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Contents 6 Mr Rock Steady Writer, frontman and owner of the best voice in rock, Paul Rodgers tells us about leading the band, then and now.
20 Good Company Jon Brewer, director of the DVD in your hands, reveals how it was made.
30 Free Time The rise and fall of Free.
olling Away 32 RThe Stone
Why Mick Ralphs left Mott The Hoople at their peak.
lways On 86 AThe Run
Behind the scenes of the band’s smash-hit third album, Run With The Pack.
92 Big In America How a band of British outlaws conquered the US.
98 The G Man The man behind the myth: the true story of legendary manager Peter Grant.
108 Skyfall
Rediscover Burnin’ Sky, Bad Company’s great lost album.
Heaven 34 The Black Album 109 And Hell The story behind the creation The band laugh in the face of one of the all-time greatest debut albums.
of punk with a kick-ass rock’n’roll statement.
Iconic shots from the 70s.
Our pick of the very best Bad Company songs.
he Bad 40 TScrapbook
46 Simple Man Mick Ralphs, the guitar hero who still can’t get enough, on his life in music.
58 Dice Men Bad Company hit the target with their sublime second album, Straight Shooter.
64 Simon Says The view from behind the drums: Simon Kirke reveals all about adulation, addiction and redemption.
he Cat In 76 TThe Hat Family, friends and his Bad Company brothers remember Boz Burrell.
op 10 110 TBaddest Co.
nd Of 114 EThe Road
Drink, drugs and disillusion: the inside story behind the band’s split.
120 Movin’ On After the Company closed, Paul Rodgers kept on singin’ the blues.
ill The Day 124 TThey Die The comeback all music fans dreamed of proves Bad Company still rock.
128 Subscribe!
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classicrockmagazine.com 5
NEAL PRESTON
Paul Rodgers: “I knew we had the songs. We just needed the rest.”
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It was the album that launched Bad Company upon the world and it’s still a classic, 40 years on. Words: Jon Hotten
classicrockmagazine.com 35
Perhaps there was such a thing as magic after all: magic in the house, in the equipment, in the runes… Headley Grange, Hampshire, spring 1974. Simon Kirke walks into the run-down, three‑storey former poorhouse where Led Zeppelin had recorded parts of Led Zep III and IV, where Robert Plant had sat and written the lyrics to Stairway To Heaven inside a single day, and the first thing he claps eyes on is Bonzo’s giant drum kit set up in the entrance hall, plastered in its runic symbols. “Fuck me,” he thinks. “This is great!” Call it magic, call it luck, call it serendipity, call it what you like, but there was something going on; something smoothing their path, clearing the way. Look at how they got here, after all. Kirke and his pal Paul Rodgers, the ‘country boy’ (read: not from swinging London), half of the late and not-yet-aslamented-as-they-would-be Free; Mick Ralphs from Mott The Hoople, a man writing songs too good for the singer of his band to sing; and ex-King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell, a fellow who took life as easy as his wide smile. They came together in the kind of semi‑planned, semi-fortuitous way that mitigated against the label of ‘supergroup’ (and its usual connotations of musicianly self-indulgence) that was quickly applied and still sticks. They were at the Grange because Led Zeppelin were supposed to be there – all of their gear was, and so was Ronnie Lane’s mobile recording truck – but John Paul Jones had come down with the flu and so there were 10 days of expensive studio time lying fallow while Jonesy sorted himself out. And as Bad Company shared a manager with Led Zeppelin, well… And that was another story, another case of things sliding into place. Peter Grant, the heavyweight ex-wrestler, who was becoming the emblematic rock manager of the age. Part entrepreneur, part gangland overlord, he was the man the bullish Rodgers had been encouraged to phone by Free’s former tour manager, Clive Coulson. Grant had arranged to come and see the new band rehearse at a village hall in Surrey. They’d waited all afternoon for him to turn up, only to discover that Grant, wanting to catch an unmediated earful of what they did, had waited outside to listen to them rehearse. What he heard had convinced him to take them on. With their material written and ready to go, it wasn’t the big man’s most difficult decision to pick up the phone and offer them the Grange once Jones went down with that bug. 36 classicrockmagazine.com
Rodgers and Ralphs take flight in their ‘semi-planned supergroup’.
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Had Bad Company cut their first album anywhere else, it would still have had the songs and it would still have contained their essence, but the Grange offered something else: a strange sense of place that came in part from its history. It was the scene of a famous riot by its inmates in the 1830s, and something of their anger and despair must have seeped into the walls – and also from the bands that had brought their own peculiar energies to it. Many years later, in 2009, Jimmy Page revisited the Grange for the film It Might Get Loud and admitted to being overwhelmed by the memories and emotions that came rushing back to greet him. Then there were the odd happenings that come with a building of that age and condition. Rodgers later recalled a picture on one of the staircases, a landscape painting of sheep that somehow transformed into wolves. There were the damp walls and the creaking floorboards and the things that went bump in the night. All of those indefinable elements are somewhere in the record, just as they are in the albums that Led Zeppelin made there, and in the subconscious dreamings of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, the record that Genesis would write at Headley Grange just a few weeks after Bad Company had left. The band weren’t just digging the vibes of the Grange – they were becoming intoxicated by the new chemistry they were creating together. During the Free years, especially towards the end, Rogers and Kirke had been hostage to the addictions and insecurities that were to destroy and then end the life of their guitarist Paul Kossoff. His shimmering brilliance was symptomatically diminished to the point where, before one of their final shows, Kirke was on his knees in the dressing room trying to show Kossoff the chords to All Right Now, a song he had played hundreds, if not thousands of times. Rogers, who was
equally as gifted as the guitarist – and arguably more so – now forged a new partnership with Mick Ralphs, an entirely different character to the tortured Koss. As Simon Kirke told Classic Rock’s Mick Wall, “You couldn’t have been further away from Paul Kossoff than Mick Ralphs. I wasn’t interested in any more geniuses. Mick drank – of course he drank, he was from Hereford! – but he was great fun. And he brought Rodgers out of his shell. By the end of Free, Paul had his back to the audience; he didn’t want to know. Then Ralphs came along with his Max Wall impressions and the whole thing changed – and for the better. Paul really blossomed with Mick.” It had been something of a coquettish courtship. Ralphs was still attached to Mott The Hoople when they met during a US tour, and Rodgers had his first post-Free band, Peace, although he was contemplating a solo record. All of that changed, though, once they had disentangled from their other partners. They were a perfect creative partnership, and one that fired right away: the first song that Ralphs showed Rodgers was Can’t Get Enough. The guitarist might have dismissed it, with some misplaced modesty, as “a three-chord bash”, but it was exactly the kind of song that Rodgers’ unsurpassable voice could fully inhabit. Kirke retained his effortless swing behind the kit and Boz Burrell proved that his playing was as easy-going as he was. Deep within its grooves was the essence of the band to come. While Mott went off on a journey into 70s glam, Ralphs had found his home. He played Rodgers Ready For Love, another of the tunes he’d written – and actually recorded in this case – with Mott The Hoople. Once again, when the other Bad Company ingredients were mixed in, it emerged as a solid-gold staple of the classic
Getty
‘They weren’t just digging the vibes – they were intoxIcated by the chemistry they were creating together.’
classicrockmagazine.com 37
Rob Monk Classic Rock Mag/TeamRock
Mick Ralphs, London, January 2014.
imple SMan
mick RAlphs
He was the six-string razor in Mott, then the man who “brought the edge” to Bad Company. And Mick Ralphs still can’t get enough. Words: Mick Wall
classicrockmagazine.com 47
M
It so nearly didn’t happen, though did it? If Free hadn’t broken up when they did and you’d decided to play it safe and stay with Mott The Hoople… Well, I was unhappy in Mott, but I don’t think I would have just left without something else to do. But obviously the opportunity came along when we toured with Peace, by which time I think I was ready to do something else. I wanted something more bluesy, more simplistic, more earthy. ’Cos the early Mott had that sort of earthiness in among all the craziness. And I had these songs that were quite straightforward that needed someone like Paul to sing them, to work his magic on them. You had already written the words to Can’t Get Enough – the riff came from One Of The Boys from Mott’s All The Young Dudes album. Or was it always 48 classicrockmagazine.com
Young Dudes: Ian Hunter and Mick Ralphs by the rooftop pool of The Continental Hyatt House in West Hollywood, 1972.
Can’t Get Enough but because Ian couldn’t sing it, it then became One Of The Boys? Quite possibly. I can’t remember which one came first but I do remember recording it in my little flat in Shepherd’s Bush on an old ReVox tape recorder that you could add another track to and bounce them back and forth. For a drum machine I used a pillow with a microphone underneath it, which I hit. That was the bass drum. The snare drum, I used a tambourine with a tea towel on it, with a microphone underneath that, and just hit it with a drumstick. And then I put a bass guitar and a couple of guitars on it and blah blah blah. But the original demo, which is still skulking around somewhere – it’s on one of my solo albums, I think – it’s quite different. It’s a shuffle still but it’s quite a bit slower than the final version. And Ian [Hunter] was great about it. He said, “Look, I love the song but I can’t sing it. It doesn’t suit my voice.” Then when I got to know Paul, I said, “I’ve got all these songs.” He said, “What are they like?” So I showed him and he said, “I could sing that great.” So I thought, “Well, that’s the perfect bloke to sing them.” I had Movin’ On, Can’t Get Enough, Ready For Love… Was that when you suggested forming a band? No, not right away. Originally it was just going to be us recording some songs we’d got together. It wasn’t actually designed to be a group at all, in the beginning. And then Simon pitched up one day to visit Paul and I was there and we got chit-chatting and he wanted to sit in with us. And I said, ‘Well, all we need now is a bass player and we’ve got a group!” Of course, I was still in Mott but Paul had very kindly agreed that I couldn’t just dump them in it. I said, “We’ve got to finish off this album [Mott] and then we’ve got to do this tour.” Paul
Neal preston. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
ick Ralphs is running late for his interview. “But only by an hour or so,” an assistant assures me. “That’s good going for Mick.” It seems you can take the rock star out of the 70s but you will never retrieve the 70s from the rock star. Not in terms of his time-keeping, anyway. Everything else – the sex, the drugs, the, er, sex and drugs – Mick Ralphs left behind a long time ago, he insists, when he does eventually show up, looking relaxed and avuncular, as befitting a man now at an age when others have long since retired. “I don’t mind that one bit, though,” he smiles. “It would be a bit sad if I hadn’t! No, the only thing I do now that I still did back then is play the guitar. As long as I can still play music, I’ve got everything I need.” We meet on a sunny winter’s day in London, sequestered for the time being in a curtained-off corner of the basement photographic studio of the Classic Rock office. The only surviving member of the original Bad Company line-up that still lives in England, he says he was never tempted to live aboard – “Except for that time when the British government wanted all our money and we became tax exiles. I think they wanted something like 90 per cent – who would stand for that now?” he says, his West Country accent still thoroughly intact despite not living there for most of life. “Plus, I’d only just made some money for the first time in my life and didn’t know if I ever would again, so I left the country with the rest of the band. I didn’t really enjoy it, though. The only way I managed was because we spent most of the time away working outside the country anyway.” Those were the days, eh? Crushing taxes, rock star exiles, long hair, flares and three-channel TV… “It’s weird, isn’t it?” he twinkles. “You look back now and it really is another planet. I wouldn’t change it for the world, though. I still say, those early years with Bad Company were probably the best of my life.”
mick RAlphs
“AS LONG AS I’VE GOT MY GUITAR, I’VE GOT EVERYTHING I NEED.”
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the final days
None more black: the late 70s were dark days for Bad Company, but the fans never deserted them.
Words: Joel McIver Photos: Ross Halfin
BAD
By 1977, punk was sweeping the nation. But did Bad Company give a damn? Classic Rock tells the tale of five years fighting against the odds.
Mick Ralphs: by 1982, “We all needed to stop”, he says.
the final d ays
ross halfin x2
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nd so Paul Kossoff was dead. One of the finest British guitarists of his generation, gone to the great jam session in the sky. This meant that Bad Company, scheduled to tour America in 1976 with Kossoff’s band Back Street Crawler, would be doing nothing of the kind. Despite this tragedy, nothing was about to stop this band of renegades at this point in their careers. Anyone who predicted otherwise was very, very wrong. If you need evidence, take a look at the tenacity with which Messrs Rodgers, Ralphs, Burrell and Kirke flung themselves into their next album and tour cycle. In the summer of ’76, Run With The Pack was still as hot as molten lava when the group booked themselves into the Château d’Hérouville studio near Paris to record their next LP, but that didn’t deter them a jot. Only supernatural forces, it seemed, could do that. Mind you, that could have been a potential problem as the place was haunted… “The control room is where all the weird things go on,” Mick Ralphs told Circus writer Wesley Strick. “Chopin used to live there, and Elton John cut Honky Château there. The machines go off and on for no reason. And we used to hear voices coming through the speakers. I don’t know whether we were stoned or what!” Neither spectres nor spliffs proved to be a hindrance to writing decent music, though. Burnin’ Sky, the album that emerged from the paranormally enhanced recording sessions, was a reminder that when Bad Company were on form, they could deliver blues rock like few other bands. The vibe this time was laid-back rather than explosive, always a sign of a band maturing within their niche, and Rodgers’ pure blues influences were at their most obvious. The title cut was an exercise in restraint, a recipe continued in Leaving You and Everything I Need, with both songs demonstrating the singer’s grasp of a blues wail and the band’s effortless mastery of refined grooves. The high point for many fans was Like Water, a ballad of epic proportions that placed as much emphasis on shimmering guitar textures as on Rodgers’ signature vocal acrobatics. Despite the evident quality of the record, times were changing, and the chart positions for Burnin’ Sky were underwhelming – as were some of the reviews. Punk rock was about to arrive in late 1976 and early ’77, and although it’s too much of a typical black-and-white assertion made by rock writers that punk killed heavy rock overnight, there’s some truth to the idea that bands like Bad Company were about to be made to look a tad old-fashioned. Fortunately, Rodgers and crew were made of tough stuff, and not about to bow down before some kid with a safety pin through his earlobe. Bad Company retorted against Burnin’ Sky’s lukewarm reception in the best possible way, hitting North America for an all-out assault on venues the length and breadth of the continent. Spending close to a year on the road, the
“The audience responded even when the press didn’t,” says Rodgers.
‘Unfashionable or not, Bad Company were doing very nicely thank you for cash flow.’ band paid the inevitable price, coming close to the edge of complete exhaustion. The point had been made, however, and made well: they weren’t going down without a fight. Still, you can never argue with evolution, and by the time Bad Company’s next LP came out in early 1979, the wheel of fashion had spun a few more times. Punk may have been in its infant stages when Burnin’ Sky appeared two years previously, but the gobby stuff was now dominating the airwaves and music-weekly headlines. Predictably, interviewers wanted to know what Bad Company thought of the new sound – and what it implied for the future of their own band. Kirke rose to the bait, telling Vivien Goldman of Sounds, “I mean, what are they? The Vibrators, I mean The Damned, I mean the Chainsaws or whatever their bloody name is. I really don’t think they’ll last very long. As much as the music papers are championing them… I don’t think they have the talent or the inspiration that will make them endure. I don’t think you’ll see The Vibrators in two, three years time. Or The Damned. Or the Sex Pistols…” In an interview with Melody Maker’s Chris Welch, Rodgers added, “There have been some good new classicrockmagazine.com 117
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