“Free Ride” by Edgar Winter Group

"Free Ride" came from the pen of Dan Hartman, and the Edgar Winter Group first put it on They Only Come Out at Night, the 1972 album Rick Derringer produced for them. It sounds like the windows are rolled down, but its history is messier than it lets on.

The album take lists Ronnie Montrose on lead guitar, and Montrose was soon gone: drummer Chuck Ruff later said Montrose and manager Steve Paul simply couldn't get along, and Montrose quit before the band could get round to firing him. So the single that arrived in August 1973 wasn't quite the same record. The mid-song solo has a different tone, and Ruff recalled redoing the track two or three times with Derringer and Jerry Weems. That version climbed to 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, 10 on Cash Box and 8 in Canada.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.