Just how dumb can you be and still make it big in the rock biz? To find the answer you need look to either Foreigner or Bad Company, and I lack the intestinal fortitude it would require to examine the former. Both bands achieved fame and fortune via songs with IQs (providing songs could have IQs) lower than that of your average ape, so there’s your answer right there. You can be dumb as a stump, and still make enough moolah to drive your Jaguar on a whim into your swimming pool, even though Jaguars don’t know how to swim.
But is dumb necessarily a bad thing? I love Bachman Turner Overdrive and they’d probably be the first three pupils eliminated in a second grade spelling bee. (Actually Slade would precede them, and I love Slade too.) There are rockers much smarter than any of the bands listed above, and their intelligence—take Rush or Bad Religion for example—just gets in their way. They’re just smart enough to be pretentious, which in turn should tip you off to exactly how stupid they really are.
So maybe dumb doesn’t necessarily translate as insufferable, as Bad Company proved during its career spent producing crudely simplistic hard rock songs that could have been performed by troglodytes playing rocks. It mattered not a whit that they were dumb, as in dumb as a thumb. Why, lead singer Paul Rodgers concedes in “Runnin’ With the Pack” that his girlfriend wants to keep him in a cage, presumably to prevent him from inadvertently doing harm to himself or others.
The reason Bad Company made it was because, Mensa members or not, they knew how to frame Mick Ralphs’ brutal power chords in pummeling songs that, at their best, either made you want to be (a) deaf or (b) part of their rock’n’roll fantasy. They even told a decent story or two. The basics: Bad Company was a “supergroup” formed in 1973 by Mott the Hoople defector Mick Ralphs, Free’s Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke, and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell. Under the direction of infamous Led Zep manager Peter Grant, the band quickly became superstars both in England and the United States, which doesn’t speak highly for either nation. 1985’s 10 from 6 is a greatest hits package released before Rodgers and his chest hair moved on, and includes (duh) cuts from the band’s first 6 LPs.
“Can’t Get Enough” provides the template the band would follow throughout its career, one based on Mick Ralphs’ school of bludgeon and bluster. Ralphs’ opening riffs are primordial, while Rodgers establishes his caveman bona fides with the delicate sentiment, “I take whatever I want/And baby I want you.” Kirke bashes the drums while Ralphs takes a solo and Rodgers utilizes his heavy metal pipes to let his baby know, approximately 650 times, that he can’t get enough of her love. It’s a truly dumb song that has never failed to amuse me, and it’s followed by its sex-crazed doppelganger, “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” This Rogers-Ralphs composition opens on a less barbarous note, with an acoustic guitar no less, and Rodgers doesn’t come across like a guy dressed like Fred Flintstone. Ah, but in come Ralphs’ power chords at the chorus, and they’re monstrous, earth shaking, the footsteps of some rough beast slouching towards Budokan. Rodgers may say he feels like making love, but Ralphs is behind him with Thor’s Hammer, fashioning chains of pure “get up, get out” groupie fornication. That said, I like the solo he takes the song out on; it actually shows a bit of finesse, at least by Bad Company standards.
“Run With the Pack” opens with some Mott-school piano before Rodgers comes in to announce that he’s leaving his girl to run with the pack, and he’s not looking back. This one is pure subtlety compared to its predecessors, what with the piano and a cool Ralphs solo, and unlike tracks one and two it doesn’t come crushing down on you like a ton of bricks; why, they even throw in some strings towards the end, and the only bashing going on is compliments of Kirke. It’s not Leonard Cohen, but who needs Leonard Cohen when you’ve got “Shooting Star,” which is up next? It tells the story of a kid who becomes a rock star only to crash and burn, and while Ralphs’ power chords on the choruses are at the demolition level, the song itself is the picture of decorum. Okay, I admit it, I owned the 8-track with this one on it, and loved Ralphs’ great solo almost as much as I did the song’s final stanza, where Rodgers describes the hero’s death, adding, “If you listen to the wind/You can still hear him play.” Why, this could almost be a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, that’s how good it is.
“Movin’ On” is your average road song, and you could almost mistake its opening for The Who. It’s more of a rocker than a headbanger, and its only problem is that for a song about movin’ on, there isn’t much actual movin’ on goin’ on. Ralphs plays a cool solo, and Rodgers kicks things up a notch as the hoopla winds down, but that’s about it. “Bad Company” opens on a muted and atmospheric note, with piano and cymbals and Rodgers singing he was “born with a six-gun in his hand,” which certainly indicates the need for stricter intrauterine gun control laws. We’re back in the Wild West on this one, with Rodgers as part of a band of Rebel deserters, and it’s a slow cooker until the choruses, when Ralphs launches bass-heavy power chords that are more 12-guage than six-gun. Ralphs serves up a decent solo, Rodgers repeats that he’s bad company approximately 87 times, and then Ralphs takes the song out, throwing in a bit of feedback along the way.
If I’ve always loathed “Rock’n’Roll Fantasy” more than any of Bad Company’s other bad songs, it’s because it’s bad but not funny. It bludgeons its way along, Rodgers singing about how he’s living his fantasy while Ralphs plays with more finesse than usual, and besides the pseudo-Zep interlude in the middle, it just goes on and on, with Rodgers singing about jesters and dancers and letting the music get down into your soul, which sounds like a cancer risk to me. Other than some oddly intriguing bass by Burrell, this one has nothing going for it, and it would mark the album’s low-water mark if it weren’t for “Live for the Music,” on which Ralphs fires off huge cannonades while Rodgers serves up lots of clichés about living for the music, his voice rising occasionally in an eerie imitation of Ronnie Van Zant (actually, Van Zant was probably the perp if plagiarism was committed). This one goes from A to A with no stops in between, and it has nothing to recommend it but Ralphs’ guitar work, which shows flair, and the long drum and bass interlude it goes out on.
“Ready for Love” is secondhand product, a Ralphs song that first appeared on Mott the Hoople’s 1972 breakthrough LP, All the Young Dudes. It’s atmospheric and moody and I like it a lot, if only because it breaks somewhat from the band’s template. The big bashing power chords are muted on this one; and unlike the album’s first two cuts, its priapism isn’t accompanied by caveman slavering. Why, it’s almost subtle, although that might be pushing things a bit. I like the “Oooooohs” and Ralphs’ keyboards and overall this one isn’t ripe for parody, as Killdozer parodied “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad,” which come to think about it I can’t believe isn’t on this compilation. As for “Electricland” I don’t have much to say about it, other than that it too breaks the band’s template, with Ralphs eschewing his usual power chords for occasional lightning riffs, and the presence of keyboards of all types. Rodgers also seems to be holding back for once, and “Electricland” illustrates the point I was trying to make at the beginning; it’s not startlingly dumb, and something is lost thereby. These guys were made to hit you over the head with rocks, and even if you thought their songs were silly they still stuck with you like a 3-day hangover.
If Bad Company demonstrates anything, it’s that dumb can lead you to some interesting places, but will let you down in the end. I certainly prefer their troglodytic approach to rock over the subtleties of, say, The Police or The Killers, but in the end the only way you can enjoy a song like “Can’t Get Enough” is at the level of kitsch. It reminds me of that Grand Funk album cover with the guys all standing around in cave man clobber. And come to think of it, why didn’t I include Grand Funk in my short list of dumb bands? Because they wrote “We’re an American Band,” that’s why. Bad Company never wrote an indispensible song; why, they could hardly gather together enough decent material to put on a “best of” compilation. But despite it all I have a soft spot for them. Perhaps it’s “Shooting Star,” or “Bad Company,” or the so dumb it’s brilliant “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” Or, and this is probably what it really comes down to, I really like Mick Ralphs’ amazing ability to play riffs so big they could crush houses. He was Jimmy Page wearing two-ton boots. That may not sound like much, but then again we’re in the middle of nowhere, far from art rock and amongst Bad Company, and Brian Eno is nowhere in sight.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
