FAS #126 - March 2011 - Paul Kossoff At Sixty

PAUL KOSSOFF – AT SIXTY

Hindsight.

Understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed:

With hindsight, I should never have gone

Oxford Dictionaries

Maybe that should read… with hindsight I should never have done that…

It’s a truly wonderful thing hindsight, or so they say. You can put to rights pretty much everything once you know the sequence of events and where to intervene. You can stop wars, stop dictators before they ever get so much of a sniff of power, stop disasters, warn people of events and you can save lives. That’s the one… you can save lives. Sadly hindsight only helps to identify the place where the problem occurred and doesn’t always help to put it right in real terms. So in Paul’s case we can see what the problem was looking back at it, but its too late to stop it happening now. A sequence of events going way back led Paul to be on that aeroplane at that time and he died. Stopping him getting onto the plane would have saved him at that time but for how long? Would the inevitable simply have happened a week later elsewhere, a month later? A year? Or would Paul have survived, grown tired of feeling like shit all the time and straightened himself out like Keef and Clapton and many others did. It’s impossible to know of course because he did die. His life story ended abruptly at 25.

I’ve been thinking about Paul quite a lot recently. Our birthdays are only a week apart so he’s always in my mind around that time and I always play some of his music on the 14th to celebrate his life. It’s funny now to look back and consider that when Paul died he was older than me, but now my years alive double his and then some. There is something quite unsettling about thinking in that way, particularly as he still has such a profound effect on things I do. For me Paul Kossoff truly was a life-changing experience. Bearing that in mind I wanted to write something about him to celebrate what would have been his 60th birthday in September 2010. Circumstances made concentrating on that a bit difficult and I abandoned the first couple of attempts as they ran into the mire of drugs and Paul’s abuse of them.

Its difficult NOT to get into that at some point when you talk about Paul because the drugs had such a profound effect on his career and his life. Over the years I’ve been all through the anger at the pushers and people supplying Paul’s crippling addiction at its height, and I’ve seen the effect his early death had on his parents. How different his father’s life would have been had Paul lived. In retrospect now I look back (with hindsight) and see a young man doing what a lot of young men do, and but for the fact drugs always made me a bit ill and weren’t that readily available to me (thankfully) I did my personal damage with alcohol. I was young and I was invincible. Maybe I didn’t think quite like that but certainly when I was doing something extraordinarily stupid I didn’t always see how serious the outcome could be. I’m sure Paul was exactly the same. Like many Paul got wrapped up in the moment and the train ran away with him aboard, he wasn’t alone in that and he wasn’t the only one that died. The list is actually very long and continues to grow, and that’s just people in the public eye. It doesn’t include the ‘average Joe’ who does all this privately and unseen by the focus of media attention. Young people take risks for whatever reason, and there is often a price to be paid. For all his ills Paul certainly paid the price and in the end the responsibility for that has to be his. I’ve said it before but it really was Paul Kossoff who killed Paul Kossoff, and while the finger of blame can be pointed at managers and band members and hangers on and all the rest of the circus it still comes down to that in the end. Yes Paul was probably vulnerable but he was an adult and he was responsible for himself.

So with that off my chest I can now come out of the dark stuff. Whatever I think I can’t change the fact that Paul died. He was too young and it was a waste but it is what it is. What I can do is concentrate on what he did in his lifetime. Paul may have been young but he did leave a wealth of great music that we’ve been enjoying for a long time, and will continue to enjoy for a long time to come. So while its sad that he is gone I personally am so glad that he was here for 25 years and this article celebrates what Paul did with his lifetime.

I’m often asked what my favourite Free track is, and to some extent I think people miss the point when they ask that. For a start it changes depending on what kind of mood I’m in and also while I love Free my main focus has always been Paul Kossoff and his playing. That was the initial attraction rather than Free ‘the band’. Over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to analyse why I like certain bands more than others and almost universally it comes down to guitar players. When I list the people I like, Paul Kossoff, Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Tony Bourge, Martin Pugh, Audley Freed, Robben Ford, Michael Schenker, Peter Green, and many more I always find it interesting that they aren’t all ‘blues’ players. They all come from what I think of as a ‘Rock’ remit. Yes there is blues in there but they have evolved it further. I didn’t start listening to blues, I started with what was in the late sixties and early seventies classed as ‘Progressive Rock’ I’d heard lots of other stuff from my older brother and sister but the first thing that REALLY grabbed my attention was my brother’s copy of ‘Deep Purple In Rock’. That was a lightning bolt.

I can actually remember it very clearly; the red Dansette record player (glorious mono baby!) with the cream coloured lid and ‘In Rock’ with its gatefold sleeve. My brother put it on and I sat on my bunk bed (the bottom one) in our tiny bedroom that probably still had the Captain Scarlet wallpaper at my lower level! What a fantastic noise, I mean even at low volumes it was so BIG that it filled me up, and what attracted me was the guitar player and his TONE. I probably didn’t fully realise that then, but I do now. ‘In Rock’ is still a monster album for anyone who wants to learn about guitar sounds and tone. 40 years old and its still completely ‘relevant’. It could have been recorded yesterday and players still aspire to ‘that’ sound. Let’s pick another, like ‘Voodoo Chile’, another monster tone. My brother had it on an EP with ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘All Long The Watchtower’ (another recording with fantastic guitar tone). From my brother’s collection I spiralled off on my own. Alice Cooper was pretty quick onto the list; both ‘Love It To Death’ and ‘Killer’ have great guitar sounds. Then Budgie, especially ‘Squawk’, and again fantastic guitar sounds and so it went on. It was about songs too. All these albums have great songs and when you get great sound and a great song I’m in heaven but when I look back I REALLY like the guitar sounds. Between 1968 and 1972 I think all the great guitar tones can be found. Since then we’ve just been trying to replicate them. Okay I can concede that Eddie Van Halen added things to the mix, and yes he did change guitar playing forever but Eddie’s tone was still a 70’s style distorted guitar, it was the style of playing that had evolved. Joe Satriani took it even further of course and check out his eponymous 1995 album for sweet tones (Glyn Johns’ great production too). But wait, I’m getting off track… this is about Paul Kossoff right?

So while I wandered happily through the Rock genre listening to guitarists I was always adventurous enough to try new things. People recommended albums; I borrowed and lent records from friends, I heard things on the radio, I heard things in my local ‘Selectadisc’ (which really became a local hang out) and I bought things because I liked the sleeves! Yes I did, and I guess you did too! I browsed the racks checking out all the bands and all the sleeves and if I had the cash I might buy something because of a Roger Dean cover or because it took my fancy for whatever reason. Thinking about it now it could even be because of the band name…. though I recall Grateful Dead being very disappointing at the time! Bearing all this in mind I pondered KKTR for a long while. I mean the sleeve is crap right? It was in JR Music in the ‘market’ section of Victoria Centre, our town’s concrete monster of a shopping ‘experience’. Basically JR Music was a small booth with a dozen racks of second-hand singles and two or three lines of albums at the side. It was there for a long time too, seems no one else wanted it! I was already aware of Free and had the records but they hadn’t really ‘clicked’ yet. I went to look at KKTR every weekend for quite a while actually. I recall it was £1.75, a king’s ransom then it seemed. I thought about (and probably tried) stealing it a couple of times too, but that was kinda difficult from there, so eventually I handed over the dosh and took my prize home.

When I’m asked I always cite KKTR as my favourite album. Lots of people disagree, and that’s fine. It is after all MY favourite album; it doesn’t have to be yours. Within our band of merry fellows I know most people would say ‘Fire And Water’ in the same way lots of Deep Purple fans would say ‘Machine Head’ and lots of Yes fans would say ‘Close To The Edge’ but be careful. I have actually thought about this quite a bit and when asked ‘What’s your favourite album’ you should really interpret the question as ‘if you could only play and own one record in the whole wide world what would it be?’ Do you really play ‘Fire And Water’ THAT much? Personally I don’t, in fact with Free I’d probably pick ‘Highway’ or cheat and choose ‘The Free Story’ (double album, all the tracks please – not the CD). So why pick KKTR? Because of all the albums with Paul Kossoff it’s the one I play the most and it’s still the one I play most frequently to this day. It wasn’t always like that though. When I got KKTR home I slipped it out of the sleeve and played it. I don’t recall being ‘knocked out’ by it straight away and truthfully it’s just not that kind of album. It doesn’t shout for your attention or pose and preen in any way, in fact its very understated – right down to that poor sleeve. You almost get the impression it’s trying to hide actually! I thought it was pretty good on that first spin and initially I didn’t think there was enough guitar on it from what I remember. I put it away and I played something else. From what I can see I bought around the same time I was probably about to hit a Steppenwolf’ phase’ as I’d just bought the double ‘live’ album (great record too) and I used to play that to death. Still, KKTR kept coming back out and was regularly played. I don’t think I knew anyone else who particularly liked it, certainly no one else who owned a copy at that time. It felt like quite a ‘grown up’ record. No chest pounding vocals, no guitar heroics, it had nothing like that at all but what I realise now is that I was attracted to the quality of the songs, the quality of the production (which really is first rate thanks to Richard Digby Smith), the quality of the guitar playing and the quality of Kossoff’s TONE. It wasn’t about quantity; it was about QUALITY. It seemed to me Koss played on the songs that needed guitar, when they didn’t he stayed away from them. I didn’t know then that actually he should have maybe been on a bit more of the record but he wasn’t well enough to record. I just heard what was there. The record was a slow burner, and it just kept burning. I kept playing it, year in, year out.

Now many people throw up the fact that it doesn’t sound like Free – well that’s fine because it isn’t Free. It doesn’t say Free on the sleeve and it wasn’t meant to sound like Free. Other people say ‘Well its not got Rodgers on it’ and my God, they are right too. It’s KKTR not KKTRR (that came later and the album was called ‘Heartbreaker’). I don’t miss Paul Rodgers on this album. I’ve only ever heard him sing one of the songs (‘Hold On’) and I have absolutely no problem with the vocals on here. I think they suit the music perfectly. For me it’s a fully rounded album and I don’t really feel it needed anything adding or taking away. Yes Kossoff’s vocal on ‘Colours’ is raw, but he wasn’t a great singer – in fact he was a crap singer, but look at the atmosphere the track has BECAUSE of his vulnerable vocals. The track is so desperately sad anyway and Koss is definitely expressing that to these ears. I know Paul Rodgers could have sung it in perfect pitch and with great soul, because he’s a great singer – but would he really have added anything to the ‘feel’ of the track? I’m not so sure he could, it would have certainly been different from the version on the record but ‘better’? I’m not sure.

So what’s good here? Well check out the opening stuff in ‘Blue Grass’. Koss is straight in there with some lovely licks and fantastic tone (sounds like the Strat). He continues to add flashes throughout, there’s no rhythm guitar in his way and Rabbit is giving him all the support he needs. The track is full but not cluttered and Paul is working to enhance the song, not just show off. All his phrases are beautiful and restrained, even the solo is low key but its so well executed, and really soulful and thoughtful. This track has a great guitar performance from someone who loves songs and not just hearing himself play solos. ‘Sammy’s Alright’ follows a similar theme, not big chords just these elegant licks and tones. The contrast between the straight sounding guitar and the one through the Leslie here is great. Both sound fantastic in their own right but layered and flipping between one and the other they sound amazing. Lovely performance and so understated. Nice one Koss. I love it

‘Just For The Box’ is considered the big guitar workout here and it’s a great funky piece. Nothing like Free at all, not even remotely. This is Paul Kossoff talking, clean and clear. Again, the first thing that gets you is the fantastic tone. It’s so sweet and almost delicate even though it’s a raging distorted amplified beast! Don’t forget there’s also some absolutely rampant guitar on the end section of ‘Hold On’ too; an absolutely outstanding performance there. I feel very lucky in that when we were mixing the Free boxed set in 1999 I sat with Digby late one night and we had the MASTER of this on the multitrack machine. He did a mix and at the end we pushed the guitar RIGHT UP, turned the volume as high as it would go in the studio and just wallowed in this glorious sound. I thought my head was going to burst but it just sounded incredible. You can find a new mix of the track on the ‘Songs Of Yesterday’ set, and while we did bring the guitar track down a little after our excessive behaviour (which almost gave Tim Chacksfield a heart attack) its still loud enough to enjoy when you stick all the volume you can stand behind it. Kossoff’s playing and tone there just brings tears to my eyes even playing it now though my Hitachi 3D Super Woofer via my computer! It’s so intense and the sound is so moving.

Flip to side two of the original album and ‘Fools Life’ opens and Kossoff is again hitting all the marks, great tone, great licks, perfect timing. Everything has its place. Side two also has ‘Dying Fire’, one of my favourite Kossoff solos, Again all of the elements are there, great tone, beautiful timing, even right at the start when he makes you wait for that first note. He could have come in a beat earlier but the waiting is everything. And it’s such an emotional piece, such a long yearning build to the climax. He just keeps climbing and climbing until he’s right at the precipice and then he lets it go and it flies into the ether. How good is that?

‘I’m On The Run’ another great solo from two sections. Different tones from both but equally great, might be different guitars or it might be a jump from bridge to neck pick up, doesn’t matter, it’s the result that counts and the Leslie rotating speaker is chewing the sound around on its slow turning speed. Paul wasn’t the first to use it. George Harrison was using the same effect with The Beatles and Eric Clapton puts the Leslie through its paces on Blind Faith’s ‘Presence Of The Lord’. Johnny Glover told me Koss wanted to use a whole bank of them to play live with during Back Street Crawlers first UK tour, Glover thought he was crazy and talked him out of it. Curiously on March 11, 1976 – just days before Paul died, I saw Tommy Bolin do just that with Deep Purple. The noise between songs was something else! Like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner made by Marshall amps! Sadly Bolin, like Paul at that time, wasn’t at his best and died later in the year (December 4, he was also 25).

‘Colours’ closes KKTR with its rather haunting vocal performance and lyric of some deep wound to the soul. It’s a tough track but once you get through that vocal there’s some really uplifting guitar wailing away until the track collapses and Rabbit’s Hammond rumbles to the close. So, lets set the record straight. I love Paul Kossoff’s playing and with that in mind, KKTR… what’s not to like? He plays GREAT!

Moving on its interesting to see what Paul can do with very little, and how he can lift something as simple as a single repeating motif and turn it into something genuinely inspiring. At just over two minutes Blondel’s ‘Hole In The Head’ certainly fits into that camp. I always liked those first two Blondel albums without John Gladwin. When John left during an American tour after a fight with Eddie in 1973 – details in ‘Heavy Load’ - Eddie Baird was really thrown into the deep end and was forced to write songs. He’d written a couple previously but a whole album…! Island Records simply expected the two remaining Blondels to carry on and though the sound of the group changed considerably I thought Ed wrote some really great stuff. The lyrics were good, the songs have great melodies and he and Terry sang like angels. Its wonderful and everybody reading this should have the ‘Blondel’ and ‘Mulgrave Street’ albums. In fact I actually like those two albums better than anything else they ever did, pre or post Gladwin.

‘Hole In The Head’ came from ‘Mulgrave Street’. By this time Blondel had been dropped by Island and Johnny Glover had moved them over to DJM. In an effort to bring the band to a wider audience Eddie and Terry Wincott had been using numerous friends and guests to broaden the sound. On the ‘Blondel’ album (also known as the ‘Purple’ album) they’d had Steve Winwood playing bass, Simon Kirke on drums and Paul Rodgers helped them with vocals on ‘Weaver’s Market’ (sadly one of the album’s weaker songs). On ‘Mulgrave Street’ they repeated the idea and widened the net, so you can find Eddie Jobson, Mick Ralphs, Boz Burrell, Simon Kirke, Rabbit and of course Paul Kossoff. ‘Hole In The Head’ is simply 2.16 of a repeated descending motif with the title repeatedly sung over the top. No bridge, no chorus, no middle eight, nothing; just the single repeating riff. It’s nice enough, the band is good and Terry Wincott’s vocal is great but Kossoff makes it quite extraordinary, and it really shows how much he could do with so little. Right from the opening he draws you in with the haunting fade intro and a simple pulling of the finger up the neck on one string; then the first couple of notes are just so deep and sad. It’s a beautiful performance. The three little solos here are all fantastic and the tone is great. There’s nothing new here and its all very simple but the delivery is just perfect as Kossoff simply gives the song exactly what it needs, no more – no less.

The guitar sound is pretty big and weighty, the tone suggesting it was recorded on Paul’s infamous white Stratocaster at high volume but when I asked Eddie Baird about it he said he remembered the amp used was actually very small, he thought maybe a Fender Champ, and they had it on a table! Koss apparently had three pops at the song and they used the third. There appear to be a couple of little patches where it was ‘touched up’ but that’s standard practice when recording and often solos used on records are bits of three or four different performances put together to create one whole. From the first day I heard ‘Hole In the Head’ to the very day I’m writing this I’ve never EVER tired of the track. In fact it’s too bloody short and I usually leave it repeating for a while just to soak it up. It actually has to be one of my favourite pieces of Kossoff guitar playing and I’d love to be able to get hold of the master to see how long the track actually continues after the fade and also to be able to hear the other couple of performances.

It’s worth mentioning ‘Taken Hold Of Me’ too, also written by Eddie and intended for Paul’s abandoned second solo album. An edited version of this unfinished piece featured originally on the DJM ‘Koss’ album from 1977 but it can now be found on any number of compilations licensed from Johnny Glover. The piece released is actually cut from the existing seven minutes plus of the song and again it seems to show that Eddie was actually rather good at giving Kossoff pieces he could really respond to. I really like ‘Taken Hold Of Me’ and while Eddie says the vocal was a guide and never intended for use I think its fine and the song is nicely constructed. The way it rises and falls back from verse to chorus gives Koss plenty to work with. He’s not really playing a rhythm part but simply reacting to the vocal and the way the song moves him; probably the way Koss worked best most of the time.

Sticking with sessions and Paul ‘guesting’ on other projects Jim Capaldi should also get a mention. Personally I always found Jim’s solo work incredibly erratic. He was capable of great things but there really are some turkeys among his albums and ‘Whale Meat Again’ is certainly worth avoiding. Koss played on a fair number of Jim’s recordings, and some are better than others. If I had to pick two personal favourites they would be ‘Boy With A Problem’ from ‘Short Cut Draw Blood’ and ‘You And Me’, which again first appeared on the ‘Koss’ album. ‘Boy With A Problem’ was actually written about Chris Wood, Traffic’s troubled flute player, but the lyric could easily have been about Koss. It’s interesting that Koss enters the song in a similar way to ‘Hole In The Head’. He almost fades himself in over the introduction and then he rides over the track responding to Jim’s vocal and the mood of the backing. It’s another beautifully understated performance and while you might be listening for the solo check out what Koss is doing behind Jim’s voice in the body of the song. The second verse (starting ‘His mother says I wish he’d stop his drinking’) is a great example of how subtle and sensitive Koss was. He hovers in the background with little riffs and trills and throughout the song he just enhances the backing, its unobtrusive and very effective. It’s a great track, and well worth the price of the album.

‘You And Me’, again from the ‘Koss’ album may seem an obvious choice but that’s because it’s probably the peak of the material that Kossoff and Capaldi recorded together. When I interviewed Jim about Koss in the 80s I asked about the track and he replied, “That was a nice one to have in the can. I don’t know why I didn’t use it. I wish we’d done more”. The track actually was used later with a changed (and vastly inferior) lyric on ‘The Contender’ (also titled ‘Daughter Of The Night’ in some countries) but it’s the original version that really works. Again it’s a simple song and melody but the lyric about all the emotions that tie to a long-term friendship are very effective. Koss, like on the previous cuts, is left to ride over the track and chances are he didn’t hear the track until it was finished. He then went in to do a session and played over the finished version before a final mix was compiled. It’s a really strong poignant song and obviously pushes all the right buttons in Paul. The initial solo is interesting, the guitar having a rather peculiar ‘strangled’ sound, but at the end Kossoff is left to simply raise the game and he lifts the track to a fantastic crescendo as he takes it up and up until it fades. Sadly I don’t think the overall mix of the track is that solid, but what a great song to have lying around unused for three years!

Paul’s work with Back Street Crawler seems pretty much overlooked by the mainstream, and I think that’s a bit of a shame. I can’t deny the debut album is patchy song-wise but there really are some fine Paul Kossoff moments on there and his solo playing has real drive. Even the limper songs like ‘Hoo Doo Women’ (‘Who Do Women’ sic) have great guitar performances but when the songs have a bit of substance, ‘Jason Blue’ for example, I think Koss really delivers. Sadly the recording of the album isn’t that great and the mix is pretty weak too, this obviously effects the guitar tones and while Paul plays well over the majority of this album the guitar sound, particularly on the solos, I don’t find so appealing. It’s a bit abrasive and lacking depth. Still, ‘Jason Blue’ works for me and the highlight of the album is ‘Long Way Down To the Top’.

Montgomery, Wilson and Braunagel had of course already recorded both these tracks on the self-titled ‘Bloontz’ album from 1973, and they are great versions, but I think the Back Street Crawler version of ‘Long Way Down To The Top’ is fantastic and criminally overlooked by fans and critics alike. Its one of those cuts where everything comes together and that starts with the fact that it’s a great song in the first place. For Koss the construction is perfect as its another track that flows and ebbs and while he is having to fill a more major role providing both the rhythm and the solos rather than just ‘flying over the top’ with an overdub it’s a well put together performance by the whole band. The way the opening just wafts in as if on a breeze and gently opens up is SWEET and Koss is really tickling the notes from the Les Paul with a gentle persuasion. It’s subtle and very very effective. Just a few bars of sorrow from the guitar and then we work towards the first verse. The guitar sound here is about as good as it gets on this album. Koss is a bit muddy but not so much that it hides him and I really like his gruff rhythm tone. As the song breaks down for the solo there’s a perfect example of how he responded to a vocal. The solo would have been overdubbed last, after the vocal was recorded was usually the way Koss liked to work, and so when Braunagel slaps the track back into life and Sless wails Kossoff echoes the scream perfectly and the guitar howls into the solo like a wounded animal struck one more time with a pointed stick. It’s a funny thing too, Kossoff could have really scorched into this solo but he doesn’t, he’s holding it back all the time. You can almost hear him straining to keep it under control. Its really an angry song, about being ripped off, but its also very mournful, almost saying, ‘That’s rock & roll so I should have expected it’ and that’s what the solo delivers so well. It’s not a temper piece of rage and frustration; it’s more like resignation to the facts of the business. The solo delivers pathos perfectly. It couldn’t have been done any better. I also like the fact that Kossoff doesn’t come back in and solo over the fade. That’s real restraint on the part of a guitar soloist but the song just doesn’t require it. Koss has already said everything that needed to be said, so why add anything else?

It must seem strange to everyone that I pick ‘2nd Street’ as my second favourite album of all time, but again I base that on the amount of times I play it, and I really do play this record an awful lot. In the case of this album it’s about the quality of the sounds and the performances rather than WHO is performing what and where. I love Koss and Snuffy Walden and while I wish this were all Kossoff firing on all cylinders I don’t mind that some of it isn’t Koss and that Snuffy takes up the slack. As I’ve already said in this article, it is what it is. When all is said and done this does still have some very nice Kossoff moments, its just sorting out which is him and which isn’t!

The advantage this album has over the sound of the debut is the fact that Richard Digby Smith was in charge of recording it and therefore all the tones are great. Glyn Johns did quite a nice production job too. I do wish Glyn had refined the guitar performances a little and dropped out some of the out-of-tune bits and wobbly notes but as I’ve never heard the masters I don’t know exactly what he had to work with or how much time he was given for the job (or how much he was paid!). I’m sure had Paul lived this would all have been fixed, and these issues may have been the reason for Paul expressing his dissatisfaction with things at the meeting the band had before that flight to L.A. Maybe Paul felt it wasn’t finished and Digby seems to think that recording would have continued in London when they got back, but fate intervened.

For Koss this was pretty much a ‘fly-over’ album. I doubt he plays any of the rhythm tracks, most of which fell to Terry Wilson with a little fixing from Snuffy maybe. Terry is a nice little player and being as he wrote half of the songs it wouldn’t have been a stretch for him. Among the bits for me that stand out here is Paul’s playing in ‘Some Kind Of Happy’, which should have had him a bit louder in the mix. The solo in the middle is short but nicely constructed and I think ends really well. It’s not fancy but it’s very effective, and again at the end there are some nice moments. ‘Just For You’ has a much longer Kossoff track as he plays behind pretty much the entire song. This would have been better if Glyn John’s had ‘ducked’ a couple of moments out but even so this seems to be one straight track and a single complete Kossoff performance. Johnny Glover has always said he’d like to mix this track without vocals. I’d just like to hear it mixed a little better! ‘Leaves In The Wind’ is great too, but possibly a two-player performance with Kossoff and either Snuffy or Terry Wilson featured. I’d say the majority IS Kossoff however and some of those high notes with the slow vibrato are unlikely to be anyone else. It’s a tough sound to copy. Its one of this album’s great mysteries really - who plays which bits. I’d love to get into the tracks and find out. I actually think this album ends really strongly with both ‘On Your Life’ and ‘Leaves In The Wind’ being superb songs. In fact I’d really struggle to pick a weak track on the whole album. The quality of writing really is top notch, and if you play guitar this is a great record to jam along with.

The real coup-de-grace here though is Terry Wilson’s exquisite ‘Blue Soul’. This is one absolutely incredible performance from everyone and the song really defines the album. The tragedy was that Paul Kossoff just wasn’t well enough to transcend his problems and re-establish himself right at the top of the heap with this record. Back through the Leslie here it seems Kossoff just pours himself onto the track and for just under four minutes it’s like tasting all the things that could have been. The reality is that Koss actually doesn’t play that much on the track but, as was often the case ‘less is more’ with Paul. His first ‘lick’ isn’t heard until 40 seconds in and then it’s so sweet it’s painful; just gentle, soulful sounds. After 1.30 he can be heard hovering in the background, just weaving around Rabbit’s Hammond and waiting. The whole thing is very much about anticipation. Its not until after the middle eight (around 2.15) that Paul really starts to push into the track, and even then it’s brief as the odd ‘wail’ cuts through the backing and stings the listener. Perhaps that’s the secret of its success, the fact that Kossoff didn’t have to ‘wade in’ and provide a ‘solo’. Instead he was able to enhance and add atmosphere to the song, at which he undoubtedly succeeds. Terry Wilson never wrote a better song.

I didn’t buy this album when Paul died, it was a while later. I recall seeing it when it came out, and I think it was around that time that all the American ‘cut out’ imports of ‘The Band Plays On’ started to fill the cheap import racks. Remember those? With either a corner cut off or a hole punched right through the sleeve and the centre label of the album like it had been skewered. I recall seeing hundreds of them. When I did finally get ‘2nd Street’ I seem to remember I pretty much liked it from the start but became obsessed with it in the late 70’s and into the 80’s, playing it all the time. Like ‘KKTR’ its still an album I play regularly and its one of the few things where I feel absolutely no need to skip a single track. Like ‘KKTR’ I’m happy to play it end to end and then play it again straight away. For me though the undeniable heartbreak of this album is that, good as it is and like it as I do I feel personally that had Paul Kossoff been able to confront his problems over Christmas 1975 and get himself together this could have been the album of his career. The constantly high quality of the songs the band provided for inclusion, Richard Digby Smiths great engineering in the variety of studios they used, and the end production all seem to point to something really big about to happen and Paul blew it. Whether he ever felt like that about it we’ll never know. Rabbit seems convinced that Paul liked the songs but he just wasn’t able to raise his game enough to make his contribution really lift the whole thing to another level. I think this is a great record but it could have been one of the best things Paul Kossoff had ever done, a career-defining moment and better than anything Bad Company ever did, even rivalling the very best of his work with Free. That’s the tragedy and I think about that every time I play this album. That Paul could actually have ended his career on a real high point, a real peak. That would have shown ‘em, and it would have given the band that supported him through thick and thin over the year or so they were together, the recognition they rightly deserved. They worked so hard to make this record the best it could be, and Paul didn’t. He wasn’t capable. This album got good reviews, but no one bought it. Such a shame.

Paul’s so called ‘solo’ career is a tough one. The Back Street Crawler band really doesn’t count as it was a ‘band’ so we are really just left with the 1973 ‘Kossoff – Back Street Crawler’ album and a few scattered moments on things like ‘Koss’ and the few remaining glimpses in Island’s vault.

It was a great honour to be able to go through all the master tapes and listen to the different takes that made up the final album, and also be able to compile the outtakes so they could be released in the ‘Deluxe Edition’. I put in as much as was physically possible given CD time restrictions, and in fact only a couple of little jams from the ‘Tuesday Morning’ session were excluded as I recall. It was obvious when going through the tapes that all the tracks came from completely different times and sessions and it was something of a shock to see them neatly catalogue Paul’s decline from 1971 to 1973. At the start (‘Time Away’, ‘May You Never’ and all the ‘Tuesday Morning’ material) he’s sharp, focused and really inspired. By the end (‘Back Street Crawler’ and ‘I’m Ready’) the guitar sounds completely different, the vibrato has slowed and he has trouble getting through a take without missing his timing or making a mistake. When it’s all compacted together the difference really is quite evident.

I’ve always liked the original Record. As a solo album from a guitar player it ticks all the right boxes. It has in the past been called ‘one-dimensional’ but for the life of me I can’t understand where that comes from. It covers a lot of different ground musically and it’s definitely not stuck in one genre. Paul was ‘blues-based’ rather than trapped there and this record shows that. On this album Paul runs from Blues, white Funk R&B, through to some pretty ballsy rock and then seriously into the ethereal, and throughout all of this there’s no doubt it is him. He stamps his mark firmly on the album from start to finish and handles all the styles well. It could be said it lacks a coherent focus being from lots of different times, but it doesn’t lack sincerity or soul.

The original version of ‘Tuesday Morning’, at almost 18 minutes, still stands as a fine piece of instrumental Blues/Rock guitar music. All one take, no overdubs. It seems even the echo sections were added ‘on the fly’ by the engineer as they recorded. That’s pretty impressive by any standard when you consider the quality of the playing by everyone included. It’s a jam piece they’d loosely constructed over a number of previous ‘takes’ and each time it gets a bit longer and a bit more refined until they reach the zenith and run though all the sections in one monumental push. The piece runs from straight out Rock into some incredibly soulful sections with beautiful guitar and keyboard playing (from Rabbit). I can understand it’s not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ but even so from my viewpoint I think it is pretty extraordinary and defines what Paul Kossoff could do when no restrictions were placed upon him. This is Paul in full free-flowing guitar mode just letting rip.

What was Side Two of the original album is a little less fluid as it shuffles from 1973 to 1971 and then back again over the course of the four tracks but nevertheless it doesn’t lack for guitar performances or inspiration. ‘I’m Ready’ is short and sweet and shows how well Kossoff and Jess Roden work together in this white funk format. It’s a focused cut from a more sprawled piece but it works REALLY well and I always thought it was a great little track. Jess Roden never sounded better. It’s nice to have the full take but I do think the short version is the definitive one really.

‘Time Away’ is one of the centrepieces of Paul’s CV. As we know now this is cut from a huge piece of improvised music almost 40 minutes long. I’m very happy to sit and listen to the full version as it evolves through the different stages but Paul did cut out the essence of it in the 5.49 he used on the original release. There are lots of great pieces of guitar playing, and lots of great pieces of instrumental guitar music but I don’t think I’ve ever found anything that comes anywhere near this for pure soul. Paul pierces the piece like light flooding over from some deep otherworldly place illuminating everything. It’s uncontaminated and profound, and it’s deeply moving. When we had the tapes of this we listened to Paul and the sound of the guitar coming through the Leslie cabinet ‘soloed’ and I swear it was one of the highlights of my life. The sound is just colossal. It’s completely ‘not of this earth’. It made me want to buy lots of Leslie cabinets and play very loudly!!

‘Molten Gold’ is one of Free’s lost treasures really and it is such a shame they never actually worked to complete it. Paul must have been very proud of it and it’s a great song. Andy suggested that they didn’t use it because Koss never actually finished it, but given what there is here it sounds like a completed song to me, just lacking the application by the players to take it further than a ‘demo’. There are certainly songs on ‘Free At Last’ less well constructed. When Koss went back and added some extra touches from Rabbit and Jess Roden he did polish it up a bit but there’s still that ‘not quite finished as well as it could have been’ feel about it.

The album’s title track comes with its own legend and the lost vocal by Eugene Wallace. We actually found Kossoff had deleted this from the master tape as he overdubbed yet more guitar to try and get a perfect ‘take’. Sadly his problems had really caught up with him here and the album version is as definitive as it gets. While there were a number of solo guitar tracks recorded none are spectacular in their own right so pieces were used from all of them to composite the guitar playing found throughout the song. It’s a tough, gruff way to finish the record and while good enough it is perhaps the album’s least satisfying moment overall.

I realise I actually don’t play Paul’s solo album as much as I should and that’s perhaps because it does demand quite a lot from the listener. Its not really background music, it insists on you giving it all your attention and rather like ‘Free At Last’ it can be a quite an exhausting but ultimately rewarding experience. Paul always said it was a ‘collection of pieces’ rather than a wholly consistent work but even so it highlights his strengths far better than many guitar albums in the same sphere and its much more rewarding than the majority of Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton works. Well anyway, that’s my opinion as a listener.

And so to the BIG one. Whatever we do and whatever we say the focus of Paul’s work will always be within the material he recorded with Free. It was his longest period of consistent output and I would say it’s generally where people first come into contact with his playing. These days Free are approached from a number of satellite careers, Queen, Bad Company, The Firm. If you choose to investigate Paul Rodgers further via any of these you are drawn back to the source, Free. With his constantly heavy workload and high profile as ‘worlds greatest Blues Rock Vocalist’ all roads from Paul Rodgers lead back there. Andy Fraser and Simon Kirke play slightly less of a part with lower profiles but again if you hear about ‘this great bass player from the 70s’ you’ll be going back to the Free albums to check Andy out, and the same goes for Simon’s work. None of them should be underestimated because whatever anyone may think or say Free were as good as they were because all the parts were perfectly fitted together. No one individual made that band what it was. What also keeps the Free legacy current is the fact that around every decade they seem to be re-discovered by musicians. Its as if they are passed from generation to generation like a torch passed from runner to runner. In the 80’s we had Thunder and a few others that mentioned Free as a major influence and sent their fans back to listen to them. In the 90’s it was Cry Of Love and Gov’t Mule who carried the flame for them, and into the new millennium it’s people like Joe Bonamassa and Jimmy Bowskill who constantly bring the name of Free and Paul Kossoff up in their interviews. Joe Bonamassa has been a huge endorser of Paul Kossoff specifically and mentions him in almost every interview. It’s quite incredible. I was surprised last year when even The David Gilmour Blog mentioned Koss on September 14th and was telling people to go check him out. Add to that the fact that the Free albums have never been out of print and have over the years been recycled and enhanced, the Boxed Set, the DVD and The Book (Heavy Load). The Free story isn’t one that seems to want to fade away and with ‘All Right Now’ still notching up radio plays in the millions it’s unlikely the band are going to get lost in the mêlée of 70s bands further down the ladder. Free’s place in the history of British Blues/Rock music is well cemented and its foundation is very solid and that’s because the albums all still sound so bloody good.

It’s difficult to dissect Free. This is partly because I like the band so much but also because all the albums are different and so what mood I’m in tends to dictate which album I play. I do gravitate to some more than others for various reasons and I’ve never been sycophantic about Free. I like some things more than others and there are some bits I don’t like at all. For example I don’t like ‘Travellin’ In Style’ and I’m not mad on ‘Goin’ Down Slow’ either, despite Kossoff’s spirited performance. As I have said before, it took me a little while to ‘get’ Free. Kossoff was definitely my way ‘in’ and is still mostly the motivation for listening but like most of us you soon get to hear the beautiful woven interplay between the instruments and the voice and appreciate how much the four needed each other to get that particular sound. None of them have achieved anywhere near it since and that shows how reliant on each other they really were. Talent as it is I’m sure they’d all have been successful without Free, Bad Company lays testament to that, but everything else they have ever done has always been compared to and laid in the shadows of their work with Free.

By the time Paul Kossoff went into the studio with Free in the winter of 1968 he’d already had a bit of studio experience. In April of the year he had recorded some nice blues with Champion Jack Dupree and there’s still an open debate on whether the Martha Velez album was recorded in Mid 1968 or early 1969 but either way both Kossoff and Kirke had been in the studio, and even Paul Rodgers had come along to the Dupree session and hung around as Black Cat Bones did their last work with their current line-up. In the six months between the Dupree and Free albums both Koss and Kirke had come a long way. No more Chicago blues shuffles for them, the British sound that was permeating the clubs was much tougher and harder. Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies may have kicked off the whole change from the traditional Jazz band to the sounds of the Mississippi but once John Mayall came along the ball really started to roll and bands like Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack took the whole thing somewhere else. In 1968 The British Blues boom was actually in saturation. There were hundreds of bands pumping out the same stuff and it was tough to be heard above the ‘wannabefamous’ scuffle. Things were changing. The flower power psychedelic sounds were also toughening up and everything seemed to be combining into some monstrous new sound that was later known as ‘progressive’. Studios had broken from the stranglehold too and were no longer run by engineers in white coats doing a day job (well maybe Abbey Road was). Lots of little studios had popped up and were run by entrepreneurs who allowed people that actually loved music to come in and ‘have a go’. Andy Johns fits that profile, and so does Richard Digby Smith, both very important in the work Free did and the way they recorded the band. Like with all things it wasn’t one event that ‘made’ Free possible, it was the amalgamation of lots of different elements all coming together at one time. The right combination of players, the right record company, the right material, the right album covers, the stars aligning and… well, you get the idea. As Eddie Baird once said, Free were the right group at the right place in the right time and with the right material. All that dropped into place to make the correct combination out of all the possible permutations. Maybe not right away, but soon enough.

To run over Free track by track and pick to pieces the Kossoff performances would be a monumental task and take up far more space than I have here. So let’s overview the material and pick a couple of things from album to album. A tasty sampler treats basket kind of thing. Yum Yum.

‘Tons Of Sobs’ I do play fairly often. I like the basic nature of the recording and the overall sound of the album appeals to me. Very live, four guys in a room having a good time and getting off on some fine music created by them. That’s how it sounds to me. There are some great performances here from everyone, I mean the average age was 17 or so and just LISTEN to it! This record also really does capture that initial spark a new band has when everyone is really into it. I think it is that which makes the recording so exciting to listen to, and it is a pretty exhilarating album. Kossoff really excels though. This is like a different guy from the player in Black Cat Bones six months earlier. His sound is gruff and concentrated, a little more distorted and a fair bit louder. A little unrefined still perhaps but the solos come in brutal bursts of energy. ‘Worry’ is just fantastic as Kossoff tears through the backing and lays in. If this were a fighter he’d be fists, feet, elbows and headbutts! It’s great playing by any standards but for someone so young it’s remarkable. No wonder Clapton sat up and took notice! ‘Walk In My Shadow’ doesn’t let up either. The track might be a little more polished but its still a musical thug. ‘Wild Indian Woman’ is great too. Did I say just pick a couple of tracks. Oh well. So lets reflect. Debut album and four of the five cuts on side one alone kick ass. How often did that happen in 1968/1969?

Side Two opens with ‘I’m A Mover’ and another really mature performance from everyone. The writing may have been basic but this doesn’t sound like anyone else then or now. Rodgers wrote some great songs early on. Koss is particularly good here and the song is more structured. While he still plays over the top of it, the breaks for solos allow him to really dig in and rattle a few cages. If Kossoff was out to prove something he was succeeding big time and the whole album is pretty cocky for first timers. Not so much ‘Here We Come’ more like ‘HERE WE ARE!’ ‘Moonshine’ has another fine guitar performance and ‘Sweet Tooth’ is great song too. I have to mention Andy here because the bass playing is superb but that loose Kossoff rhythm is fabulous and while the solo might not have the sweet sound we identify as Koss that’s down to the recording gear Morgan Studios had at the time, the room they played in and perhaps even the fact he was still using the 4x12 speaker cabinet his father had made for him! Even so there’s enough great guitar playing on this one album to complete this article! Go play it and program out ‘Goin’ Down Slow’ and ‘The Hunter’. Even with those missing it’s still 30 minutes of great music.

Between the first and second albums Free covered a lot of ground. The initial idea of a Rob Stewart / Jeff Beck type sound for the band was superseded with a much more sophisticated and refined sound and the group got to know each other better musically as the Fraser / Rodgers team also established itself as a writing force. It was a huge change, and I don’t think many bands have released a second album so radically different to the first (except maybe Stray Dog!).

You can hear on this album how much more restrained Kossoff is. There’s very little of him blazing over the tracks and he’s pretty much pushed into smaller eight bar boxes for solos. It makes the tracks much tighter and it also makes him focus on delivery. His performances throughout this album are all very fine (as are everyone’s) and when people mention that Free ‘swagger’ and ‘groove’ its pretty much this album that they are talking about, ‘I’ll Be Creepin’, ‘Songs Of Yesterday’ and ‘Woman’ particularly, and all these have great guitar playing. Where ‘Sobs’ had plenty of excitement but was perhaps a bit ‘raw’ here the tones of the band are much richer and more articulate. Koss has some really nice different guitar sounds on this record. A combination of more experience, better gear and probably a few different guitars too. ‘Trouble On Double Time’ is wonderful (Fraser’s Bass playing is outstanding here) and Kossoff comes in sounding like a trumpet. The sustain on the notes is sweeter, the vibrato less excited than on the debut and the solo is nicely constructed. The growth is pretty astounding; we are after all only talking about six months between albums recording-wise (not release dates) but this is what happens when a band ‘live’ music 24/7, and that’s what Free did. Endless gigs tightened them up and refined their essence. I think Blackwell did a great job catching them here and while Free weren’t keen on his technique in the studio, which consisted of endless ‘takes’ frustrating the hell out of them, he did get results. I don’t think this is a very consistent record particularly, it tends to wander too much into slow sleepy material for my tastes, and ‘Lying In the Sunshine’ and ‘Mouthful Of Grass’ on one side was a bit much (good as they are individually) but it is a very playable record and it does sound rather good some forty plus years down the line.

‘Free Me’ is often overlooked. The slow tempo and doomy feel distract a lot of people and its never listed as a favourite by anyone, but Kossoff’s solo is fantastic. The tone is just beautiful, his playing very delicate and I love those little ‘spiral’ licks at around 2.38 that just lift and brighten the tune. The song would be such a drudge without what Elliott Bugress called “Those elegant little ‘licks’ of Paul’s”. Fraser and Rodgers may have had some great songs but it’s the way Kossoff enhanced them that really lifted them and that is what attracts my ear.

The third album was ‘the one’ for the majority. It’s the album with the hit that flags the band and draws in the bulk of the audience still. ‘Fire And Water’ was a little bit of a step back from the sound Chris Blackwell was trying to achieve. It’s very stripped down and sounds very ‘live’, which is what the band wanted. Blackwell did make them ‘re-work’ some of it but even so its still pretty basic stuff over the most part in terms of recording technique and production. Free certainly did approach the album differently and its actually the only album where the majority of the outtakes consist of very simple guitar, bass and drum backing tracks, everywhere else there are guide vocals, even on later albums, but not here.

This is probably my least played Free album, mostly due to the fact that there are three tracks I’m not really that enthusiastic about. My lack of interest isn’t due to the guitar performances though. ‘Remember’ just sounds at the wrong speed to me. I’m not sure if it needed to be faster or slower but it needed something and the rhythm tone on the guitar is a bit flat. Nice solo though, great tone, and this middle section is really good before it goes back to that bloody riff and the handclaps. It just sounds weak to me, and dated. The backing has no substance. ‘Don’t Say You Love Me’ is just too long and doesn’t really go anywhere (even guitar wise), and as for ‘All Right Now’ I prefer the ‘thicker’ ORIGINAL single mix. It’s just a personal preference. I’d also have to say that ‘Mr. Big’ suffers too, but only because the version on ‘Free Live’ is so definitive! If I wipe those out I’m only left with 14 minutes of music, and this is probably the reason I don’t air it very often. Still it’s not without its moments.

‘Oh I Wept’ is the highlight for me. Kossoff’s overlapped solos on ‘Fire And Water’ are great but here his performance as a whole I find more satisfying. The rhythm track is nicely executed and the song has a nice feel. It’s got ‘swing’ which makes its slower pace attractive. It makes you want to nod your head and tap your feet. The tempo is spot on. Kossoff’s solo is boxed into eight bars again and he really makes them count. Its actually only 31 seconds from start to finish but his tone is sweet and the playing perfectly tuned to the song. Very nice.

‘Heavy Load’ doesn’t get mentioned much either, and Kossoff’s part in this song is limited to the last 90 seconds! It’s amazing how much he could achieve in such a brief section but the solo is really nice and minimalist and then he continues to lift the song behind Rodgers’ excellent vocal with some gorgeous long sweeps of colour. This isn’t a guitar player pushing himself into the spotlight; it is someone working for the benefit of the song and the total performance. I like Kossoff’s wilder moments as much as anyone but often these more subtle examples of his ability to be understated are missed or simply ignored and I find that a bit frustrating considering how important they are to the songs.

All the experience gathered over the recording of the previous three albums was put to maximum effect on ‘Highway’. I think of all the Free albums this one seems the best as a complete project. All the sounds of the instruments are rich and full with real depth and warmth. Everything sounds fantastic and Andy Johns did a really extraordinary job recording everything and catching all the different elements and tones here. This album still sounds absolutely great and the production is perfect.

From a listener’s point of view I think the guitar tones here are as good as any ever recorded by anyone. Kossoff may have felt that he wasn’t always allowed to express himself fully in the context of himself as the guitar player, but they weren’t his songs and while he does stamp his voice on them it may not always have been as fully ‘realised’ as he would have liked. I understand what he means when he says he felt ‘constricted’ and ‘squashed’ but it doesn’t mean that his performances aren’t good, or that he felt they weren’t good. An example is perhaps the solo in ‘On My Way’. It works perfectly in the song and it’s a nice piece but it’s more a cartoon of his sound and a photocopy of his style than a fully blown example. Certainly this album was about songs and not about individuals but I think that is its strength and everybody gets to shine on this record.

From a Kossoff standpoint you just can’t go wrong with ‘The Stealer’. The whole track sounds fantastic, from the sweet vibes in the backing of the verse (listen for them) to the great rhythm guitar tone. It’s all so lush. Highlight of the whole thing is Kossoff’s magnificent solo playing and also the exceptional timbre of the guitar. He has a fantastic sound here and he’s really on top form too. Those wailing highs are perfectly executed and the vibrato he adds is just out of this world. I love the version on the album, but it’s the full ‘take’ that really shows he was on fire that day. I can’t think of a better way to spend four and a half minutes. The last 60 seconds are just mind-blowing as he rips into the track with some really special playing and I can remember going across the room at Island’s St. Peters Square studios to fetch my head the first time I heard this as Kossoff just took it clean off at the neck and sent it across the room like a football! I was just blown away by the performance.

Slightly less explosive but equally satisfying is Paul’s sweet and defined solo in ‘The Highway Song’. It may be very simple but its really effective and it truly lifts in the middle of the track. There are some really nice little licks in the backing too. It all sounds pretty straight forward on a casual listen but in fact the more attention you pay to this track the more you get to hear and there are all kinds of things going on behind the vocals. Try it with headphones and listen to how well constructed it is, and how well all the guitar parts fit together. It’s a beautiful piece and comes from what is actually my most played Free album. I think this is a great record.

The highlights on ‘Free Live!’ are much more obvious I suppose. The album was thrown together quickly when the band split initially to fill a gap and Island no doubt saw it as a quick money earner. Tracks are culled from three gigs but it’s really the material from Sunderland that makes it so exciting. It wasn’t an easy show either. The recording gear was held together with elastic bands and sellotape, the audience invaded the stage and knocked equipment all over the place and the engineer spent 30 minutes desperately trying to fix everything while the band had a break. The hall was filled to bursting point with rabid fans, some of whom had been queuing to get in from the early morning to ensure a good spot in the ‘Filmore North’. Free were gods up north, but Sunderland was the zenith of their popularity and we can only be truly thankful that this concert was recorded because it does show exactly how good they were at this time and its much more exciting than the Croydon sets recorded six months later where Kossoff was more reserved, and it has to be said, sloppy! It was his birthday so maybe the celebrations got the better of him. Here he’s at the top of his game and the album is littered with great playing. His all-important tone is superb and a Les Paul through a Marshall has never sounded better than this. Jimmy Page? Don’t make me laugh.

It’s all too easy. ‘The Hunter’ is the definitive version of the song; there just isn’t a better version anywhere, by anyone! When Albert King wrote it he could never have dreamed it would sound like this and I’d love to have known what he thought about it because he surely must have heard it! Kossoff is on fire and all the trademarks of his sound are brazen, the high notes, the screaming trills and the wild vibrato. Its all completely bonkers and heard for the first time by guitarists the usual response is a simple …F*****g Hell! It’s very impressive and it’s very intense. It is nothing like the technical expertise of Eddie Van Halen, or Steve Via or Joe Satriani, it’s from somewhere else entirely, born of pure expression and feeling. It’s from the soul, not book learning and finger dexterity.

My own favourites are the roaring version of ‘I’m A Mover’ where I think Koss really kicks ass on the second and third breaks. They are all simple variations on a theme but each solo builds in intensity. Very cool. ‘Mr Big’ is incredible and I think I’ve told the story of how I used to play this through my Marshall stack as loud as I could stand it while my parents were out! It isn’t just the solo, which in itself is a perfect example of how to build things up and hold the tension but also the way Kossoff works behind Fraser on his solo to wind things up to almost breaking point. At 5.20 when they both push further up the neck together it’s all become so extreme it’s almost unbearable (the word even Paul Rodgers used when I interviewed him) and I can’t think of many examples where the music created by three instruments can bring you so close to having a heart attack! It’s perfect, it’s just absolutely perfect, and it’s LIVE! No tricks, no overdubs NOTHING! Phew!!

As was always the case Free came back with a fifth studio album that was in no way a copy of any of the others, and was completely removed from the sound they had refined on ‘Highway’. The strain of splitting up and then reforming must have been pretty extreme for Andy Fraser and Paul Rodgers, both very ‘driven’ individuals who had broken up the band to pursue their own identities and were now pushed back together in the hope of providing some stability to a flailing Kossoff. Drugs may have been blighting Kossoff’s life and keeping suppressed the emotions he didn’t want to deal with, but given the right context and a guitar he could lay all the pain straight onto tape with candour that is actually rather frightening. ‘Free At Last’ is a very blunt album. The production here is almost experimental, loud tambourines, strange piano tones and all, but there are plenty of thrills, particularly from Kossoff and the guitar drives the majority of the record.

‘Free At Last’ is definitely a step back towards ‘Tons Of Sobs’ in terms of the way Kossoff recorded. Here he is no longer pinned down to short breaks for solos, eight bars here and there or the fade of the track, he’s all over the place and completely rampant over some of the songs. ‘Catch A Train’ is a perfect example as Koss tears it up throughout the song to great effect and working the guitar around the vocal. It’s a fine performance, but a bit of a bugger to play live! His tone here, is middy and guttural and it cuts straight through the backing. I think it’s the Strat personally. Its an exciting performance, feedback and all, and they are some great high bends and pulls down the neck that really add to the exhilaration A fine start to the album..

‘Soldier Boy’ follows a similar recording technique, Rodgers playing the rhythm guitar here I believe, while Koss uses the Leslie Cabinet to great effect floating over the backing like smoke. Again the tone is really nice and he’s accentuating the vocal performance, the guitar likely added when the final vocal was done. Full-blown Leslie solo in the middle and that lovely gurgling sound. Sweet!

The rest of the album follows in a comparable way and Kossoff is great on everything actually. The Leslie tones on ‘Sail On’ are fantastic, and while Richard Digby Smith maintains that this was a pretty tough album to record there’s no hint of that on the finished product and in fact, not having played this album for a while, I was surprised how good it actually sounds. It’s really bright and fresh and Digby did a great job. It also contains what I always think of as Free’s great ‘lost’ track, ‘Little Bit Of Love’. This 2 ½ minutes of musical sunshine was top twenty but never gets played on the radio and seems suffocated under the weight of ‘All Right Now’ and even ‘Wishing Well’. A shame really as it’s a perfect single with a great verse and chorus and a neat little solo brightening the middle. This and ‘The Stealer’ are sadly neglected by the populous in favour of equal but certainly not better songs from the repertoire. I always felt ‘Free At Last’ had a much more ‘progressive’ sound than the other albums, more ‘modern’ if you like, and with interesting arrangements too. It’s stood the test of time really well and it does feature some very strong material.

So, Andy quits and the band plays on. ‘Heartbreaker’ was the final push and if ‘Free At Last’ had been difficult to record Digby must have had a nightmare with this – so much so in fact that eventually Chris Blackwell called in Andy Johns to wrap the album up as the sessions went on and on with no real conclusion in sight. Kossoff was there for some of it, and not for other bits. When he did perform it was breathtaking but everyone got fed up with waiting for him or having him turn up and pass out or fall asleep. Rodgers and Simon played some guitar and Snuffy Walden was called in for the first time to take up the slack. Kossoff quit the band around Christmas, but there’s no saying he wouldn’t have come back as he did go to the shows in Florida to see them struggling with Wendell Richardson. Perhaps his plan was to repair the damage and rejoin after the tour. It’s hard to know for sure.

I know some people don’t consider this a ‘real’ Free album but I’m not one of those. It was really a continuation and only one member had left. It’s not unusual and although the sound of the band changed a bit, and certainly became denser, this may not only be the change in personnel but also the fact that for large parts of the project they had no coherent guitar player! For me parts of this album still impress, and where Kossoff is at his best all the trademarks are there to ensure it sounds like Free, albeit a bit heavier. I think it’s a pretty easy progression from the ‘Last’ album and can anyone deny that ‘Wishing Well’ isn’t great?

The obvious highlight here is ‘Come Together In The Morning’. It’s got a big, almost cathedral type sound, lots of reverb and a ton of depth. Kossoff’s guitar is so squashed and clipped that it sounds unworldly. I’ve never heard another tone anything like this. It is obviously the Strat again and you can hear how responsive it is to every touch. It’s highly microphonic as even moving his fingers to a new position on the fretboard becomes part of the performance, and it’s mesmerising. The guitar on the end section at the fade is almost unbearable, like tortured souls. I can think of almost no other guitar pieces that ‘talk’ like this does. It’s very affecting and right up there with ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Gilmour as one of the most emotional guitar pieces ever recorded.

Kossoff also puts in a strong performance on ‘Heartbreaker’, though he could have been a bit louder in the mix, and I think this is as exciting as anything Free had done previously. The track has mood and a fantastic build, great tension and relief. Rodgers and Rabbit both wrote really well around this point. ‘Seven Angels’ is equally gratifying in performance. It’s a much bigger sound picture than Free had managed previously but not a big jump from ‘FAL’ and things like ‘Guardian’ really. Both Koss and Snuffy feature here but Kossoff’s tone isn’t too hard to identify. It is a shame Paul never got to contribute to ‘Muddy Water’, or ‘Common Mortal Man’ in any significant way, but there is enough guitar here to show that, like with ‘2nd Street’ if Koss had been fit and well the result would have been much more significant.

This overview of Paul’s career basically covers all the major releases and I am aware things are missing. The Jack Dupree album ‘When You Feel The Feeling You Was Feeling’ has good points, ‘Roll On’ in particular, but I do feel its more of interest as Paul’s initial introduction to ‘real’ recording than it is for its guitar performances – good though they are for such a young player. The Martha Velez album should also be mentioned, as Koss really is quite excellent there. The vibe is very ‘Sobsy’ and unrestrained and ‘Swamp Man’ and ‘Come Here Sweet Man’ are particularly good. Other things include material with Black Cat Bones, Mike Vernon, Michael Gately, Ken Hensley and David Elliott but while these have their moments I don’t think Koss was at his best here. Same goes for the Back Street Crawler ‘Croydon’ set as Koss played better shows with them and I don’t play it very often.

The big ones would be the BBC sessions and Songs Of Yesterday. Both are essential and have riveting performances. The BBC set boasts great versions of ‘I’m A Mover’ and ‘Sugar For Mr. Morrison’ from the studio along with a fine ‘Mr. Big’ and ‘Woman’ (1970) from the live segment. Sound quality on some of this is an issue but you can’t have master quality where masters don’t exist. Be glad it still exists at all as so much BBC stuff is lost or erased, like the Nick Drake session.

The 5CD ‘Songs Of Yesterday’ provides a comprehensive alternate history with significantly different versions of almost all the major tracks. From a Kossoff perspective its pretty essential as I made sure anything from Paul that hadn’t been used was included and from that end there’s lots of wonderful guitar performances throughout the set. Particularly worth a mention are the alternate versions of ‘I’ll Be Creepin’ and the full version of ‘Sugar For Mr Morrison’ on disc one. The full-length version of ‘The Stealer’ is a no brainer and the new complete mix of ‘Travellin’ Man’ is pretty exciting, both on disc two. The third disc is a goldmine with not only completely different versions of some ‘Free At Last’ material (‘Soldier Boy’ and ‘Sail On’ are fantastic) but also the original Digby mixes from the ‘Heartbreaker’ sessions that feature Kossoff far more prominently. The Live Disc (4) is particularly impressive I think. Excellent versions of ‘Be My Friend’, ‘Mr. Big’, ‘I’ll Be Creepin’, ‘The Stealer’, ‘I’m A Mover’, ‘Walk In My Shadow’ ‘Songs Of Yesterday’ and ‘Woman’! Blimey! Kossoff’s playing and tone over this disc is just incredible. Listen to that chunky rhythm sound on ‘I’m A Mover’ the combination of his volume and that hollow revolving Sunderland stage give the guitar a sound so close to that of a lorry motor its amazing. Check it out. It’s like some huge monster truck ticking over. Wild! Over twice as long as the original live album and consisting of all alternate and previously unreleased performances this disc alone has got to be worth the price of the whole set. Consider the rest an added bonus along with that rather nice booklet. Performances from that Sunderland show are just unbelievable and it may well be one of the best gigs played by any band EVER!

The final disc from this set features some excellent new looks at the ‘Kossoff Kirke Tetsu Rabbit’ album and it really was an honour to sit with Richard Digby Smith as he re-worked some of that and all the emotions associated with it came flooding back to him. If you love the ‘Koss with Leslie’ sound then this is for you too but really I had this stuff remixed for ME The performances from all four of the players are so strong and bold, and timeless. ‘Fool’s Life’ is on the headphones now, LOUD and I’m just welling up. It’s wonderful. Koss, thank you. Don’t forget to really wind up the volume on that new mix of ‘Hold On’ too, and if that doesn’t make you feel good and move you, your soul is obviously dead. There’s a great performance on ‘Tuesday Williamsburg’ too. There’s enough on this 5CD set to write another complete article!

This has been a tough piece to write. My ‘head’ hasn’t been in the best space recently and it has taken a while to actually force this piece into life, but as I’ve gone on and played the material it’s gotten easier. My admiration for the work of Paul Kossoff is undiminished for all these years of writing about him, and my love of hearing him play still overwhelms me at times. Once I start talking about Koss it is hard to stop and I could easily expound the virtues of pretty much every note if I had to. I can’t defend his weaker moments, nor the fact that had he controlled himself a little more there would be even stronger pieces in the Free and Back Street Crawler catalogues and that he may actually be still alive and recording. Hindsight tells us that had his drug use been stopped early on he may have survived, but its not to say the pressures of life that Paul seemed so unequipped to deal with wouldn’t have simply manifested themselves in some other way. Resolving one problem may have just led to another further down the road. Its sadly inevitable that any writing on Paul comes down to this speculation, but it does. Still, in his short life he did much we can still enjoy and admire, and for the good things he did in his lifetime I am extremely grateful. Paul Kossoff continues to move people with his playing even thirty-five years after his death, and new fans are converted all the time. In some ways he’s actually beaten the fatality of it, and with what he did achieve as a guitar player of extraordinary talent assures his place in the history of musical giants, not because of his early death, but because of his LIFE.

Happy Birthday Paul.

60 years old
September 14, 2010.


This article was written by David Clayton.
It first appeared in FAS #126 in March 2011
© The Free Appreciation Society / David Clayton 2011