“We were brothers, watching each other’s back”: The making of Free’s “All Right Now”

Originally published in Uncut Take 114 [November 2006 issue], Paul Rodgers, Andy Fraser and Simon Kirke celebrate their classic single…

“The chorus came from a really bad situation…”

ANDY FRASER (Bassist/co-songwriter)

“The conception of the song was when we were playing a small college date on a rainy Tuesday in some out-of-the-way place near Durham. There were only about 20 kids there, and they were all whacked out of their heads on Mandrax. We played, and apart from not even being noticed by the audience, we sucked. We were bad and when we came off stage, in the dressing room there was this awful silence. So I started singing, ‘All right now, baby, all right now’ and everyone started tapping along and singing, and it turned into bit of a jam, just getting rid of that horrible vibe, and we thought: ‘OK tomorrow’s another day.’ That’s where the chorus came from, a really bad situation.

“The guitar riff came another day, and it’s me trying to impersonate Pete Townshend, who was, to me, the all-time greatest chord king. Of course, I couldn’t play it as good as Pete! I think Paul [Rodgers] got the lyrics and the verse together pretty quick, waiting for the band to pick him up to go off for a gig. We started playing it in sound checks just to do something a bit different.

“We didn’t think we’d written a classic song at all, we just regarded it as a kind of throwaway three-chord trick. I thought we had a lot more mature songs, like ‘Heavy Load’, which was also on Fire And Water. It was Chris Blackwell, our manager, who wanted to put it out as a single. We didn’t take him seriously and tried to suggest another one, but he was thick-headed, and proved himself right.

“The song’s now used everywhere! I think there’s a football club over here, one of the big San Francisco football teams, that uses it as their theme song. It’s always on adverts and on the radio. It’s amazing but it’s strange. I still can’t quite take it seriously. I still see it as a three-chord trick with me pretending to a play guitar like Townshend, with some teenage lyrics… like it’s not difficult to pull those things together.

“When Free broke up, that was the hardest thing ever. Free to me, was a family. I mean, I loved my blood family but with the band we all felt, ‘OK I’ve found home.’ We were brothers, watching each other’s back, anticipating each other’s thoughts, finishing each other’s sentences; it was that kind of closeness. We tried to hold it together, but it wasn’t there. It’s such a sad story when you think about what it did to Paul Kossoff.”

“The song has a kind of universal simplicity”

PAUL RODGERS (vocals/co-songwriter)

“‘All Right Now’ came about after playing a gig up North. I said to the guys that we needed a song to follow ‘The Hunter’ which, at that time, was our biggest song – something with a chorus that the audience could sing. I said, ‘Something like [sings] “All right now, baby!”’ and I picked up a guitar and showed them how simple it could be. Andy went away with that and came back with the first chords. I think Koss may have had some input, because he had an amazing finger stretch and he could hit some really big chords.

“I worked on the lyrics as I was waiting for the guys to pick me up for a show and it didn’t take long because sometimes, when the music’s with you, it just flows right out. We played in a club that night, what we called two 45s, which was a 45-minute set, a break, and another 45-minute set. We opened the first set with the brand new, rough and ready ‘All Right Now’. There were only a few people there, but when we played the song, they all got up and started to dance, which was excellent. Then, when we came to the end of our second 45-minute set, I said to the audience: ‘Do we have any requests?’ A few people shouted out, ‘Play that song you started with!’ I thought that was pretty incredible, that they remembered it! So we played it again. I knew we had something special right then. We fine-tuned it a bit in the studio, but that’s where it came from.

“I don’t think there was any doubt that the song was going to be a single. But one of the things we did hesitate about was playing the song on Top Of The Pops. We considered ourselves to be an underground band with lots of street credibility and now, all of a sudden, we were appearing on Top Of The Pops. What convinced us was the argument that we could reach a lot more people. That did it for me.

“The BBC were convinced that I had sung a rude word; ‘Let’s move before they raise the parking rate’ – they thought I’d said the ‘effing rate’. All the BBC team came down to the studio and we had to break down the track and take everything off until it was just the voice and we convinced them it was ‘parking rate’. The Musicians Union also got involved. They said everything had to be live when music was played on TV, so we took the vocal off, mixed the backing track, and I sang it live. That’s why the vocal may be slightly different to the released version.

“We recorded the song downstairs at Basing Street’s Island Studios, in the crypt. We’d worked on the song live so we knew exactly what we wanted to achieve. I’ve always looked at the blues guys and the soul guys who recorded their songs as if they were live and we wanted to put that kind of spark into the song.

“When we wrote it, I didn’t think I’d still be playing it today. And for a long time, I didn’t. Finally, in 1993 I was touring a tribute album I’d made to Muddy Waters with Jason Bonham and a couple of other guys and people in the crowd started calling for ‘All Right Now’. Jason behind me kept saying, ‘Let’s do it!’. I was standing on the stage, the band were calling for ‘All Right Now’, the audience were calling for ‘All Right Now’ and we just did it… tore the place apart.

“The song has a kind of universal simplicity. That’s what I was looking for when I wrote the chorus. I wish I could do it again! Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it’s true. I still enjoy playing it and get a kick, because the energy of the audience is fresh every night.”

“A little number born in a sweaty dressing room in Durham”

SIMON KIRKE (drums)

“I’m not getting into whether it was Andy or Paul who came up with the words ‘All right now’, but it was in that dressing room in Durham in 1969 that the song was born.

“The recording was pretty straightforward. It was done at Island Records in Basing Street. We played the song about a dozen times, including false starts and stops half-way through. I can’t remember which take was used, and then Koss went out and put that sublime solo on it – we were all in the control room cheering him on as it kept climbing towards the roof.

“One of his finest moments and one of the all-time great guitar solos. Paul Rodgers had done his vocal by then and after Koss we all got a round a couple of mics with percussion. As a final touch, right at the end, me and Andy got on our knees and thumped out octave A’s on the foot pedals of a Hammond organ. You can here them on the last chorus of the album version.

“When Chris Blackwell came in and heard it for the first time he had a broad grin on his face and said, ‘This is a hit.’ My stomach did a somersault when I heard that, ’cos Chris was never wrong. We were resistant to his suggestion for an edit, though. It was our baby and suddenly he wanted to lop a piece out of it. We said, ‘No way’ and he said, ‘Well then, the only station that will play it is Radio Luxembourg and the pirate stations anchored off England. The BBC wont touch it as it clocks in at over five minutes.’ He convinced us to do the edit after reassuring us that the whole song could be on the Fire And Water album, like a bonus track. He was a smooth talker, old CB… they didn’t call him the baby-faced killer for nothing!

“When we recorded ‘All Right Now’ we had no idea it would become this iconic piece of music. We just wanted something people could dance to. It was a happy song. What stood out for me more than anything was Koss’s solo and the energy we created… just listen to the last verse on the album version for verification.

“The song stands alongside songs like ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘My Generation’, ‘The Wall’… all those songs that you remember where you were when you first heard them – a little number born in a sweaty dressing room in Durham.”