Credit: Far Out / Jim Summaria
November 1st, 2026 · 1:00am GMT
Fresh off the success of their self-titled debut album, Bad Company found themselves in a haunted castle, setting out to craft their next high-stakes hit.
Bad Company were the supergroup of dreams, consisting of the minds of Free’s drummer Simon Kirke and vocalist/guitarist Paul Rodgers, Mott the Hoople’s guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson’s bassist Boz Burrell. Signed to Swan Song, Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant’s label, the odds were ever in their favour.
Once their self-titled album debuted in 1974 to massive success, peaking at number one in the United States and number three in the United Kingdom, the euphoria between the musicians was near palpable. But this did not mean that Bad Company could coast on their debut’s achievement forever.
“All the elements were coming together,” Simon Kirke explained of Bad Company’s post-debut album energy, speaking with Uncut in 2016, “but also, we had to prove that we weren’t a one-hit wonder and that this follow-up to the Bad Company album would stand on its own merit. So there was a little apprehension.”
‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ began with written verses by Rodgers on an acoustic guitar, dating back to when he was on the road with Free in 1968; particularly, in San Francisco, inspired by an unnamed someone that he had met. At the time, he was just 19 years old.
“Life experiences,” he summarised, “I travelled, hitchhiking, up to Rio Nido [California], and camped out in the woods with some people I had met. I was gone for days. It was a wonderful experience to be young and free in America during the ’60s.”
Rodgers brought his song to Ralphs to garner his thoughts, initially presenting something that resembled a country ballad with what the latter remembered as “gentle” lyrics. In turn, Ralphs crafted the heavy chords that dominate its chorus. He described the contrasting energies between the verses and the chorus as the verses “appealing to the ladies, probably more than the men, and then the riff comes in which is all bloody macho”.
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‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ was a country ballad no more: instead, the song transformed into a belting, heavy declaration, in stark contrast to its pining verses, which hear Rodgers profess his adoration for his unnamed muse: “If I had those golden dreams / Of my yesterday,” he sings in one, “I was wrap you in the heaven / We’d feel it dying all the way.” Balanced by the song’s brazen, titular chorus, Bad Company composed an ode to the free-loving energy of the 60s, brought into the following decade for one last time.
For their recording sessions, the group found themselves at Clearwell Castle, a location in Gloucestershire, England, found by their tour manager, Clive Coulson. They were no strangers to haunted studios: Bad Company was recorded at Headley Grange, a haunted mansion in East Hampshire, that presented them with inexplicable occurrences. Clearwell Castle had its own lore of similar oddities transpiring, but that did not stop the likes of Peter Frampton arriving at the space to record, before Bad Company followed suit.
They recorded alongside the “baronial-type” banquets that were held to keep the castle afloat, as Kirke remembered. The band were suddenly in the company of patrons housed at the other end of the castle, dressed in medieval-style, Tudor wardrobes and hosting lavish dinners.
For the following two months, Bad Company made Chearwell Castle their home, complete with a mobile studio built within an Airstream caravan parked outside, intended to replicate the “organic vibe,” as Rodgers described, of recording their first album at Headley Grange.
From these sessions, their sophomore album, 1975’s Straight Shooter, was born, and ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ became, as Rodgers noted, their possible “legacy song”.
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