Andy Fraser / July 3, 1952 - March 16, 2015

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'