Paul Rodgers Interview Part One
DAVE: The Free Story has some
interesting stuff on it.
The Free Story has some
interesting stuff on it.
PAUL: What number of the Free Story have you got? What number of the Free Story have you got?
DAVE: It’s in the A’s, it’s…
PAUL: Wow! I’ve got A00002
DAVE: Well, hell, take a look at this puppy… [Showing him the Kossoff picture disc, Mr. Big / Blue Soul]
PAUL: Ah! Number 29! Not bad. Ah! Number 29! Not bad.
DAVE: It’s one Johnny put out.
PAUL: Johnny? Johnny?
DAVE: Yeah, Glover Yeah, Glover
CYNTHIA: You’ve never even seen that, have you?
PAUL: No, I haven’t, actually.
CYNTHIA: I wonder if that was supposed to ever be released. Johnny Glover did that? I wonder if that was supposed to ever be released. Johnny Glover did that?
DAVE: I’m not sure it ever came out. I’ve heard
talk that it had. In fact, it’s on the discography listed in here [the Kossoff Blue
Soul cd liner notes.]. Dubious nature.
PAUL: So much stuff… Well, you know…
DAVE: All you can wonder about is ‘where the hell did all the royalties go’?
PAUL: Yeah, well you can’t help wondering. Somebody gets them.
CYNTHIA: The record companies usually get taken care of. They make sure that they do fine. The record companies usually get taken care of. They make sure that they do fine.
DAVE: Oh yeah, they own the product. CDs are released fifteen different times before you get to one made from an original master, if you ever do. Oh yeah, they own the product. CDs are released fifteen different times before you get to one made from an original master, if you ever do.
CYNTHIA: [Referring to the photos in the Free Story album gatefold] Funny, huh? [Referring to the photos in the Free Story album gatefold] Funny, huh?
PAUL: Yeah. Touch of the Sixties, huh? [Finding a photo I
took of Ronnie Lane in 1983] Oh, Ronnie Lane…
DAVE: That’s a shot taken right before the ARMS tour.
PAUL: [To Kristi] Your hair’s a different color
DAVE: That’s Boo.
PAUL: [To Kristi] That is you isn’t it?
DAVE: No, that’s [Lane’s girlfriend] Boo.
PAUL: Oh, it looks like you. Doesn’t that look like her? Or is it me, I’m losin’ my mind?
PAUL: Who is it? Who is it?
DAVE: Barbara Oldfield, the girl that set up the A.R.M.S. tour with Glyn Johns. Barbara Oldfield, the girl that set up the A.R.M.S. tour with Glyn Johns.
PAUL: Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes... Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...
DAVE: I don’t know if she actually showed up on the tour or not. But that was Ronnie right before the A.R.M.S. tour of America. Right after the Royal Albert Hall.
PAUL: Right. Yeah, I didn’t do the Albert Hall one.
CYNTHIA: [Looking through the chord book for Bad Company’s Burning Sky] That’s a beautiful shot. Is that you?
PAUL: Yeah, still got that guitar. Look, there’s some of our guitars, huh?
DAVE: Is that you in the back corner there with the…
PAUL: Yeah, that’s me. That’s definitely me.
DAVE: Had to be with the hair. Had to be with the hair.
PAUL: And with the trousers [laughter] Okay, all right, enough! And with the trousers [laughter] Okay, all right, enough!
DAVE: So, this album, Now, was actually
recorded in late ’96, and then released in January of ’97. Correct?
PAUL: Yes that would be about right, yeah. Yes that would be about right, yeah.
DAVE: Was that recorded in Canada? Was that recorded in Canada?
PAUL: No, the Now album was recorded in England. I rehearsed at Stanbridges, which is a rehearsal place just down from Brighton. We recorded it in Hastings, at the studio there. No, the Now album was recorded in England. I rehearsed at Stanbridges, which is a rehearsal place just down from Brighton. We recorded it in Hastings, at the studio there.
DAVE: How did you get the band together? I understand you’d been with that lineup for about eighteen months before you cut the album.
PAUL: Yes, I had. The lineup of the band is Geoff Whitehorn, Jaz Lochrie, and Jim Copley. Geoff’s on guitar, Jaz Lochrie’s on bass, and Jim Copley on the drums. I got the guys together with the help of my manager in the UK, Steve Croxford. I’d done some session work with Geoff Whitehorn before, and thought he was really good. He picks up very well, and he’s got a lot of different styles going for him. He can play anything, from blues to soul to rock, a very versatile guitar player. I was very impressed with his playing. I put him together with the rhythm section of Jaz and Jim-- they’d worked together before with a guy called Chai, a Japanese guitar player, and they were also in a band called Go West together... They’ve done a lot of things together, so they...
DAVE: They were also in Killing Joke for a short time, weren’t they?
PAUL: I believe so. They lock together pretty good. They worked as a rhythm section. And they, too, are pretty versatile. It was very cool to do the blues, because Jim is a very, very competent drummer. He’s really great with different styles. He’s got the touch for blues and things like that... The dynamics of the blues they had down really well. We went out and we toured all over the world: Russia, Japan, all over Europe, Canada too, mostly playing a mixture of blues and the Free and Bad Company material, whatever came to mind. We ended up with a huge repertoire of material. We could play for just about six hours straight, there was so much material.
It was good for me, as well, because I could chop and change
whichever direction I wanted to go. For instance, we did six days at Ronnie Scott’s,
two shows a day. We played a lot. We did a lot of blues, really focused on the blues most
of the time. Then I’d throw "Wishing Well" or "All
Right Now" or something like that in there. It was good to be able to do
that. 
I had a lot of songs on the boil, and I worked them up, and we worked on the material as we were traveling. We [did it] on the bus and on planes, at airports and things like that. There’s a lot of time when you’re traveling, as you probably know, [that we call] "down time" when you’re just crazy to do something. You’re sitting at an airport, waiting for a plane or something, so I’d get the guitars out and sit in there and work on the material. We would put a hat down. We actually made quite a lot of money that way, as well. [Laughter]
DAVE: Back to busking again, eh? Back to busking again, eh?
PAUL: While we were making the songs. It financed the album, you know. While we were making the songs. It financed the album, you know.
I have a difficult problem because, if you’re not very careful, you can find the album is out on bootleg before you’ve even gone in the studio and recorded it, you see. So I had that to contend with, but I would play some of the new material occasionally. I did two shows in Victoria, and we tried Heart of Fire one night and Nights Like This the next night. We just slipped it into the set to see how the audience reacted, and also to give the band a feel for the song. Playing it live gives it a different feel, as opposed to just playing it and rehearsing it and rehearsing it. When you play it in front of a bunch of people, in front of an audience, something else happens to the song. It locks a bit better.
Having done that, I thought, "Well, it would be nice to have played all of the songs in front of an audience before we go into the studio". So, right in the middle of rehearsals, we put a couple of club dates in London-- a club called the Borderline, right in Soho there-- and we did a couple of shows. I played half the album one night and half the album the next night. So, it gave us a good edge on the material. Then we finished rehearsing, went in the studio, and pretty much laid them down. I always try to get a live kind of feel, but in studio conditions so that everything’s pristine and nicely recorded, you know. I’ve done this with Free and Bad Company, and with the solo album. And that was the aim with the Now album, to capture the spark of the song...
DAVE: It does sound like it was primarily cut live, with as
little overdubbing as possible.
It does sound like it was primarily cut live, with as
little overdubbing as possible.
PAUL: Yes. Yes.
DAVE: It’s not like one of those mix-down albums where you can tell it’s just layer upon layer of takes.
PAUL: Yeah. Well, there are a lot of albums that are made like that, and they’re layered and it’s all very perfect and pristine, etc., but it can lack the feel. Some of the best albums in the world have been [cut live in the studio.] A couple of the Traffic songs, "Mr. Fantasy" if I remember rightly, was actually recorded with one mike. The band was playing, and there’s just this natural balance there, you know. You want to achieve that, anyway. We have so many roundabout ways of achieving the same effect, and what can get lost in the process is the feel of the [song]. It’s very simple, really.
DAVE: My understanding is that, around this time, you also kind of cleared the tax problems you were having in the UK. So is this more like 1976 again, where this is a tax year away from England? My understanding is that, around this time, you also kind of cleared the tax problems you were having in the UK. So is this more like 1976 again, where this is a tax year away from England?
PAUL: Well... Well...
DAVE: Like when you spent that time in France in ‘76.
PAUL: Yeah, we did. We were advised... Well, we were paying at that time 96% or some ridiculous amount. I think it was 86%, which means that for every dollar you earn you pay 86 cents to tax. It gets ridiculous, really. And, though we were earning a lot of money, it was ridiculous to just basically pour it down the toilet and flush it, you know. So we did do a tax year to try and hold on to some of it. Yeah, we did that, and I’m actually doing that again, to be honest. Yeah.
DAVE: So that’s where the hub of Canada has come in? Is that when you first decided to go up to Canada...
PAUL: Yeah, partly, partly. But, I met a wonderful lady as well, so I’m spending time with her, which I would be doing anyway. I can’t remember her name, but... [Laughter] No, bless her... My Cynthia...
Yeah, so I’m spending a lot of time in Canada and sort of dashing into America and making raids on the clubs and theaters.
DAVE: Guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare.
PAUL: Yeah! [Laughter] And it’s good, it’s fun.
DAVE: How long do you plan to extend the tour? How long do you plan to extend the tour?
PAUL: Well, all of this summer and right through Christmas. Well, all of this summer and right through Christmas.
I have been talking with the other boys in Bad Company and the record company. They would like us to do a box set, so we may do a very short tour in connection with that sometime next year. That’s what we’re talking about doing. But, my main emphasis is my solo efforts, because I feel a lot more freedom when I work solo, you know, and have my own band. That’s a long and complicated thing to get into, but...
DAVE: That seems, primarily, what the initial breakup of Free was... That seems, primarily, what the initial breakup of Free was...
PAUL: Well, yeah… Okay… To cut a long story short, ‘yes’.
I find that in the bands that I’ve been with I’ve always
kept [their material separated]. Free did Free material, and when I moved on and formed
Bad Company, the focus was a new band and new material so, pretty much, we
didn’t do any Free material. [Bad Company] weren’t going out and doing "All
Right Now". Ever. We never, ever performed "All Right Now"
as Bad Company. We did do "The Stealer" as a one-off thing at some
point. But, basically, each band was an entity unto itself. And, in going solo, I can mix
and match the whole thing. I can get material that I wrote with Free or with Bad Company
or the blues or the new stuff, and I like it like that. It [gives me more freedom].
DAVE: I noticed in the Eighties, after the Cut Loose album... You were the primary writer with the Firm with Jimmy [Page], or at least you did the lion’s share of it. Then you backed away from writing during the Law period, and then did cover tracks...
PAUL: Yeah. You go through phases in your life. I had been one of the chief writers in every band that I’d been with, and after the Firm I think I had all sorts of weird ideas about backing off from writing.
Kenney Jones and I put the Law together. We met at a club and we were having a few drinks, cuz I drank in those days, which I don’t do anymore... And we got in this rap, and I was [telling Kenney] that I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go, you know. I could go do a rock thing, or do a blues thing, or I could do a soul thing. So we concocted this idea where he’d be the drummer, and I’d be the singer, and then we’d interchange musicians... You’ve heard this story, have you?
DAVE: Actually, somewhere around here is the promo interview
disc... Actually, somewhere around here is the promo interview
disc...
PAUL: Yeah, okay... [Laughter] Yeah, okay... [Laughter]
Well, the record company never really understood that, and I don’t know whether it was ever going to work, but we tried it. Actually, we put quite a good band together, the Law itself, with…
DAVE: Pino Palladino. Pino Palladino.
PAUL: John Staehely, and George, the bass player. I’ve forgotten his second name just now.
DAVE: George Hawkins, Jr. George Hawkins, Jr.
PAUL: Hawkins! That’s him! That’s the man. And it was actually a pretty good band, I thought. We put an album together. It was weird, actually, because the record company, bless them in their wisdom, kept saying to me: "Yes, we love it! We love it." All the way down the line, you know. We had all these demos done, we had all these songs, and I wasn’t writing too many songs because, for some reason, I decided not to be the writer on this and to just to get songs in from other people. It was interesting, actually, because I found that there wasn’t many about. It’s very hard to find good songs, which is why, eventually, I went back into writing them myself… for a number of reasons.
We put an album together, and it was pretty cool, I thought. Then [the label] turned around and said, "well, no, we don’t like it anymore." You know, we’d done this album! Months in the studio! "No, we don’t like it. We want you to do something else" and this and that, and "we want you to get a producer, and we want this and we want that..." It was a long, convoluted and boring series of events in my life.
But we ended up, I think, with a pretty good album. But it wasn’t the album I had intended to make, you know, and I didn’t use my method of recording which is, as I said before, to rehearse the band until they know exactly what they’re doing, and then go in the studio. You set everything up so that you’ve got a beautiful sound, and then capture the spark. We actually did end up layering things, and I was like, "Oh, God, this is not quite what I want". That’s why the Law didn’t really do anything more.
DAVE: It didn’t seem like it was a clash of personalities or anything, it was just a one-off.
PAUL: We tried, you know. We went out their and tried something different, Kenney and I, but I don’t think the world was ready for it! [Laughter]
DAVE: In ‘88, you’d done the Atlantic Otis Redding bit, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay", at Madison Square Gardens, and you started to get more into cover tunes. Was Muddy actually that major an influence on you, because you [grew up] way up there in the middle of nowhere, BFE. You don’t get hold of old Muddy Waters albums up there.
PAUL: Oh, yeah, I had and still have a blues collection. There was a big blues boom in England... Oh, yeah, I had and still have a blues collection. There was a big blues boom in England...
DAVE: Sure... Sure...
PAUL: It was blues and soul, actually. There was a period of time when just everybody was playing blues, just before the time that I came down to London. In fact, Free was a blues band when we first started. That’s all we played, flat out. I had just started out writing songs when we all met up, and we were just a total blues band. I introduced a couple of songs, I think "Walk In My Shadow", and then Kossoff asked if I’d write lyrics to what became "Moonshine". We just gradually got into writing. I remember one day sitting down with the guys and saying, "it seems to me that the successful bands out there are the ones that are writing their own material, and they’re not doing covers." If you looked around at the time, it was Cream, Hendrix, Jethro Tull, and what made them unique was the fact that they wrote their own songs. I said we should concentrate on writing songs, and look towards a time when we would play only our own songs. It was a turning point for us, and we went off in that direction.
I came to a point around about the time I did the blues album where I really missed the blues. I mean, there was a direction we went off in, and it was good, and we wrote all these great hits, I suppose, which have become "classic rock". But I also missed the blues. Having tried the Firm, and that was that, and the Law, and that was that, I was sitting at home thinking, "well, what next?"
[That’s] when I got a call from an old associate of mine who had become part of this new record company, Victory, and he asked if I wanted to do a blues album? And, straightaway I said, "yes! Yes! That’s a great idea." And that developed into it’s own thing, because I didn’t say: "Let’s get as many star guitar players as we can and put them all on this album." It just fell into place, that.
First of all, we put the band together, which was Jason [Bonham] and
the guys and, as we were laying the tracks down, it occurred to the producer and I…
we sat there thinking: "Well, you know, Slash would be great on this". We
started just daydreaming and making a list of who would be great on what track, you know.
It read ridiculously. It read like the credits on the album! And I said, "You know
what, I can actually get in touch with Brian May. I could call him and ask him." One
way and another, between us all, we could actually contact all these people. So we did.
All they could say was ‘no’. It was very exciting, actually. What’s the guy
from Yes? 
DAVE: Guitar player? Guitar player?
PAUL: Yeah. Yeah.
DAVE: Oh, Trevor. Trevor Rabin. Oh, Trevor. Trevor Rabin.
PAUL: Trevor. Trevor, I think, was the first to come and say "yes". It was like, "well, all right! That’s pretty cool!" And then David Gilmour said ‘yes’, and then people started to roll in. We started to fill the gaps in the list. Everybody said ‘yes’, and it was an amazing experience.