Paul Rodgers - The Royal Sessions (2014) LP

You can argue over who is the greatest rock singer, but there’s no arguing whether or not Paul Rodgers would be high up on every list compiled by music critics and fellow musicians alike. Rolling Stone placed him at #55 in its list of greatest singers male and female all rock era genres but I’m more inclined to side with John Mellencamp who in 1991 called Rodgers “the greatest rock singer ever”.
Free, Rodgers’ first recorded group, was a critics’ favorite though other than the hit single “All Right Now” (which surely spawned AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” and the very concept of bands like Foreigner), the band met with limited commercial uccess.
Between 1968 and 1970 the original foursome released four memorable albums, one slower and darker than the next, starting with Tons of Sob (ILPS 9089) the cover of which appears to be a graveyard in which are strewn a stone cross, a rabbit, what appears to be a piece of roasted corn and a grotesque cartoon doll in a clear plexiglass coffin. There’s also a leopard. It was a darkness into which you could pleasurably revel.
The band split up in 1970 following the release of the fine Highway (ILPS 9138).
A live set recorded in 1970 Free Live! (ILPS 9160) was issued in 1972 and that year the group re-formed to produce another studio album, after which, the original foursome of Rodgers, guitarist Paul Kossoff, bassist Andy Fraser and drummer Simon Kirke broke up for good.
Ironically, Alexis Korner had named the group Free after a band featuring Ginger Baker and Graham Bond called Free at Last, which was the title of the group’s final album Free at Last (ILPS 9192).
Guy Stevens, who produced the group’s first album had suggested the name Heavy Metal Kids, but the quartet hated that one so Free it was, not that a different name would have changed the group’s commercial appeal, which was a damn shame because those albums so well stand the test of time. The problem was that they were dark, brooding and distinctly non-commercial.
You can go back now and still marvel at Kossoff’s guitar playing, Kirke’s drumming and especially Fraser’s bass playing. Like the late John Entwistle, Fraser’s bass was more of a second lead guitar. Fraser’s still with us, surviving AIDS and the self-realization that he was gay.
The guitar great Kossoff died in March of 1976 of a heart attack related to his long struggle with heroin during a flight from Los Angeles to New York. His cremated remains were interred at the Jewish Golders Green crematorium under an epitaph that reads “All Right Now”.
I walked past that place many times while staying with a friend. Had I known Kossoff was there, I’d have paid my respects.
A reformed Free with Rodgers and Kirke joined by Tetsu Yamauchi on bass and percussion and Texan John “Rabbit” Bundrick on keyboards produced yet another outstanding album, Heartbreaker (ILPS 9217). So many outstanding tracks, so little commercial success yet again.
In 1973 Rodgers, Kirke, Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell formed Bad Company. Managed by Led Zeppelin manager and music business force to be reckoned with Peter Grant, Bad Company was all about commerciality and after all of Free’s struggles, who could blame Rodgers, Kirke and the others?
The commerciality spawned some big hits and classic rock radio perennials like “Can’t Get Enough” and “Feel LIke Makin’ Love”.
I only insert the following anecdote because some analogplanet readers say they enjoy them: when Bad Company came to Boston in 1974 I was on WBCN and assigned to take the boys around town and show them “the sights”.