Free - Free (Remastered Bonus Track Edition) (2001)

Free's second album was recorded with the band itself in considerable turmoil. Principal songwriters Paul Rodgers and Andy Fraser demanded strict discipline from their bandmates, and guitarist Paul Kossoff in particular equally demanded the spontaneity and freedom that had characterized the group's debut. It was an awkward period; both Kossoff and drummer Simon Kirke came close to quitting, and only the intervention of Island label chief Chris Blackwell seems to have prevented it. Few of these tensions, however, are evident on the finished album. (Tribute, again, to Blackwell's powers of diplomacy.) He replaced original producer Guy Stevens early into the sessions and, having reminded both warring parties where the band's strengths lay, proceeded to coax out an album that stands alongside its predecessor as a benchmark of British blues at the turn of the 1970s.