Freebird! Freeeeeebird!

"Man, do not write this," said Bruce Finkelman, owner of the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue. "Let that song die. It's almost dead! There's a generation out there for whom this song means nothing! They're not yelling it like they used to!"

Sorry.

Thirty-five years ago, Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd -- playing next Sunday with Kid Rock at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park -- released the single "Freebird," and in the decades since it has been an anthem, a demand, an ode to personal independence, the lamest heckle in the history of rock. But what it has never been is forgettable -- not to the band who played it, not to the disparate acts who still get a rowdy "Freebird!" shouted at them, regardless of what they play or who they are.

"The best thing about touring Europe is no one yells 'Freebird,' " said James McNew, bass player for the indie band Yo La Tengo.And yet, Finkelman is right -- depending whom you ask, people aren't shouting "Freebird!" like they used to. Tim Rutili, the Chicago musician who once fronted Red Red Meat and now leads Califone, said he only gets "Freebird!" shouted at him "maybe once every few years."

Which is sad, because what would going to a concert be without that one person who shouts "Freebird"?

Yet, earlier this year, the world came closer to no Lynyrd Skynyrd at all -- the current touring incarnation of the 40-year-old band was on the verge of calling it quits after pianist Billy Powell died in January of heart failure at 56. (He wrote the plaintive opening melody of "Freebird.") Indeed, the legacy of "Freebird" is so long and misunderstood -- whatever meaning it once had stripped by years of drunken hollers -- it only feels right to return that dignity, before it's too late.

Besides, there's a case to be made that whatever dignity it had, Chicago may have soiled it.

Birth of Freebird...