I like the song. And ever since the time that I saw a cover band nail it I’ve been able to appreciate the talent it takes to reproduce the music within Freebird.
I currently have a 10 minute live version on the MP3 player and it’s the best version I’ve heard to date. Beautiful piano, creative drum work, excellent guitar work (with some lively bass), and just overall great sounds. Fast too.
So, ever since the first time I’ve heard the song I’ve been a fan. Not sure what lends someone to hate the song…
I’ve heard (sorry, no cites) people on this board bash the song.
Do tell why.
I think this is a decent starting point:
If I may assess the appeal of Freebird, it’s “Wow, look! It’s three guitars playing the same uninteresting figure at the same time, and not doing it particularly well! Woooo, I must shout this at every concert I attend unto eternity!” 
‘Long’ does not cover for ‘terrible,’ in fact it makes it worse. Freebird’s absurdly inflated reputation just makes its permanent place on lists of The Top Five Rock Songs of All Time that much more annoying.
It’s trite, unoriginal and over-played.
That said, I still crank the radio up and break out the air guitar every time it comes on! 
The live version was current when I was in high school. I worked with a group of guys who would DJ dances in the suburbs once a week. That would be the song we would end the dance with every week, every single week. We also had flash boxes going off during the end of the song. One week, while priming the boxes, some clown thought it would be funny to turn them on while I was putting the flash powder in them. It took three months for my eyebrows to grow back. To this day, almost 30 years later, I hear a loud BAM! and smell burnt hair whenever that song starts.
But that’s just me.
Not a fair and objective critisism but it is extremely overplayed in my area, and judging by it’s most vocal fans around here it is cemented in my mind by a certain “white trash” culture. Certainly not passing judgement on all the fans or the artists…But I suspect a lot of people make take issue with it for that reason.
It’s about 9:30 too long. It shares the distinction with “Hey Jude” of being a nice slow pop ballad changed into a pukeworthily bad classic rock anthem via completely unnecessary, boring additions.
Basically, it’s "In memory of Elizabeth Reed, or “Layla”, or “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’”, for oafs. That is, it has the structure of those classics, but is much more dull and tedious than any of them, both in lyric content and lack of musical virtuosity.
There’s no color or nuance to the lyrics: “Sorry babe, I’m way too cool to commit to you, but I’ll be happy to gracer you with a one-night stand. See ya”. That’s it. Nothing elaborated; Ronnie van Zandt can’t even be bothered to identify what kind of metaphorical bird he is. As for the music, first we hear several excruciating minutes of plodding, syrupy slide-guitarish whining, then, inexplicably, and without much in the way of transition, several more minutes of manic multi-guitarish screeching, with no thematic relationship to what came before it.
OK, actually I’m making this up as I go along. Really, I hate it because I’ve not only heard it umpteen million times on the radio over the course of twenty freakin’ years, I used to hang out with a local band that played it every.single.venue they ever showed up at. If I never hear it again, it’ll be way too soon.
My experience with Freebird is playing it as a bar band staple and burning out on it.
Starting in the '70s, you played it like any other song. No problem. Nice tune, fun to play. It’s the starter slide guitar song.
Then you get tired of playing it. It becomes the cliche big rave-up for the end of the night. Play Freebird!! Whooo!!
But drunk people at bars don’t tire of it. It still retains some meaning for them. Hot summer nights. Hangin’ out with Debbie what’s 'er name who sorta looks like the chick from Fleetwood Mac. So you’re like, OK, what the hell, we’ll play it anyway. Just this once. I can have fun with it again, I suppose.
The years go by, and it becomes a joke. “Play Freebird!!” Ha. Ha.
Then people get tired of the joke.
So he we are.
Like Stairway to Heaven it’s nice to listen to once every five years or so, but that’s it.
If I ever needed one, I would make this my “why I hate Freebird” sig. 
I like the keyboard intro.
Overplay is right. However, it wasn’t as bad here, where I live. “Feelings”, “Let Your Flow”, “Lovin’ You” and “Touch Me in the Morning” take that honor!
As a young lad in the 70s, I used to watch a British TV rock music programme called The Old Grey Whistle Test, which played stuff I either liked (e.g. The Residents) or loathed (e.g. Captain Beefheart). It was on fairly late at night on BBC2. My memory tells me that every now and then the presenter, Whispering Bob Harris, would close the programme by saying something like “And now, to play us out, here’s some footage of a concert where some Yank band is playing a song called Freebird”. I’d say to myself, OK: I’ll go to bed when this is finished. But after about 25 minutes, they were still droning on and on and on and on and on and on and on (etc) so I’d have to give up. I never managed to hear how it finished - if, indeed, it ever did. No wonder I ended up liking The Ramones.
Gee, I go to post and someone’s already quoted me.
But that was my point. The actual song is OK, but the guitar solo section is just plain awful, probably the worst ever, not counting those deliberately done poorly (e.g., “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone”). It’s completely repetitious – the same handful of notes played over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . .
It’s annoying enough when I do it, but when it’s several minutes of this, it’s like listening to a dentist drilling.
Free bird!!! Play FREEBIRD!!!
And yes, that’s my entire contribution.
Because it is unremarkable in every way that is good and only memorable in ways reminicent of sandpaper on your teeth.
And because some people can’t seem to get enough of it, while others can’t get too little of it.
It has a little more meaning for me. My best friend in high scholl, who we called Mugsy, was a Skynyrd fanatic and Free Bird was his song of choice. He had to stop everything to listen when it came on the radio, and he would be the first to put it on the turntable when we were partying.
I always think of him when I hear the song. He killed himself over a girl who treated him like hell.
But, I still like the “Freebird” chant whenever a band is between songs. It gets a laugh most of the time.
Probably not a nice thing to say, but even the Allman Brothers dragged out the song Jessica beyond reasonable listening endurance. There’s a song you might remember by the Outlaws, Green Grass and High Tides Forever that goes on, well, forever, and to no purpose; even worse than Freebird.
I guess it’s a Southern Rock thing. Their conversation style is pretty much the same, but if you’re a transplant down here as I am, you learn really quickly to keep these observations to yourself.
I’m a big Skynyrd fan, but I skip over Freebird whenever it comes up on my player. For all the reasons mentioned. Skynyrd must have had two dozen songs better than Free Bird.
Back when that song was really big I had a good friend that was deaf and I put it on the record player (younger Dopers can Google that) and put the headphones on him WIDE OPEN and signed the words to the song for him as it played and mimicked the instruments so as he could associate the sound to the instrument. And before you ask, he had something like 85% hearing loss so he did get a little sound and a lot of vibration from the headphones.
I still think of his enjoyment of that and the amazement on his face throughout the song. So for me, as perhaps with others, there may be events and memories associated with the song of times gone by that are more important than the complexity of the arrangement.
Here’s a question;
How difficult and challenging is the quitar solo(s) in the song (to play from a guitarist standpoint). It certainly sounds like it would take a bit of skill to play and the guys I saw play it were pretty tired when they were done.
I mean, you wouldn’t want to try to keep pace as a beginner would you?