![]() Perhaps the most Ronnie Van Zant ever revealed about his political beliefs occurred on “Sweet Home Alabama,” when he admitted his indifference towards Watergate. And indeed their music was omnipresent within earshot of anyone with their local classic rock station on the radio dial, which garnered them a fanbase that existed beyond the color lines. Nothing the band ever said or did directly smacked of racism. ![]() Lee raining down on American decency.įor the majority of their career as a band, the Confederate Flag has also served as the main symbol for Skynyrd, who utilized the imagery as part of their Southern bad boy image. It was like one last gob of spit from the ghostly, fetid maw of Robert E. The image of one of the insurrectionists parading around the punchbowl with a giant stars and bars was something we never thought we’d ever see in our lifetimes. Many people were brandishing Confederate flags during the riot. VIDEO: The Golden Palace, Season 1 Episode 11 (1992)Īlmost 28 years after that episode aired, we saw a mob of angry (and predominantly white) men and women storm the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in a failed effort to overturn the U.S. The North is just as bad… I’ve battled that flag all my life.” It is about crosses being burnt front lawns today – not an evil past, Blanche, today. “It’s about companies that won’t hire me. It’s about colleges that won’t let me in,” Cheadle explains in the episode. Devereaux, is not about college football games or quilting bees or fried chicken on Sunday. In the episode, Don Cheadle’s character reminds Rue McClanahan’s Blanche of the sordid history of the Confederate flag when she tried to hang it up for a party. ![]() However, it took an episode of The Golden Girls spinoff The Golden Palace to show me just how much that flag still brought so much pain to my friends and family members of color. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. And as a pro wrestling fan, seeing The Fabulous Freebirds with their faces adorned with warpaint in the likeness of the Stars and Bars when they faced The Road Warriors in 1985 was just so badass. I mean, who didn’t think the General Lee was the coolest fucking car on earth when The Dukes of Hazzard was riding high in the Neilsen Ratings? I had those toys, for sure. As I sit here on the cusp of 48, I was raised during a time when the Confederate Flag was handled with kid gloves in American pop culture. This conundrum is at the very root of my incredibly mixed emotions about this band in the present tense. Here’s a trailer.It’s Memorial Day 2021 and I’m in my office writing about Lynyrd Skynyrd. After pulling survivors from the wreckage, it was he who staggered to a farmhouse looking for help. The film is narrated by former Skynyrd drummer, Artemus Pyle, a survivor of the crash. Rather than a straight documentary, it’s a dramatized version of the the event. More than 40 years after that plane went down, there’s a new film that looks at what really happened that night. The official cause of the crash was “fuel exhaustion due to pilot error.” But was that the full story? Six of the 26 people on board were killed, including lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, and Dean Kilpatrick, the band’s road manager, were killed. For some reason, the plane ran out of fuel over Mississippi and crashed into a Louisiana swamp. On October 20, 1977, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd boarded a rickety Convair CV-240 passenger prop plan for a hop from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge.
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