Simon Kirke may be heading into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of Bad Company, but he’s not ready to let go of the past—especially when it comes to Free, the trailblazing band that launched his career.
In a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Kirke expressed deep concern that Free, the late-’60s British rock outfit best known for their monster hit “All Right Now,” has been overlooked for too long by the Hall. “People have always asked me about Free, you know, ‘Why aren’t Free inducted?’ And I don’t know,” he admitted. “But my worry is that Free is so back in the past now… I just hope we don’t get left in the dust.”
Free, which included Kirke and powerhouse vocalist Paul Rodgers, had a relatively short but impactful run between 1968 and 1973. Despite their influence on blues-rock and their anthemic legacy, the band has remained on the outside looking in—while artists like Chubby Checker, eligible for decades, are only now being recognized.
Kirke, reflecting on the band’s signature track “All Right Now,” recalled its surprising origin. “It came from a bad gig. We needed something up tempo, something people could dance to,” he said. “The caliber of the song is measured by how many times you can play it without getting sick of it. And we never did.”
He even shared a vivid memory from that fateful recording session at Island Records: “We finished around one in the morning and ran upstairs to wake up Chris Blackwell. He came down rubbing his eyes and said, ‘This better be good.’ And yeah—it was.”
With Free’s lasting cultural imprint and the enduring power of “All Right Now,” Kirke is hopeful the Hall will eventually catch up. But with a Hall committee that skews younger, he fears that Free’s influence may be lost to time if they don’t act soon.
“Time shouldn’t erase legacy,” Kirke said. “And Free deserves its place in the rock history books—officially.”
