Sitting in the control room of a recording studio in suburban Atlanta, listening to the opening of a new song from a band that most of America hadn't even heard of yet, Rodney Mills did what the lead singer asked him to do.
Mills, then a 20-something audio engineer, gave a knob a clockwise twist and, without realizing it, became a part of music history.
He turned it up.
Mills might’ve been the first person to respond to Ronnie Van Zant’s request during the opening guitar riff of “Sweet Home Alabama.” He obviously wasn’t the last.
'Turn it up'
It was 50 years ago, in the summer of 1974, that Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” first played on radio stations across America. It was released as a single on June 24, 1974. By August, it reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. And while it was off the charts after 17 weeks, five decades later it remains a part of American music, described by some as “synonymous with Southern rock.”
It has been dissected and debated, praised and criticized. It has been downloaded millions of times, covered and sampled by dozens of artists, all the while enduring in ways few songs have.
As it turns 50, the first few notes of Ed King's guitar riff are instantly recognizable. And three words that never were in the lyrics now are a part of much more than the song. There’s even a Skynyrd cover band called Turn it Up.
One analysis of the song describes what Van Zant says as “a command, a threat, an invitation to to keep listening, and an indication that whatever is about to transpire should be heard as loudly as possible.”
This might’ve become true over time, growing like a lot of Skynyrd folklore tends to do.
But, as Mills explained before a recent event honoring him, that wasn’t the original intent.
Ronnie Van Zant just wanted the sound in his headphones turned up.
That Georgia Rhythm
Mills turns 78 this month. He and his wife, Mary, live in Fernandina Beach.
They grew up in Georgia and first started coming to Fernandina as kids, before they even met in college. In the 1960s, Rodney was in a band that would rent a house in Fernandina for the summer.
Standing in the Women’s Club of Fernandina Beach the other night, he looked around and said, “We actually played in this room in 1965.”
About 150 people gathered for an event, the premier of a trailer for a documentary, “The Georgia Rhythm: The Story of Studio One.” Charles Camp and Branden Camp, a father-son team from Atlanta, have been working on the documentary for about a decade. They plan to have it finished next year. The event not only was a peek at the film, it was basically a reunion for Studio One and a tribute to a man who the filmmakers describe as "an unsung hero behind the music that will live on forever."
As some band members of Stillwater, a Southern rock band from the 1970s, warmed up before the screening, Mills was asked what instrument he played. He laughed.
“I owned a bass,” he said. “I tried to play on one studio session and it was kind of like, ‘This is not working out.’ So I put it in the closet."
It’s safe to say that engineering did work out.
After a few years at another Atlanta studio, producer Buddy Buie asked Mills to build a studio for him and become chief engineer there. Mills co-designed and oversaw the construction of what became Studio One. Located in an industrial part of suburban Doraville, Studio One had a forgettable exterior. But what happened inside in the 1970s and 1980s became quite memorable, as the recording studio was used by The Atlanta Rhythm Section, Lynyrd Skynyrd, 38 Special, Journey and others.
Peter Stroud — a guitarist known largely for his work with Sheryl Crow — spoke at the event. He recalled moving to Atlanta in 1982, driving to his daytime sales job, listening to songs recorded at Studio One and being excited just to be in the vicinity of it.
“I’m humbled, because I started out as a fan literally of Rodney Mills,” he said. “I was one of those guys who would look at an album and see all the credits.”
Mills’ credits just kept growing. He has been involved in the recording of more than 50 albums that have gone gold or platinum. And this year the songs he worked on became the soundtrack of 4th of July in Nassau County.
Hilliard and Callahan proclaimed it to be Rodney Mills Day. Along with the fireworks at the Northeast Florida Fairgrounds, part of the Nassau County Bicentennial Celebration, there was live music — featuring songs that Mills produced, engineered or mastered.
That’s quite the potential playlist, everything from Gregg Allman’s “I’m No Angel” to The Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “Spooky” to 38 Special’s “Rockin’ Into the Night” and “Second Chance.”
It includes Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut studio album (Pronounced ‘Leh-’nerd ‘Skin-nerd) — with “Simple Man,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Tuesday’s Gone” and “Free Bird” — and the band’s last studio album before the 1977 plane crash, “Street Survivors.”
And in between, there was “Sweet Home Alabama.”
About more than turning up headphones
The band with roots on Jacksonville’s Westside had gone to Atlanta to record its first album in the spring of 1973. But before it was released on Aug. 13, 1973, Skynyrd was playing some gigs in Atlanta, mixing in a new song that wasn't on the album.
“It was getting a terrific response,” Mills said. “They called Al Kooper, the producer, and said they wanted to record it.”
Skynyrd booked Studio One just to record that one song. Mills thinks they might’ve been considering putting it on the yet-to-be-released debut album, but they realized that meant taking something off. So they decided to save it for the second album.
Mills had never heard "Sweet Home Alabama" before that day in the studio. He remembers King playing his solo — which the guitarist said had come to him in a dream — in the control room, with the entire band listening.
“Al Kooper thought it was in the wrong key, but the band pushed back and said, ‘No, that’s exactly the way it should be,’” Mills said.
It stayed that way. And when the rest of the tracks were done, it was time for Van Zant to record the lead vocals. He stood in the middle of the studio, facing the slightly elevated control booth.
That now-familiar intro started playing in Van Zant’s headphones. Too softly.
“The headphones at Studio One all had volume controls on them,” Mills said. “Whoever had worn the headphones before Ronnie didn’t turn them up very loud.”
So Van Zant looked at the control booth and said, “Turn it up.”
“I didn’t think of it as being momentous until later on,” Mills said. “Al Kooper had the foresight to realize, 'This is going to be about more than turning the headphones up.'”
When Kooper took the master 2-inch tapes to California, where the background vocals were added, the producer easily could’ve removed “turn it up.” He didn’t.
From 'Sweet Home Alabama' to 'Street Survivors'
At least initially, much of the attention was on the words that followed. The song was written as a rebuke of Neil Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama” and, along the way, supported Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace. Or did it?
Van Zant later said, “The lyrics about the governor were misunderstood.” He noted that the line, “In Birmingham, they love the governor” was followed by the words, “Boo, boo, boo.” He said that Wallace and he had “very little in common.” And yet King, listed as a co-writer along with Van Zant and Gary Rossington, said decades later the song was indeed meant to defend Alabama and Wallace.
This much seems clear: There wasn’t some lingering feud between Young and Skynyrd.
Van Zant said in interview the song was written mostly as a joke, adding: “We love Neil Young. We love his music.” And in Young’s 2012 autobiography, he wrote: “My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record.”
Ask Mills what he made of the song, and he says that he never expected it to be a big hit. He grew up in the 1950s, when hit songs were about boys and girls. This was full of inside references about someone else’s songs and the music made in Muscle Shoals, Alabama?
“I think the bottom line is that what’s in the verses is overcome by what’s portrayed in the chorus of the song,” he said.
Sweet home, Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet home, Alabama
Lord, I'm comin' home to you
That was the only song Mills engineered on Skynyrd’s second studio album, “Second Helping.” The rest of the album was recorded at another studio. On the third album, “Nuthin’ Fancy,” again just one song was recorded at Studio One — “Saturday Night Special.”
But by the fifth studio album, “Street Survivors,” Skynyrd was back at Studio One with Mills in the control booth.
That album includes “That Smell,” a song that deserves to be in the Skynyrd pantheon, partly for the ominous lyrics about fame and fortune, partly because of Allen Collins’ guitar.
“When he got to the end of his solo, he did this harmony part to himself, it was almost like a religious experience,” Mills said. “I’m telling you, it was so emotional I wanted to cry."
And then, three days after the album was released, a plane carrying the band crashed in Mississippi.
Mills and his wife were driving home from an antique auction in Atlanta when they heard the news on the radio.
The 'Amen break'
Mills says being the engineer on “Street Survivors” changed his career. It paved the way for him to become a producer for 38 Special — which, when “Wild-Eyed Southern Boys” went gold and platinum in the 1980s, paved the way for him to build a house in Fernandina Beach.
Still, after all of this, he figured he might be remembered for his role in “Sweet Home Alabama.” Then maybe 10 years ago, he got a call from someone asking if he was the engineer that recorded “Color Him Father.”
Released in 1969, the song by The Winstons became a Top 10 R&B hit, sold more than a million copies and won a Grammy. Mills was pleased someone remembered “Color Him Father.” But it turned out the caller wanted to know, “Do you know the significance of the B-side of that single?”
Mills didn’t even remember what song was on the B-side.
It was “Amen, Brother.” And midway through the song, there is a drum solo performed by Gregory C. Coleman. It lasts about seven seconds. It now is known as the “Amen break.”
It has been used in thousands of songs, making it one of the sampled recordings in music history. It’s not only found in Salt-N-Pepa’s “I Desire” and N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton,” it can be heard everywhere from car commercials to sitcom theme songs.
So when asked whether he thinks his legacy is “Sweet Home Alabama” or the “Amen break,” Mills said: “I’ve been living with ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ for a long time. The Amen break is new to me.”
Maybe his legacy is something else, something he hasn’t done yet.
They are adding a carport to their house. And he is planning to build a studio above it, something larger than the small room his equipment is now, the walls covered with some of the record awards.
At the event in Fernandina Beach, he said he never envisioned where his career would take him. As he talked about some of the memories from Studio One, he mentioned “a song called ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’” And as if on cue, someone in the audience yelled out the words that never were in the lyrics but forever will be a part of the song and more.
"Turn it up."
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Fifty years ago, Rodney Mills turned up Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Sweet Home Alabama'
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