A Real Simple Love Song
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
In the beginning, Free Bird was written as a “real simple love song about leaving you,” Rossington noted. The first two lines of the song – “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?” – that was actually something that Collins’ then-girlfriend, Kathy, asked him at the time.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
It may have started with love in mind, but the song’s creation went on and the band’s jam sessions, “got longer and longer,” according to Rossington. “At first it didn’t have the end, the long guitar end; it was just the slow love song.”