Quality hard rock and the influence of Free/Paul Rodgers

Free were one of the greatest hard rock bands of all-time. Everyone knows "All Right Now", but they have a lot of great songs. 
If that was not enenough ,upon their demise, lead singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke went on to form the even more successful Bad Company. 
How Free and at least Bad Company are not in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame I will never understand...




rare footage of Free live in 1972 performing the title track from their last release,"Heartbreaker". Paul Rodgers handles lead vocals AND lead guitar. He and Simon Kirke would go on to forming Bad Company a little over a year later.

Black Country Communion is an incredible Hard rock band formed by Glenn Hughes and Joe Bonamassa with Jason Bonham and Derek Sherenian.  These guys are in the tradition of Free, Deep Purple (Hughes was in Deep Purple for awhile in the 70's), etc. They've released 3 excellent albums of material in the last 3 years. Joe Bonamassa covered Free's "Heartbreaker" with Hughes on one of Joe's solo cd's

                 Black Country Communion "Down Again"

                      The Joneses were signed to Atlantic in the early 90's but not much happened for them. They had that blues-based hard rock sound of Free/Bad Company. The lead singer has that Paul Rodgers style. Overlooked...

                  The Joneses "Don't You Know"

Havana Black were (and apparently still are!) a Finnish hard rock band that sounded incredibly a lot like Free. On their second album they even worked with the legendary producer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company, KISS, Foghat,Led Zeppelin).

                       Havana Black "Hoo Myself"

           

In recent years, Paul Rodgers has been performing some great stuff from his Free catalog. This is one of those tunes. Ex-Heart guitarist Howard Leese on lead guitar.

                             Paul Rodgers "Be My Friend" (live)