Bad Company and Straight Shooter, Bad Company’s first two albums, remain blueprints for catchy, concise and commercially friendly, soulful hard rock for the 70s. The fact that they were on Led Zeppelin’s Swan Songs Records only adds to their cool factor. A superstar unit out of the gate, the lineup featured singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke from Free, guitarist Mick Ralphs, formerly of Mott The Hoople, and bassist Boz Burrell, fresh from a two-year stint with King Crimson. To everyone’s pleasant surprise, their 1974 self-titled debut went to Number #1 and spawned two Top 40 singles. The 1975 follow-up, Straight Shooter, went to Number #3 and boasted two more Top 40 hits. Forty years later, Rhino has reissued both albums, each with a second disc filled with B-sides, outtakes, alternate versions and unreleased songs.
Bad Company’s debut is undeniably the album that set things in motion for the British quartet. Led Zeppelin’s notorious manager Peter Grant got them in the Headley Grange, the studio where Zeppelin was working on Physical Graffiti, to cut the album in two weeks. Rodgers and Ralphs had been working on songs for months, Ron Nevison was brought in to engineer, and everyone had previous recording experience, so the sessions went smoothly and quickly. “Can’t Get Enough” was the record’s first single and it remains their biggest hit. “Movin’ On” was the second single, while “Rock Steady” “Ready For Love” and “Bad Company” all experienced heavy rotation on the FM dial. “Bad Company” features Rodgers playing an eerie piano line and tracking the vocal in an empty field outside Headley Grange to get a genuine distant effect. Fans will love the second disc with multiple alternate takes of “Can’t Get Enough,” “The Way I Chose,” as well as alternates of the B-sides “Little Miss Fortune” and “Easy On My Soul,” plus the released B-sides themselves. Detailed liner notes on those and an informative essay by David Clayton complete a very nice package.
Straight Shooter receives similar treatment with its 13-track bonus disc featuring alternate versions of every one of the original album’s songs, plus the unreleased songs “See The Sunlight” and “All Night Long.” The B-side “Whisky Bottle,” as an early piano demo and in its released form, backing the “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” single, is also here. Ron Nevison rejoined the band three months after the debut album was released to begin work on the songs comprising Straight Shooter. The hard rockin’ “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” is perhaps the album’s edgiest track and its first single. The more melodic “Feel Like Makin’ Love” was the follow-up single, charting higher and becoming one of the band’s most beloved rock ballads. Rodgers’ “Shooting Star,” a magical paean inspired by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, is another one from the album that continues to resonate. “Deal With The Preacher” is the other hard rocking song, one of only three credited to both Rodgers and Ralphs. Drummer Simon Kirke earns two sole writing credits for “Weep No More” and “Anna,” arguably the album’s two most unremarkable tracks on the surface, but quite listenable and essential parts of the whole. And on that note, the final verdict is in: Any Bad Company fan is going to want to get his or her hands on these reissues of Bad Company and Straight Shooter.
~ Shawn Perry
