The albums that made Paul Rodgers: “Milestones in one’s life”
Music marketeers love the phrase, “Your favourite musician’s favourite musician”. It’s a way of making you question your own taste, were you to have any reservations about the music.
It’s one thing, however, saying that in reference to a current-day artist whom you’re yet to make your mind up on, and it’s another altogether, doing it with a musical icon like Paul Rodgers.
Because how dare we question the taste of someone who knows the music industry as closely as someone like Rodgers? To be fair, we can’t. Or even if we think we can, we shouldn’t. Because while we modern-day music fans can just muse on what each decade of cultural importance might have been like, well, Rodgers would have lived through it, soaking up the atmosphere of every release and movement, to truly understand what had an impact.
While Rodgers’ time with Free, Bad Company, the Firm and the Law saw him create the sorts of records that leave a lasting impression on music fans, he hailed two LPs in particular as albums that changed the course of history and altered what came after them. In his words, music was never the same after they were released into the world.
“Albums, for me, are like milestones in one’s life,” he explained, before crucially adding how they change life. “Like Pink Floyd, The Wall. “You measure your life by those releases, like life before Axis: Bold as Love, or life after Axis: Bold as Love. That’s how I remember certain things. Like the first time I heard ‘Hey Joe’, it blew my mind and still does today. Whenever I hear that song it takes me back to that day when I first heard it.”
It’s easy to see how Hendrix, in particular, would have formed as an inspiring influence for Rodgers. He transformed the way in which music approached the guitar and paved the way for the 1970s to become a decade in which the fusion of musical styles was welcomed. Blues, soul, and rock all amalgamated into one coherent idea, and it benefited the likes of Rodgers. While Pink Floyd’s The Wall might not represent a more obvious point of stylistic reference for Rodgers, it was simply a groundbreaking record for its conceptual nature.
But one record and artist in particular held a special place in Rodgers’ heart, and it’s far less surprising than Pink Floyd. Given the way his blues-infused vocals took so much inspiration from soul music, it’s easy to see how Otis Redding’s seminal record, Otis Blue, influenced him so much.
“I’m a big fan of Otis Redding, especially the album Otis Blue [Otis Redding Sings Soul], with the song Change Gonna Come. I loved Otis Redding and still do,” Rodgers claimed, before explaining how, of all the seminal albums in his collection, it is Redding’s that finds itself on the turntable as much as it does.
While my cynicism often makes me recoil at the phrase “your favourite musician’s favourite musician”, when it comes to Rodgers, I’m happy to share a love for the legends of the industry.
