https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdb37oZ6WfA

PAUL RODGERS (vocals/co-songwriter)

“‘All Right Now’ came about after playing a gig up North. I said to the guys that we needed a song to follow ‘The Hunter’ which, at that time, was our biggest song – something with a chorus that the audience could sing. I said, ‘Something like [sings] “All right now, baby!”’ and I picked up a guitar and showed them how simple it could be. Andy went away with that and came back with the first chords. I think Koss may have had some input, because he had an amazing finger stretch and he could hit some really big chords.

“I worked on the lyrics as I was waiting for the guys to pick me up for a show and it didn’t take long because sometimes, when the music’s with you, it just flows right out. We played in a club that night, what we called two 45s, which was a 45-minute set, a break, and another 45-minute set. We opened the first set with the brand new, rough and ready ‘All Right Now’. There were only a few people there, but when we played the song, they all got up and started to dance, which was excellent. Then, when we came to the end of our second 45-minute set, I said to the audience: ‘Do we have any requests?’ A few people shouted out, ‘Play that song you started with!’ I thought that was pretty incredible, that they remembered it! So we played it again. I knew we had something special right then. We fine-tuned it a bit in the studio, but that’s where it came from.

“I don’t think there was any doubt that the song was going to be a single. But one of the things we did hesitate about was playing the song on Top Of The Pops. We considered ourselves to be an underground band with lots of street credibility and now, all of a sudden, we were appearing on Top Of The Pops. What convinced us was the argument that we could reach a lot more people. That did it for me.

“The BBC were convinced that I had sung a rude word; ‘Let’s move before they raise the parking rate’ – they thought I’d said the ‘effing rate’. All the BBC team came down to the studio and we had to break down the track and take everything off until it was just the voice and we convinced them it was ‘parking rate’. The Musicians Union also got involved. They said everything had to be live when music was played on TV, so we took the vocal off, mixed the backing track, and I sang it live. That’s why the vocal may be slightly different to the released version.

“We recorded the song downstairs at Basing Street’s Island Studios, in the crypt. We’d worked on the song live so we knew exactly what we wanted to achieve. I’ve always looked at the blues guys and the soul guys who recorded their songs as if they were live and we wanted to put that kind of spark into the song.

“When we wrote it, I didn’t think I’d still be playing it today. And for a long time, I didn’t. Finally, in 1993 I was touring a tribute album I’d made to Muddy Waters with Jason Bonham and a couple of other guys and people in the crowd started calling for ‘All Right Now’. Jason behind me kept saying, “Let’s do it!”. I was standing on the stage, the band were calling for ‘All Right Now’, the audience were calling for ‘All Right Now’ and we just did it… tore the place apart.

“The song has a kind of universal simplicity. That’s what I was looking for when I wrote the chorus. I wish I could do it again! Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it’s true. I still enjoy playing it and get a kick, because the energy of the audience is fresh every night.”