1973Released
4:30

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Gimme Three Steps. By Songfacts®.

This song is based on a true story. As Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington tells it, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was about 18 at the time, used a fake ID to get in a bar while his younger bandmates Rossington and Allen Collins waited for him in a truck. Van Zant danced with a girl named Linda, whose boyfriend, who was not too happy about it, came up to Ronnie and reached for something in his boot. Figuring he was going for a gun, Van Zant told him: "If you're going to shoot me it's going to be in the ass or the elbows... just gimme a few steps and I'll be gone." He ran to the truck, and he, Rossington, and Collins wrote this song that night.

According to the Freebird Foundation, run by Van Zant's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness, the events of the song took place at a bar called The Little Brown Jug, located on Edison Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, where the band is from. This explains the lyrics, "I was cuttin' the rug, down at a place called The Jug," which is where Ronnie ran into an angry local man with a gun.

The pace of the chorus is fast, to signify Van Zant running away from the guy he thought was going to shoot him.

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Gimme Three Steps.
AKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
133BPM

Album

The album Gimme Three Steps is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Gimme Three Steps.
Geffen*
© 2001 Geffen Records
℗ 2001 Geffen Records

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.5MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists