Back to 100 Greatest Guitar Solos
Song first appeared on: Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1974 debut album, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd
Guitarist Gary Rossington used a 1961 Gibson Les Paul/SG Standard with side-pull vibrato for his slide guitar part on "Freebird". Rossington played through a Peavey Mace amp head, and a Peavey 4x12 cabinet (with the back removed to produce a more open sound) with JBL speakers.
Around 1970, when Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote the song, Rossington had just started playing slide. Rossington used a glass Coricidin bottle on his middle finger for a slide, an idea he got from Duane Allman. But when Rossington played, the bottle kept clinking against the frets because the string action was too low, so he took a screwdriver and stuck it under the strings up at the nut. He then tuned the B string down to G. When Rossington played the slide part, he would often hit the third and second strings (both now tuned to a G) together, and play them as if they were one string, to create a doubled-guitar sound.
