Top 66 Paul Rodgers Quotes

There are so many challenges and different parts to the job of singing. When you’re in the studio, you have to be really, really, precise. You’ve got to keep everything clean and nice because that’s going to be something that’s down forever. And then you go onstage, and it’s much more in the moment.

When I left Free back in 1972, I didn’t play ‘All Right Now’ until about 1996, when I was touring with Jason Bonham, and we were supporting the tribute record we had done to Muddy Waters.

Life is so mundane, isn’t it? It’s great to hear a guitarist getting into it and the rhythmic section blasting, even if it’s all meaningless.

You’ve had all that punk and New Wave thing, and I think people have really got sick up to here with it. I know I have.

I honestly have really deep reservations about releasing everything you ever did. Every time somebody farted in the studio, now it’s out there.

I loved the ‘Free Spirit’ tour and the guys who helped create the magic: Pete Bullick, Rich Newman, Ian Rowley and Gerard ‘G’ Louis.

Otis Redding, his voice, there was something spiritual and unworldly and at the same time, very deeply connected with the human connection and the way one feels about life in general, love, life, and everything, really.

Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it’s true.

When I was 14, I heard Otis Redding in a club local to me, and I was blown away. It leaped out at me and went straight to my heart. I set my sights on singing like that.

I carry my own tea, food, and Tabasco on the plane with me.

I’ve been influenced by so many great people , like Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, so many great blues and soul artists that I completely revere. So it’s strange for me, actually, to hear somebody say, ‘Oh, I was deeply influenced by your music.’

When I play solo, that’s when I put it all together. I go through all of the songs that I’ve written wtih all of the different bands; that, for me, tells its own story, and the DVDs really enforce that.

I look back on the early days of Free with Paul Kossoff with the most fondness of any of my bands, because I met him at a time when I was in London and very hungry, and we believed in each other.

I saw The Jeff Beck Group at the Marquee Club in 1967, when he was with Rod Stewart, and holy smokes, they were amazing.

I don’t like lyrics to be overbearing. I like them to say something. But I’m not trying to change the world overnight. Something simple and understandable that people can relate their own everyday experiences to.

In order to write music, you need lots of Tabasco sauce.

You go through periods of times where bands are calling the shots, and then sometimes, you’ve got the record companies calling the shots. I think it has to be a bit of both to make the thing work.

The one thing I loved about blues and soul was the way they taught the world how to express such deep feelings.

Every day, every time I sing, I feel blessed, really, to be able to do that. It’s like having wings, in a way. It’s a bit like flying sometimes, because you go off into another realm. And a whole lot of people come with you. It’s amazing.

I like to be in control of my own destiny.

I like following whatever’s right for me at any given time. I could have stayed with Free for 40 years, but it becomes a corporate entity after a while, and once I become locked into it and governed by it and am expected to do a certain thing all of the time, I tend to want to move on.

When you can touch the spirit, whatever that is, and when you can feel the love, and you can feel the song is cooking and it’s in the pocket, you know, everybody knows that’s the one that’s grooving.

Being in a band is all-consuming, and I like to have a life.

I’ve always been a Jeff Beck fan. Who isn’t? He is in a league of his own.

Ann Wilson has an amazing voice and is a brilliant songwriter.

The simpler the message, the broader the meaning, in many respects. I think about a song like Free’s ‘All Right Now,’ which I’m often asked about. It’s that sort of song.

I got the idea for the song ‘Bad Company’ when I saw a poster for the Jeff Bridges movie, and it reminded of an old Victorian picture that I’d once seen, and it said, ‘Beware of bad company.’ So I sat down at the piano and started to write the song.

Of course I was a fan when I was a kid. That’s what made me get into it, the whole rock n’ roll fantasy.

Without music in schools’ curriculum, there is a void for young people to express, explore, and experience music.

I enjoyed playing with the guys in Free Spirit so much because they really dug into Free material, and I really liked how they expressed it. They have a lot of dynamics.

With Free, we were teenagers, and, ummm, there was a lot of raging hormones.

‘Shooting Star’ started out as the arrangement on the record, and it’s developed into a real audience-participation song, just from playing it.

I still love ‘All Right Now,’ strangely enough. But then that’s probably because I didn’t play it for some twenty years.

I’m a big fan of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

There is magic on earth.

Free got famous fast, and it was a shock. You’re working towards it, and when you suddenly get it with bells on, it is a bit much. I don’t know how well I dealt with it.

Once I’d become a songwriter, it just stays with you. You always want to write more songs because it’s such a great feeling.

Only Freddie Mercury could do Freddie Mercury. He was absolutely brilliant – I loved him to pieces, and I had a great deal of respect for him.

I just sort of grew up with music always in the background like a soundtrack. And it really hit me hard when The Beatles came along, like so many people. That got me started digging back further to Chuck Berry.

A lot of those early blues records and soul records were pretty much live. It was what it was, and they had goofs and mistakes, but it still kept its charm. We have to remember to keep the feel. It’s so important.

‘That’s How Strong My Love Is’ carries a message that resonates with the broken-hearted, and most of us have been there.

My mother said I used to dance to all this radio music when I was a young kid.

I tend to want to form bands and then create new music within them. Queen was an exception, and we joined forces because it just seemed to work when we played together.

Free – I miss that band, but when I look back, we were very young.

My dad worked on the Middlesbrough docks.

There are just so many people making music out there. I’ve always promoted the idea that everybody needs to make music. I think the more music there is in the world, the better, but it does make it highly competitive.

I get a bit quick-tempered sometimes.

I have a secret weapon. My wife Cynthia is very good at keeping me in shape. She’s very good for me. She’s the best thing that happened to me.

I am proud to be a Canuck.

I got the idea of meditation from The Beatles. It was a fad, but I’ve found it beneficial in my crazy life.

I had a band when I was 14, and we would play around in my hometown of Middlesbrough, and we’d go to the club afterwards, which was the Purple Onion then. There would be live bands playing, and in between that, the DJ would be playing records.

I got the idea of what a band should be from listening to Booker T and Otis Redding.

I didn’t really like the ’80s, to be honest with you. There was some good music that came out, but it went a bit disco for me.

The thing about simplicity is it’s not easy to achieve. To many, simplicity can mean repetitiveness and maybe even a lack of intelligence, those kind of things, but simple yet unique is the key.

As a performer, the thing that I love is to see people come together.

When I went down to London in ’67, I had three things in mind: To survive, to find peace of mind, and to make music doing it.

There were personality clashes in Free, really. I think it’s as simple as that; I think we felt we weren’t leaving each other enough room to develop in our own way, and we were restricting each other. So we said, let’s go different ways.

I was conscious of vocalists from an early age.

Nobody should attempt to do Freddie Mercury impressions.

If not for music in my life as a young person, who knows where I would have focused my energy.

Horses are such a powerful part of human development and have been since the early ages. We humans owe them so much.

After leaving Queen, I decided to stop doing those mega-four-month tours. I go out for a month, and my dog recognizes me when I come home.

When Free came together, there was a creative magic around us, something unique and different.

The first record I bought was actually Booker T and the MG’s ‘Red Beans and Rice.’

I was brought up in a fairly emotionally repressed kind of society in Northeast England where one didn’t express emotions and was expected to keep a stiff upper lip.

I think it is tiring to listen to digital music for too long.