As a native of their hometown, it has long been my belief that the only good thing to ever come out of Jacksonville, Florida, is Lynyrd Skynyrd (anyone that tries to counter that claim with Limp Bizkit tells me all I need to know about their taste in music). And it’s easy to see why they were so successful. Coming on the scene at the height of the Southern Rock movement in the 1970s and featuring some of the best musicians Rock music has arguably ever seen, Lynyrd Skynyrd seemed destined to have a major impact on both Southern culture and Rock music as a whole. Their undeniable talent and penchant for writing both swooning ballads and headbanging rockers (and in the case of “Free Bird”, both at the same time), made the plane crash on October 20, 1977, that killed several bands members and nearly ending the career of the whole band all the more tragic. Thankfully for us music fans, Ronnie Van Zant, the founder, lead vocalist, and primary songwriter for the band, left us some of the best examples of Southern Rock songwriting ever. And while almost everyone knows songs like Free Bird, Simple Man, and Sweet Home Alabama, I’d like to talk about one of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s more simple and fun tracks.
“Gimme Three Steps” tells the classic tale of flirting with the wrong girl and paying the price. Appearing on the band’s debut album in 1972, this song is a mid-to-upper tempo, bluesy headbanger and uses a very basic and common structure (Verse-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus with several interludes scattered throughout). But despite its apparent simplicity, this song features several great storytelling and songwriting techniques that make this song a work of pop-songwriting brilliance.
The song starts with an instrumental introduction, showcasing the main riff that will feature through the song and a guitar solo (of course with that amazing Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar tone) that contains musical motifs that will be present throughout the rest of the song with variations. This is a classic technique that has been used throughout music history and is the main reason composers put overtures at the beginning of operas and musicals.
After the first intro solo, Ronnie Van Zant wastes no time in setting the scene lyrically.
I was cutting a rug
Down at place called the Jug
With a girl named Linda Lou
This is great storytelling in songwriting. The first lines of any work of literature needs to hook in the audience and create a tone the rest of the work will work within. As songwriters, we have both an advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is we can use instrumental intros to hook in audiences as the musical elements of a work are typically more attention grabbing and hooky anyways. The disadvantage is the limited amount of space we have to work in. Lyric writers do not have tens of thousands of words like novelists in order to set scenes and tell narratives. Lyric writers can not waste a single line not driving the narrative forward. Van Zant certainly doesn’t here, placing the audience firmly in the setting with just enough concrete imagery for the audience to fill in the rest of the details in our own mental images and starting to establish the main narrative tension that the song is built around.
The rest of the first verse finishes the job that the first three lines started. Van Zant continues the tale by describing the “man/ with a gun in his hand” that doesn’t appreciate the narrator’s actions described in those first three lines. This fully establishes that main conflict and narrative tension that is vital to good storytelling. This verse ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, going from the antagonist of the tale explicitly threatening our narrator to an interlude section that features a guitar solo continuing but creating variations of those musical motifs seen in the intro solo. This is a great use of the interlude section as it allows the audience to sit in that narrative tension created in the lyrics of the first verse while processing what happened in the narrative (something that most songwriters I find don’t let their audiences do enough). Plus anytime Lynyrd Skynyrd has a guitar solo it’s going to be great.
The second verse continues this narrative by showing us the narrator’s reaction to being threatened by a stranger with a gun.
I was scared and fearing for my life
I was shaking like a leaf on a tree
And honestly, that’s a pretty understandable reaction, in my opinion. What stands out the most about this line and the next couple of lines, however, is not its use of emotional realism, but its variance of the structure used in the first verse. The first half of the second verse uses a different rhyme scheme and phrasal structure than the entirety of the first verse. This is a great decision by Van Zant as sticking too rigidly to any structure can (and likely will) cause the audience to get bored at best and fully burnt out at worst. Varying this structure allows the second verse to have a sense of freshness while the underlying riff keeps the song firmly anchored to what has already been established.
But note the second half of the verse.
Wait a minute mister
I didn’t every kiss her
Don’t want no trouble with you
Despite being a rather weak defense when there is a gun in your face, this section of the second verse returns us to the structure established, releasing the structural tension created by the variations of the first half of the verse. The rest of the verse continues with the narrator asking for a “favor” from the antagonist. This favor ends up being our chorus.
Oh won’t you
Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister
Gimme three steps towards the door?
Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister
And you’ll never see me no more
Not only a rather witty response to the narrator’s predicament, this chorus is rather simple, mostly just repeating the name of the song. This creates a great poppy hook and narrative climax. However, it breaks one of the cardinal rules of pop songwriting: GET TO THE CHORUS. This chorus doesn’t start until over two whole minutes into the song, almost the exact halfway point through the four and a half minute tune. While conventional songwriting wisdom tells us to get to the chorus as fast as possible, holding off on that in this case is the more effective choice as it allows the chorus to be more seamlessly implemented into the narrative and play the role of climax (AKA the most important part of a narrative) in the song, allowing the already great chorus to stand out even more and stick in the brains and ears of the audience more powerfully. This chorus and its placement in the song indicates that Van Zant understands narrative flow.
The third verse concludes and resolves the narrative by describing how the narrator is able to escape when the gunman turns his attention to Linda Lou, the woman at the center of the conflict. This verse brings us back into the full setting after the second verse and the chorus narrowed our focus to just the narrator and the antagonist. The verse ends with our narrator running out the door before the song brings us back to the hook with the chorus. The song then ends with another solo and a fade-out.
“Gimme Three Steps” is a great example of pop songwriting in the aesthetic context of Southern Rock. Featuring some great musicianship throughout, the song also uses masterfully storytelling to create a memorable and stand-out narrative that perfectly fits the humorous tone established by the first riffs. Lynyrd Skynyrd are true Southern Rock masters, and “Gimme Three Steps” is a great piece of their legendary discography that has so much more to learn from.
Have you heard “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd? Let me know your thoughts on this song in a comment below! And if you would like a Breakdown of any other song, feel free to let me know down below as well. Thank you for reading!