Artist · chart history
Free
Band London United Kingdom Active 1968–1973 60s/70s UK blues rock group
Free formed in 1968 in London, United Kingdom and was active until 1973. Free has 95 chart appearances on 94 radio countdowns from 33 stations on RockLists, spanning 1976–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “All Right Now”, which appears on 92 lists with a best position of #6. The station that charted Free most often is 97 Rock (Buffalo, NY), with 9 appearances.
Free came together in London in 1968, four young bloods with the blues in their bones: Paul Rodgers singing like a man twice his age, Paul Kossoff squeezing notes out of his guitar until they cried, Andy Fraser on bass and keyboards, and Simon Kirke on drums. They played live constantly, and on stage they're a thing of wonder, but for a while nobody was buying the records.
That changed with their third album, Fire and Water, and "All Right Now", the most stripped-down, strutting hard rock single you'll ever hear: a few chords, a lot of space, and Fraser's bass doing the talking in the gaps. It got them onto the bill at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, playing to a sea of people, and turned them into one of Britain's biggest-selling blues rock acts. "Wishing Well" is the other one people remember.
It didn't hold. Fraser quit in 1972 to form Sharks, John "Rabbit" Bundrick and Tetsu Yamauchi passed through, and after one more album, Heartbreaker, Free called it a day in 1973. Rodgers and Kirke went off and started Bad Company. Kossoff formed Back Street Crawler but died of a pulmonary embolism in 1976, just 25 years old.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Free on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All Right Now#212 of all time | 92 | #6 | – | – | |
| 2 | Wishing Well | 1 | #136 | – | – | |
| 3 | Woman | 1 | #619 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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