As the singer of a number of the greatest rock anthems of all time, together with All Right Now and Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Paul Rodgers has offered greater than 125 million information and was hand-picked by Queen to switch Freddie Mercury when Brian May and Roger Taylor reunited in 2004 for 2 mega-selling world excursions.

Rodgers’s bands Free and Bad Company had been as massive in America as they had been again dwelling, the place the frontman had grown up performing in golf equipment in his native Middlesbrough from the age of 13.

Dubbed “The Voice” by followers for his highly effective blues holler, Rodgers’ singing has influenced generations of vocalists, together with Mercury himself, Paul Young and heavy steel giants Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and Whitesnake’s David Coverdale.

Yet, away from the stage, Rodgers is completely happy to dwell quietly and delights in revealing that he can sneak previous followers nearly each time he needs. “I don’t mind fame, but I don’t seek publicity at all when I’m not working,” admits the modest 73-year-old star.

“I can be pretty incognito. I like to be able to pop down to the supermarket and grab some eggs whenever I want. I care what fans think, but I try to let my music speak for me.”

When he was not too long ago out biking in Los Angeles, Rodgers stopped in a storage to test his route – and was completely ignored, regardless that Bad Company’s 1979 hit Rock’n’Roll Fantasy was taking part in on the forecourt radio.

“You just don’t exist when you’re on a bicycle,” laughs the affable frontman.

The singer has lived in Canada because the begin of the century with spouse Cynthia, a health teacher and former Miss Canada.

Despite Rodgers’ low-key strategy, life with Cynthia, 61, had a rock ’n’ roll starting – they had been launched to one another by Nineteen Seventies rock giants Lynyrd Skynyrd.

In 1997, a yr after Rodgers and first spouse Machiko Shimizu divorced, the singer was touring North America with Skynyrd, famed for Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird – and a tragic airplane crash which killed two band members and a backing singer in October 1977. Their drummer, Rickey Medlocke, was a buddy of Cynthia and seemingly knew the couple can be well-suited.

Rodgers, speaking to the Daily Express by way of Zoom from his dwelling in British Columbia, recollects: “Rickey told me, ‘Listen, when we get to Canada you need to be on your best behaviour. That’s because when we get to Vancouver you’re going to meet Cynthia.’

“I thought, ‘Okay, great, I’m going to meet a woman called Cynthia. I’m already well-behaved.’ When we did meet, me and Cynthia spent a long time talking. Soon enough, I spent a long time commuting to see her in Canada.” He turns to Cynthia, by his aspect all through our interview.

“The rest is history, isn’t it, sweetheart?” Cynthia agrees with amusing: “It’s ancient history.”

Rodgers formally turned a Canadian citizen in 2011 after the couple married in 2007. “I was visiting Cynthia for some time,” he explains.

“I’d stay for longer and longer, and I found the commute to Cynthia’s home in Vancouver was getting too much. I said to Cynthia, ‘I think I live here really, don’t I?’ and she said, ‘Yes you do.’ So I said, ‘Will you marry me?’

“Now Cynthia is involved in every area of my life, including managing my career.”

Despite Rodgers’ compelling vocal type, the then-shy teen had no intention of changing into a singer when he fashioned his first band The Roadrunners aged 13. He was initially their bassist. He admits: “I’d never seen myself as a singer or anything in the limelight of that nature.

“Then, when The Roadrunners were starting up, I sat in one day in rehearsals and sang Good Golly, Miss Molly. This voice just came out of me and the band said: ‘OK, you’re the singer.’

“That was the turning point. Then the first time I felt at home in front of a crowd was when we covered Solomon Burke’s blues classic Everybody Needs Somebody To Love at a local youth club. The chorus is ‘I need you, you, you.’

“When I started to point to people on each ‘You’, the reaction was so fantastic I thought ‘Now, this is what I want to do!’”

Ironically, Rodgers and Free bassist Andy Fraser wrote the all-conquering All Right Now in 1970 as a result of they needed to do away with the blues covers within the band’s set.

They needed their new album to not have any cowl variations, however their cowl of Albert King’s tune The Hunter was the most well-liked tune of their live shows.

Rodgers reveals: “I told Andy ‘We’ve got to write a song that’s better than The Hunter. It has to be universal, so the lyrics should be something really simple like, I don’t know, all right now…’

“We came up with the chorus on the spot, then Andy took the song away and came back with that incredible opening riff: ‘Bam! Ba-bam-bam!’

“There obviously had to be a story to the song, and the big songs usually have a boy-meets-girl story so: ‘There she stood, in the street.’ OK, what’s she doing? ‘Smiling from her head to her feet.’ The rest of the song flowed on the spot. We played All Right Now for the first time that night.

“We opened our show with it and the crowd demanded to hear it again at the end of the gig. I thought, ‘Wow, this song has got something.’”

Sure sufficient, All Right Now reached No2 within the charts, saved from the highest by Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime for 4 weeks.

“Oh no, don’t mention Mungo Jerry to me,” wails Rodgers good-naturedly. “I don’t mind that they beat us to No1. We had the two biggest hits of the summer, that’ll do me. But I’m going to have In The Summertime in my head all day now. Thanks a lot!” The album containing All Right Now – Fire And Water – additionally reached No 2.

“Our album became Queen’s bible,” smiles Rodgers. “Brian May told me they had to buy a new copy because they wore the vinyl out playing it so much.” Queen repaid Rodgers when May and Roger Taylor invited him to entrance Queen + Paul Rodgers for 4 years from 2004.

The collaboration additionally resulted in a brand new album, The Cosmos Rocks, which reached No5. “It was great with Queen, I loved it,” enthuses Rodgers. “The only challenge was that Brian and Roger didn’t want to tour America. I thought that was a mistake. We’re still good friends, and when Queen later got Adam Lambert in as a singer, I thought he was perfect for the job.”

Rodgers has simply launched his first album since The Cosmos Rocks.

Midnight Rose is his first solo album for twenty-four years – and is co-produced by his spouse, in addition to famed producer Bob Rock, a veteran who has labored with Metallica, Bryan Adams and Michael Buble amongst others.

“Being in the studio with Cynthia was hell on wheels – she’s a slavedriver,” jokes Rodgers, as Cynthia yells “Never again!” Gathering himself, Rodgers states of Cynthia’s first manufacturing function: “I’d always thought Cynthia has a good ear. I’d say to myself, ‘She knows a lot of stuff.’

“When she made suggestions to me about changes to my songs or lyric additions, I was really impressed. I let Cynthia run with it.”

The couple are so shut that it transpires the album’s story of spurned need, Take Love, is definitely about their cat fairly than any vengeful former lover.

“We had a rescue Siamese cat who’s very proud and arch,” remembers Rodgers. “You couldn’t get near her, and one day Cynthia said, ‘I can’t love you if you keep walking away.’ I thought, ‘There’s a line for a song.’ Walking away from love? We’ve all done it.”

As father-of-three Rodgers prepares to return to his incognito life within the Canadian mountains, he reveals he’s happier than ever now that he’s settled with Cynthia.

“I like things as they are right now,” he beams. “When I left home in Middlesbrough, there were three things I wanted – to survive, to find peace of mind and to make music. I’ve got all of that and I’ve got a beautiful wife. I’m in a good place.”

The publicity-shy singer from Free? He’s doing all proper now.

• Paul Rodgers’s new album Midnight Rose is out now on Sun Records