Credit: Far Out / MCA Records / Analog Originals
Wed 9 September 2026 1:00, UK
Rock and roll loves a good feud, whether it’s between two warring bands or the songwriters that exist within it; the furious energy of this beloved music genre is often focused on whatever animosity exists between its heroes.
For the most part, it’s harmless fun, probably designed to boost record sales, but in the instance of Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd, it was personal. It all started when the former penned his 1970 track ‘Southern Man’, a characteristically unflinching protest track from the rock icon that aimed its focus on America’s Deep South.
Young exposed the area of America as the centre point of the country’s legacy of racism, citing its history of slavery and the subsequent birth of white supremacy movements as characteristic of the place. While no individual was targeted, some members of the Southern community felt vilified, deeming it a personal attack on their culture. One of the most vocal defenders of that argument was Lynryd Skynyrd, who, despite being self-proclaimed Young fans at the time, unleashed a brutal assault on the Canadian songwriter.
But while Young took to the press to explain that the song was more about the Civil Rights Movement than the history of the South, he chose to musically double down, releasing ‘Alabama’ two years later, which explored more of the same narrative territory. When Lynryd Skynyrd penned their proud anthem of their native state, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, they decided to make it abundantly clear that Young was in their crosshairs, singing “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”.
But Ronnie Van Zant didn’t leave his feud in the studio. His anger extended beyond the microphone, and he made relatively bold claims that defamed Young more personally than artistically. When asked about his feelings on the feud in a 1977 interview, Van Zant spilt the beans on just how pointed the feud got between the pair.
“I will summarise,” he started, “Neil Young wrote, ‘Southern Man’ and ‘Alabama’. He criticised the South, and then we wrote, ’Sweet Home Alabama’. What you don’t know is that Neil Young is a weenie from Canada, and I banged his wife. I didn’t know it was his wife at the time, but I met her at Woodstock in 1969, and we balled in the woods. She left him a few months later, and he wrote, ‘Southern Man’. I can’t blame him, and it is a great song. He owes me.”
In the same year as that interview, Young and Van Zant managed to bury the hatchet, with Young even sending the group a demo version of ‘Powderfinger’ to apologise and even offering the band to use it on their next record. Luckily for the singer, the reconciliation came just in knick of time, for shortly after, in the very same year, the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd sadly passed away in a tragic plane crash.
The reconciliation was honoured at the subsequent memorial gig in Miami, where Young played an emotional medley of ‘Alabama’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, honouring the band, their make-up and, more crucially, the proud people of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s native state.
