Free - Fire And Water
A seven track timeless British blues rock album, and one that I discovered only in the last couple of years after much resistance. I had always loved Paul Rodgers' (Free Vocalist in Free) work with a band called Bad Company, but had always been a little reluctant to listen to Free for some reason. Even though it had a taken me a while to listen to this album I was delighted to find that it contains so many strong songs and a bone-fide classic.
'Fire And Water' opens the album with the sort of riff that Pete Townsend would have killed for! Paul Kossoff (Guitar) had a wonderful belief and swagger about his playing, and
it shows on this song - IMMENSE!
Another rocker on this album is 'Mr. Big', an awesome stuttering riff by Kossoff with some great bass lines that almost seem like the Bassist was actually playing lead. The disc does have a number of slower and medium paced tracks the best of which is 'Remember'. Paul Rodgers' voice is drenched in the blues whilst the guitar solo is just sublime.
As for the rest of the songs 'Heavy Load' is a well crafted guitar and piano workout wrapped with a wonderful story led vocal. On 'Oh I Wept' Paul Rodgers certainly proves, without a doubt, he was one of the best vocalist of his generation.
The one song that most people will be familar with closes the album, 'All Right Now'. A song that I never really tire of hearing (despite it's over use for a gum commercial back in the late 1980s). I defy anyone not to play air guitar along with the huge riff to this track. This song did catapult Free to success, but also contributed to the beginning of their downfall.
Free On Top Of The Pops Performing All Right Now
It was during the tour for the follow up record 'Highway', that differences were beginning to show between the main songwriters (Rodgers and Bassist Andy Fraser),coupled with Kossoff's growing heroin dependency.
The band disbanded in 1973. If you do buy one Free album in your life, ensure it's this one!
Why I ♥ This Album
Early 1990s before the internet, if you wanted to know the lyrics to a song you had four options to find them;
1)have the sheet music
2)some lyrics were printed on the inner sleeve of a record cover
3)buy 'Smash Hits' magazine which listed lyrics to the Hit Parade
4)listen to the song over and over again to decipher the lyrics
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| Me & Mike From The Bane |
No problem, I said. The following day it dawned on me that I didn't know the words and didn't actually own a Free record. As it had no long been re-released it was on the jukebox at my local watering hole 'The Lardicake'. However I was sure that the locals would have grown sick of me pumping the machine full of 50 pence pieces and playing the song over and over and over again. So I had to come up with Plan B.
I suddenly remembered that I had not long gone to London and bought a mystery pack of 7 inch records from Berwick Street. The pack came in a sealed carrier bag and only cost a couple of quid, what would be inside was fairly hit and miss but I recall that there was a version of 'All Right Now' in there.
So off home I went to dig the single out. It is lucky that I do like the song as this version was awful!! I must have listened to it at least 20-25 times, stopping and starting it to write down the lyrics. It seemed to take forever. The second verse was a little hard to follow - "Are you tryin' to put me in shame?, I said, slow, don't go so fast" are the actual words, I found out later.
I don't remember what I wrote down but it certainly wasn't that!
Sunday rolled around and I was all ready to rehearse. After a couple of run throughs, and me just simply destroying the song and ruining it for everyone (I am no Paul Rodgers)
it was decided that Graham would sing the song in the live set. I don't blame my own vocals I blame the version that I had learned it from.
So I blame Pepsi & Shirlie!!!
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| Pepsi & Shirlie - All Right Now |
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