In 1970, English rock band Free had a breakthrough hit with ”All Right Now.”
Written by Andy Fraser and Paul Rodgers for the band’s third album Fire and Water, the hard-rocking song peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1970. “All Right Now” became the band’s signature song as well as a classic rock anthem thanks in large part to guitarist Paul Kossoff’s iconic, driving guitar work.
The BBC’s Classical Music ranked the recognizable chords from “All Right Now” as one of the all-time most iconic guitar riffs that defined rock music.
The outlet noted that while Free was invited to play at Woodstock, the band turned the gig down. “And yet somehow, few licks define the spirit of the cultural revolution of the Woodstock generation more than ‘All Right Now’, despite it having not featured. It’s just two chords, strummed in a spirited fashion, but the effect is sensational,” the BBC music site added.
While “All Right Now” became an iconic hit, it didn’t take long to write. In the liner notes to Free’s Molten Gold anthology, drummer Simon Kirke revealed that after a particularly disastrous gig, the band realized they needed to add an up-tempo song to their set list.
“All of a sudden the inspiration struck Fraser, and he started bopping around singing ‘All Right Now,” Kirke recalled. “He sat down and wrote it right there in the dressing room. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes. Andy soon had the riffs worked out, and Paul came up with the words. That song changed our lives.”
Fraser told Songwriting Magazine he originally came up with the famous riff on the piano before handing it off to Kossoff.
“Basically the chorus wrote itself, the chords took me about 10-15 minutes, and then Paul came up with the verses while he was waiting for a lift to a gig the next day,” he said of the song.
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Free disbanded in 1973 singer-songwriter Rodgers famously went on to form Bad Company with Kirke. The singer also left “All Right Now” behind for nearly two decades.
“After I left Free, I didn’t play ‘All Right Now’ for many, many years because I thought, ‘I’ve gotta move on,’” Rodgers explained during a 2023 appearance on TalkShopLive. “I was doing the Bad Company thing, and then I did the Firm, we didn’t do much Free then.”
Rodgers revealed that he finally agreed to perform “All Right Now,” one of his best-known songs, after not playing it for 18 years. The moment came as Rodgers was playing a show in support of a Muddy Waters tribute album.
“One day we were in this club, a fabulous club somewhere, I can’t remember where, unfortunately. And [Jason Bonham] said, ‘Let’s do ‘All Right Now!’ and he started it,” Rodgers recalled in the interview. “And the audience all picked up on that, and they all said, ‘Yeah, come on! ‘All Right Now!’ …All the musicians behind me want to play ‘All Right Now,’ and all the audience is going for it. I went, ‘OK, let’s do it,’ and it was amazingly refreshing to play it. It really was.”
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