“Live music is where you get the inspiration and the creativity.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I just try to keep an open mind, and that’s the way a lot of good things happen.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I got the idea of meditation from The Beatles. It was a fad, but I’ve found it beneficial in my crazy life.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I had a band when I was 14, and we would play around in my hometown of Middlesbrough, and we’d go to the club afterwards, which was the Purple Onion then. There would be live bands playing, and in between that, the DJ would be playing records.”
― Paul Rodgers
“The first record I bought was actually Booker T and the MG’s ‘Red Beans and Rice.’”
― Paul Rodgers
“I tend to want to form bands and then create new music within them. Queen was an exception, and we joined forces because it just seemed to work when we played together.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I have a lot of analog. I think a lot of people do. There are a lot of people that are re-discovering it. I still have a lot of my old records from back in the day. It’s a joy to play things like Junior Wells’ ‘Hoodoo Man Blues,’ and John Mayall & The Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. There’s a warmth that you can still feel.”
― Paul Rodgers
“With Free, we were teenagers, and, ummm, there was a lot of raging hormones.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Nobody should attempt to do Freddie Mercury impressions.”
― Paul Rodgers
“’Shooting Star’ started out as the arrangement on the record, and it’s developed into a real audience-participation song, just from playing it.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Only Freddie Mercury could do Freddie Mercury. He was absolutely brilliant – I loved him to pieces, and I had a great deal of respect for him.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I was in my teen years and in my 20s and even 60s, it was okay to drop everything and disappear and become a road warrior for all those months. But after a while you get… y’know, one likes to have some home life.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I’m a big fan of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.”
― Paul Rodgers
“One of my dreams was always to have a piano – a room with a piano overlooking the ocean or a lake.”
― Paul Rodgers
“If you look at my history, my history is that of forming bands rather than joining them.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Horses are such a powerful part of human development and have been since the early ages. We humans owe them so much.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I loved the ‘Free Spirit’ tour and the guys who helped create the magic: Pete Bullick, Rich Newman, Ian Rowley and Gerard ‘G’ Louis.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Without music in schools’ curriculum, there is a void for young people to express, explore, and experience music.”
― Paul Rodgers
“If not for music in my life as a young person, who knows where I would have focused my energy.”
― Paul Rodgers
“There is magic on earth.”
― Paul Rodgers
“One overindulges when you’re younger, and you pay the price in later years. But I always realized how important it was for me to take care of myself and my voice if I was gonna have a voice when I was older.”
― Paul Rodgers
“With any band, there’s two sides – there’s the image, and there’s the music.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I play solo, that’s when I put it all together. I go through all of the songs that I’ve written wtih all of the different bands; that, for me, tells its own story, and the DVDs really enforce that.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I was 14, I heard Otis Redding in a club local to me, and I was blown away. It leaped out at me and went straight to my heart. I set my sights on singing like that.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I got the idea of what a band should be from listening to Booker T and Otis Redding.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I think it is tiring to listen to digital music for too long.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I left Free back in 1972, I didn’t play ‘All Right Now’ until about 1996, when I was touring with Jason Bonham, and we were supporting the tribute record we had done to Muddy Waters.”
― Paul Rodgers
“As a performer, the thing that I love is to see people come together.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I love it when people come from all over the place in separate vehicles, and they all come to this venue and become one energy. When that happens, it’s a very magical thing. I think that helps the world go around, and it’s what we do as performers – bring people together.”
― Paul Rodgers
“With Free, we had phased out all of the blues material and wanted to phase in all original material, and the only song that stayed from our blues past was ‘The Hunter’ by Albert King. People just loved that. And I said, ‘We have to write a song that will top that – otherwise, what are we doing here?’ That was the birth of ‘All Right Now.’”
― Paul Rodgers
“I always think the audience should be part of the show.”
― Paul Rodgers
“The one thing I loved about blues and soul was the way they taught the world how to express such deep feelings.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I was brought up in a fairly emotionally repressed kind of society in Northeast England where one didn’t express emotions and was expected to keep a stiff upper lip.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I’ve always been a Jeff Beck fan. Who isn’t? He is in a league of his own.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Ann Wilson has an amazing voice and is a brilliant songwriter.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it’s true.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I toured with Lynyrd Skynyrd as a solo artist, many years ago. I love those guys.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I’ve been influenced by so many great people , like Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, so many great blues and soul artists that I completely revere. So it’s strange for me, actually, to hear somebody say, ‘Oh, I was deeply influenced by your music.’”
― Paul Rodgers
“Every day, every time I sing, I feel blessed, really, to be able to do that. It’s like having wings, in a way. It’s a bit like flying sometimes, because you go off into another realm. And a whole lot of people come with you. It’s amazing.”
― Paul Rodgers
“A song isn’t finished until it’s played live, and then it moves on.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I carry my own tea, food, and Tabasco on the plane with me.”
― Paul Rodgers
“In order to write music, you need lots of Tabasco sauce.”
― Paul Rodgers
“One doesn’t have to sit through exams and go to universities to play rock n’ roll.”
― Paul Rodgers
“’That’s How Strong My Love Is’ carries a message that resonates with the broken-hearted, and most of us have been there.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Being in a band is all-consuming, and I like to have a life.”
― Paul Rodgers
“After leaving Queen, I decided to stop doing those mega-four-month tours. I go out for a month, and my dog recognizes me when I come home.”
― Paul Rodgers
“We come from a generation where the music was very innovative, a lot of it coming out of blues and influenced by blues: the idea was that you would jam on things, and you’d try things out. You took a journey, and you took a left turn, and you experimented live right there in the moment.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When you can touch the spirit, whatever that is, and when you can feel the love, and you can feel the song is cooking and it’s in the pocket, you know, everybody knows that’s the one that’s grooving.”
― Paul Rodgers
“There’s a lot of trickery that can go on in the studio, and there’s a lot that one can do – none of which I am interested in even slightly. I mean, you can actually tune vocals and stuff like that, but it’s so hideous, I can’t believe it.”
― Paul Rodgers
“You go through periods of times where bands are calling the shots, and then sometimes, you’ve got the record companies calling the shots. I think it has to be a bit of both to make the thing work.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I am proud to be a Canuck.”
― Paul Rodgers
“You’ve had all that punk and New Wave thing, and I think people have really got sick up to here with it. I know I have.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Of course I was a fan when I was a kid. That’s what made me get into it, the whole rock n’ roll fantasy.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Life is so mundane, isn’t it? It’s great to hear a guitarist getting into it and the rhythmic section blasting, even if it’s all meaningless.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Artists like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Ann Peebles, Isaac Hayes, and so many more gave me hope when I was an angst-filled teenager trying to make sense of it all… They were my teachers. Through their music, I learned how to live, how to be true to myself, and how to tell my story as a songwriter the way that I was feeling it.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Otis Redding, his voice, there was something spiritual and unworldly and at the same time, very deeply connected with the human connection and the way one feels about life in general, love, life, and everything, really.”
― Paul Rodgers
“There were personality clashes in Free, really. I think it’s as simple as that; I think we felt we weren’t leaving each other enough room to develop in our own way, and we were restricting each other. So we said, let’s go different ways.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I don’t like lyrics to be overbearing. I like them to say something. But I’m not trying to change the world overnight. Something simple and understandable that people can relate their own everyday experiences to.”
― Paul Rodgers
“A song like ‘Shooting Star’ – the thought process behind writing that song was that I looked around and thought, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of people dying at that time in the music business.’”
― Paul Rodgers
“I didn’t really like the ’80s, to be honest with you. There was some good music that came out, but it went a bit disco for me.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I got the idea for the song ‘Bad Company’ when I saw a poster for the Jeff Bridges movie, and it reminded of an old Victorian picture that I’d once seen, and it said, ‘Beware of bad company.’ So I sat down at the piano and started to write the song.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I first started writing songs, I looked around at the bands that were making it, and they all had the original material. Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Stones – everybody was writing their own songs. That’s the way that you established your own identity.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Once I’d become a songwriter, it just stays with you. You always want to write more songs because it’s such a great feeling.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I honestly have really deep reservations about releasing everything you ever did. Every time somebody farted in the studio, now it’s out there.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Free – I miss that band, but when I look back, we were very young.”
― Paul Rodgers
“The Skynyrds and I go back to the ’70s and the days and nights at the Hyatt House on Sunset in L.A., aka the Riot House.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I met Paul Kossoff for the first time when I was playing in the back of a pub room in Finsbury Park in London in 1967. It was kind of a blues thing going on, and he came up and said, ‘I’d like to have a jam.’ So he came up and jammed with me, and I just loved his playing right from the start.”
― Paul Rodgers
“There are just so many people making music out there. I’ve always promoted the idea that everybody needs to make music. I think the more music there is in the world, the better, but it does make it highly competitive.”
― Paul Rodgers
“A lot of those early blues records and soul records were pretty much live. It was what it was, and they had goofs and mistakes, but it still kept its charm. We have to remember to keep the feel. It’s so important.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I was 17, and it was my first summer in London as a professional singer. One hot, humid evening, I heard that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was playing in a blues club above a pub in Finsbury Park. I was flat broke and couldn’t afford a ticket, so I went along just to stand outside and listen.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I get a bit quick-tempered sometimes.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I have a secret weapon. My wife Cynthia is very good at keeping me in shape. She’s very good for me. She’s the best thing that happened to me.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When I went down to London in ’67, I had three things in mind: To survive, to find peace of mind, and to make music doing it.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When Free came together, there was a creative magic around us, something unique and different.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I like following whatever’s right for me at any given time. I could have stayed with Free for 40 years, but it becomes a corporate entity after a while, and once I become locked into it and governed by it and am expected to do a certain thing all of the time, I tend to want to move on.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Free got famous fast, and it was a shock. You’re working towards it, and when you suddenly get it with bells on, it is a bit much. I don’t know how well I dealt with it.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I still love ‘All Right Now,’ strangely enough. But then that’s probably because I didn’t play it for some twenty years.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I didn’t ‘join’ Queen. We played together and found a strong connection, did a TV show, and carried on – then I suddenly realised I’d been with these guys for four years. If I’d been called up and asked to join, I would have said no.”
― Paul Rodgers
“’When I’m Sixty-Four’ hasn’t worn well, but George Harrison’s ‘Within You Without You’ is awesome.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Soul and blues were a definite influence on me. It was raw and naked emotion which you didn’t get much where I come from.”
― Paul Rodgers
“My mother said I used to dance to all this radio music when I was a young kid.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I just sort of grew up with music always in the background like a soundtrack. And it really hit me hard when The Beatles came along, like so many people. That got me started digging back further to Chuck Berry.”
― Paul Rodgers
“The thing about simplicity is it’s not easy to achieve. To many, simplicity can mean repetitiveness and maybe even a lack of intelligence, those kind of things, but simple yet unique is the key.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I come from a working-class family of seven children.”
― Paul Rodgers
“My dad worked on the Middlesbrough docks.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I was conscious of vocalists from an early age.”
― Paul Rodgers
“It’s important to me to be able to hit the notes and just be able to fly when I sing.”
― Paul Rodgers
“There are so many challenges and different parts to the job of singing. When you’re in the studio, you have to be really, really, precise. You’ve got to keep everything clean and nice because that’s going to be something that’s down forever. And then you go onstage, and it’s much more in the moment.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I look at John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, guys who had a fantastic longevity, and I learned something from them. They didn’t try to sell records. They weren’t saying, ‘Ok, what can I write, what can I do in the studio that will sell?’ They were just doing their thing, and people picked up on it. I like the idea of that.”
― Paul Rodgers
“The simpler the message, the broader the meaning, in many respects. I think about a song like Free’s ‘All Right Now,’ which I’m often asked about. It’s that sort of song.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I enjoyed playing with the guys in Free Spirit so much because they really dug into Free material, and I really liked how they expressed it. They have a lot of dynamics.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Blues is such a dynamic and ever-changing system of music.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I liked the 12-bar blues because everybody could play it, but they could also play it their own way, and they could express their own emotions using that as a structure.”
― Paul Rodgers
“Music takes me where I go. I’m always open to wherever the journey will take me.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I saw The Jeff Beck Group at the Marquee Club in 1967, when he was with Rod Stewart, and holy smokes, they were amazing.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I look back on the early days of Free with Paul Kossoff with the most fondness of any of my bands, because I met him at a time when I was in London and very hungry, and we believed in each other.”
― Paul Rodgers
“I like to be in control of my own destiny.”
― Paul Rodgers
“In Free, we managed ourselves, and it was too tough for us to handle all of what that entailed when we got to touring America.”
― Paul Rodgers
“When we formed Bad Company, I looked around and asked, ‘Who is the biggest rock band in the world?’ The answer was undoubtedly Led Zeppelin. Peter Grant was their manager, so we got him to work with us. That made the difference for Bad Company.”
― Paul Rodgers
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