Quotes from Paul Rodgers

A song like 'Shooting Star' - the thought process behind writing that song was that I looked around and thought, 'Wow, there's a lot of people dying at that time in the music business.'

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

I toured with Lynyrd Skynyrd as a solo artist, many years ago. I love those guys.

In Free, we managed ourselves, and it was too tough for us to handle all of what that entailed when we got to touring America.

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.

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

With any band, there's two sides - there's the image, and there's the music.

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.

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.

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.

Live music is where you get the inspiration and the creativity.

We come from a generation where the music was very innovative, a lot of it coming out of blues and influenced by blues: the idea was that you would jam on things, and you'd try things out. You took a journey, and you took a left turn, and you experimented live right there in the moment.

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

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

If you look at my history, my history is that of forming bands rather than joining them.

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

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.

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.

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.

Nobody should attempt to do Freddie Mercury impressions.

When we formed Bad Company, I looked around and asked, 'Who is the biggest rock band in the world?' The answer was undoubtedly Led Zeppelin. Peter Grant was their manager, so we got him to work with us. That made the difference for Bad Company.

I didn't 'join' Queen. We played together and found a strong connection, did a TV show, and carried on - then I suddenly realised I'd been with these guys for four years. If I'd been called up and asked to join, I would have said no.

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

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.