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Articles > Queen + Paul Rodgers Articles > 09-18-2008 - The Northern Echo (Darlington, England) - Paul Rodgers interview
All Right Now
by Andy Welch
This is the real thing, it's not just fantasy. . . Paul Rodgers talks to Andy Welch about recording as a member of Queen.
For Paul Rodgers, singing in 1970s super-group Free just wasn't enough.
After the band's demise in 1973, three years after their biggest hit, All Right Now, the Middlesbrough-born vocalist went on to form another charttopping band, Bad Company.
Along with former Free drummer Simon Kirke, Mott The Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell, the band released a string of international hit albums, while singles such as Can't Get Enough and Feel Like Making Love - a No 1 hit in the US - can still be heard on the radio to this day.
The rest of the 1980s saw Rodgers kick-start a successful solo career and team up with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page in The Firm. He might have earned a break from music by the time the 90s rolled around, but he got involved in another band, The Law, and jammed with the world's best-known rock musicians for one off concerts and musical tributes.
Now, he's lending his world-famous voice to another band, the Queen + Paul Rodgers, and touring the world including the MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, on November 4. This week they released an album of new material, The Cosmos Rocks.
During their illustrious career, Queen were one of the biggest bands in the world, largely thanks to largerthan-life frontman Freddie Mercury.
Rodgers, however, is known for his bluesy vocals, and, during his time with Free and Bad Company especially, famous for a no-frills approach to music and performing.
Rodgers singing with Queen might seem an unlikely union, but, as he's keen to point out, it works.
"There was never really a longterm plan with this whole thing," says Rodgers, in his Teesside-via years in North America accent. He now lives in the beautiful Okanagan valley in British Columbia, Canada. ("I live overlooking a lake," he says. "I'm going waterskiing this afternoon.") "We did a TV show together, and I sang with Brian (May) and Roger (Taylor). We did a couple of Queen songs, and then did one of my songs.
"Brian asked me if I'd like to sing with them on a couple of European shows, as Queen + Paul Rodgers, just for a bit of fun. A couple of shows turned into a full-blown European tour, which then developed into a worldwide tour. It's taken on its own momentum." This happened in late 2004. Since then, Queen + Paul Rodgers have toured the world and released DVDs of their concerts, all the while readying themselves for perhaps the biggest challenge - recording new music.
The Cosmos Rocks was recorded over the "best part of two years" and sees a slight change in direction from the Queen we all know and love.
Current single C-lebrity mocks today's fame-hungry culture, while Voodoo and Warboys, in particular, feature Rodgers' finest vocals of recent years.
"Voodoo was a song I had already when I came into the studio," explains 58-year-old Rodgers.
"We really just jammed on it. I picked up an acoustic guitar and played it, then Roger came in on the drums, Brian then joined in, and we played through it. We recorded the second or third take." The affable Rodgers points out that replacing Mercury as the singer is not the point of the new music.
"In my mind, this is two forces joining together. No one is trying to take Freddie's place, no one ever could. I accept that," he continues.
"He was a great singer, great performer and great songwriter, and I wouldn't attempt to impersonate him." Strangely for artists so big during the same era, Rodgers had only met the other members of Queen once before.
"I saw them briefly on a stairway once, when they were looking for a manager.
They were talking to Peter Grant, who managed me and Led Zeppelin at the time.
"The four of them, Brian, Roger, Freddie and John (Deacon) were coming out of his office, and we bumped into one another, said "hello", and that was about it.
"Of course, Brian and I have done a few things over the last few years; we played at the Olympics in Spain in the early 1990s, and we even appeared on TOTP together doing a charity song." The Newcastle audience are promised the best of Queen's back catalogue, and one or two of Rodgers's biggest hits too.
"Which do I like singing most? Oh, I can't answer that!" says Rodgers. "I enjoy singing them all. I know that's a bit of broad sweep, but I really do."
PAUL RODGERS FACTS:
Free's biggest hit, All Right Now, written by Paul Rodgers and bass player Andy Fraser has been played more than two million times on radio in the US alone.
Rodgers is a keen student of martial arts and has had a black belt in one of the forms for many years.
When Free played at the Isle Of Wight festival in 1970, they attracted a crowd rumoured to have been 600,000 strong.
Queen + Paul Rodgers, Newcastle Metroradio Arena, November 4, Box Office: 0844-493-6666