All Right Now is still the theme song for Teessider Paul Rodgers who talks to Viv Hardwick about his formative years and his thoughts on returning to the North-East.

IS it true you are the kid from Valley Road, Middlesbrough, who lived next-door to Brian Clough, I ask rock legend Paul Rodgers. “Yeah, that is true,” he laughs. “He actually lived along a bit from me and, to be honest, I never actually saw him. But it’s a nice claim to fame.”

Those early days on Teesside saw the youngest of seven form a band called The Road Runners, in 1963, with fellow St Thomas RC Secondary School pupils Colin Bradley and Micky Moody.

I mention the pictures I’d seen of a teenage Rodgers with a ferocious moptop and white jumper. “I was a big Beatles fan and they were a very strong influence on me. A lot of people have influenced me, but because of The Beatles I went a bit deeper and discovered the Blues, Tamla Motown and Detroit City.

“Since those days I’ve met a lot of the people involved, like The Four Tops, Aretha Franklin and Sam Moore, and played with them. It’s been an incredible wild ride.”

Middlesbrough’s Purple Onion club owner John McCoy helped his fledging career by arranging meetings with visiting bands like The Who, Spencer Davis and Stevie Wonder “I did see those bands and I’m very grateful to John for being there and for running such an amazing club where all the great bands dropped in to play. I saw fantastic acts at the top of their game and I got my first job in a paint shop warehouse, which backed onto the Purple Onion. That was why I took the job because I could see the bands coming and going and saw the other side of the glamour. They arrived tired and unload the gear and sometimes they slept in the van. I thought ‘I like that life, that’s for me’,” Rodgers says.

The 62-year-old reveals that he’s never overdone performing and he keeps to about 30 shows a year, compared to those who might stage 200.

That way he feels on form for his tour to the MetroRadio Arena Newcastle on April 18.

I ask him about his incredible voice which has lasted from the 1970 All Right Now days of Free through Bad Company, his solo days and then as a hugely successful front man for Queen in the 2000s. Even Paul Mc- Cartney can’t sing the same way he did in the Sixties.

“I love Paul McCartney, he’s been an outstanding influence on me. I just did my part in a tribute to him where a lot of people like Billy Joel are singing his songs. I did Let Me Roll It which I’ve always loved. My voice is a God-given gift and I’m eternally grateful that I can still do it. In fact, I like to think I’m getting better as time goes by. I’m taking time out at the moment to lay some demos for a new solo album because I haven’t had time to write songs since my album with Queen called The Cosmos Rocks (2008). I still get up in the morning and live and breath music,” he says.

I take him back to 1967 and the decision by himself and three other penniless Teessiders to seek their musical future in London.

He’d grown up in a period where your dad told you to get a job or any apprenticeship you could get hold of.

“My old fella said to me ‘get yourself a trade’ because he worked on the docks at Cargo Fleet, but for some reason I threw it all out the window and hit the road. I couldn’t really go back home to be honest. I was about 16 or 17 and my father and I were very much at loggerheads. I couldn’t see a way to go back home.

When the rest of the band returned to Middlesbrough, I stayed and tried my luck.

“I tried to put a band together and that’s when I met Koss (the late Paul Kossoff),” Rodgers says of the fateful meeting with his Free bandmate.

Asked how he’d managed that first step into bass-playing which propelled him to icon of pop and rock, Rodgers replies: “Just the financial aspect of owning a guitar was kind of a big deal. My father suddenly turned up one day with an acoustic guitar and I don’t know why to this day. I wish I could go back in time to ask him, because he’s dead now. That was what kicked if off.

“Looking at The Beatles showed us there was a new way of doing things. They seemed to do everything themselves, although George Martin was a huge part as well, and they understood how they wanted to sound, although, the idea of the singer-songwriter had come from the Blues guys who’d been doing it for a long time. They’d ramble their experiences of the day over 12-bar Blues.

“People joined in and answered and I learned so much from that.

Over the years I’ve never tried to be too clever. It’s about simplicity really.

I find that big powerful chord changes with lots of gaps in between and simple lyrics are what I like, and I like a good beat. That’s the way I try to write all the time. I don’t try to change the world too much, just spread a little joy with it.”

So how did Rodgers know he was destined to be the front man. Is it something you’re born with?

“I switched from acoustic guitar to the bass and then there was one night when a Solomon Burke song called Everybody Needs Somebody To Love came along at a youth club and I took the bass off because I was going to be singing. Everybody loves that ‘I need you, you, you’ lyric and I remember that was the turning point for me. Even now I prefer not to be playing when I’m singing because I feel so much freer and don’t have to think about the notes.”

Rodgers is also married to former Miss Canada (Cynthia Kereluk) and has a golden life in North Americ. So is it possible for another working class hero from Teesside to end up as a top music act?

“Things have changed an awful lot. But it’s so much more in the hands of people. You can sit at home and make an album, which you couldn’t even dream about in the early days. That’s an amazing advantage to me. A lot of things stay the same. As long as you feel the passion and believe in what you’re doing and don’t give up, anybody can do it.

“We were talking about Brian Clough earlier and, to me, that triggered something in my mind ‘If somebody famous can live in my street, that means I can be famous too’. It did put the seed in my mind.”

• Paul Rodgers UK Solo Tour, MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, Monday, April 18. Tickets: £34.50. Box Office: 0844-493-6666 metroradioarena.co.uk