Sweet Home Alabama is a classic song composed by the Southern rock band called Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was a big hit in 1974, the band's first. In 2004 it got listed in Rolling Stone's list, The 500 Greates Songs of All Time, at number 398.
Ed King, the guitarist of the band said that he dreamed the chords and 2 main solos of Sweet Home Alabama.
Sweet Home Alabama is not very hard to play, although the hammer ons and pull offs in the riff need some practicing. This song's a good exercise for mixing chords with riffs. Use a pick to play this song.
Here's the guitar chord chart for Sweet Home Alabama:
The D chord is a regular D chord, but we don't play the top string (like the rest of these chords). You'll notice in the guitar tabs that is not necessary to fret the 4th string of the C chord and the 5th string of the G chord, but I advice you to fret them anyway, just so you know what you are playing.
Here are the guitar tabs:
Some fun and not so fun facts about Sweet Home Alabama:
Sweet Home Alabama is a response to two songs of Neil Young, Alabama and Southern Man, in which he sings that people in the South of the US are racist. Sweet Home Alabama is Ronnie Van Zandt's (the singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd) reply to Neil Young, it's a song about all the good things in Alabama. All this is good-natured though, Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zandt are fans of eachother.
Neil Young played Sweet Home Alabama on a concert once, after 3 members of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash in 1977.
There are rumors that Ronnie Van Zandt is burried in a Neil Young T-shirt. Some sick people vandalized his grave, trying to check if the rumors were true or false.
The Y's in Lynyrd Skynyrd is a reference to The Byrds.
Sweet Home Alabama is one of the most featured songs in film. Some examples are Forrest Gump, Con Air, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the new version), The Girl Next Door, Sahara, To Die For, ...
