Sometimes, when you’ve reached the bottom, you just have to smile and laugh it off. If you stay down for too long, you’ll never get up.

Free formed in London in 1968 when teenagers Paul Kossof and Simon Kirke heard teenager Paul Rodgers belting out a live set and decided he was the guy with whom they needed to rock. All three currently had gigs with other bands, but that didn’t stop anybody in the 60’s, as everyone not already playing with a hitmaking band seemed to move freely from group to group in search of the right combination. The trio still needed a bass player, so they grabbed the even younger teenager Andy Fraser from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and took on the name Free.

Island Records also came away impressed with the power of Paul’s voice and signed the band not too long after they formed. Free’s first album bombed, but they were young and showed talent. Their second album performed a bit better, but still produced no hits. Everything would depend on their third album.

Before they recorded that album, Free went on tour to promote their sophomore effort, and to make a little cash and try to build their audience. One audience, however, would not be swayed. On a cold, rainy night at a concert in Durham, England, in a venue that could hold thousands but saw only a few dozen show up, the boys tried to rock the socks off those in attendance, but the socks of the unimpressed punters remained firmly in place.

After the show, the band members, sweaty and exhausted, unhappy with their performance, trudged back to their dressing room, where they all sat around dejected and defeated, until bassist Any Fraser suddenly started playing some chords on a nearby piano, trying to cheer everyone up, singing the words “all right now” over and over until everyone joined in. The doldrums lifted. Playing a terrible show to a tiny, unresponsive audience in an empty hall on a cold, wet night away from home, after two years with no hits — how much worse could it get? You had to rock on.

Fraser had the music for the whole song written in about ten minutes and Paul Rodgers finished the verse lyrics the next day. The band considered it a fun but frothy throwaway.

Fast forward a few months and the first single chosen from Fire And Water, their new album, didn’t even reach the lower echelons of the chart. It was make or break time — Free needed a hit. When Island’s president, Chris Blackwell, suggested “All Right Now” should be the next single, the band at first demurred, but then deferred. Much to their surprise, when released in the spring of 1970, “All Right Now” shot up into the Top 5 in the UK and US and became a worldwide smash. Now they had a real reason to smile.

The group scored a couple more hits in the following years, but nothing on the same level as “All Right Now.” Rodgers and Kirke, however, would attain even greater heights soon after with a little band called Bad Company.

So don’t wait or hesitate — move before they raise the parking rate … with Free.