Free, “Molten Gold: The Anthology” (1993), <i> A&M;</i>

“We wanted it very simple. . . . We never wanted to have a gaudy sound,” Free’s drummer, Simon Kirke, reminisces in the booklet that accompanies this double CD retrospective.

This great British blues-rock band didn’t need to grease its sound with extra ingredients. In Kirke, bassist Andy Fraser, guitarist Paul Kossoff and singer Paul Rodgers, Free had four distinctive musical personalities who winnowed rock down to its most forceful, high-impact basics. From 1968 to 1973, that approach yielded seven albums that were a combination of cleanly brutal sinew, laid-back jauntiness, yearning idealism and wrenching romantic drama. It’s a sign of the universe’s flawed nature that Free failed to make it big, while Rodgers and Kirke went on to huge success with their comparatively overwrought and under-inspired sequel band, Bad Company.

You could quibble about six or eight of the 30 selections on “Molten Gold,” but it offers a suitably wide overview of a band that accomplished a great deal in a short time, winning the admiration of such famous peers as Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and the Faces.

“All Right Now,” the band’s lone American hit, is the one Free song that everybody knows; but “Wishing Well,” “Fire and Water,” “My Brother Jake” and “I’ll Be Creepin’ ” also are among the best that British rock has to offer.

Rodgers, who set the standard for blues-rock singing during his Free days, could summon a remarkable combination of soulfulness and grit, swagger and poignancy. Nobody did the tough-guy walk better, yet Free’s music also is suffused with humor, idealism and compassion. Kossoff, who died in 1976 of heart problems compounded by heroin addiction, was a guitarist of incomparable economy, equally at home with vicious riffing and elegiac, emotive cries. Fraser ranked with Jack Bruce, John Entwistle and Paul McCartney as one of the great bassists of British rock, bringing Free’s rhythms a funky, loping motion that is utterly original.

Half of Free’s six studio albums were uneven, but the other half--”Fire and Water” (1970), “Highway” (1971) and “Heartbreaker” (1973)--were without weaknesses and are sure to satisfy fans of tough, melodic, blues-based rock. “Molten Gold” is an enticing introduction to this trove of goodies.