Free - Fire And Water

Released - June 1970

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Free & John Kelly

Selected Personnel - Paul Rodgers (Vocals); Paul Kossoff (Guitar); Andy Fraser (Bass/Piano); Simon Kirke (Drums)

Standout Track - All Right Now

Free and their later offshoot Bad Company are two further musical obsessions of mine that I again owe to my step-dad Rob's music collection. In the 90s, I didn't listen to anything that was actually being made at the time. Occasionally my schoolfriends would mention Scatman John to me, and then in 1997 I discovered Aqua, but that was about it. Generally, I was either listening to Joni Mitchell and the Bay City Rollers via mum, or Free and Focus via Rob. Personally, Bay City Rollers aside, I think I got a pretty good deal. I basically traded in Britpop for hard rock, and I have no problem with it to this day. That said, the problem with simple, straightforward blues rock and hard rock is that it's not a genre that encourages or enables innovation with much ease, and therefore it's the kind of genre that can induce a kind of fatigue after a while. These days, I find it difficult to listen to much generic hard rock without finding my attention wandering - only this week I tried listening to Whitesnake and found it a phenomenally dull experience. But there are certain bands who, even years and years after you first heard them, and even given the straightforwardness of the material, are able to deal with the music so masterfully that it's still nothing short of perfection, even despite its lack of vaulting ambition. Of all the classic hard rock bands, Free are up there with the very best. They're also one of the most preposterously young bands of all time, with lead vocalist Paul Rodgers at the ludicrous age of 20 when he wrote "All Right Now," still a strong contender for the greatest rock song of all time to this day.

The formula is absurdly simple - listening to "Fire And Water" and breaking it down into its constituent parts - a simple 4/4 drum and bass part, three chords and the odd plonking of a piano - begs the question "How does this song manage to be so incredibly good?" There's simply never been a band that's managed to achieve so much with so few ingredients. Paul Kossoff's gnarled, gutsy guitar tone is just perfect and turns out a number of razor-sharp solos, while Rodgers is basically the best rock vocalist of all time. The thought that these bluesy chest-beating bellows and wails were being made by a twenty-year-old is nothing short of astounding. Other than "Fire And Water," the other big standouts are the full band composition "Mr Big," a slow burner of a song that builds up to some explosive belting from Rodgers and some firebrand solos from Kossoff, and then, of course, there's "All Right Now," blessed with one of the most simple, catchy and undeniably cool riffs ever, and heightened further by Rodgers's impassioned, sassy vocals.

Those three songs, along with the earlier "The Hunter" and the later "The Stealer" and "Wishing Well," make up the band's career highlights - half of them right here on one album, easily tent-poling the finished thing at the beginning, middle and end. It's a shame that the quality across the whole record isn't solidly up to the same standard, but given the incredible quality of those songs, it's forgivable. "Oh I Wept" is a competent slow blues number, and "Remember" is a fun, upbeat, country-rock romp, but none of them really grab your attention like those three do. No matter, because Free had already delivered something that took influence from the blues rock of Cream, the hard rock of Led Zeppelin and the back-to-basics roots rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival and refined them into a simple, straightforward slice of rock perfection.

Free's time on the music scene was tragically short-lived due to the increasing instability and drug dependence of Paul Kossoff, which would see them briefly break up two years after recording Fire And Water, only to regroup to record one final classic album before Kossoff's unreliability made continuing impossible. That album would be a fine swansong before Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke went to polish the Free formula for the arena rock market by forming Bad Company in 1974.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Andy Fraser and Paul Rodgers except where noted.

1. Fire And Water

2. Oh I Wept (Paul Rodgers & Paul Kossoff)

3. Remember

4. Heavy Load

5. Mr Big (Andy Fraser; Paul Rodgers; Paul Kossoff & Simon Kirke)

6. Don't Say You Love Me

7. All Right Now