The rock band “Free” burned bright and then quickly flamed out, but their influence had a lasting effect on rock and roll.
“I look back and I actually do wonder myself (Why we broke up), because (the band) was a really perfect outfit in many ways, you know. We loved each other, we loved the music that we created. But I think what happened was that Andy (Fraser) and myself, we were the main driving force I think, with the organization.”
“Andy was very strong in getting the business together and we wrote these songs together. And we differed over the future of the band, I think. To me, Andy wanted to take it to a more commercial direction and I wanted to go back to the Blues.”
“I thought Kossoff would sort of back me up in this but he sort of didn’t and Simon was like ‘whatever you wanna do’. We didn’t realize what we had,” Paul Rodgers said.
Joe Bonamassa said Paul Kossoff is one of his favorite rock guitarists of all time.
Unfortunately Paul, like his idol Jimmy Hendrix died from drugson a plane in 1976.
It was the air stewardess’ scream that told them something was very wrong. The ‘red-eye’ from Los Angeles to New York had just landed at JFK Airport. Until a few minutes ago, the blues-rock group Back Street Crawler and their crew had been asleep, scattered throughout the half-empty plane. Roused from a collective torpor, they blinked and stared as the stewardess ran down the aisle. “I looked at where Paul Kossoff had been sitting and the seat was empty,” says former tour manager John Taylor. “But the flight was only 30 per cent sold out, we’d all moved around, so I didn’t think anything of it.”
Before long, a group of NYPD officers had trooped on to the aircraft. By then, everybody knew the awful truth. The lifeless body of ex-Free, now Back Street Crawler guitarist Paul Kossoff had been discovered slumped in the bathroom. At some point during the flight, Kossoff had visited the toilet – and never come back. It was March 19 1976, and one of rock’s greatest guitar players was dead. He was just 25 years old.
Open thread.
