Once upon a time, there was a radio format known as "AOR." AOR stood for "Album Oriented Rock." AOR stations did not play the Top 40 hits (although sometimes some of the songs did crack the Top 40 charts, usually in the bottom quarter or so). They played the album cuts, sometimes album cuts sufficiently obscure as to be "deep cuts." AOR was very popular in the late 1960s and, especially, the first half of the 1970s. AOR radio was so popular that some of the songs routinely played on the AOR stations became more popular than various band's hit singles.
The "Mt. Rushmore" of AOR radio was the Big Four of "Stairway to Heaven" (Led Zeppelin), "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, a.k.a. Eric Clapton in his Allman Brothers derivative phase), "Roundabout" (Yes) and the great "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. These songs were memorable, more hook-a-licious than what was playing on the Top 40 stations, and were so long in length that the D.J. could take a bathroom break, or a smoke break, and not worry about the song coming to an end before the break was over.
AOR radio later became classic rock. Radio stations were not longer driven the taste preferences of local DJ's, but were all programmed, across the country, out of the same office located in a strip mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bland corporate rock was in, causing the revolution of punk and new wave, which, too, succumbed to corporatization during the MTV era.
Speaking of bland, this is a song that you should only listen to as the live version. The studio version is OK, but it's not real deal. But it was the bigger hit. Studio peaked at #19 in 1974, while the iconic live version barely scraped into the Top 40 at #38 in 1976.
But through it all, one AOR rock earworm triumphed over all of the trends that came and went. Not even death could diminish the power and catchiness of the greatest anthem the genre of southern rock ever produced: the majesty of "Free Bird."
And this bird you cannot change.
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