Rock and Roll Contenders # 16: Free's "I'll Be Creepin'"
Paul Rogers’ voice is timeless, seasoned, and a perfect fit for the part of the original creep.
Andy Fraser was just seventeen years old when he wrote “I’ll Be Creepin’” with Paul Rogers, and he was a veteran of London clubs who’d been around the block a few times. Fraser had already played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and he was fifteen when he met the other members of Free. The eponymous Free, the band’s second LP, was released in October of 1969.
What we get in “I’ll Be Creepin’” is a modern take on the blues that bounces and sneaks over an ominous lyric. And while we might call it modern, Paul Rogers’ voice is timeless, seasoned, and a perfect fit for the part of the original creep. To say Rogers’ singing is masterful and dynamic seems an understatement. It’s almost shocking, then, to recognize that he was still a teenager when the song was recorded. Rogers wouldn’t turn twenty until December of ’69.
The maker of the beat turned twenty that July: drummer Simon Kirke was friends with a young guitarist named Paul Kossoff, another teenager who’d been struck hard by the blues. When Kirke and Kossoff saw Rogers sing with a band called Brown Sugar in 1968, they talked him into joining their youthful, enthusiastic team. Andy Fraser came last as an imaginative and powerful bassist who could write songs. The band was dubbed Free by Alexis Korner, and Island Records snatched them up quickly.
Andy Fraser ended up being the main songwriter and penned Free’s biggest hit, “Alright Now,” with Rogers, but that was yet to come as the band composed and recorded Free during the early months of 1969.
“I’ll Be Creepin’” is largely built over Kossoff’s Les Paul as he riffs on a B major chord. If the song slinks and hovers, it’s because of the tension created over that single chord and Kossoff’s movement between the seventh and ninth frets. The band doesn’t navigate away from the riff for a full twenty-four measures—an eight-bar intro followed by the sixteen-bar verse. We’re still on the B when Kossoff plays a descending line at the beginning of the chorus. The effect is hypnotic and sets the mood for an unsavory narrator. If there’s movement in those twenty-four measures, it’s in Roger’s voice, which is nothing less than stunning.
He begins with a warning for the object of his affection: “If you’re tryin’ to screw me, baby, take my advice.” The word screw is mobile and mean and undeniable as Rogers steers through at least six notes to make that single syllable verb abundantly clear. He remains on the path to virtuosity in the second line when he sings, “Opportunity, baby, never knocks twice.” Baby gets the same treatment as screw, but there is nothing self-indulgent in the vocal here. Rogers isn’t showing off, and no listener is complaining. There’s emotion and a controlling energy in this narrator—we believe him when he says, “When I get to you, baby, I won’t make no sound.” We have to assume the young lady believes him, too, and that she’s in trouble if she fails to act in accordance with his pronouncements.
Rogers makes an effort to sound gentle when he sings, “I’ll hold you in my heart like nobody else.” It’s almost romantic. And, girl, when we’re apart I expect the same from you. The singer shouts at the end of the verse, lest she doesn’t get the point, and any hint of kindness has vanished: “I won’t take no less!” There’s no running away from this creep, either. Take all your things and move far away, but changing your address will never be enough. “I’ll be creepin’ ‘round your door,” sings Rogers.
As songs of obsession go, it seems that Paul Rogers’ vocal makes Free’s the most dangerous of the bunch. The pulse set by Kirke and Fraser is steady and fluid, even as the temperature rises and makes unsuspecting victims quake in their boots. Nobody wants this creep around their door, but they’ll listen to him sing all day long and far into the night.
Paul Rodgers is in my top 5 - probably top 3 - of favorite all-time rock vocalists. Great piece. Can never have enough Free material!