This epic favourite from Lynyrd Skynryrd is a long song, so we're dividing it into 3 main parts. The song can be played on just 2 guitars - rhythm and lead. The rhythm guitar is easy enough (click here to see it). However most of the lead guitar parts throughout the song are very difficult. You have been warned.

In this ActionTab we show you the lead guitar for part 1 of the song. It is played using a bottleneck slide on your 2nd finger. Remember with slides you need to slide over the actual fretwire of the fret to get the right notes. If you haven't used a slide before, check out the tutorial in the Core Skills section on Sliding.

It is a very distinctive melody, and if you are familiar with the song then you should be able to work through it quite quickly. It's the easiest lead part in the song, but still takes skill.

Notice that fingerpicking is used to pluck the strings here (because that's how it was played by the band) but you can use a pick instead if you prefer.

There are some difficult parts, mainly where the slide is moved quickly between strings and frets - like this note to this note. If these parts give you trouble, don't be afraid to use your fingers to just fret / play notes normally in such cases. That is why the slide is on your 2nd finger. It keeps the 1st, 3rd and 4th fingers free to play normal notes on the frets if you need to. So in this particular case, you could use your 3rd finger to play this note.