This song is about Annalena Nordstrom, the Swedish girlfriend of bass player Martin Turner from his days with Empty Vessels, an Ash precursor. They were playing at Torquay when there were about 200 Swedish girls on holiday. When he met her again in London a few years later, "She hadn't changed a bit."
In an in-depth interview with Lawrence Pugliese at the Moonshine Theatre, Scranton, during the 2005 Ashfest, Andy Powell was asked about "Blowin' Free." He said it was one of the very first songs they ever wrote, about 1971. Although he didn't comment on its inspiration, he remembered where it was written, at the Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. By "they" he meant himself and Wishbone Ash as it was then, because by the time of this interview, he was the only remaining original member, having clocked up over 35 years with the band, (although the original bass player and vocalist Martin Turner was still performing as Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash).
In a 2013 Songfacts interview with Andy Powell, he talked about coming up with the guitar riff on this song: "We were on tour with the Who, and I liked some of the chord progressions that Pete Townshend was doing, so all I did was take some of those ideas that he was coming up with and sped them up."
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