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Thu Mar 17 10:51:39 EST 2005

March 17, 2005 

Rock's Oldest Joke:
Yelling 'Freebird!'
In a Crowded Theater

It's a Request, a Rebuke,
A Cry From the Heart,
A Tribute to Skynyrd
By JASON FRY 
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
March 17, 2005; Page A1

One recent Tuesday night at New York's Bowery
Ballroom, the Crimea had just finished its second
song. The Welsh quintet's first song had gone over
fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist
Davey MacManus looked out at the still-gathering
crowd.

Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry,
"Freebird!"

It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll
nights in America.

  THE FREEBIRD FILES

Please note: RealPlayerG21 is required for these
files.

"Freebird" has been a rallying cry for fans of
Southern rock since the 1970s. This exchange2 between
Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and an Atlanta
audience introduces the version of "Freebird" from the
1976 live album "One More From the Road". That cut has
been a radio mainstay since the album's release,
likely inspiring many more shouts for "Freebird."

Bands don't always welcome the request, though. Mike
Doughty had a suggestion for audience members yelling
for "Freebird," as captured in this clip3 from the
2002 album "Smofe + Smang: Live in Minneapolis."

Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins tried to shame a
"Freebird" heckler known as Ivan into changing his
ways with this on-stage lecture4, delivered during a
1993 show in Chicago. Note Ivan's proud
self-identification as a KevHead.

And in some cases, entertainers become slightly
unhinged when they hear the song title, especially
after Chicago DJ Kevin Matthews urged listeners to
yell "Freebird." In this clip5, from a Chicago show in
the early 1990s, the late comedian Bill Hicks utters a
string of expletives in response to an exuberant fan.
If you're offended by profanity, don't click on it.

Here are Web sites related to the artists mentioned in
this article:

Lynyrd Skynyrd
(www.lynyrdskynyrd.com6)
The Crimea
(www.thecrimea.net7)
Dash Rip Rock
(www.dashriprock.net8)
Mike Doughty
(www.superspecialquestions.com9)
Jewel
(www.jeweljk.com10)
Hot Tuna
(www.hottuna.com11)
Modest Mouse
(www.modestmousemusic.com12)
Bill Hicks
(www.billhicks.com13)
Kevin Matthews
(www.kevhead.com14)
Phish
(www.phish.com15)
The Dandy Warhols
(www.dandywarhols.com16)

-- Jason Fry

"Freebird" isn't the Crimea's song; it's from the 1973
debut album by legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd
Skynyrd. The band's nine-minute march from ruminative
piano to wailing guitar couldn't be less like the
Crimea's jagged punk-pop. But it was requested
nonetheless.

Somebody is always yelling out the title. "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, adding that "these kids,
they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd."

Yelling "Freebird!" has been a rock cliché for years,
guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from
music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And
it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago
White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire
and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding
a lighter hollers "Freebird!" at wedding musicians.

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."

A few years ago, Mr. Doughty started promoting the
Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" as the new
"Freebird," asking audiences at his solo shows to call
for the disco chestnut instead. Now, he says, he gets
yells for both songs at every performance.

A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late
comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early
1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks
at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling
that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever --
it's stupid."

The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the
"Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says
wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was
the Word -- 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled
throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of
the moron."

How did this strange ritual begin? "Freebird" is
hardly obscure -- it's a radio staple consistently
voted one of rock's greatest songs. One version -- and
an important piece of the explanation -- anchors
Skynyrd's 1976 live album "One More From the Road." On
the record, singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed
along with two other bandmates in a 1977 plane crash,
asks the crowd, "What song is it you want to hear?"
That unleashes a deafening call for "Freebird," and
Skynyrd obliges with a 14-minute rendition.

To understand the phenomenon, it also helps to be from
Chicago. When asked why they continue to request
"Freebird," Mr. Hicks's tormentors yell out "Kevin
Matthews!"

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, when he says he hit
upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of
"Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He
figured somebody should yell something at her "to
break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan
settled on "Freebird," saying the epic song "just
popped into my head."

Mr. Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him
to go down the listings of coming area shows, looking
for entertainers who deserved a "Freebird" and
encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen.

But he bemoans the decline of "Freebird" etiquette.
"It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert --
it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame," he
says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell
'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert."

Lynyrd Skynyrd performing in New York City in April
1976.

Still, Mr. Matthews treasures his trove of recorded
"Freebird" moments -- such as baffled comedian Elayne
Boosler wondering why the audience is shouting
"reverb." And he argues that good bands simply
acknowledge it and move on. "The people who are
conceited, the so-called artists who get really
offended by it, they deserve it," he says.

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.

They may all be right: It's possible "Freebird" began
as a rallying cry for Skynyrd Nation and a sincere
request from guitar lovers, was made famous by the
live cut, taken up by ironic clubgoers, given new life
by Mr. Matthews, and eventually lost all meaning and
became something people holler when there's a band
onstage.

But as with many mysteries, the true origin may be
unknowable -- cold comfort for bands still to be
confronted with the inevitable cry from the darkness.
For them, here's a strategy tried by a brave few: Call
the audience's bluff. Phish liked to sing it a
cappella. The Dandy Warhols play a slowed-down take
singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor describes as sung "like
T. Rex would if he were on a lot of pills." And Dash
Rip Rock has performed the real song in order to
surprise fans expecting the parody. 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."

So what do the members of Skynyrd think of the
tradition? Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's brother and the
band's singer since 1987, says "it's not an insult at
all -- I think it's kind of cool. It's fun, and people
are doing it in a fun way. That's what music's
supposed to be about."

Besides, Mr. Van Zant has a confession: 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."

Write to Jason Fry at jason.fry at wsj.com17

 URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111102511477881964,00.html

 Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://www.real.com/ 
(2)
http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_ls_freebird.rm

(3)
http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_md_freebird.rm

(4)
http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_sp_freebird.rm

(5)
http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_bh_freebird.rm

(6) http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/ 
(7) http://www.thecrimea.net 
(8) http://www.dashriprock.net/pages/1/index.htm 
(9) http://www.superspecialquestions.com/ 
(10) http://www.jeweljk.com/ 
(11) http://www.hottuna.com/ 
(12) http://www.modestmousemusic.com/ 
(13) http://www.billhicks.com/ 
(14) http://www.kevhead.com/ 
(15) http://www.phish.com/ 
(16) http://www.dandywarhols.com/ 
(17) mailto:jason.fry at wsj.com  

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