Lynyrd Skynyrd, ‘What’s Your Name?’ – Butch’s Way Back Wednesday

As a music fan there is always something new and great, but there really is something special about the songs you grew up listening to. For me, that was 70′s and 80′s classic rock. If I am in a shi**y mood, I throw in a little Zeppelin or Rush and take a trip back to rolling in my mom’s T-Bird. Now every Wednesday you get to take that trip with me. It’s Way Back Wednesday with Butch, and today’s feature is a song we first heard 35 years ago in 1978… Skynyrd's, “What's Your Name?”

I am still on cloud nine after having the opportunity to sit down and talk to one of not only my favorite bands of all time, but one of the most respected bands in the history of music this last weekend. It had been awhile since I shook with nerves during a whole interview, but Lynyrd Skynyrd did that to me, so today I figured I would go back and revisit a hot of theirs from 35 years ago....

"What's Your Name" was the opening track off the album Street Survivors. It peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 6 in the top Canadian songs.

Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Gary Rossington wrote "What's Your Name", while in Miami with producer Tom Dowd and Booker T. & the M.G.'s guitarist Steve Cropper. The lyrics depict a true story of the band drinking at their hotel bar during a tour, when one of their roadies got into a fight. The band got kicked out of the bar, but they went into another room and ordered champagne. However, as the song suggests, the incident did not happen in the city of Boise, Idaho. Instead, when Van Zant found out that the band 38 Special (led by his younger brother Donnie) was starting its first national tour in that city, the lyric was changed.

Three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash just 3 days after this album was released. The album had to be given a new cover, because the original one portrayed the group surrounded by flames.

Now take a trip back 35 years with us to 1978...