Best known for the evergreen All Right Now, Free were part of the blues rock explosion of the late 1960s. Alongside Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac, they took the music in a harder direction, laying the foundations of the house that hard rock built in the 1970s.
Formed in April 1968, they held their first rehearsal at the Nag’s Head pub in Battersea, South London, and knew they were onto something immediately. “We just played blues because everybody could play it straight away,” frontman Paul Rodgers told us. “We were four separate guys at the beginning of the afternoon, and by the end of the evening we were a band.”
They struck a deal with Island Records with the support of blues scene lynchpin Alexis Korner, and debut album Ton Of Sobs followed in 1969.
“We did the album, I think, in two or three days,” said drummer Simon Kirke. “It was a pretty good showcase of where we were at that time. We were essentially a blues band with adventurous leanings.”
1970 was their year. All Right Now was a massive hit, the band played to over half a million people at the Isle Of Wight Festival, and the Fire And Water album became a huge seller. At the same time, the success of All Right Now had created a problem.
“We were always a rock/blues band,” said Rodgers. “But a rift in our direction did start to become obvious – between the authentic and the obviously commercial.”
In May 1971 the group splintered, but they were back together within a year, albeit temporarily. By June 1972 bassist Andy Fraser had departed, Kirke had been diagnosed with appendicitis and tonsillitis, and Rodgers had started played guitar onstage after guitarist Paul Kossoff‘s drug use had rendered him incapable.
Final album Heartbreaker was released in January 1973, and Kossoff spent the next three years fighting addiction. He died on an overnight flight from Los Angeles to New York in March 1976.
These are Free’s six studio albums – and one live album – ranked in order of greatness.
