Here’s another hard-rocking single from that great year of 1970, “All Right Now” by Free. This song was released in the U.S. on August 15, 1970 (May 15 in the U.K.) and peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 17. This one was a little later in the year than the songs we’ve looked at previously, but it’s still a keeper.
Free was an English band formed in 1968 by Paul Rodgers (vocals), Paul Kossoff (guitar), Andy Fraser (bass), and Simon Kirke (drums). They’d developed a following in the U.K. for their live shows but their first two albums didn’t well all that well. It was their third album, 1970’s Fire and Water, and its hit single “All Right Now” that brought them a larger audience via extensive radio play.
“All Right Now,” complete with its incessant cowbell (shades of “Don’t Fear the Reaper”) was written by Rodgers and Frasier, allegedly after a bad gig at Durham University. Here’s how drummer Simon Kirke remembers it:
“We finished our show and walked off the stage to the sound of our own footsteps. The applause had died before I had even left the drum riser. It was obvious that we needed a rocker to close our shows. All of a sudden the inspiration struck Fraser and he started bopping around singing ‘All Right Now.’ He sat down and wrote it right there in the dressing room. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes.”
That was a particularly productive ten minutes. Billboard ranked “All Right Now” as the #27 song for all of 1970, an impressive achievement given all the other great tunes released that year. In the U.K., it ranked as the #7 song for the entire year.
Free broke up in 1973. Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke went on to found the supergroup Bad Company, which had hits with “Can’t Get Enough” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” Rodgers also had later success with another supergroup, The Firm, which included Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
The other members of Free when their separate ways, playing in a number of different bands. None of them, save for Rodgers, ever achieved the level of recognition that got in Free with “All Right Now.”
By the way, the week that “All Right Now” peaked on the Billboard charts (October 17, 1970), the rest of the top ten looked like this:
- “I’ll Be There” (Jackson 5)
- “Cracklin’ Rosie” (Neil Diamond)
- “Green-Eyed Lady” (Sugarloaf)
- “All Right Now” (Free)
- “We’ve Only Just Begun” (Carpenters)
- “Candida” (Dawn)
- “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (Diana Ross)
- “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”/”Long As I Can See the Light” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
- “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” (Bobby Sherman)
- “Fire and Rain” (James Taylor)
I’m guessing that if you’re reading this post, you know all of those songs by heart.
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