Andy
Fraser
July
3, 1952 - March 16, 2015
March
is never much fun when it comes to writing about Free. Within 8 days
there's Andy Fraser's death, then Paul Kossoff's, and then David
Kossoff, his dad, and my friend. There are also some personal
memories for me to deal with too, so a bit of a minefield really.
It
is remarkable that it's 11 years since Andy died. Where the time has
gone, I can't say. His post-Free career was surely the most erratic,
but there certainly were some great moments in there, even if it all
seems a bit unsettled from a distance. 'The Andy Fraser Band'
album was great, a punchy, powerful trio without a guitarist,
then the somewhat lightweight
'In Your Eyes' follow up. I guess the CBS deal was two albums,
and they didn't pick up the contract again for more records, so Andy
decided to move on... literally... and then there was the long
silence after he moved to America.
I
can't remember when I first spoke to Andy. The date would be in my
records and calendars somewhere I'm sure. I know my connection to him
came through Lionel Conway. He was head of Island Records'
publishing, having been 'poached' by Chris Blackwell from Dick
James Music Publishing, and at the time I knew him, he was based in
the American office in LA. I'm not sure who put me in touch with him,
maybe Trevor Wyatt, but Lionel was in touch with Andy. After asking
Andy if he wanted to talk to me, Andy had Lionel pass his telephone
number over, and asked me to give him a call. Lionel always wanted to
know the football scores when I spoke to him I recall. Super nice
guy. No internet to look them up then. I guess this was around 1980,
as it was well before 'Fine Fine Line' (1984). I also remember
these were expensive phone calls at the time!
Andy
could be tricky. He would talk about Free, but it was difficult to
get him to talk about anything else. He could get very prickly and
dismissive about his solo career, and he would NOT talk about Sharks,
which he felt was a complete fiasco! I'd have to disagree. Anyway,
what you got out of him depended on what he was doing that day, how
much time he wanted to spend talking, and what kind of a mood he was
in. We covered everything to some degree over a period of time, and
after 'Heavy Load' was published we did keep in touch, right
through to the end of his life.
We
did talk about Sharks in the end, very briefly (it was like pulling
teeth), we spoke about the CBS albums, and his move to the USA. Andy
said he was tired of the UK weather, all the familiar venues becoming
"Discotheques at best!"
and the fact he wanted a clean break, and a new start. If he was
going to America, it was New York or LA, and New York was too crazy,
too cold and wet, so LA it was. I guess he moved in early 1976, after
the generally unsuccessful 'In Your Eyes' LP and tour.
At
some point we must have talked about Robert Palmer. I would have
undoubtedly brought that up as in 1978 Palmer had a huge US hit with
'Every Kinda People', which was Andy's song. It stalled
outside the top 50 in the UK (53), but in the US it peaked at No.16
(Palmer's break though hit), was at No.22 in Billboards 'Adult
Contemporary Chart', and made No.12 in the RPM charts (Canada).
It was a big deal, and a huge break for Andy too, as he said it made
enough money to keep him comfortable, with continued radio play and
re-issues/remixes. It helped set Andy up, and meant artists were now
looking at his songs as potential material (people like Joe Cocker,
Chaka Khan and Ted Nugent among them). ANYWAY, while we spoke about
that Andy let slip that there had been an abandoned project when he
first got to America, and 'Every Kinda People' was originally meant
for that undertaking, until Palmer heard it, and told Andy that he
wanted to record it. This 'project' was never mentioned again
(by Andy), and I'd never seen it mentioned anywhere else.
Some
time (years) later I was contacted by an American musician/producer
(I won't name him here), who was a big Andy Fraser fan, and had a ton
of Andy's demos from when he (Andy) was trying to bulk out his
publishing. If people covered his songs, he got paid, so the more he
published with Island and Lionel, the more chance there was of
someone picking a song up, and maybe getting another hit, and another
big payday. However, as we talked this guy also mentioned an
unreleased LP by 'Andy Fraser And The Stealers', the
aforementioned abandoned project, and the fact there had been this
shelved album, that had gotten all the way to test pressings, and he
had one! I was gobsmacked. An unreleased Andy Fraser album! Pretty
Wild. At this point there was no title I was aware of for the record,
but finally I at least knew the proposed group name. I had no idea
who the album was recorded for, certainly not Island Records in the
US, as there was no mention of it in their archive, or any tapes from
the sessions. Also I had no idea who was playing on it! So all
unknown, except for a 10 song acetate pressing, and the song titles.
'Just
One More Time' / 'I Want To Know' / 'Back On The Streets' /
'Still
Remembering' / 'Wandering Man' / 'Ain't Me Babe' / '
Til The Night Is
Done' / 'Last Line' / 'Beautiful' / 'Do Right'.
Musically
it falls between the sound of AFB, and the Muscle Shoals record. It
doesn't have the musical 'weight' of the solo debut, but has
some great bass playing, and Andy is handling all the vocals. There's
a lot of sax, some great Hammond work, and it's a pretty accomplished
set, fitting into that 'late-nite' US radio feel. It does NOT
sound like a UK album from a guy born in Paddington, West London! As
many an A&R man has said "I
don't hear a single", but
why this got so far only to be shelved at the last minute is a
mystery, and I never got to ask Andy about it, sadly.
Now,
I have mentioned this album in writing I've done about Andy
previously, but with little detailed information available, only ever 'in passing',
as a basic reference. It could have all ended there BUT on February 3rd
this year (2026), FAS researcher and long time Italian subscriber Alessandro
Borri sent me some old press from a magazine I've little knowledge of
(Phonograph Record Magazine, USA). And lo, inside the April 1977
issue on Page 18 (continued on P21)
is an article on 'Andy Fraser And The Stealers'
(weirdly miss-titled 'Andy Fraser's Screamers' ??).
What a remarkable find by Alessandro. Seems the LP (titled 'The Night Is
Gone') was imminent, and the writer here has heard it. The group is
thankfully name checked, as Tony Hicks (Drums -
formerly with Back Door) / John Hardin (sax) / Mad Dog (keyboards)
Chris Stainton maybe? / Tony Sales (Guitar), the label involved was
Polydor, and there's even a photo of them all. And more than that,
it's not just a brief look at the 'forthcoming'
album, it's discussed with Fraser himself! Something of a 'Holy
Grail' press find moment! I can't thank
Alessandro enough for all the time he spends looking for this stuff.
RESULT!!
So,
for your education and edification I've included the original press
cutting below, and a typed reproduction of the text, as the cutting
is a bit low resolution and tricky to read. Also after that, there are
snippets of three songs from the acetate: 'I
Want To Know', 'Wandering Man', 'Til The Night Is Done'.
Sorry about any 'clicks'
and 'pops', it's
vinyl! If you are acquainted with the two CBS albums Andy made, then
I think this will actually sound pretty familiar. Also check out the
re-written 'I'm A Mover'
lyric, used here for 'Wandering
Man'!
Maybe
it's about time we had a Fraser boxed set of some sort. There are BBC
sessions (in stereo too!), live recordings from the first and second
tours, the two CBS albums, and this - which fits perfectly into that
'70s period 'feel'
prior to 'Fine Fine Line'
in the '80s. Certainly there's enough for a 5CD set, with an overview
of the period in a booklet.
It's
a shame Andy's albums, and his career outside of Free, is so
undervalued. Certainly part of that can be laid at his feet. His
attitude was to discard things, people, groups, music, and to be
disparaging about things he'd done that hadn't quite worked out how
he'd hoped. Andy was often dismissive of his early solo work. He
didn't really want to talk about it much. None of that was very
helpful to how people viewed it retrospectively. Was there some
bitterness there? I think there was, and when Andy said to me that it
was tough to find out that "no
one really gives a shit about some bass player from some old split
band"
regardless of their credentials, it was spat out like something with
a bad taste.
I think those feelings mellowed towards the end of his
life. Certainly in the last couple of years he seemed a little
happier in his own skin. He never gave these older projects a proper
chance to grow and flourish, and that was a big mistake. The 'next
thing'
isn't always better than the thing you have, and if you burn your
bridges as you go, it's hard to make good on your mistakes. It's all
fine and well to look ahead and lunge forwards, but sometimes where
you are right now is pretty good if you take the time to evaluate it
properly. How he dissolved the Andy Fraser Band showed
short-term-ism, which left all the projects feeling a little
disjointed and 'one-off' going
forwards.
This
unissued LP sits quite well as one of three in Andy's post Free
search for recognition, but I don't think he had much in the way of
fond feelings for his 'sans-Free'
'70s. Personally I do, and often told him so, and while the path was
winding, and he wandered off-track a bit in places, there's some
really nice material, and great bass playing going on with the '70s
records he made. Great band performances on that debut too. I'm not
sure what else we could want. It wasn't like Free, because it WASN'T
Free, rather like 'KKTR',
which also wasn't
Free, but if you have the Andy Fraser CBS albums, go back and have a
listen. I think you'll be surprised. It seems to me that's the issue
people tend to have. That it's not Free. Rather than just relishing
the good stuff that is there to enjoy.
----------------------------
Phonograph
Record Magazine (USA) April 1977
(Pages
18 and 21)
Andy
Fraser’s Screamers
By
DON SNOWDEN
The
sound of Traffic's first album reverberates against barren,
functional walls as gray as the overcast L.A. day outside. Tony Sales
shifts position with the nonchalant grace of the practised poseur as
other members of The Stealers keep a wary eye out for the red rubber
ball being hurled at them in a vain attempt to keep the photo session
interesting. And Andy Fraser, the focal point of Stealers and once
the musical architect of Free, sits with his eyes fixed on the camera
lens in a fierce, unrelenting glare.
At
a time when most rockers were flexing their instrumental muscles on
extended, high velocity jams, Free's Spartan, no-nonsense approach
stood in stark contrast to the prevailing excess. Raw but ever so
subtle, slow almost to the point of being ponderous, the music was
all fire and emotion with no deadwood allowed to interrupt the
message. The
Free sound didn't click with the record buying public until "All
Right Now" burst like an explosive charge out of car radios
everywhere en route to becoming the first standard bar band copy of
the '70s tune.
Despite
another mid-chart success in "Wishing Well", Free
succumbed to internal tensions and, in 1973, broke up. The four
original members moved on to strikingly different fates, Paul Rodgers
and Simon Kirke to fame and fortune with Bad Company, Paul Kossoff to
an early grave and Andy Fraser to the peculiar netherworld reserved
for most bass players who strike out on their own.
"One
reason Free split up," the short, intense Fraser reflects on
the eve of his return to the American music scene, "was for
ages and ages I wrote songs and I didn't have a situation where I
could sing them. Songs are very personal things, a very personal
expression and you want to express them. Free wasn't geared that way.
Apart from Paul Rodgers not needing another singer, he didn't want
another singer. So it was really a question of if I wanted to sing I
had to go somewhere else to do it."
Andy
Fraser's search for the proper setting for his voice became a five
year odyssey that left his name a fading memory on these shores. Only
import collectors were able to follow his musical efforts during this
period - one album with the much-touted Sharks and another with his
own imaginatively constructed trio, plus a cut-and dried
solo LP, 'In Your Eyes',
recorded in one week with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section.
Finding
himself without a recording contract, his career fortunes at low ebb,
Fraser left England last year with former Back Door drummer Tony
Hicks for a ten acre hilltop retreat in the Brentwood section of Los
Angeles. Energized by their new surroundings, Fraser and Hicks
quickly recruited John Hardin (sax) and Mad Dog (keyboards) for the
Stealers. But the guitar slot remained vacant through six months of
intensive auditioning until Tony Sales appeared on the scene. The
quintet completed work on their debut Polydor LP shortly thereafter.
Says
Fraser: "The music still has a lot of the Otis Redding-Aretha
Franklin sort of basic blues-soul feeling about it. Of late, people
like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye have really influenced me. They're
coming from the same place - black talk, blues and soul, but have a
contemporary way of saying it and producing it. To me, they're
expressing the times."
Listening
to several tracks from 'The Night is Gone' confirms that
Fraser has retained his songwriting touch without living in his
musical past. Sturdily supported by his distinctively understated
bass lines, the sound is richly textured, full of dynamic changes and
the multiple colors offered by the guitar-keyboards-sax front line.
The music is marked by the kind of cohesive group interplay and
personal empathy that characterized Free at their best. "We're
still very much coming from songs," Fraser emphasizes almost
vehemently, "very simple songs. Free was nothing I was
ashamed of and I feel this is a natural extension. It's funky without
being.... paaarty."
The
big surprise for American ears is Fraser's voice, an expressive
instrument that, not surprisingly, recalls Paul Rodgers as well as
the Spooky Tooth duo of Gary Wright and Mike Harrison. But the secret
weapon in the Stealers' arsenal could well be Hardin, who contributes
several blistering solos in the Junior Walker-King Curtis vein. And
when one thinks of how much Clarence Clemons has meant to
Springsteen....
A
smile slowly forms on Fraser's dark features as he contemplates the
radical change in his fortunes over the past nine months. Given a new
lease on musical life, working with a strong new band - a band in the
old-fashioned, collective sense of the word - Andy Fraser is free at
last from the problems that once plagued him.
"One
way or another, I've been through a lot of trips in England. Bad
management, bad band, bad production, a lot of bad-mouthing. Whereas,
in America, it's just been Free, so it's comin' in fresh. It's comin'
in from a new standpoint."
'I
Want To Know', 'Wandering Man', 'Til The Night Is Done'
