Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 1: Free

This album is the first of the last day of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. As such, the track numbering starts at one again and the coloring of the text on the album cover is different (yellow for all the albums from this day).

The good news is that I have the entire set from the band Free here, in excellent sound. The band news is there were four acts that played before Free on this day, and I don't have any music from any of them at all. The four acts were :Good News, Kris Kristofferson, Ralph McTell, and Heaven. Don't feel bad if you never heard of Good News or Heaven, as they're both very obscure. 

Kris Kristofferson played earlier in the festival, but his set was badly received, in part due to problems with the sound system. So he was given another chance on this day. His music was much better received this time. Folk-rocker Ralph McTell also went over well, according to the press accounts.

That takes us to Free. They had just released the album "Fire and Water," containing their biggest hit, "All Right Now." The popularity surged. The album reached Number Two in the British charts, when their last two albums hadn't charted at all. The crowd was still near its maximum size of 600,000 to 700,000 people, so it was the biggest moment of Free's career so far.

Murray Lerner, the director of "Message to Love," the music documentary of the festival, later said about Free, "To me they were a revelation. I had never heard them before. I thought they were fantastic – their energy, their sensibility. And 'All Right Now' to me was really a thrilling song."

The sound quality is excellent, because the whole set was officially released as the album "Live at the Isle of Wight 1970."

This album is 49 minutes long.

001 talk (Free)
002 Ride on a Pony (Free)
003 talk (Free)
004 Woman (Free)
005 talk (Free)
006 The Stealer (Free)
007 talk (Free)
008 Be My Friend (Free)
009 Mr. Big (Free)
010 talk (Free)
011 Fire and Water (Free)
012 I'm a Mover (Free)
013 The Hunter (Free)
014 All Right Now (Free)
015 talk (Free)
016 Crossroads (Free)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15596235/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-30-1970_Pt1Free.zip.html

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Paul Rodgers - Night of 100 Guitars, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-26-1994

In 1994, the Gibson guitar company had their 100th anniversary as a business. To celebrate this, they staged a concert that brought together several famous lead guitarists. Headlining the show, however, was a singer, Paul Rodgers, formerly of Free and Bad Company. Here is a bootleg of that show.

In 1982, Bad Company broke up. After that, Rodgers was in some other bands, such as the Firm. He released his second true solo album in 1993, "Muddy Waters Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters." He brought in a whole bunch of famous lead guitarists to play on different songs. So it wasn't a stretch for him to play with some of them for this concert: Brian May of Queen, Slash of Guns N' Roses, and Neal Schon of both Santana and Journey. Schon was part of Rodgers' band for the whole concert, while the others only joined in for certain songs. Additionally, bassist Andy Fraser was featured on some songs. He had a critical role in Free with Rodgers back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, writing or co-writing many of the band's songs. He'd kept a low musical profile since then, suffering from both HIV and cancer since the early 1980s. So this concert was a bit of a Free reunion as well.

Most of the songs were classics originally by either Free or Bad Company. Only two songs, "Muddy Water Blues" and "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl," were from his recent Muddy Waters tribute album.

This concert is an hour and four minutes long.

01 talk (Paul Rodgers)
02 Travellin' Man (Paul Rodgers)
03 talk (Paul Rodgers)
04 Wishing Well (Paul Rodgers)
05 talk (Paul Rodgers)
06 Fire and Water (Paul Rodgers)
07 talk (Paul Rodgers)
08 Muddy Water Blues (Paul Rodgers)
09 talk (Paul Rodgers)
10 Feel like Making Love (Paul Rodgers)
11 talk (Paul Rodgers)
12 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Paul Rodgers with Brian May)
13 A Little Bit of Love (Paul Rodgers with Brian May & Andy Fraser)
14 talk (Paul Rodgers)
15 Mr. Big (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser)
16 talk (Paul Rodgers)
17 Let Me Love You (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
18 talk (Paul Rodgers)
19 The Hunter (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
20 Bad Company (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
21 All Right Now (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser, Brian May & Slash)
22 talk (Paul Rodgers)
23 Crossroads (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser, Brian May, Slash & Zakk Wylde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15136495/PaulRdg_1994_Nghtof100GuitrsWmbleyArena__6-26-1994_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Rodgers comes from this exact concert. I would have liked to have one or more of the lead guitarists in the photo too, but I couldn't find any good ones like that. The writing at the top comes from the promotional material for the show, including the font type and color. So I replicated that design for the writing at the bottom.

Free - BBC Sessions, Volume 3 (1970-1972)

Here's the third and final album of Free at the BBC. This one was trickier to put together than the other two.

Free didn't last that long, compared to other bands like them. Formed in mid-1968, the band made it big in 1970 with their classic hit "All Right Now." But then they broke up in 1971, due to personality conflicts. However, they reunited in 1972 and put out more music, only to break up for good in 1973. A key figure during these troubled years was lead guitarist Paul Kossoff. He had a growing drug addiction problem, and the band's condition rose and fell with his successes and failures with beating that addiction. Eventually, drugs got the best of him, and he died in 1976 at only the age of 25.

The band continued to put out quality albums during this time, with a live album in 1971, then studio albums in 1972 and 1973. But on stage they were hit or miss, with Kossoff often unable to perform well, or sometimes failing to show up at all. Perhaps because of that, the band only had two BBC sessions in 1971, and none after that. So their last two years as a band aren't as well represented in this series.

That's not to say that aren't represented at all. During the band's first break-up in mid-1971, lead vocalist Paul Rodgers formed a new band called Peace. This band played a few concerts, but didn't last long, since Free reunited in early 1972. However, during Peace's brief existence, they did play one BBC session. It's never been officially released, but it exists with good sound quality on bootleg. Two of the three new songs they did, "Heartbreaker" and "Seven Angels," would be put on a Free album in very similar versions, though they would go on their 1973 album instead of their 1972 one. "Like Water" would be done by Rodgers next band, Bad Company, in 1977.

There are two famous songs the band did towards the end of their career: "Heartbreaker" and "Wishing Well." I wanted to include both, so this BBC series could also serve as a "best of" for the band. For "Heartbreaker" there was no problem because it was done during that Peace BBC session. But I couldn't find any instance of "Wishing Well" played on TV or radio shows. So instead I found the best sounding concert bootleg I could find with that song on it, from late 1972, and used that version. I stripped out the audience noise at the end so it would fit in with the sound of the other songs here.

So yeah, this volume was a little more tricky to put together. This time, only five of the 11 performances have been officially released (tracks 2 through 6). I also wanted to include "The Stealer," another key song for the band. They never did it in the studio for the BBC (though there's a live version on Volume 2), but I found an unreleased version from another TV show appearance. And "My Brother Jake" was done for the BBC, but for some reason wasn't included on the official album.

By the way, for the songs "Be My Friend" and "Ride on a Pony," the official album included several takes. They did the song a few times before they felt they got it right. I found these extra versions unnecessary, especially since most of them were incomplete. So I only picked what I considered the best take of each one. For "Be My Friend" that was take 2, and for "Ride on a Pony" that was take 5.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 The Stealer (Free)
02 All Right Now (Free)
03 Fire and Water (Free)
04 Be My Friend (Free)
05 Ride on a Pony (Free)
06 Get Where I Belong (Free)
07 My Brother Jake (Free)
08 Heartbreaker (Peace [Free])
09 Like Water (Peace [Free])
10 Seven Angels (Peace [Free])
11 Wishing Well (Free)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116150/Freee_1970-1972_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows the band hanging out backstage in 1972.

Free - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert (1970)

Here's the second of three volumes of Free at the BBC. The first and third ones are studio sessions. This second one consists entirely of songs done live before an audience.

I didn't put a date in the title, because the material here is from two BBC concerts, not one. The first four songs were done for "John Peel's Sunday Concert" in January 1970. This totals 22 minutes. The remaining seven songs are also for "John Peel's Sunday Concert," but in July 1970. This totals 35 minutes. Luckily, there are no duplicates in the two shows.

All the performances have been officially released on the album "Live at the BBC," so the sound quality is excellent. However, there are a couple of problems. One is that there is no banter between songs. I'm sure there was originally, probably BBC DJ serving as emcee. I don't know if the recordings of those weren't saved, or if there was an editorial decision not to include them on the official release. If anyone has more, let me know, and I'll add it in.

The second problem is one that I was able to fix:

 two of the songs faded out a little early, and one song had no applause at the end. For the fading out, I'm pretty sure it was only the very tail ends of the songs. I did some editing to give them satisfying sounding endings, and added applause for them. I also added applause for the song that was missing it. These three songs are the ones with "[Edit]" in their names. 

The two shows up total total 57 minutes.

01 The Hunter (Free)
02 Woman (Free)
03 Free Me (Free)
04 Remember [Edit] (Free)
05 Fire and Water (Free)
06 Be My Friend (Free)
07 Ride on a Pony (Free)
08 Mr. Big (Free)
09 Don't Say You Love Me [Edit] (Free)
10 Woman (Free)
11 All Right Now [Edit] (Free)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116151/Freee_1970_BBSessionsVolume2InConcrt_atse.zip.html

The photo shows lead singer Paul Rodgers in front of a crowd at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.

Free - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1968-1970)

Next up for the BBC is the British band Free. The band's lead singer was Paul Rodgers, who went on to bigger things later, especially with the band Bad Company. Nowadays, Free isn't that well known, other than their classic hit "All Right Now." But they were a major British blue rock band, and got a lot of critical praise. 

In terms of BBC recordings, it turns out they did some studio sessions and some live sessions. They played many of the same songs live that they did in the studio. So I've created two volumes of their studio sessions and one of their live sessions. This is the first album of studio sessions.

All but two of the songs here come from an official album, called "Live at the BBC." The two exceptions are the last two songs. Those come from the German TV show "Beat Club," and are still unreleased. I've included those because a few key songs didn't happen to be done in the studio for the BBC.

All but the last two songs were recorded in 1968 or 1969, before the band hit it big with songs like "All Right Now" and "Fire and Water." At this point, the band's music was more steeped in the blues. Although their first two albums (both released in 1969) weren't as commercially successful as their later albums, they're their most critically acclaimed ones.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Waiting on You (Free)
02 Sugar for Mr. Morrison (Free)
03 I'm a Mover (Free)
04 Over the Green Hills (Free)
05 Songs of Yesterday (Free)
06 Broad Daylight (Free)
07 Woman (Free)
08 I'll Be Creepin' (Free)
09 Trouble on Double Time (Free)
10 Mouthful of Grass (Free)
11 Free Me (Free)
12 Mr. Big (Free)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116097/Freee_1968-1970_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I don't know when or where the cover photo comes from. If anyone knows, please tell us.