Teesside star Paul Rodgers is back on the road with a Bad Company tour

The return of old king cool

Middlesbrough star Paul Rodgers is the finest blues and soul singer of his generation. He's back in the spotlight after reforming Bad Company for an eight-date tour in April 2010. Paul and the original members – Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke - are back together for the first time in more than 30 years. They play Newcastle Metro Arena on April 7. Paul, recently named one of the top 100 singers of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, says: “These dates are to thank the fans for keeping the music alive.”

Middlesbrough rocker Paul Rodgers will always be remembered for the classic single All Right Now, which took the charts by storm in 1970, became a world-wide hit and propelled his band Free to pop stardom.

It was a number one in more than 20 countries and helped to establish the sound of the British blues/rock invasion.

Free released no less than four top five albums in the early Seventies and Paul was eventually honoured with The Multi Million Award in 2000 by the British Music Industry when All Right Now passed two million radio plays in the UK.

But the soulful singer has continued to make sweet music for 40 years. After Free came Bad Company, then The Firm, and he has enjoyed immense success as a solo artist.

In the latest chapter of an illustrious career he toured last year with Queen, who were largely dormant following the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991.

Paul was keen to stress he’s not trying to fill a dead man’s shoes. And he is still sporting his trademark stagewear of leather trousers rather than flamboyant Freddie’s famous white strides.

‘I don’t think anyone can fill an original person’s shoes. He was an original and they broke the mould after him. Freddie was a great frontman and a great songwriter but he also had a lot of heart,’ he says.

‘I studied the band by watching DVDs and listening to the music when I took this on and I became even more impressed with the power of this stage presence.

‘People forget that they sang some really deep stuff as well as the flat out rockers.

‘So I decided the way to do it was to reinterpret the songs in my own way, in the same way that I would do with blues or soul classics that I have covered.

‘That’s the only way we could make this work to create something brand new.’

This latest incarnation of Queen started back in 2004 when guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor proposed a collaboration with Paul after a successful live TV performance.

A tour followed and the group – billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers – subsequently released a live album with songs from Queen, Free and Bad Company called Return of the Champions.

‘We got together and had such a blast that it turned into a world tour. We went out playing their hits and mine and then took it to a new level which is to go into a studio and see if we could cook up something new.’

The new studio album The Cosmos Rocks was released last September and they played new material from it – as well as all the classics – when the tour hit Newcastle MetroArena last Novembe, as part of their 33-date European tour.

‘One of the exciting things about this tour is that as well as doing the hits we’ll also be doing our own brand new material.

‘Each song is so different from the others but there’s a blues/soul feel to it and that’s what I bring to the band but we still have the harmonies and the precision that Queen are famous for,’ says Paul.

The tough-voiced singer grew up in Valley Road in Grove Hill, Middlesbrough. The family lived at number 25, two doors down from the legendary football manager Brian Clough. He went to school at St Joseph's and then St Thomas's.

Paul remembers: ‘My dad came in dead chuffed one day when someone thought he was Brian Clough. We used to play football in Albert Park.’

He played bass in a school band called The Roadrunners and did his first gig at Sussex Street youth club.

‘We had a class band and we used to rehearse in the living room. Then this guy came into the school called Colin Bradley, and he was really very good. He was playing Bob Dylan songs and stuff like that.

‘He had this older brother Joe that managed us – and he was so knowledgeable. He was a long-distance driver and he really knew the music scene. He seemed to know the world.

‘He opened our minds to a lot of music. I should thank Joe Bradley, my first manager. He was a fantastic guy.’

But Paul realised he had to move to London if he wanted to make it. So he hitched 250 miles to the capital and joined a band called Brown Sugar. There he met up with guitarist Paul Kossoff, bassist Andy Fraser and drummer Simon Kirke. It was 1968 and Free was born.

Chris Blackwell signed them to Island Records and wanted to call them The Heavy Metal Kids but the band were having none of it, Blackwell backed down and Tons of Sobs became their debut album. The power and rawness of that recording still impresses today.

‘The thing was in those days, everything happened in London. Nothing really happened outside all the studios were there, all the record companies and everything.

‘I would see Paul Kossoff around town. And finally I got to meet him. I had a band called Brown Sugar and we were playing in this blues club, and his hair was down to the back of his knees and he looked very cool.

‘And he got up and we played a couple of B.B. King songs. And I said to him: “You and I are going to form a band.” And he said: “But I’m with a band.” I said: “Never mind about that – we’re gonna form a new band. And it’s going to be professional.”’

Paul's career – which has seen him sell more than 90 million records and produce 28 albums over the past 40 years – was on its way to legendary heights.

Free broke up in 1973 and the following year he formed the great stadium rockers Bad Company, managed by Led Zeppelin's Peter Grant.

They toured extensively from 1973 to 1982 and had a string of hits including Feel Like Making Love, Can't Get Enough, Shooting Star, Bad Company, and Run with the Pack. Paul also showcased his instrumental talents on several tracks. The songs Bad Company and Run with the Pack featured him on piano, Rock and Roll Fantasy on guitar, and on the ballad Seagull he played all of the instruments.

It was while he was touring with Bad Company that he learned of the death of his close pal Kossoff from a drugs overdose. Paul wrote the classic 1973 hit Wishing Well about the virtuoso guitarist’s battle with heroin. And he admits he has never really recovered from the tragedy.

‘It broke my heart when Paul Kossoff died. With his demise there was no way we would get Free back again,’ he recalls.

‘I still don’t think I’m over it. I wish that he and I could have got back together in some way, shape or form. I was in the middle of a Bad Company tour when I heard about his death, and I was ready to go home.

‘I was ready to quit right there and go home, but Peter Grant talked some sense into me. Basically, he said: “You can do that, but what good will it do now? It’s too late. And you will let so many people down – you’ve got a sold-out tour and everybody’s waiting.”

‘I said: “You’re right. I should finish the tour.” But it was a terrible loss because you don’t know what we might have done, what might have been.’

Former PM Tony Blair, appearing on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs, picked Wishing Well as one of his castaway songs.

‘If I could have sung like Paul Rodgers, I'd probably have stuck with being a rock musician,’ he said.

Bad Company earned six platinum albums until Paul left in 1982 at the height of their fame to spend time with his young family.

He married Machiko Wada in 1971 and two children by that marriage – Steve and Jasmine – are also musicians and singers who formed a band called Boa in the Nineties. Paul and Machiko got divorced in 1996.

He later met beauty queen Cynthia Kereluk, a former Miss Canada and aerobics teacher. They married in a surprise outdoor wedding ceremony in Canada’s Okanagan Valley on September 26 last year, ten years after they got together.

Paul joined forces with the Zeppelin's guitarist Jimmy Page to form The Firm in 1985.

In his time he has worked with so many other great guitarists including Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Gary Moore, Hubert Sumlin, Joe Satriani, Buddy Guy, Joe Walsh, Mick Ralphs, Eric Clapton and Howard Leese.

His Grammy-nominated solo CD, Muddy Water Blues was released in 1993, and for Woodstock’s 25th anniversary the following year, he brought together drummer Jason Bonham (son of the great John), his old pal Andy Fraser on bass and guitarist Slash to perform as the Paul Rodgers Rock and Blues Revue.

In 1999 he toured again with Bad Company for the first time in 20 years. In 2002 they released their first live CD and DVD Merchants of Cool.

In 2003 he did two sell-out nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall with Jools Holland’s 18-piece rhythm and blues orchestra and played charity concerts with the legendary Jeff Beck at the Royal Festival Hall.

In 2004 he performed at Wembley for the 50th anniversary celebration for the legendary guitar the Fender Stratocaster, along with David Gilmour, Ronnie Wood, Brian May, Joe Walsh and Gary Moore.

At the bash Paul sang and played a custom-designed Fender Jaguar and the spark forged with Brian May led to the offer to join forces with Queen for the current collaboration.

Music Now on 11/7/1970 reported: ‘Free were faced with riots when they played Durham Tech last weekend. Two thousand people barred their way to the stage, and when they eventually went on one-and-a-half-hours late, they were forced off again after one number. Police had to escort the group back to the hotel, where the riots continued. The group, whose single All Right Now is currently at Number 1 in the Music Now charts, fly to Germany and Holland on Thursday.’