Original subtitles

[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, muscular 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 guitarist.

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 didn'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 myself 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 so 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 riff]

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 lookin', 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 bass.

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 ideas, 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 the 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 couple 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 structure 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 see 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 radio,

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 career.

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 Understanding,

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 wearing

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

[band 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.

And 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 that, 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 of,

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.

There'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 make 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 Bad 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

the 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 standard 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 melody...

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 we 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 for 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,

when 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 identify 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 guitar 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

the 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 excellence 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 strutting 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 you 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 recorded 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 incandescence.

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 reticence 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 together 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 roll 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 production 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 sustain

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 just...

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 with 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,

you 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]