“All Right Now” is a song by English rock band Free, released on their third studio album, Fire and Water (1970). It was released by Island Records, a record label founded by Chris Blackwell. Released as the album’s second single, “All Right Now” peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart and number four on the US Billboard singles chart. In July 1973, the song was re-released, peaking at number 15 on the UK chart. In 1991, a Bob Clearmountain remix of the song was released, reaching number eight on the UK chart.
“All Right Now” was a number-one hit in over 20 countries and was recognised by American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1990 for garnering over 1,000,000 radio plays in the U.S. by late 1989. In 2006, the BMI London awards included a Million Air award for 3 million air plays of “All Right Now” in the USA. The song remains as a staple track of classic rock radio.
According to drummer Simon Kirke, “All Right Now” was written by Free bassist Andy Fraser and singer Paul Rodgers in the Durham Students’ Union building, Dunhelm House. He said: “‘All Right Now’ was created after a bad gig in Durham. We finished our show and walked off the stage to the sound of our own footsteps. The applause had died before I had even left the drum riser. It was obvious that we needed a rocker to close our shows. All of a sudden the inspiration struck Fraser and he started bopping around singing ‘All Right Now’. He sat down and wrote it right there in the dressing room. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes.” Fraser has agreed largely with this history.
Unsurprisingly given its swift genesis, ‘All Right Now’ isn’t the deepest of lyrics. Boy meets girl (“There she stood in the street”), boy uses cheesy chat-up lines (“I said hey, what’s your name baby… let’s move before they raise the parking rate”), boy takes girl back for a coffee (“I took her home to my place”), girl questions boy’s intentions (“Are you tryin’ to put me in shame”) before boy reassures girl that hey, it’s all right now.
It may well be the signature song not just for Free but all of its individual members, but the band didn’t even think of it as a single at first. “We really thought it was just kind of something light and throwaway – y’know, at last we’ve got an uptempo song, was basically all we were thinking!” said Fraser. “We were very serious boys you see, we liked to write songs we felt had some kind of depth, whereas ‘All Right Now’ is just pure fantasy, really.” Island Records boss Chris Blackwell knows a hit single when he hears one though, and insisted they release it as a standalone cut.
Billboard called it a “funky beer blues swinger” that’s a “mover from start to finish.” Record World said that the song “lays a hunk of heaviness on your head” and “will establish [Free] once and for all.” It was covered by artists such as Mike Oldfield, Witch Queen, Rod Stewart, Pepsi & Shirlie, and GNR. A version arranged by the Stanford Band is the de facto fight song of Stanford University Athletics teams.
