Bad Company (1974)

It's interesting that Bad Company should follow Deep Purple and in particular these two albums. Ravaged by personnel issues, the band Free was spinning apart by 1973, leaving the various members primed for the taking by other larger bands. Ritchie Blackmore had designs on singer Paul Rodgers in particular, so much so that it's really not much of a surprise that he ended up drafting similar-ranged David Coverdale in spite of also acquiring the perfectly capable Glenn Hughes, who had taken over bass duties. However, Rodgers, along with his steadfast drummer Simon Kirke, had plans of his own, to break out of the second tier, which Free occupied along with other quality bands of limited popularity, like King Crimson and Mott the Hoople. In effect, they created a band far more successful than the sum of its parts.

In many ways, Bad Company is a supergroup where the individual musicians agreed to leave their less commercial tendencies at the door and produce albums of concrete songs with strong popular appeal. Rodgers and Kirke make a conscious effort not to slip into the extended Cream-style bass/guitar jams that were the hallmark of their sound. Meanwhile, bassist Boz Burrell doesn't bring an inkling of his exposure to prog music, nor his vocals. He's just the bass player here. Mick Ralphs, who probably enjoyed the most commercial success prior to Bad Company, keep any association with glam at arm's length. The result is a set of eight songs that almost all get classic rock radio airplay to this day.

Like I've said about Hotel California, regardless of what you think of Bad Company, the first album is just one of those gotta-have albums. Unlike the Eagles, though, Bad Company, at least at their debut, doesn't have a lot of haters. It's a solid work. Sure you may think a song needs an extended solo here, or more vocals there, but this is an exercise in focus. As the band went through the 1970's, the albums would tend to concentrate more on bigger hits, leaving a lot of filler. Eventually by album number six they were ready to call it a day. Interestingly, the band minus Rodgers backed up Deep Purple keyboard maestro Jon Lord for a couple tracks on his 1982 solo album Before I Forget and in a contemporary radio interview, Jon expressed his interesting in keeping the band afloat. Bad Company would be propped up in some form or another over the years by Ralphs and Kirke, while Rodgers was busy with high-flying projects with Jimmy Page and (much later) Queen. I think they did sort of reform, but after Burrell died that obviously became a little more difficult.