Dale Earnhardt needed more than just a cup of coffee to get going in the morning during his early racing days.
Dale Sr.’s racing career is one of legend. He was a seven-time Cup Series Champion, and is arguably the most recognizable NASCAR driver ever. He’s still just as present in pop culture as he was during his heyday, and while Dale Sr. was a real and very flawed man, many still view him as somewhat of a superhero.
That’s why so many racing fans champ at the bit anytime more info comes out about the late, great NASCAR icon. Sometimes that comes through stories that Dale Earnhardt Jr. tells (like his dad telling him he was wasting time on computers), while other times, it comes through documentaries or biographies.
It’s actually thanks to a book titled Earnhardt Nation: The Full-Throttle Saga of NASCAR’s First Family by Jay Busbee that we know a little bit more about Dale Sr.’s early life. In the beginning of his career, the “Intimidator” was just trying to make ends meet, and that’s covered in depth in Busbee’s book.
A couple of years ago, Busbee joined the Our American Stories podcast and talked about his book, and some of the details within it. While discussing the tumultuous nature of Earnhardt’s early racing days, he revealed that there was one song that he always started his day with as he tried to race his way out of poverty:
“He decided to stick with the racing, and it cost him a lot. It cost him his second marriage, and it cost him his two children, who went to live with their mother because he was not able to care for them in the way that he needed to to be a proper father. He was racing all the time, he was enjoying life all the time. It was partying all the time, and it just was not a good fit. By the late 1970s, Dale Earnhardt was a mess.
Quite frankly, he was a single guy living in a small apartment with a friend of his. He would wake up every morning at 6:30 to the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Give Me Back My Bullets.’ That was his motivational song.
He was a guy who had the hounds at his tail. He was twice divorced, he had three kids, and he had no real options other than racing his way out of poverty and racing his way out of a nine to five clock punching life.”
Busbee was able to obtain that information while researching for Earnhardt Nation. Thanks to him, we can all now imagine Dale Earnhardt starting every day of his life with “Gimme Back My Bullets” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. If you are familiar with the 1976 song from the southern rock band, it couldn’t be a better fit for Dale Sr. and the way he lived his life. The track was even used in the Prime documentary Earnhardt that was released in 2025.
If you need an extra pick-me-up tomorrow morning, feel free to try out the Dale Sr. method and fire this one up:
“Gimme Back My Bullets” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
