{"id":659429,"date":"2026-05-23T00:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/659429\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T00:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:06:15","slug":"the-1970-rock-hit-that-was-created-after-a-show-so-bad-the-band-walked-off-the-stage-in-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/659429\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1970 Rock Hit That Was Created After a Show So Bad, the Band Walked off the Stage in Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

For especially sensitive musicians, bombing a show\u2014that is, having a terrible time on stage and getting an equally lousy response from the crowd\u2014could be enough reason to stop performing altogether. When that happened to English rock \u2018n\u2019 rollers Free, they took a different tack. If their songs weren\u2019t getting the response they wanted from their audience, well, then it was time to write new songs.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the genesis of this global Top 10 rock hit gave all-new meaning to the phrase \u201cAll Right Now<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

How Free\u2019s \u201cAll Right Now\u201d Came To Be<\/p>\n

According to bassist Andy Fraser<\/a>, the idea for Free\u2019s 1970 mega hit, \u201cAll Right Now\u201d, came from a particularly bad gig at a college in Durham. The weather was bad. The band was grumpy. When they looked out at the audience in the 2,000-capacity venue, they looked out at 30 people, many of whom were \u201coff their heads on Mandrax,\u201d a type of sedative similar to Quaaludes. \u201cIt was pretty grim,\u201d Fraser said. \u201cBut of course, we went on anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Fraser and the rest of Free typically tried to pull through and play for each other if the crowd wasn\u2019t responsive, the energy just wasn\u2019t there. \u201cWe absolutely sucked,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd the audience were too out of it to even notice, which just made it all the more depressing, really. Afterward, in the dressing room, there was just this horrible silence. A really bad atmosphere. So, to try and alleviate some tension, I just started singing, you know, \u2018All right now, baby, it\u2019s all right now,\u2019 over and over, kind of like a parent trying to gee their kids along. But it worked. The rest of the band started tapping along.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the rest of the song fell together in around 20 minutes. Each band member contributed a little something, whether a musical idea or a transposition from one instrument to another. Even The Who\u2019s Pete Townshend played an indirect role, as Fraser said he was trying to imitate the fellow Englishman\u2019s riff style.<\/p>\n

Turning Lemons Into a Lemonade-Flavored Top 10 Hit<\/p>\n

While Free was happy to take the distraction after such a disastrous gig, the band considered \u201cAll Right Now\u201d to be somewhat unserious and fluffy when compared to their other material. Nevertheless, that\u2019s the track that their record label, Island, latched onto. \u201cAll Right Now\u201d came out in the spring of 1970 and quickly rose to the Top 10 in charts all around the world.<\/p>\n

The Durham crowd, meanwhile, was none the wiser that they helped inspire this classic rock \u2018n\u2019 roll one-hit wonder<\/a>\u2014even while dazed and confused on Mandrax.<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael Putland\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For especially sensitive musicians, bombing a show\u2014that is, having a terrible time on stage and getting an equally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,7056,216,2156],"class_list":["post-659429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-music","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}