Quotes from Paul Rodgers

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.

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

Music takes me where I go. I'm always open to wherever the journey will take me.

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

Artists like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Ann Peebles, Isaac Hayes, and so many more gave me hope when I was an angst-filled teenager trying to make sense of it all... They were my teachers. Through their music, I learned how to live, how to be true to myself, and how to tell my story as a songwriter the way that I was feeling it.

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

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.

I met Paul Kossoff for the first time when I was playing in the back of a pub room in Finsbury Park in London in 1967. It was kind of a blues thing going on, and he came up and said, 'I'd like to have a jam.' So he came up and jammed with me, and I just loved his playing right from the start.

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 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.

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.'

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

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.

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

I just try to keep an open mind, and that's the way a lot of good things happen.

Soul and blues were a definite influence on me. It was raw and naked emotion which you didn't get much where I come from.

I was 17, and it was my first summer in London as a professional singer. One hot, humid evening, I heard that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was playing in a blues club above a pub in Finsbury Park. I was flat broke and couldn't afford a ticket, so I went along just to stand outside and listen.

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.

I come from a working-class family of seven children.

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

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.

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.

'When I'm Sixty-Four' hasn't worn well, but George Harrison's 'Within You Without You' is awesome.