Free Bird

The shouting started long after the record was out. "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd became something of a running joke among concertgoers, who would yell for it regardless of who was on stage. During Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged show in New York, one such shout led to a short, lyrically slurred run through "Sweet Home Alabama". At a Bob Dylan concert in Berkeley, California, on June 9, 2016, a fan called out for it during the last encore, and Dylan and his band unexpectedly obliged with an instrumental snippet to close the night.

The song itself had begun with a question Allen Collins's girlfriend Kathy, whom he later married, asked him about whether he would still remember her if she left the next day. Collins noted the question, and it became the opening line. Ronnie Van Zant spent two years insisting the chords Collins had written were too many for him to set a melody to, until one rehearsal when Collins played the unused sequence and Van Zant asked him to repeat it, then wrote the melody and lyrics in three or four minutes. The closing guitar solos were added so Van Zant could rest during the band's several nightly club sets.

When roadie Billy Powell was heard playing an introduction he had written, the band kept it and made him their keyboardist. Record executives wanted it cut to three and a half minutes for radio. The band refused.