Print

I grew up in North Alabama, back in the 1970's,When dinosaurs still roamed the earth SpeakingOf course of the Three Great Alabama IconsGeorge Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van ZantNow Ronnie Van Zant wasn't from Alabama, he wasFrom Florida He was a huge Neil Young fanBut in the tradition of Merle Haggard writin'Okie from Muskogee to tell his dad's point ofView about the hippies 'n Vietnam, Ronnie feltThat the other side of the story should be told.And Neil Young always claimed that Sweet HomeAlabama was one of his favorite songs. And legendHas it that he was an honorary pall bearer atRonnie's funeral such is the Duality of theSouthern Thing And Bear Bryant wore a coolLookin' red checkered hat and won footballGames and there's few things more loved inAlabama than football and the men who know how toWin at it So when the Bear would come to town,There'd be a parade. And me, I was one a' themPussy boys cause I hated football, so I got aGuitar but a guitar was a poor substitute for aFootball with the girls in my high school So myBand hit the road and we didn't play noSkynyrd either I came of age rebellin'Against the music in my high school parkin'Letras de cancionesLot It wasn't till years later afterLeavin' the South for a while that I came toAppreciate and understand the whole Skynyrd thingAnd its misunderstood glory I left the SouthAnd learned how different people's perceptionsOf the Southern Thing was from what I'd seen inMy life Which leads us to George Wallace NowWallace was for all practical purposes theGovernor of Alabama from 1962 until 1986 Once,When a law prevented him from succeeding himselfHe ran his wife Lerline in his place and she wonBy a landslide He's most famous as theBelligerent racist voice of the segregationist[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/NEt ]South Standing in the doorways of schools andWaging a political war against a FederalGovernment that he decried as hypocritical AndWallace had started out as a lawyer and a judgeWith a very progressive and humanitarian trackRecord for a man of his time. But he lost hisFirst bid for governor in 1958 by hedging on theRace issue, against a man who spoke out againstIntegration Wallace ran again in '62 as aStaunch segregationist and won big, and for theNext decade spoke out loudly He accused KennedyAnd King of being communists. He was constantly onNational news, representing the "good" peopleOf Alabama And you know race was only an issueOn TV in the house that I grew up in WallaceWas viewed as a man from another time and placeAnd when I first ventured out of the South, I wasShocked at how strongly Wallace was associatedWith Alabama and its people Ya know racism is aWorldwide problem and it's been since theBeginning of recorded history and it ain'tJust white and black But thanks to GeorgeWallace, it's always a little more convenient toPlay it with a Southern accent. And bands likeLynyrd Skynyrd attempted to show another side ofThe South One that certainly exists, but fewSaw beyond the rebel flag And this applies notOnly to their critics and detractors, but alsoFrom their fans and followers. So for a while,When Neil Young would come to town, he'd getDeath-threats down in Alabama Ironically, in1971, after a particularly racially chargedCampaign, Wallace began backpedaling, and heOpened up Alabama politics to minorities at a rateFaster than most Northern states or the FederalGovernment. And Wallace spent the rest of his lifeTrying to explain away his racist past, and in1982 won his last term in office with over 90% ofThe black vote Such is the Duality of theSouthern Thing And George Wallace died back in'98 and he's in Hell now, not because he's aRacist His track record as a judge and hisLate-life quest for redemption make a goodArgument for his being, at worst, no worse thanMost white men of his generation, North orSouth But because of his blind ambition and hisHunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to theSuffering of Black America. And he became a pawnIn the fight against the Civil Rights cause Fortunately for him, the Devil is also aSoutherner From Letras Mania