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ALBUM REVIEW BAD COMPANY
B A D C O Released - June 26, 1974 on Swan Song Records. Produced by Bad Company Paul Rodgers - Vocals, Guitar on
"Can't Get Enough", Piano on "Bad Company" & "Don't Let Me
Down", All Instruments on "Seagull" With:
REVIEW This is the first album from the supergroup Bad Company, formed when singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke left the band Free and were joined by ex-King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell, and former Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs. Bad Company was also the first group signed to Led Zeppelin's new label, Swan Song. Overall this is one of the better depute rock albums, and pure Classic Rock at that, even if the term wasn't coined yet when this was released. The songs found on B A D C O are more on the mellow side of things, other than two of it's better songs, the hard hitting "Moving On", which is almost perfect, and the LP's opening number "Can't Get Enough", which is. The best song on this one, is the album's title cut "Bad Company" - but, is it really the title cut? Deep down no, since the official title of the LP was B A D C O, but how come I got a feeling that the band's name was taken from this great song, which was written by Rodgers and Kirke when they were still in Free. Weird that there are only maybe 15 to 20 real out-law rock songs out there, since all of them are very good, but "Bad Company" lands in the top five out of those. This album was self produced by the band, and overall they did a good job. But one song on here shows why sometimes it is cool to have another's outside view on how a song should sound, or if it should even be included on the album. Usually if an album overall is very good, which is the case with B A D C O, I'll just skip over the one or two bad songs that may show up on it. But I have to bring up "Don't Let Me Down", as it never should have been placed on this LP. Its chorus is nothing short of a rip-off of the Beatles "Don't Let Me Down"; but Bad Company's song totally lacks the feelings that John Lennon put into his lyrics. Had this been written today, I believe you would have see the song credited to Ralphs/Rodgers/Lennon/McCartney. The truth is, even if this song's lyrics didn't sound so much like the Beatles lyrics, it still is a very poor song anyway. But in rating it I still had to drop its rating down a full point for it's plagiarism. Overall, it is true that one good song can make an album, but one bad song does not ruin an album, either, and B A D C O is a nice first outing by this supergroup. - Keno 2005 To listen to some soundclips from B A D
C O or to purchase it click on: Bad Company Return to Rock Album's Reviews
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