10 Famous Rock Songs Written So Fast You Won't Believe
2. All Right Now - Free
What do you do when you want to close out your show with a big tune, but don't have one in your repertoire? Why, you just write one on the spot!
Free, who were practically unknown at the time, had just finished a gig at Durham University in England. According to bass player Andy Fraser, "it was pretty grim."
To try and raise his band's spirits ahead of their encore, Fraser began singing about how everything would end up being "all right." The rest of the band joined in, and the creative muscles started to flex.
"Basically the chorus wrote itself," Fraser continues, "the chords took me about 10-15 minutes."
With the basic skeleton of what would become their biggest ever hit, Free went back on stage and tore the house down. Lead singer Paul Rodgers then worked out the full lyrics to the song the next day whilst waiting in a lift.
Free turned what could have been just another terrible gig into one of the greatest origin stories in music history. The 30 or so bored students that night in Durham had, unwittingly, just become part of history.