Free – “Mr. Big”

"Mr. Big" - Andy Fraser, Paul Rodgers, Paul Kossoff, and Simon Kirke Copyright 1970 Irving Music, Inc. BMI

In the late 1960’s, a group of London teenagers emerged from the blues-rock underground to form Free, a band that would prioritize emotional weight and groove over flashy speed. Led by the soulful, hyper-masculine vocals of an 18-year-old Paul Rodgers, Free created a sound that felt massive yet remarkably sparse. This episode deconstructs the song “Mr. Big“ from their 1970 breakthrough album, Fire and Water, highlighting the interplay between Paul Kossoff’s legendary guitar vibrato and the melodic counter-melodies of bassist Andy Fraser.

“Mr. Big” (Andy Fraser, Paul Rodgers, Paul Kossoff, and Simon Kirke Copyright 1970 Irving Music, Inc. BMI)

TRANSCRIPT:

All right now, it’s time for another edition of the I’m in Love with that Song podcast. My name is Brad Page, I’m the host of the show, and we’re part of the Pantheon family of podcasts. Each episode of this show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we dive into it together, taking a deeper look at all of the elements—those little details and magical moments that come together to make it a great song.

We don’t get into music theory here; you don’t have to be a musician or musical expert to follow this show. We focus on the arrangements, the performances, and the production that make the song work. It’s easy to get dazzled by a pyrotechnic display of guitar virtuosity, to get swept up in some singer’s vocal gymnastics, or a drum solo that sounds like the drummer must have four arms. Even a bass player can show off now and then. But what’s just as important are the notes not played—the spaces left in the music that let the song breathe.

When it comes to hard rock bands that exemplified that approach, I can think of no one better than Free. Most people know Free only for their one big hit, “All Right Now”, and they were only together for a total of five or six years, but they had a lasting effect. Two of the members would go on to much greater success; two other members would die too soon, one of them tragically young. In this song, Free shows the effectiveness of leaving air and space in the music. And yes, even the bass player gets to show off. This is Free with “Mr. Big”.

In England in the mid-to-late ‘60s, a band called Black Cat Bones was a proving ground where a handful of musicians got their start. Just a few episodes ago, we mentioned how guitarist Rod Price graduated from that band to join Foghat. Two other players who came out of Black Cat Bones were guitarist Paul Kossoff and drummer Simon Kirk.

Kirk was born in 1949 in South London, grew up in the countryside, and returned to London when he was 17 to make it as a drummer. Kirk was never flashy; he was a rock-solid drummer. He was heavy, but always in the pocket.

Paul Kossoff was born in Hampstead in 1950, the son of a well-known actor. After seeing Eric Clapton play with the Bluesbreakers, he knew he had to play electric guitar. But Kossoff focused on the emotional weight of each note; it wasn’t about playing fast. It was about playing the right note at the right time. He developed a distinctive, wide vibrato, a technique that would eventually catch the ear of Clapton himself.

Kirk and Kossoff hit it off, and when they outgrew Black Cat Bones, they set out to form their own band. In 1968, they caught a set by a band called Brown Sugar and were immediately knocked out by their singer, Paul Rogers. Born in Middlesbrough in 1949, Paul Rogers had a voice to be reckoned with—a bluesy, soulful singer with a lot of power. At 18, he had the voice of someone twice his age—a sound that was hyper-masculine but could also be sensitive when needed.

The final piece of the puzzle was introduced to the band by Alexis Corner, one of the founding fathers of British blues. Corner recommended that Kossoff, Kirk, and Rogers check out a young prodigy named Andy Fraser, who, at 15 years old, was already playing bass for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Fraser had a melodic sensibility miles beyond most bass players of the time. He excelled at playing counter-melodies, a syncopated style that fit in perfectly with Kossoff’s guitar style. It was also Alexis Corner who suggested the band call themselves Free.

The band gelled almost immediately. They wrote six new songs during their very first rehearsal. They signed to Island Records and released their first album, Tons of Sobs, in March 1969. They were all still teenagers when that album was released. The album was largely based on their live set and was recorded quickly with a budget of under 800 British pounds. The album featured their first single, “I’m a Mover”, and their cover of Albert King‘s “The Hunter”.

That same year, they released their second album, just called Free. This album focused entirely on original material, with all but one song written by the team of Paul Rogers and Andy Fraser. But it was in 1970 that their third album really broke through. Fire and Water still stands as their creative and commercial peak. It featured their big hit, “All Right Now”, along with the title cut, an absolute classic, and “Mr. Big”.

The album was recorded between January and June of 1970 at Trident Studios and Island Records’ Basing Street Studios in London. The band is credited as producers on the album, but considering it was engineered by Roy Thomas Baker, who would go on to become a legendary producer, I’m sure he had a lot to contribute to the sound of this album. All four band members receive writing credit on the song: Rogers, Kirk, Kossoff, and Fraser. The track is performed by Paul Kossoff on guitar, Simon Kirk on drums, Andy Fraser on bass, and Paul Rogers on vocals.

The song opens with Simon Kirk laying down a simple, straightforward beat. At this point, Paul Kossoff is going to come in with a simple but killer guitar riff that leaves plenty of space, plenty of air for the music to breathe. Notice how the guitar is double-tracked here. Andy Fraser comes in with his bass—such a great bass part. Listen to how his part fills in the spaces left open by the guitar. They are playing in between each other; it’s almost like a coordinated dance between the two instruments. Neither riff is excessively complex, but they combine to make a really interesting part.

And here is where Paul Rogers comes in with the vocal. The vocals are mixed pretty low. The chorus is up next, and if you listen closely, you can hear a bit of piano added to fill out the chorus, probably played by Paul Rogers. Still, musically, this is a pretty stripped-down track.

For the second verse, let’s bring up Paul Rogers’ vocal track. He would become more famous later on, but my favorite of his vocals are all on Free albums. I’ve always thought he was very influenced by Steve Marriott, from Small Faces and Humble Pie, and I think that shows up the most on his work with Free earlier on in his career. Of course, I’m a huge Steve Marriott fan, so I guess it’s not a surprise that I would gravitate to that sound.

Before we move on, let’s go back and listen to the instrumental track for the chorus without the vocals, just to see what the band is doing.

Here, the song shifts into the guitar solo. Paul Kossoff’s solo is overdubbed in the right channel with just the right amount of reverb to sweeten it up. This is pretty classic Kossoff soloing here. He’s not playing flashy; he’s focusing on melody and using feedback and sustain to slowly build the solo up. And that famous Kossoff vibrato is totally on display. Let’s bring up the guitars for this section.

Here’s the point where Paul Kossoff settles back into some chordal figures and arpeggios, while Andy Fraser steps forward and we get to hear some killer bass playing. There’s a very distinctive sound to Andy’s bass, and a big part of that is due to the type of bass that he’s playing. For most of his time in Free, Andy played a Gibson EB-3 bass. The EB-3 is a short-scale bass with a big, fat pickup in the neck position, affectionately known as the “mudbucker” pickup. These unique characteristics led to its distinctive tone. For more discussion on the bass guitar, listen back to episode 200 of this podcast, which was dedicated to the history of the electric bass, and we touch on the EB-3 in that conversation. Or, you can just continue to listen here as Andy Fraser gives us a masterclass on the EB-3.

Along with Andy’s bass, there are three guitar parts panned left, right, and center, and I’m pretty sure I hear a piano in there, too, just popping out occasionally. Let’s push Andy’s bass up in the mix. Let’s bring the band back up.

Kossoff’s going to overdub some additional guitar licks. And now they’re going to break into one final chorus.

“Mr. Big” by Free. This album was a hit, and Free headlined the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, playing to almost 700,000 attendees. Seemed like they were on their way to being superstars. But their follow-up album, Highway, was a mellower affair and it didn’t sell as well, adding to the friction within the band. The musical partnership of Fraser and Rogers was beginning to fray, and Kossoff had a drug problem that was spiraling out of control.

The band split and issued a live album called Free Live! in 1971 as kind of a farewell to the fans. That album features a killer version of “Mr. Big”; many people consider that to be the definitive version, though I wanted to focus on the studio version here. And I still think I prefer the studio version just for the recording quality. But you can’t go wrong with either version, really.

After that live album, some solo projects were pursued in 1971, but none of them made much of an impact. They decided to get the band back together in 1972, as much to try to save Kossoff from his addictions as anything else, and they released an album called Free at Last. There are a few stellar moments on that record, but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Fire and Water.

Unfortunately, Kossoff wasn’t able to hold it together. The tour was a mess, and Andy Fraser left again, this time for good. The band brought in bassist Tetsu Yamauchi and keyboardist Rabbit Bundrick as replacements and soldiered on with one more album, Heartbreaker, released in 1973. That album features “Wishing Well”, one of the band’s best tracks ever, and that was a hit. But it was too little, too late. The band called it quits for good.

Paul Rogers and Simon Kirk founded Bad Company and went on to much greater success—bigger hits, sold more records. But for my money, Rogers never sang better than he did with Free. Paul Kossoff spiraled deeper. He released a solo album, Back Street Crawler, which I like quite a bit, and then he started a band with that same name, Back Street Crawler, that released two albums. And he was still in demand as a session guitarist, playing on a number of projects. But the drugs had taken over. He was unreliable and his health was in bad shape. On March 19, 1976, on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, he died on the plane from a pulmonary embolism. He was only 25 years old. I maintain that he could have been one of the greatest guitarists of his generation if he had lived, but it just wasn’t to be.

After leaving Free, Andy Fraser tried to get a few bands off the ground and released some albums, but nothing caught on. He moved to Los Angeles and focused on songwriting. His biggest success as a songwriter was writing “Every Kinda People”; that was a hit for Robert Palmer in 1978. Fraser came out as gay, one of the few rock stars of his generation to do so at that time, and it was revealed that he had HIV. He died from a heart attack in March of 2015. Fraser thought of himself as an all-around musician rather than a bass player, but his distinctive voice as a bassist left a mark on the instrument and has continued to influence players right up until today.

Thanks for joining me here on the Pantheon Podcast Network for this edition of the I’m in Love with that Song podcast. New episodes of this show come out on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so I’ll meet you back here in about 15 days. And if you can’t wait that long, you can find over 200 of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com.

This show has no corporate sponsor, no one’s funding this show, there’s no production team, no editor, no producer. It’s just me, doing my thing on my own. It’s a truly independent show. So, if you’d like to support this podcast, you can always go to oldglory.com and buy a t-shirt and use our discount code, “lovethatsong”, to save a few bucks. But more importantly, the best thing you can do is to tell people about the show. Share it with your friends, your family, and fellow music lovers. Anything you can do to spread the word about the show and help us gain new listeners, I really appreciate that. Follow us on Facebook, send an email to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com, and post a review wherever you listen to this show. Until we meet again, go seek out some old Free records and crank ‘em up.

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