You Can't Go Home Again...
220. Lynyrd Skynyrd "Was I Right Or Wrong?"
When they combined the bluesy Southernisms of the Allman Brothers Band with punchy British rock influences from Cream and The Who, Jacksonville, Florida's Lynyrd Skynyrd immediately became standard bearers for the genre dubbed 'Southern Rock,' which was both a blessing (in that they were feircely proud of their southern roots) and a curse, since every hamhanded redneck stereotype was hung around their necks, including that they were musically capable of only flag-waving and endless jamming, an unfair assessment since at his best, vocalist Ronnie Van Zant was among the finest rock songwriters of his time, like with this rock and roll retelling of the Prodigal Son story we have here (somehow never released before the plane crash that killed Van Zant and two other band members in 1977).
Instead of a stomping anthem or slow build epic, the plodding beat and the ringing opening guitar followed by the slow crunching grind thereafter, create an air of pure tension. Forsaking his usual cockiness, Van Zant delivers his lyric in a doubtful, unsure voice bordering on anguish in spots, only accented further by the gospel style backup vocals. The question of the title is never resolved, rendering the song a masterpiece of ambiguity while sacrificing none of Skynyrd's trademark toughness showing us a direction Skynyrd might've explored further were it not for Ronnie's death, making his loss all the more profound.
When they combined the bluesy Southernisms of the Allman Brothers Band with punchy British rock influences from Cream and The Who, Jacksonville, Florida's Lynyrd Skynyrd immediately became standard bearers for the genre dubbed 'Southern Rock,' which was both a blessing (in that they were feircely proud of their southern roots) and a curse, since every hamhanded redneck stereotype was hung around their necks, including that they were musically capable of only flag-waving and endless jamming, an unfair assessment since at his best, vocalist Ronnie Van Zant was among the finest rock songwriters of his time, like with this rock and roll retelling of the Prodigal Son story we have here (somehow never released before the plane crash that killed Van Zant and two other band members in 1977).
Instead of a stomping anthem or slow build epic, the plodding beat and the ringing opening guitar followed by the slow crunching grind thereafter, create an air of pure tension. Forsaking his usual cockiness, Van Zant delivers his lyric in a doubtful, unsure voice bordering on anguish in spots, only accented further by the gospel style backup vocals. The question of the title is never resolved, rendering the song a masterpiece of ambiguity while sacrificing none of Skynyrd's trademark toughness showing us a direction Skynyrd might've explored further were it not for Ronnie's death, making his loss all the more profound.
