Free
Highway

THE REVIEW

At the dawn of the seventies, Free and Led Zeppelin, the two best rock blues acts around, had almost the same idea for their respective fourth album: an anonymous cover in the inscriptions and modest in appearance. The Zeps even omitted the record’s serial number, as well as the title and the band's name. Free merely omitted their name, thus making the album's title misleading and, in collaboration with the pale and elusive cover containing their barely recognizable faces, led many to believe they were in the presence of a debut group called "Highway" rather than the follow-up to the acclaimed and magnificent "Fire And Water," released just six months earlier.

Ah, if only they had waited another six months!, enough time to compose and embellish the album with two or three more "strong" songs.

The rush to follow up their previous success and the incoherent, unjustified low graphic profile took their toll objectively: the commercial step backward was clear, and there were then no circumstances for a consistent comeback, as Free's career entered self-destructive issues (starring the extraordinary guitarist Paul Kossoff, a notorious drug addict) and rivalries (starring the two roosters of the coop, singer Paul Rodgers and bassist Andy Fraser), leading to increasingly less significant works, systematic lineup changes, and an early swan song.

Thus, this and the aforementioned "Fire And Water" (both from 1970) remain the two best works of Free, the most charismatic and influential British Blues band of all time (keeping Led Zeppelin out of the ranking, since they are much more than British Blues, enough to be included, and be seen winning, in the most vast and heterogeneous possible rankings!).

Like the Zeppelin, Free was a voice/guitar/bass/drums quartet comprising three outclass members, with the difference that the only "normal" musician in Free played the drums, not the bass. Simon Kirke is a solid and powerful drummer, very straightforward, very well-suited to the sparse and cadenced music, yet powerful and visceral, put together by the group. His rhythm section partner Andy Fraser was instead a real genius, the true driving force of the group. At fourteen, Andy was already playing on London stages, performing blues with the greats; at seventeen, he founded Free, at nineteen he imprinted his personal touch on this fourth album of the band. His two standout qualities were: great songwriting abilities (the main riffs, the harmonic ideas of the band's great rock blues frescoes were his), as well as clear and authoritative creative execution on his instrument. Helped by the presence of a very economical guitarist in his interventions, a metronomic and essential drummer, and the typical syncopated flow of the music, mostly conceived by him, his bass had enormous sonic space in which to move slyly and unpredictably, highly indifferent to the drum kick or other typical reference points for bassists, happily and creatively roaming within the rhythmic and harmonic fabric of the pieces.

The young Paul Rodgers in these grooves displays his precise voice from heaven. He was indeed born with his sexy and extremely mobile timbre, and the fact that he was only twenty here made no difference: his is a masculine, seasoned, mature, convincing singing style, especially in the two great pieces that ennoble the album, the super rock of "The Stealer" and the blues ballad "Be My Friend", sung with heart in hand, skirts tucked and testosterone glancing. From my very unsuitable perspective as an adult and hetero male, I attempt to say I find nevertheless irresistibly feminine the swaggering progress of this great singer amidst the bouncing and infectious riffs of the former, or the touching invocations scattered among the arpeggios and stops of the latter (a blues masterpiece, probably the greatest Free song).

Oh yes, Fraser, Rodgers, and Kossoff could have gone much further, further than anyone, had they been able to coexist for a good ten years. Rodgers found a sufficient alternative to Kossoff in his future Bad Company (with Mick Ralphs, an equally economical and inspired guitarist, just less heartfelt and exciting), but he never found someone like Fraser, a better songwriter than he and a uniquely styled bassist.

Fraser's low profile post-Free is unheard of, until he tried (not much) in the music business. A musician who gave his best from fifteen to twenty!

Kossoff passed away at twenty-six, struck by a heart attack, overdosed on cocaine. He was eighteen when he happened to give a couple of guitar lessons to then twenty-four-year-old Eric Clapton, at the time in Cream and already legendary, who approached him saying, "Hey, kid, show me a little how you do that fast vibrato, I want to use it too!" A unique musician, a phenomenal touch, one of those who can kill you with three notes, without the need for speed, complexity, sticking to the blues scale, the pentatonic, and sending you into ecstasy. It wasn't what he played, it was how he took it, how he "entered" it. Legions of guitarists still study his sound, his phrasing, his tumultuous approach with the six strings so stark, so fiery; each note a brushstroke, a jolt, a thrill. A talented junkie, like many of that era, unfortunately, one of those who didn’t survive, what a pity!

Great Koss! Even this album is in the pages of your passport, never expired, to immortality.