Southern Man

Lynyrd Skynyrd told Neil Young that a Southern man don’t need him around, anyhow. Ronnie Van Zant wore a Neil Young t-shirt onstage. They traded jabs in song for years, and everyone called it a feud. But the real question—the one Young asked in 1970—never got an answer.

“Southern Man” is accusation as music. Young looked at the American South and saw centuries of brutality written in the landscape. He saw burning crosses and segregated lunch counters and a region that celebrated its history while refusing to reckon with it. He picked up a guitar and said so out loud.

The song starts almost gently. Acoustic strumming, Young’s high lonesome voice setting the scene. Then the electric guitar comes in like righteous anger, building through nearly six minutes of confrontation. In live versions with Crazy Horse, the guitar solos stretched into furious meditations on violence and denial.

Was it fair? Is it fair to indict an entire region? Van Zant thought not, and “Sweet Home Alabama” was his response—a reminder that Southern identity was more complicated than a Canadian outsider understood. Both songs are right. Neither is complete. That’s why they’ve been arguing with each other for half a century.

Young’s guitar on the extended passages sounds like someone trying to burn something down. It builds and builds, feedback screaming, notes bent until they break. He wasn’t trying to be diplomatic. He was trying to be heard.

Some songs ask questions. This one demands answers that still haven’t come.