuse me if I don’t go to many shows over the next couple of years…

Finally, perhaps the best story in the article, and it’s about “Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie’s brother and the [Lynyrd Skynyrd] singer since 1987 [...] His wife persuaded him to see Cher in Jacksonville a couple of years ago, and he couldn’t resist yelling ‘Freebird!’ himself. ‘My wife is going, ‘Stop! Stop!’ ’ he recalls, laughing. ‘I embarrassed the hell out of her.’”

And thus, as the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd heckles Cher, surely the Freebird Circle must be complete.