Bad Company: In Performance | Music Documentary | Simon Kirke | Paul Rodgers | Mick Ralphs

[waves splashing] [band playing] Bad Company was the real deal. They hit it big, and they achieved a lot. Most bands you could see two or three hits you can think about. And this band, when I grew up were like American radio. You know what I mean, they were like American radio. They wrote millions of hits. [band playing] They had the greatest singer that rock music has ever produced. They wanted to strip away all the access, they wanted to strap on their guitars and deliver basic bare-bones, mus

cular rock and roll that would make your blood boil. They devoured Zeppelin. Black Company was born out of Free, a seminal British blues-rock band, which comprised of Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke, Andy Frazer and Paul Kossoff. And they've done some wonderful stuff. That's the way it's got to be So Mr. Big You'd better watch out And don't you hang around Oh for you I will dig A great big hole in the ground Things started to go wrong in Free, largely or mainly due to Paul Kossoff, the g

uitarist. Kossoff's growing drug problem got worse and worse until he was missing gigs, and it was sort of very hard for the band to go on. There was some kind of tension between Andy Fraser, the bass player, and Paul Rodgers, so Andy Fraser just abruptly decided to leave. And I left them kind of sorting their way, so they split up. Bad Company may never have happened if Paul Rodgers would have taken up the offer to join Deep Purple in 73. They phoned me and said they were in the middle of this

American tour and a singer wanted to leave. And would I sing for them? And, uh, I wasn't... I wasn't sure what I was doing at the time, so I said, Let me think about it. And I thought about it and decided against it. It's just that I didn't really think I would fit in there. A great big hole in the ground He was determined to have a successful band and big sales, big tours. He had enough of the Free kind of cult syndrome. I mean, again Free had the one single, but Free really never... They did

n't have big tours like that, and they weren't selling lots of records. Paul Rodgers went to Peter Grant, who was Led Zeppelin's manager, and asked him if he'd be willing to manage him. And Peter Grant said yes, he would love to do that. And uh, so Paul Rodgers said he wanted to get a band together along similar lines to Free. And he was gonna ask Simon Kirke, who had been in the drummer entry with him. Bad Company was a combination of musicians from three you know, separate groups. Paul and mys

elf from Free, Mick Ralphs from Mott The Hoople, Boz Burrell from King Crimson. Paul had a band called Peace, and he toured with Mott The Hoople when Free had one of their breakups, and they formed an alliance to bond going very well. And so when Mick left Mott and Free was no longer, Mick and Paul got together, and they asked if I'd like to join, and I said I'd loved to. Because I just wanted to put Free behind me, it'd been such a wait, such a millstone. And, um, Mick was wonderful. Mick was s

o funny. Mick Ralphs had been the great back of Mott The Hoople with Ian Hunter. Their breakthrough came in the shape of David Bowie's song that David Bowie produced called All the Young Dudes. Mott The Hoople was kind of entering this glim type of period, and Mick Ralphs was anything but glim. Although he played great in the band, he came up with amazing parts and amazing songs. I don't think it was really what Mick was comfortable doing. He was a little bit more of a bluesy rock guy. [guitar r

iff] Paul Rodgers and Mick Ralphs really connected as musical soul mates almost the same way that Paul Rodgers did with Paul Kossoff. Mick was a songwriter who wrote not only the music, he had a lot to do with the melodies. So his guitar parts were orchestrated around that, while Kossoff was really more and would just come up with a riff. He really never knew what the melody was gonna be or lyrically. But Mick would come in... came in with two or three big songs from the first record. good look

in', come with me I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta Steal your love I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta Steal your love I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta Steal your love I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta Steal your love Mick and Paul had formed this little bond and they were of like blues-oriented. Mick was a little bit no country. So obviously, Paul Rodgers and myself had been together four or five years, so we got on pretty well. And then Boz was this very laid back, amiable bass player

, you know. And when he was the last on the list of bass players, because we hated King Crimson, We had all... We had the guy from Super Tran, a guy from this band, and that band, and we always put Boz at the bottom because we hated King Crimson. So after we've been through 15 bass players with all the fuck it, we got to try Boz. Crimson is one of those bands led by Robert Fripp that probably has had 100 members since its inception. So in Crimson, Boz was just another guy who played electric bas

s. In Bad Company, Boz realized the potential here. So Boz arrived and he was this great looking guy with a beard, tall, you know. And we said, Well, the first key in the first song is G... And he said, don't tell me anything. I'll just pick it up as I go along. And we're... all right. Does he even want to know the chords? So after the first song, we knew that he was the one. And the irony is, we only found out later, he'd only been playing bass about 18 months. We've tried with millions of idea

s, and something that said, Well, look, going to be this big, so you better give us a name. So we said, all right, Bad Company, and that was it. [mummering] Peter Grant took them all on. They called themselves Bad Company, which Peter Grant didn't like it at the time. He thought it was a name they shouldn't use. And the record company, which was Led Zeppelin's record company, Swan Song, also didn't like the name. But eventually, Paul Rodgers persuaded them that this was going to be the name of t

he band. He was convinced and Peter went along with it. There were egos in the band, but we were all seasoned musicians. We all got on well. Um, it was almost as if Free, and Mott the Hoople had been almost like training grounds for the real thing. It's hard to know exactly what's gonna come out now. But the great thing is that there's an amazing amount of potential because we have a lot to draw from each other. We have a lot to learn from each other, and that's bound reflecting the songs. When

you had all these influences stirred up in the pot, you had this explosive hard rock band that was gonna take the world by storm. Led Zeppelin was about to record using a mobile unit at Headley Grange Studios. Well, Headley Grange manor was their mobile studios, and it was delayed for a couple of weeks. So Peter Grant said, Do you want to get into the studio and start recording tracks? So they basically put down their first album by jumping the queue from Led Zeppelin. I think it cost about a co

uple of thousand dollars to make a whole album. I can't get enough of your love I can't get enough of your love I can't get enough of your love Well I take whatever I want And baby I want you It starts with that, you know, you hear on the track recording itself. You hear the guy go, one, two three... bang, you know, from the immediate start, you know, the guys air in there playing. That's what you get. The guys are playing, it's not studio controlled. There's nothing over doubly in all

that, it's just here we are, one, two, three, four... in we go. It was just a count off that they were gonna spice off, and it was just gonna come in with their drum, ka ba baa... But somebody counted off one, two, three... ka ba baa... And they all heard it, and they go, Wow, that's great. And that snare snap at the front of it, it's because of putting the bass kick in front. What it tends to do is it tends to just drag the track back before it goes forward. So already it picks you up and just

let you drop into the song. ♪[Can't Get Enough]♪ I remember hearing it on the airwaves in Philadelphia and from the first opening chords, the song grabs you. [guitar riff] It's an extremely exciting guitar solo, and it's an early example of what's known as Julie guitar solos popularized later by Thin Lizzy. But it's where the guitar solo starts, it's just one guitar, and then the second guitar comes in playing almost an identical part, but it's just like a sort of minor thing about it. A couple

of interesting things going on for Mick Ralphs on the guitar here. The first thing is that when he actually goes down in the main verse, which is a C to a B flat, then he plays to an F. But what he does, he goes C, B flat and then he plays in F in the first inversion and he adds a C on top, which makes an F suspended basically on one guitar. So he goes... [guitar riff] On the other guitar, he's going F, C, F. And the two good guitarists together create a really beautiful little harmonic structu

re there. The other guitar that's playing on the record, may even be tuned into what's called on open G tune. It's very difficult to tell because when the two guitars are playing together, you can't really tell. But it's the mixture of the two guitars that gives it that really exciting drive to track and the shuffle B from Simon Kirks' drumming. The second section is quite interesting. It's a typical rock n roll thing, and is using root and fifth of what's now known as a five chord. So if you se

e it written down on a piece of music that says G five or C five, what that means is, it's neither major nor minor of the chord. It's just root and fifth. [guitar riff] Free used to use it a lot and Bad Company used it a lot. So the bridge, he basically goes G five and then they go to B flat five. And they go to an F five, to an E flat five, and then the course is C, F. [guitar riff] Up to a D, to a G suspended, back to a G. I can't get enough of your love baby Come on I can't get enough of

your love all right I can't get enough of your love baby It's the guitar that really dominates, and the drumming is very straight, but very effective. It was sort of swing to it in a swagger. It was a good example of how Bad Company differed a bit from Free as well, but it was a more up-tempo, more aggressive sort of hard-hitting approach to rock music compared to the more laid back Lussier elements of Free. I can't get enough of your love I can't get enough of your love What you say

I can't get enough of your love All right When Big Company plays I can't get enough of your love, it's great because the whole audience is like singing, I can't get enough of your love. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I grew up singing that song and you just really get into it, and they've really... the audience feels apart. They're like drawn into the music. I can't get enough of your love I can't get enough of your love I can't get enough of your love [band playing] It works on the radi

o, it works in the house, and you know, you could make love to it. You get down to a bar, and in a stadium. It's like a sing-along. You know, it's just got all the qualities. It's just... it's really great, and it's non-complexity. It's something to do with Paul Rodger's voice, even though it's of a white rocker, he's got this... retains this blues... this blues integrity, that even if he was singing about groceries, it would sort of sound kind of very authentic. It's a very sexy voice, very big

voice kind of draws you in. Say yeah You say yeah Just say yeah I’ll tell you that I love you It was just right for the time. It was a perfect illustration of of good quality high energy seventies rock music. Can't Get Enough is the template for Bad Company sounds. There wasn't a lot of noodling. It wasn't prog rock. It was a song where they stripped away all the fat. There was no filler, and that's what Bad Company was all about. Don Kirshner TV Show in America is early on in their car

eer. And, you can see from the second number in, from the power of the performance, they're winning this audience over. And by the time you get to can't get enough of your love, which, of course, is a hit, they had the audience in their hands and, you know, Paul is getting them to sing and clap. You know, it was just... It was a brilliant performance. Kirshner was huge. And if you got on Don Kirshner, you got pretty well national exposure. A Little Miss Fortune, hit me and I'm down Miss Und

erstanding, ran me out of town A Little Miss Take, she don't understand I'm in a bad situation, and I'm standing at the station Turning around, round, round, yeah Gotta get home yeah Bearing in mind, this was well before in TV or music videos, it looks surprisingly tamed compared to my memory of how the band wore like a big rocking outfit. But you know, very hard-edged rock unit, and when I see the Kirshner, it's almost like glitzy. You know, I saw trousers Paul Rodgers was wearin

g in a very kind of tight ends of this glittery bits and Boz Burrell wearing sort of a flowery top shirt with a sort of... If I asked you, he looks just like Kings of Leon. The way that Boz Burrell looks in this cushion footage, a lot of bands who are currently working, I think they sort of look at old rock footage and they take old bass. I want to get back home, down this long road The way I'm going, I hope to see you before too long Time is passing; time is gone, oh, oh, oh [ba

nd playing] A huge part of what Bad Company was about was the look. Paul Rodgers had his own choreography. He would dance with the entire microphone stand. Rod Stewart the same thing. He had obviously perfected that with these years with Free. Simon was just kind of, ah, you know, just a really hard-hitting guy in the back. But Simon was also a great looking guy, blonde and just really cut and ripped. And I think Mick Ralphs wore these boots on the outside and the boots came up over his jeans. A

nd I thought got on anybody else, that is corny as hell, but it looks so great on the guy. [band playing] There was just this newfound freedom when Bad Company came together, it was like all the Christmases had come at once. All the... All the ambition was finally being realized. This is what we were going to do. Jesus, in the first year, we were like we had a gold album. When Bad Company was formed, there was a definite jelling together with not only Mick Ralphs guitar playing, but the fact tha

t, as with Paul Rodgers, he was also very prolific as a songwriter. So the two of them were jelling together in that respect, coming up with good songs. Although often they write songs individually, they would form a collection of great songs on their albums. And Boz Burrell was, I suppose a typical bass player. He was just there, solid and reliable. One guy who was a little off-kilter in terms of this playing because he came from King Crimson, you know, a prog-rock band was Boz Burrell. But he

gave the band just a little bit of uniqueness in terms of his playing that and was able to separate them a bit. The major difference between them and Free is that they had three-part vocals going on because of Mick, Simon and so did Boz. And also, a lot of people didn't realize it in Free, that Paul Rodgers also played a bit of guitar and keyboards. And so, he was allowed to do a little bit more of that because he was really in Bad Company. He was the man that formed the band, and he was so far

in front. Obviously, on the first album, Bad Company stated their intent, with both the name of the band and the album, and obviously the track was called Bad Company as well, which is an excellent song. I love the way it starts with its moody piano intro. Paul is playing a little... I don't know if it's a little Wurlitzer piano. So Paul is playing a little Wurlitzer, and Boz is playing bass and Mick Ralphs is like barely playing guitar. And I think it was a performance on Don Kirshner. Um, and

Paul just plays those little minor chords and it gives you chills. Company Always on the run Destiny is the rising sun I was born six gun in my hand Behind a gun I'll make my final stand Paul came up with the initial riff on the piano, and company... Just a little black notes, all the flats and sharps on the piano. And he just wanted some help with some lyrics. I was there. I just happened to be there and we finished it in 20 minutes. But the thing about Bad Company was it had this sort o

f, um, riders on the plane... the planes rather, on horses, tumbleweed and bounty hunters and outlaws things. It's cowboy rock and roll, Paul Rodgers understanding the American market, in a sense, you know. And it's like a sort of extension of what the blues singers were singing about. Now when I first heard Bad Company, I couldn't tell if it wasn't American. I thought it was an American band because it sounded like the sexiest hot voice, like I thought Southern Rock like a Leonard Skinner. Ther

e's so much drama in the song. To me, it almost puts me in an old western. It almost gives me that type of a feel, when you close your eyes and then there's the machine gun drumming of Simon Kirke. It's very atmospheric and ethereal, but then it really kicks in for the course with the great power chords from Mick Ralphs. That's why they call me Bad company I can't deny Bad company Till the day I die Everybody wants to have their band anthem and maybe they've got other anthemic songs that ma

ke more statement or a bigger stadium rockers. But I think Bad Company is a great track lyrically, Bad Company till the day I die, you know. I mean, it's a baker song. Isn't it? It's an outlaw. It's how's the angel. And threw away the song Now these towns Well they all know our name six gun sound Is the claim of fame Well I can just hear them say Bad company I can't deny Bad company Till the day I die I think that they're kind of rock fans who are certainly well into drinking beer at B

ad Company gigs and doing what's it down and all kinds of drugs. They kind of liked and they took this song in the heart and liked this kind of slight dangerous edge that the imagery of this song suggested. Typically songs in minor keys and the sad songs, it's kind of a little harder than the big up chords of I Can't Get Enough, but that song did really well. It was unbelievable. Bad company And we are Bad company I can't deny What I say [band playing] Bad company Bad company All right

Just lots of cowboy It's very reminiscent of some of the songs that Paul used to write in Free. It's got that sort of darkish swagger. Free was what it was, a very blues-based band. Bad Company was a lot more, perhaps geared towards the stadiums. A lot more up-tempo rock, a bit more sort of a match show rock for one of their bare expression. Bad Company had more hits than Free. You know, Free were incredibly influential, and I think bad company were, you know, a great rock band that may possibly

not have influenced the whole lot of people. They just let them enjoy the music for the sake of it. The Free audience was there a little bit, but I think that this was a whole new ballgame. This was a singles-oriented band. This was a major media Blitzer's, huge magazine ads. I mean, Free had none of that stuff. Certainly on a commercial level, Bad Company were much more popular. But I do think on a purist level, perhaps Free delivered something that was so intangible but yet so powerful that t

he shadow of Free over Bad Company probably was never extinguished. [band playing] Ready for love was... you know, it was originally done by Mott the Hoople. It was one of the only songs that that Paul said, fuck, man, I'll not sing that. And Mick said, but we've already done it. Paul said I don't give a shit. I want to record it. So that shows you what a good song is to sing. It's in A minor, which is a lovely melo... sad melancholic key. As always with Bad Company, they knew how to get up to..

. build a song up to a chorus. A lot of the choruses were not dissimilar, but there's nothing wrong with that. That's the style of the band. There's a couple of nice little things in this song that are slightly different from a lot of other bands. They're using some slightly unusual chords quite cleverly. So you've got basically this little intro... and then into our switches, A minor to C major, to D major, to C major, A minor, to G, to D major with an F sharp root. All the same again, A minor

to C major, to D major, to C major, A minor to G major, to D major with an F-sharp root. And then the next thing you do is really quite interesting. It's essentially an open G chord, then playing an A minor chord after it, which sounds like... [guitar riff] And then they play a D11 chord... [guitar riff] to D major chord. [guitar riff] So it's played... [guitar riff] which is great because it's being able to use all the open strings. And harmonically, it's a bit more interesting than your standa

rd chords. And then when it gets to the chorus, they use their usual fifth thing again, written fifth. So, G to A, C to D goes... [guitar riff] does your C to D, as your G to A. And then at the end of it, they play this really nice little tag, which goes... C major, G over B, A minor to G major, to F major, to G major, which takes you back to the verse and intro again. Walkin' down this rocky road Wonderin' where my life is leading Rollin' on to the bitter end I'm finding out along the way

what it takes to keep love living you should know how it feels my friend Oo I want you to stay baby Oo I want you today I'm ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love I'm waiting for you to come Ready For Love is a good example of Bad Company's ability to do a slower tempo song. I'm waiting for your call, baby Now I'm on my feet again Better things are bound to happen All my dues surely must be paid Many miles and many tears The great melod

y... the great vocal by Paul Rodgers, the real finesse in Mick Ralphs' playing, and it's a song that everyone can identify with. I mean, they're reaching out to the Heartland. They're reaching... They were touching your heart with a song like Ready for Love. Oo I want you today I'm ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Yeah Don't you know I'm waiting for your love We were mixing the first album and Bowie... David Bowie and Angie came in when w

e were... Coz they knew Mick because he produced all the undoes. And they came in while we were mixing Ready for Love and she was going, Oh, I love this song. They were both singing it. And it still is... It's one of my favorite songs. Mick said he wrote it in about 10 minutes. Oo I want you to stay baby Oo I want you today I'm ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Ready for love oh baby I'm ready for love Ready for love oh baby I'm ready f

or love On the Bad Co. on the Black and White Album, the first album, you'll see an imprint of a palm on the white lettering because it was bad. You know, that man is Bad. Not many people get that, but you'll see this imprint of someone's palm. Bad Company's First Album Stands as one of the greatest rock n roll debuts ever. Not only did you have songs like Can't Get Enough, but you had killer tracks like the title track, Bad Company. You had Ready for Love, which was already recorded by Mott the

Hoople, which was the template for some of the most emotional Bad Company ballads. You had Rock Steady from which I understand when they were recording the song, Paul Rodgers didn't know what to sing in that blank space and then he just screamed out, Rock steady. Got to rock steady [band playing] From Day one, the first album was one song label, they get Peter Grant, and boom... like it goes like seven or eight hits. You know, I mean, like the first album. Paul sang wonderfully for those first

couple of albums, everyone was just, uh... And anything I did, Mick was like, Boy, all right, that's lovely. Great. There was no analyzing of try doing a bit of this. It was a bigger sound, the drums were bigger, Paul was still singing unbelievable. I mean, there was still... it was a little bit of blues, but it was really more kind of electric arena rock. You got to got to go to keep on rock Turn on your light and stay with me a while And ease your troubled mind Turn on your light You got

to rock steady Bad Company had opened up their account with Can't Get Enough. And on the second album, they needed something that was very, very similar in its immediacy. And I think they found this perfectly in Feel Like Makin' Love. It was a marriage of two songs. It was a little country song that Mick had or Paul had rather. And then Mick had this... And they just combined the two, and it kind of worked sort of heavy metal mixed country and it, you know, it worked big time, so another classic

song. It starts with this really lovely little sort of country acoustic thing, which is a D major chord, and then a C over a D on basically a G over a D or G suspended, back to a G to a D. So... Then the verse is D major, to G major. It's a little country look in it. And the usual big chorus, which is C D, C D, C D, C G using the root in fifth again, ♪[Feel Like Makin' Love]♪ It's very Californian. It's very, very American, I think, but certainly really friendly, which is like Hotel California

or you know, he is livin' or something like that. I mean, it's just got a really nice quality to it. Boz Burrell is a great singer in his own right and Mick Ralphs sings, so it's nice to hear all this every kind of fairly sweet eels equals E harmony is coming in the verses that gives this country Southern flavor. It starts with a bit of four player. It starts very gently, you know, the syncopation of the guitar is very soft, and it just rules itself open. By the time you get to the top notch, wh

en you've got that dili ba... I mean, that's it, isn't it? That's your point of ejaculation. Boom, boom, boom. [band playing] Feel like makin' love Feel like makin' love Feel like makin' love Feel like makin' love to you It's got dynamics. A lot of their music... A lot of good rock music has dynamics. It always does, and Bad Company's music had dynamics. It's a song that is guaranteed to get the audience standing on their seats, cheering along. It's a theme that every hot-blooded male can id

entify with. There may be ridiculed at times, you know, sort of sort of a sexual kind of angle that they put on things in the match show kind of chest-beating things that they were criticized for. But that was very much what so many of their audience was probably one of the aspects that appealed to them. Feel like makin' Feel like makin' love Feel like makin' love Feel like makin' love Again, it's deceptively simple. There was quite a lot of production going on. It sounds like it's just guit

ar bass drums, which is essentially the sound of Bad Company. But it's quite a lot going on. There's really nice... really little pianos sort of touches throughout the verses and then there's a Hammond organ that swoops in the course. So, usually when you start listening on headphones and start really analyzing what's going on, there's lots of little flavors and colors and they are, I guess, alive. They didn't really have those... some of those parts going on. It didn't seem to matter because th

e essential... the soul of the song came through. Now I ain't complaining, just try'n to understand What makes a woman do the things she does. One day she'll love you, the next day she'll leave you, Why can't we have it, just the way it used to be? If I remember correctly Mick had written it with... I know Mick wrote it with Paul, and I think it was one of Paul's relationships, you know, with him and a girl, good loving gone bad, bye-bye, I'll see you later. Yeah so go on and leave me,

leave me for another! Good lovin' gone bad, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Good lovin' gone bad, bad, bad, Good lovin' gone bad; yeah. Baby I'm a bad man Good Lovin' Gone Bad is from Straight Shooter, which is arguably the band's best album. They only say you have your whole life to write your first album and then you have six months to write your next. And Bad Company probably had less than six months to write their next record, but the follow up Straight Shooter to me stands tall with the excell

ence of Bad Company. Obviously they got clubbed together with all the other bands in the seventies who were in my opinion quite different to Bad Company. And if you look at their albums, they were never a band to sort of go off and do 10 or 15 minutes songs. They were very much a band that wrote short, concise rock songs. Shooting Star really stands out among Bad Company's catalog of songs. It's not about girls, it's not about trying to get a girl. It's not about trying to get sex. It's not stru

tting your machismo. It's a song about the tragic death of a rock and roll star. And Paul Rodgers' lyrics for that song are so evocative and moving. And from what I understand, it's a composite written about the death of Jimi Hendrix and Paul's great Free comrade, Paul Kossoff. Johnny died one night, died in his bed Bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head Johnny's life passed him by like a warm summer day If you listen to the wind you can still hear him play Don't you know that yo

u are a shooting star? Don't you know? Don't you know? In a five year span, Bad company, Straight shooter, Run with the Pack Burning Sky Desolation Angels, Five years cornerstones of hard rock. The Arms were, you know, well produced and solid, stolid rock tracks. And you know, it was definitely a Bad Company thing, but with a band that plays the way they play, the type of music they play and how they viewed themselves, it's a live band. All the songs live are much more intense than their record

ed counterparts, you know, but they're two different animals, and they could be treated well, either way. Don't you Don't you know that you are a shooting star? Don't you Don't you know? You know, maybe they would change the guitar solos and things like that and draw songs out a little longer. But not really. I mean, they kept everything really, really tight and concise, and I love that about them. It was song after song after song that was filled with great hooks, great energy, power, and i

ncandescence. When you listen to the records, production is excellent. It's very kind of in your face. It's sort of you can't avoid it, sort of you can't go around it and live. It's kind of quite nice to see that It's not like that. It's a lot loosen and It's not as hard-edged. It doesn't have is quite as much impact to me as the records. One of the things that they used to do live was they didn't come out all guns blazing. They worked up to a fever pitch, so their live performances were really

quite different from the records. You know, it was structured in a very different way from their albums. They were all great players, and it was simple. You see, and Mick being a relatively sober guy, I mean, he could handle, uh, playing rhythm and lead at the same time. Paul also played some guitar, so sometimes they do some dual guitar stuff. But there was no weak link in the band. With Free, you're always wondering, you know, what's Koz gonna be like today? There was always that sort of retic

ence within the... between the four of us, but with Bad Company, everyone was strong. They could do a great rock n roll song like Rock Steady, and they could do an amazingly ethereal song like Burning Sky, for instance, which really made you feel that you were out there in the desert. And then they could come up with this emotionally affecting ballad, which sounded like nothing you'd ever heard. It was very jangly. It was actually very birdsy, a song called Silver Blue and Gold. It's a Song from

Run With The Pack, and it's an absolutely mesmerizing, heart-rending song. Bad Company could do it all. The first album and Straight Shooter was probably the peak of what they did. And for me personally, every album subsequently was slightly worse. Bad Company had all the plaques on the wall and all the awards, but I think we kind of lost our way after about the fourth album. We had a huge following, and we sort of rode it, you know, gently downhill. As just the case money, and they were making

lots of money. Money makes things more difficult, it doesn't solve any problems. And I know that it was getting weird because now the guys who are writing the songs, they were getting a bigger cut from their songwriting and publishing, and Simon is not writing. Um, it started getting weird. [band playing] Rock and roll and drugs always go hand in hand, and always will. But in the seventies it was really nutty. Coke was the worst thing we all got. We all did it. Paul stopped doing it in about 76

. But the three of us, we all did it. And you know, it made us drink too much and made us take down... It kind of screwed up a lot of bands, coke. If we'd have just stuck with drinking pints and the old Volker or glass of wine, we would probably still be together now. I think by the third or fourth record it was for appearance's sake only. And those records show that too. There was the occasional good song, Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy, but typically there was only one or two songs. Put your hands tog

ether now and sing It out loud Its all part of my rock 'n roll fantasy Its all part of my rock 'n roll dream [band playing] Paul had been given this octave divider by Leslie West from Mountain. It literally drops all the strings in octave on a guitar. And I heard him playing with it in the studio, and suddenly having this... And it was like, Wow. It's a great beat to play along Once you have an octave down, or an octave high to play the riff, it gives quite a huge sound. And you know that wasn

't quite a Bad Company type of sound guitar-wise. And it's a song where Bad Company is really stepping away and looking on the outside and delivering a song that talks a bit about the excitement of being a rock n roll star. Going on that stage with lights out and then the spotlight gets on you. And the whole place explodes with 20, 000 people screaming your name, applauding, you could do no wrong. And I think that song just delivers a taste of what it was like to be able to enjoy that rock n rol

l fantasy. Although the song itself is a good song, I think it's... it's also a good example, I think of how production-wise the band had gone over to have some more American sounds, which is inevitable because they were hugely popular in the States. you can hear the sound Reachin' for the sky and churn In up the ground Its all part of my rock 'n roll fantasy The production values are pretty strange. I mean, there's syndromes on it, which is really quite old. And in a sense for me, the produc

tion of that song actually clothes the song that's in there. It's a good song, but it's not my favorite because of the production values messed up. all part of my rock 'n roll dream Probably the weakest record was the last album, Rough Diamonds, which really, I think from what I understand was a contractual obligation. But there are some good songs on that record. Electric Lamb was very much cut in the mold of Burning Sky, but by that time they'd run out of steam. If they had been able to susta

in what they did on those first two records, I mean, they could have almost been like a Zeppelin. They had that background and they had the singers and the names. I think what happens, every writer only has so many great songs in him. You know, it's not like your guitar player where if you keep playing, you're going to get better and better. As a songwriter, you may only have eight great songs in you, and so it a point in time when that sort of fourth record comes around and you know that it's j

ust... it's as good as you could have done, and you tell yourself you don't tell anybody else, but you tell yourself this is not as good as what I did in the first record. That has to do something to you. It was a shame when Paul decided to leave. Peter Grant went into seclusion, and so our management kind of folded and we were sort of drifting around and it was a terrible year. And Paul was unhappy, and he said, Look, I'm off. And you know, me and Mick and Boz decided after a year to carry on w

ith someone else, and that became a bit of a nightmare. So that's the one episode in Bad Company's 30 years I regret. Any band really can continue with changing the lineup sort of all the time, but it loses a lot of its continuity by doing that. Obviously, the classic Bad Company years with the early years with the original four... There's two chapters of Bad Company. Up to when Paul left in 1982 and then, you know, the two bands that came after that, that went under the name of Bad Company. For

all intents and purposes, the original Bad Company was the best. For those six or seven years, you know we had a ball. [band playing] And all the elements that I wanted to hear, you know, which was the blues thing, you know, the tough rock. You know, that lovely sounding guitar that Mick used to have, the great drumming with Simon, Boz Burrells was a great bass player, and also this extra thing with the harmonies going on. But of course, the voice of Paul Rodgers. They were a feel-good band, yo

u know, they were having a good time. And they wanted you to have a good time, and they were singing about having a good time and you know delicate stuff like, you know, making love. Some of the other bands around, their contemporaries of time, have perhaps stayed in the limelight a lot more, but Bad Company tend to get overlooked these days. So I think they're not really given as much credit as they deserve. Bad Company were anything but bad company. They were great company. I tell you that I

love you baby and you say yeah I tell you that I love you and you say yeah you say yeah You say yeah, yeah, yeah I tell you that I love you baby Now can't get enough of your love Oh yeah, can't get enough of your love [band playing]