They didn’t last long – barely three years – but while they were around Free really were a breath of fresh air. And this takes me straight back to 1973.
This was the last of their four hits and maybe the best of them. It’s certainly the most poignant, being an angry message to a friend dealing with drug problems who has one foot in the grave – or, in this instance, “the wishing well.”
It’s all rather close to home considering the band’s young guitarist, Paul Kossoff, was struggling with a heroin addiction that had already broken up the band once, and kept him on the sidelines for much of the recording of their sixth and final album, Heartbreaker, from which this is taken.
The flip side is that Kossoff’s contribution to this song is rather more restrained, and all the better for that. And it’s not about him at all: apparently the band wrote it about a friend of theirs called Bevan T. Woodhouse.
If their first hit All Right Now had been all about its monumental guitar riff, and
My Brother Jake had been a bluesy piano ballad, Wishing Well combined the best of both. The balance between the two sides of the band – exemplified by the title of their album Fire And Water – was never better and their singer Paul Rodgers is in fine voice.
I particularly like his primal grunts and ad libs in the latter part of the song.