Paul Kossoff: All Right Now by J.P. James Published by Matador Books ISBN: 978-1-78589-881-5 CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE We were held on the plane for an hour, while the authorities argued over where Koss had died LA or New York, says Taylor. Earlier that summer, blues producer Mike Vernon asked Kossoff to play on New York singer Martha Velzs debut album, Fiends And Angels. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Kossoffs father David set up the Paul Kossoff Foundation to raise awareness about substance abuse. What is the most expensive bass guitar in the world? It kicked the stuffing out of him, says Glover. They told me afterwards that he pulled himself together for that night. Just seeing him really freaked me out. Before long, he was playing in a school group and upsetting the neighbours by rehearsing in the Kossoffs garage. I actually saw him many years ago using it during a FREE performance of 'My Brother Jake' on an English . Vocalist Paul Rodgers and Kossoff ran in the same circles and had met many times, but hadnt yet played together. The band managed to record a few albums during its brief resurgence: 1971s Free Live and the studio efforts Free at Last and Heartbreaker in 72 and 73, respectively. Kirke found the break-up hard, but Kossoff was devastated. [14], Kossoff's guitar playing was also much in demand for session work and he contributed solos on several albums including: Martha Velz's Fiends and Angels (1969); Michael Gately's Gately's Cafe (1971) and Mike Vernon's 1971 album Bring It Back Home; Uncle Dog's Old Hat (1972); Jim Capaldi's Oh How We Danced (1972) and Short Cut Draw Blood (1975); The Amazing Blondel's Mulgrave Street (1974).[8]. I got myself a Gibson Les Paul Junior, which was the cheapest Gibson around at the time, he said. The band played with touring blues piano player Champion Jack Dupree, often supporting Fleetwood Mac and other gigs with Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green. He was in town playing with his group when we were in LA, remembers Rogers. One night Clapton approached Kossoff in the dressing room and asked, How the hell do you do that? talking about my vibrato, recalled Kossoff. Koss came up for the second set and said, Id like to come for a jam. I said, Have you got a guitar with you? and he said, Yeah, Ive got my Les Paul in the car., So he brought his guitar in and we jammeda really heart-stopping jam. Free At Last arrived in June 72, and gave the group a Top 20 hit with Little Bit Of Love. A second album, simply called Free, emerged in October. My dad said that if Paul wanted to play guitar, which he did of course, he had to learn to do it properly, recalled Pauls brother Simon in an interview with Gibson. It took the doctors 30 minutes to revive him. But no matter how thoroughly you searched there were times when he would still manage to get out of it. Kossoff considered its soulful slow blues Be My Friend the best thing weve ever done. But the song changed them overnight, and Fire And Water became the first Free album to crack the Top 20, reaching No.2. It's October 20th 1972 and, after a year-long split, Free are back together and touring again. A great example of that is Fire and Water., When Free decided to call it quits in 1971, Kossoff took it harder than anyone. We used to do two 45-minute spots with a break in between. Live guitar from the songs Be My Friend, Fire And Water, The Hunter, Moonshine Five months before his death, Kossoff told a journalist, Theres nothing outside music, I have no hobbies, I just want to play. That was always part of the problem. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Kossoff asked Rodgers to join Black Cat Bones. Everyone who talks about Kossoff says that had they known then what they know now, his story might have had a happier ending. Kossoff was delighted when old friend Rabbit Bundrick replaced Mike Montgomery. When the rest of the group couldnt make it in time to a gig in Connecticut or New Jersey, Kossoff managed to calm the angry promoter. Photo by Lucy Piller. But as Simon Kirke glumly admitted: The huge irony is that was the beginning of the end.. During 1966 Kossoff worked as a junior salesman at Selmer's Music Shop in Charing Cross Road. Paul attended his first concert, Tommy Steele at the London Palladium, aged eight. 1969: Broad Daylight webcam juist 1991: My Brother Jake / Wishing . Kossoff started his own blues band called Black Cat Bones in 1966 and hit the London club scene. But Simon got over it. That night, Koss didnt fall over and didnt forget the chords. For the sessions, Kossoff brought out a duo of Les Pauls, including a now-fabled late-era sunburst model, which was later stripped and painted black, as well as a black three-pickup custom. I bought it in 1976, a year after he died. It started howling and feeding back. We may earn a commission on any affiliated purchases. Stay up to date with in depth music reviews, exclusive interviews and widespread coverage of whats happening from your favourite music genre. Docherty had heard about this new group with a brilliant guitarist but quickly realised their name was misleading when punters turned up expecting to get in for free. Gibson created 100 hand-aged guitars and 250 models treated with their proprietary VOS process. We did Stormy Monday Blues, Three OClock In The Morning by BB King brought the place down, said Rodgers. Following its release, Fraser decided he had had enough and quit to form Sharks. })(); Fame, money, drugs and some unresolvable inner torment all played a part in his downfall. Kossoffs solo album, Back Street Crawler, slipped out in November 73. So I started having conversations with Paul and Andy individually, because I couldnt get them in a room together. I was mortified that the split-up of the band had affected him so deeply. Another relationship was also suffering. John Glover is certain Kossoff played in an early five-man line-up of Bad Company, and has the tape to prove it (Rodgers wont let me put it out.). Docherty was now managing Beckett, a group with a fine blues/soul singer named Terry Slesser. He just wandered off at some point during the five-hour flight. His work has appeared in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines Q, Mojo, Classic Rock, Music Week and Prog. While manning the floor one day, he happened to meet a hot new prospect fresh off the plane from America: Jimi Hendrix. In the meantime, though, his ex-bandmates were moving on. Paul Kossoff was born on September 14, 1950, in Hampstead, a London suburb. Then in June of 1970, Fire and Water hit the shelves with the force of an atomic blast. Then I had this obsession about getting a real Les Paul after seeing Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton play them. The real Les Paul he eventually acquired was a black 1954 Custom equipped with dual P-90 pickups, an instrument allegedly owned and played by Clapton himself. Aged nine Kossoff started classical guitar lessons with Blanche Monroe. Rodgers had caught gonorrhoea and moved into Frasers mothers house in Roehampton to recuperate. Texas-born Bundrick had seen Free play the Houston Coliseum: And I had this intuition I would play with them one day. Rabbit worked with Johnny Nash and Islands new signing Bob Marley before arriving in London in 1971. Rodgers says the group was never able to recover from the turmoil of the earlier dissolution. In 2006, an unreleased guitar solo surfaced on the title track to the album All One by David Elliot, who recorded with Kossoff in the 1970s. I fed him grilled fish, spring cabbage and orange juice, he recalls. But they werent Free. The live album Free Live! In thanksgiving to their skill 'and the Almighty, who helped also', Kossoff made a decision to give performances of his two famous one-man shows 'without fee, for charity, throughout 1976'. He now has 10with an additional eight 1960 Les Paulsin his massive arsenal. Paul struggled academically, but his strong, squat fingers made light work of forming shapes and chords. We did Stormy Monday Blues, B.B. As Paul Kossoff's Les Paul goes under the hammer, we take a look at the guitar's remarkable story, and get a glimpse behind the scenes at one of the world's oldest auction houses. In fact, hed recently gone to Jamaica for a spell of rest and recuperation, only to discover Mandrax was available at every pharmacist on the island without prescription. Paul Rodgers has said Kossoff was healthy and playing well in 1973 although this is disputed, but that he wonders about the company that Kossoff kept, and felt that "Koss was just too sensitive for this world. But he also had a taste for what his father called dangerous pursuits the risky rather than the peaceful. (function() { _gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]); Blackwell wrote him a cheque for 20,000 on the spot. [18], Kossoff died on a flight from Los Angeles to New York City on 19 March 1976 from a pulmonary embolism after a blood clot in his leg moved to his lung, while touring America with Back Street Crawler. '&utmxhash='+escape(h.substr(1)):'')+'" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">')})(); Free played a final show at Sydneys Randwick Racecourse on May 9 1971, and then flew home separately. He had an odd look about him and smelled strange, Kossoff recalled in interview with Steven Rosen for Guitar Player in 1976. That said, after Back Street Crawler were photographed signing their contract at Londons Olympic Studios, Kossoff climbed out of the bathroom window, jumped into his car and proceeded to crash into several stationary vehicles. Forty years after his death, Kossoffs music remains frozen in time. David was a bugger for that Dymo tape, where you can print out words. Koss was with a girl that day somebodys wife in the business who was a well-known smackhead, recalls Taylor. Not long after Tons of Sobs was released, the band was back in the studio working on its second record, the self-titled Free. In the 60s, his popular radio show heard him reworking traditional Bible stories for a modern audience. The two had become a songwriting partnership under awkward circumstances. Once out of the hospital, Kossoff went back on the road with his band, which subsequently recorded another album titled 2nd Street in 1976. Rodgers and Kirke went on to form the successful Bad Company. By the late 50s, hed become a household name playing the Cockney patriarch Alf Larkin in the TV sitcom The Larkins. Gibson honored Kossoff in 2012 with a limited run of replicas of his later Free-era/Back Street Crawler Les Paul, debuted at NAMM by blues/rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa. In June, Blackwell saw Free opening for Albert King at the Marquee and was impressed. But the job of replacing Brian Jones went to Mick Taylor instead. Andy Frasers first impression of Kossoff was that he looked like a little lion cub.. Clapton exchanged a 1959 Gibson Les Paul for Kossoffs mid-50s Custom. And what happened? What united these songs was a rawness, and a guitarist whom, to quote Alexis Korner, knew not to play too many notes and knew how to use silence. Its appropriate title was Heartbreaker. His guitar sabbatical was short lived, however. Rodgers song, Come Together In The Morning, was written indirectly about Kossoff. But he was too stoned, too unreliable, and the group continued without him. Or why not treat yourself? So much like his Dad, wrote Rodgers, who lost his close friend and ex-bandmate in 1976 when the elder Kossoff died from heroin-related heart problems ona flight from L.A. to New York. In a BBC website page about the 1970 death of Jimi Hendrix, Simon Kirke said that Kossoff idolised Hendrix and never really recovered from his death. utmx_section("Legacy Footer"). Instead, he went on the road, as a trainee stage manager on one of his fathers touring productions. He may not have been the fastest shredder, but hes certainly among those legendary players who become one with the instrument. Once again, though, Kossoff cleaned up, and slowly assembled a new band: vocalist Terry Slesser and three Americans, keyboard player Mike Montgomery, bassist Terry Wilson and drummer Tony Braunagel. He wasn't addicted to anything in particularhe would take anything he could get his hands on.. Their name, Free, reflected the foursomes stripped- down approach in the post-Sgt. Bath Within a year, Kossoff had joined the north London blues group Black Cat Bones and impressed them with a confidence and stagecraft that belied his 5ft 3in stature. Kossoff did sessions, toured with John Martyn, and formed Back Street Crawler, a band that received only scant attention from record buyers. When Geoff intervened, he threw a telephone at him, narrowly missing his face. I had a blues band at the time called Brown Sugar. As the 60s gave way to the 70s, Free reached a tipping point. It was on this tour that Clapton supposedly tried to cop Kossoffs famed vibrato technique, a tale confirmed by Rodgers. Looking to upgrade, Kossoff took a job at the venerable London music shop Selmers, where he came face to face with some of the days leading players. As the frontman for Free and Bad Company, Rodgers's soulful, bluesy voice featured on some of the all-time classic rock songs: All Right Now, Wishing Well, My Brother Jake, Can't Get Enough, Feel Like Makin' Love and many more. David Kossoff was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants and a radio, film and TV actor. Kossoffs parents tried to intervene. The subsequent UK tour saw flashes of the old Kossoff, but far too many moments of high farce and terrible chaos. Apparently, it took the crew some time to gain access to the bathroom, as his dead body was slumped against the door. It was difficult, admits Glover. ", Def Leppard's Joe Elliott hospitalised by altitude sickness in Colombia, Always wanted to record a Kiss song with Gene Simmons? How about we help him and put the band back together, just for a tour?. There was no time to pause or reflect. Geoff was the top promoter in the north east, but I was the manager and this is what I do., In January 75, to test Kossoffs reliability, Glover put him on the road with John Martyn: He played a few songs a night with John, and it was great for a couple of weeks. But Paul Rodgers also wanted to make decisions. And there were the four of Free sat on the sofa. At which point, says Glover. If interested in music and guitars, then you are in the right place and will learn a lot. Kossoff was not a prolific writer and had begun to feel excluded from the Rodgers/Fraser clique. Despite this, each member already had a taste for the road after serving in other bands. #backstagepast, Happy 77th birthday to Keith Richards, my close personal friend, as proven by this never-before-seen photograph of us partying together and touching skull rings, Happy birthday Phil #thinlizzy #therocker, Anybody remember full-page stories on wicked rock bands in newspapers? Paul Rodgers description of Paul Kossoffs intense, emotional relationship with music is reinforced by his reaction to Jimi Hendrixs death. 2 on the U.K. charts and No. (function(){var k='2354831680',d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+'=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(';',i);return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j<0?c.length:j))}}}var x=f('__utmx'),xx=f('__utmxx'),h=l.hash; . There was no going back now, he admits, so we had to keep Koss in as good a nick as we could., John Taylor was hired as Back Street Crawlers tour manager and Kossoffs occasional minder. In December 1965 he saw Eric Clapton with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers at The Refectory, Golders Green, North West London. I remember getting into Koss car and his dad had stuck these typed-out instructions on the dashboard: Are you fit to drive?, Turn on headlights. Kossoff was soon hooked on Clapton, Peter Green and the three Kings Albert, Freddie and BB and working in Selmers music shop on Londons Charing Cross Road. This was the golden age of the guitar player, when people like Clapton, Beck, and Page became recognized names the world over. Kossoff owned and played several 'Bursts during the short years of his life. He definitely had an innate talent for guitar.. Paul had approached Gibson in 1941, but it took 10 years, and Leo Fender introducing his solid body guitar for Gibson, for the company to develop what is now known as the Gibson Les Paul. Midflight, Kossoff experienced a cerebral and pulmonary edema and died at the age of 25. Free were on tour when they were told the single had jumped from No.30 to No.4 and they were due on Top Of The Pops the next day. His classical guitar training continued until he was fifteen. It was what he wanted, but not enough for him to curb his drug use. Kossoff had burns on his chest from the defibrillator, but his face was clean and pink and hed detoxed completely. Free was such a band. It had its moments the lolloping funk blues Train Song, for one but was too run-of-the-mill to compete with Bad Company. Instead, he played like the old Paul Kossoff. In 2000 a Free biography entitled Heavy Load: The Story of Free was published. Photo courtesy of Gibson, Tons of Sobs was recorded on a modest budget of 800 and was in some respects a recorded version of the bands live set. All Right Now was released in May 1970. It was such an amazing thing that when we came off stage I said to him, Man, we have to form a band. The seeds of Free were born right there.. On tour, Koss could be perfectly lucid one minute, but when the Mandrax kicked in, hed struggle to find the switch on his amp. King, who has a fast vibrato. [6], Kossoff co-wrote several Free songs, including "Oh I Wept" and "Mr Big" on the Fire and Water album.[12]. [1] He was appalled by what he found. Kossoff caught a performance by Eric Clapton at a John Mayall gig in 1965, and after seeing what Clapton was doing with the blues, his passion for the guitar was reignited. Those two pretty much ran the band. In contrast, Simon Kirke didnt say a lot unless he was upset about something, and Paul Kossoff was very, very gentle. But Paul was unconscious, says Docherty. Their tours, however, were hampered by Kossoffs unreliability. Clapton became a looming figure in the young guitarists mind, and Kossoff went out of his way to emulate Slowhand. KKTRs rootsy blues and funk rock lacked Frees bite and, most importantly, Paul Rodgerss voice. Kossoff came round to the house, recalls Rodgers now. How can I use my iPhone as a aux cord in my car? He sold a number of guitars, including the iconic 'stripped' Les Paul. His uncle was the broadcaster Alan Keith and he was a cousin of the judge Brian Keith and the model Linda Keith. 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