The Meaning Behind Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Autobiographical Hit, “Gimme Three Steps”

With the 1973 tune “Gimme Three Steps,” the young rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd, was introduced to listeners. The debut single painted the band as a raucous, good-timing, boyfriend-provoking group of budding musicians, and according to the meaning behind the song, they were.

The lyrics belonging to the heart-racing rock epic, “Gimme Three Steps,” sound too wild to be true, but the song had to come from somewhere, and as they say, it’s best to write what you know.

Behind the Song

From the beginning, “Gimme Three Steps” sets a terrifying scene. I was cutting the rug / Down at a place called The Jug / With a girl named Linda Lu, Skynyrd’s lead singer Ronnie Van Zant introduces the tale, When in walked a man / With a gun in his hand / And he was looking for you know who.

“This is another true story,” one of the band’s founding guitarists, Gary Rossington, once told Guitar World. “Ronnie went into a bar to look for someone and me and Allen were too young to get in so were waiting for him outside, and we were waiting and waiting, then he came running out with a big ol’ guy chasing him, yelling.”

The fated night that would become the subject of the classic tune supposedly went down at a local bar called The Little Brown Jug in the band’s native Jacksonville, Florida. As the story goes, Van Zant began dancing with a young woman in the establishment, but unbeknownst to the would-be rockstar, his partner’s dance card was already full. “This guy came in and was going to beat him up,” Rossington recalled.

The song continues to illustrate the event with Van Zant voicing both his and the angered boyfriend’s actions. Attempting to evade harm, the frontman apparently used the words what would become the song’s iconic chorus:

“Oh, won’t you give me three steps,
Gimme three steps a-mister,
Gimme three steps towards the door?
Gimme three steps
Gimme three steps a-mister,
And you’ll never see a-me no more
For sure.”

“Ronnie said, ‘Just give me three steps and I’m gone,’” Rossington continued telling what actually happened that night. “The guy had a gun and he was a redneck and he was drunk – a nasty combination of things – and Ronnie said, ‘If you’re going to shoot me, it’s going to be in the ass or in the elbow.’ And he took off like a bat out of hell.”

In the song, the singer also makes a break for it. I’m telling you son / Well, it ain’t no fun / Staring straight down a forty-four, he assures in the tune, never attempting to make himself the hero amid the debacle. Well he turned and screamed at Linda Lu, he sings plainly, And that’s the break I was looking for / And you could hear me screaming a mile away / As I was headed out towards the door.

“We got in the car and split,” Rossington confirmed, “and he told us what happened and we were laughing and we kind of wrote the song right there, drove over to Allen’s house, got his guitar and finished it.

“The more wild experiences you have the better songs you can write,” Rossington added. “I’m not necessarily proud of everything we ever did, but that’s just true. We always just considered ourselves a working-man’s band and thought every song should tell a story that people could relate to. When we finish a song, you know what it’s about, whereas some groups have songs you may dig but not understand. I think that’s why our songs have lasted as long as they have.”

Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns