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.

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.'

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.

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.

There is magic on earth.

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.

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.

Free - I miss that band, but when I look back, we were very young.

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.

My mother said I used to dance to all this radio music when I was a young kid.

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.

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.