Free
All Right Now

This has been a mournful week in mid-March 2015 for bassists: last Sunday, after a long and dreadful illness (ALS, one of the worst sclerosis), Mike Porcaro from Toto passed away, and on the following day, Monday, March 16, it was Andy Fraser’s turn, the extraordinary bassist from Free. As a true admirer of him, I'm here to write a few lines about him, leaning on his undeniable career masterpiece (in collaboration with singer Paul Rodgers), whose royalties practically provided much of the financial support for his adult life, completely devoid of artistic satisfaction.

Fraser is the first on the right in this British cover of the best-selling 45 rpm record of 1970. At the time, he was only eighteen! When Free started recording in 1968, he was only sixteen (the other members were just a couple of years older… a sensational fact when you consider the mature, supported, adult type of rock blues expressed by the band). By 1972, still only twenty, he had already left the group, which was in disarray due to the guitarist Paul Kossoff’s toxicity problems… and he was always clashing with his mate Rodgers, like two roosters in the same henhouse.

There were diametrically opposite stories between the two winners and the two magnificent losers of the quartet: Rodgers and Kirke went on to accumulate glory and money in Bad Company, the group born in 1974 from the ashes of Free with the same musical content but a completely different management (that of Led Zeppelin), while poor Kossoff collapsed and died during a flight, at only twenty-six years old, overdosed on drugs. For Fraser, from the time he left Free onwards, he led a life in the background of the music business, marked by the inability to recycle and restart effectively, unlike his two more fortunate and skilled ex-colleagues. In short, the best of his career happened to him as a teenager, and then, in the subsequent forty and more years, he did not score a point: incredible, considering his talent.

He was the main composer of Free, the toughest one since at the beginning he was the one who, despite being the youngest among the young, had to face the club managers where they played to get paid for the evening. "All Right Now" came out spontaneously during a discussion backstage after a concert, around the fact that the group had a too dull repertoire, lacking genuinely engaging pieces. He grabbed a guitar and churned out the famous syncopated riff, as well as the auspicious phrase "All Right Now" for the chorus.

The excellence of the guitarist and the singer who were with him did the rest. Kossoff in particular invented the transition between D and A in the riff with a rare richness and harmonic effectiveness; it was so good that it was decided to develop the prelude and the entire verse without the bass, with only the electric guitar playing over the bare time marked by Simon Kirke’s metronomic drumming. As often happened in Free's music, huge spaces would open up for Rodgers’s very mobile and heartfelt blues singing, completely at ease with the so economical and syncopated styles of his companions.

Fraser comes in with his instrument at the onset of the chorus, immediately surprising because instead of modulating following the change of the guitar chords, he remains stubbornly and brilliantly in his riff in A, and he does so for so long that the slide down to the lower octave, at the conclusion of the passage, is perceived almost as a release. Even the sound of his bass is special, thanks to the unpredictable touch of his fingers and the timbral characteristics of the Gibson instrument he handled, so woody and harmonic.

Another stroke of Andy's genius and creativity comes at the moment of the instrumental break: the drummer sets the snare on a marching band tempo, waits for a couple of staccato shots from Kossoff in the background, and then leaves him alone to draw a brand new special riff… a few notes closed in two pairs of harmonics, an amazing groove over which, this time, the good Kossoff enters at full volume, inspired to paint one of his solo masterpieces at one note per minute, enchanting, while the fourth man Rodgers, taking a break from singing, plays some piano chords just to keep the harmonic cycle in view.

When Kossoff has finished climbing the Les Paul's fingerboard and vibrated everything vibratable, in the passionate and musical way that only he could put together and which even today makes many guitarists gasp with admiration and envy (Bonamassa being one of them, for example), Kirke calls everyone back together with a rescue drum roll, and the compact group is ready for one last verse and the finale.

When talking about the best rock bassists, it is imperative to remember the poor Fraser, a victim also of the HIV virus or rather his poorly managed homosexuality in terms of health. And to think that at sixty he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, toned and lean even more than when he was a boy… Thank you for everything and forever, Andy.