Californian hippy wrote enduring rallying cry for all Southern rednecks
The irony that it took a Californian hippy to write the song that became the rock’n’roll anthem of Southern rednecks was not lost on Ed King, who has died from cancer, aged 68. One of three guitarists in Lynyrd Skynyrd, King was rehearsing with the band one day in 1973 when he started picking out a distinctive guitar riff. Singer Ronnie Van Zant instructed him to keep playing while he swiftly wrote some words and, with assistance from fellow guitarist Gary Rossington, Sweet Home Alabama was born.
‘‘We wrote that song in half an hour. It came real quick,’’ King recalled. ‘‘I started off with that riff and
Ronnie was sitting on the edge of the couch. After maybe 10 minutes he got up and sang a verse and a chorus. Then, I just put the song together. I knew where to take it. It wasn’t very difficult.’’
King, who always slept with his instrument, then added the guitar solo, which came to him fully formed ‘‘in a dream’’.
Despite the song’s title, none of the band had any connection with Alabama, but, with the exception of King, they were all good ol’ Southern boys from Florida who had been riled by Neil Young’s songs Southern Man and Alabama, which had castigated the South for its conservative attitudes and legacy of slavery and racism.
Sweet Home Alabama, with lines such as ‘‘I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around’’, was the band’s indignant rebuke. It was swiftly adopted as a rallying cry by the South. Played in sports stadiums and at Republican events, including Donald Trump’s rallies, the song has been used to sell everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken to Chevrolet cars. The song had ‘‘universal appeal to rednecks no matter where they live’’ – and they existed everywhere, according to King.
King was proud of the song he called ‘‘one of the finest feelgood tunes of all time’’. But he was disturbed by its connotations. Out of tune with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s brawling aggression and seeming desire to continue fighting for the Confederate cause, King walked out in the middle of a sellout tour in 1975.
‘‘It had got mean and I always knew that I didn’t fit,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m the hippy from southern California . . . a different mindset from those guys. I was just there to play music. I wasn’t in there to get beat up, get spat upon, get dragged around a room, get jagged glass held up to my throat.’’
After playing on the band’s first three albums and co-writing further hits including Saturday Night Special, the breaking point for King came after a gig in Pittsburgh. Riding back to the hotel, Ronnie Van Zant told King that he ‘‘didn’t amount to a pimple on the ass’’ of the band’s other two guitarists, both true Southerners. When a fist fight broke out in the back of the limo, the driver pulled over and told them to get out and walk.
King returned to the hotel, packed his bags and left in the middle of the night, without a word. He and Van Zant never spoke again and, although King did not know it at the time, he had a lucky escape. Two years later, Van Zant and King’s replacement, Steve Gaines, were killed in a plane crash in which the rest of the band sustained serious injuries. As a result, the group was disbanded.
King was at home making dinner when he heard the news. Despite the bad terms on which he had left, he drove overnight to the crash site in Mississippi and visited the surviving members in hospital. A week later he attended Van Zant’s funeral in Florida.
There was no further contact with his former bandmates for another decade, but when Lynyrd Skynyrd reformed in 1987, King accepted an invitation to rejoin.
Edward Calhoun King was born in Glendale, Los Angeles, where he was brought up by his mother after his father committed suicide. As a child he took piano lessons, but by the time he was 12 he had switched to the guitar. He got ‘‘serious’’ after buying a chord book of the Beatles songs. He had a US No 1 hit in 1967 with the band Strawberry Alarm Clock, who were supported on several gigs by the then unknown Lynyrd Skynyrd. When Strawberry Alarm Clock broke up, King was invited to join Lynyrd Skynyrd as their bass player.
Before long Van Zant informed him he was the worst bassist he had heard and King thought he was about to get the sack. Instead, he was promoted to guitar and the group’s distinctive triple-pronged ‘‘axe attack’’ was in place.
On tour King’s entrepreneurial spirit did not always commend itself to his bandmates. Rossington recalled that after gigs he would board the tour bus with a briefcase stocked with dried snacks and other goodies. ‘‘After driving an hour or two, you get hungry and he’d sell them to us at triple the price.’’
After his abrupt departure, King was just as savvy: his earnings were invested in real estate and he took an early course in computer science.
The royalties from Sweet Home Alabama meant he was able to retire in his mid-40s. ‘‘Who would have guessed that song would pay the rent for all these years,’’ he said.
He is survived by wife Sharon and a son from a teenage relationship in the 1960s.
‘‘We wrote that song in half an hour ... Who would have guessed [it] would pay the rent for all these years.’’