{"id":536552,"date":"2026-03-21T10:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T10:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536552\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T10:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T10:46:12","slug":"bad-company-by-bad-company-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536552\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Company by Bad Company: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be fair to say that things weren\u2019t looking great for the remaining founder members of Free<\/a> when the group parted ways in 1973.<\/p>\n

Their latter years had been marked by discord, much of it prompted by guitarist Paul Kossoff<\/a>\u2019s worsening addictions and increasing unreliability. Bassist Andy Fraser<\/a> had left in disgust the previous year, and there seemed to be little on the horizon for singer Paul Rodgers<\/a> and drummer Simon Kirke. Yet before the year was out, they would record the first album with a new group that would make them more popular than Free had ever been.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was feeling a bit despondent because Free had broken up,\u201d says Kirke. \u201cI met a lady who was Brazilian and she said: \u2018Come down and stay with me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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He ended up in Brazil for three months. But the itch to hit the drums had not disappeared. A call back home to Rodgers to see if anything was happening led to the discovery that the singer had hitched up with Mick Ralphs, newly departed from his position as guitarist with Mott The Hoople<\/a>. Rodgers asked Kirke if he was interested in playing with them. He was.<\/p>\n

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\"Bad\n<\/p>\n

Bad Company in 1974: (from left) Paul Rodgers, Boz Burrell, Mick Ralphs, Simon Kirke (Image credit: Mark Sullivan\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got back I went over to Paul\u2019s house,\u201d Kirke recalls. \u201cMick was there, and that was three-quarters of Bad Company.\u201d It took some months before they brought in bassist Boz Burrell to complete the line-up.<\/p>\n

Most guys are closet outlaws: we wish we could have done this, done that. We pushed the envelope now and again<\/p>\n

Simon Kirke<\/p>\n

As the band rehearsed, a sound emerged: loose-limbed, spacious and with a bluesy swagger that made their hard rock sound a little less hard than it really was. Then came the name: either from a Victorian illustration warning of the perils of keeping bad company (according to Rodgers), or because the singer had seen a poster advertising the western Bad Company (according to Kirke). At which point Rodgers decided the band needed a theme tune. It ended up being one of Kirke\u2019s rare writing credits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn late 1973 there was a Clint Eastwood western,\u201d Kirke says, naming A Fistful Of Dollars, though he must mean High Plains Drifter, which came out in the second half of that year. \u201cWe had this idea about being what they called long riders, who rode across the plains in their long coats, with Winchesters in holsters and tumbleweed blowing across the plain. It was a very romantic image, and Paul was very much enamoured of that picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Bad\n<\/p>\n

Bad Company in 1974 (Image credit: Michael Putland\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

One day, as Bad Company were working out what they were going to be, Kirke paid a visit to Rodgers\u2019s cottage in Surrey. \u201cHe had this huge Yamaha grand piano which dominated the living room. He was playing in E flat minor, which is quite a hypnotic scale. He had this piano phrase, and the lines \u2018Company, always on the run\/Destiny is the rising sun\/I was born with a six-gun in my hand\/Behind the gun I\u2019ll make my final stand.\u2019 That\u2019s all he had.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might not have been much, but Kirke was smitten by what he heard. \u201cI thought: \u2018Wow.\u2019 It\u2019s not in C major, it\u2019s not in G; it\u2019s not in those everyday chords. I pitched in a line here and there, and we helped each other with the middle eight. I think it was done in about an hour. It was basically a spaghetti western set to music, and it\u2019s been our theme song ever since. I still love playing it to this day, and I\u2019ve played it about 675 times.\u201d<\/p>\n

E flat minor is not an easy key for a guitarist, and the group tried moving it to E minor, \u201cbut it didn\u2019t have the same soul as in E flat. So Mick was stuck with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Bad Company – Bad Company (Official Audio) – YouTube
\n\"Bad<\/p>\n

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The song was both a lament and a celebration, a haunting hymn to the power of the imagination to transport four young Englishmen 100 years back in time, and several thousand miles westward. When the first Bad Company album came out, the song resonated with their audience, too, and was quickly established as a staple of the band\u2019s live show.<\/p>\n

We had this idea about being long riders, who rode across the plains in their long coats, with Winchesters in holsters.<\/p>\n

Simon Kirke<\/p>\n

But why would people respond so strongly to a song about 19th-century outlaws? After all, send a Bad Company crowd to the old West and it\u2019s highly unlikely than many of them would have been wearing black and rolling revolvers around their index fingers.<\/p>\n

Kirke laughs. \u201cOnly an Englishman would ask that,\u201d he says. \u201cMost guys are closet outlaws: we wish we could have done this, done that. Certainly when you\u2019re in your early to mid-twenties you could do that \u2013 we pushed the envelope now and then. As much as our wives or girlfriends would let us.<\/p>\n

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\"Bad\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Koh Hasebe\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there\u2019s something about the outlaw that\u2019s quite romantic. Girls like bad guys. They don\u2019t like abusive guys, but they like guys who are a little rough around the edges. So there\u2019s something about being on the wrong side of the law, as long as it\u2019s not too far on the other side of the law, that\u2019s quite appealing to both sexes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the results when he did set out to write, it\u2019s surprising Kirke didn\u2019t contribute more to Bad Company.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy songwriting \u2013 and I wish it could be a little more tough \u2013 has always been a little James Taylorish, a little more ballad-oriented,\u201d he says. \u201cI vent when I play drums \u2013 I\u2019m a tough drummer, a hard-hitting drummer. But it tends to rid me of all the nasty attack that hard songs require. I\u2019m a laid-back guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Mick and Paul took up the reins of songwriting, they did such a good job. I came on board with Weep No More, on the second album. My songs are very melodic, and Paul is a blues singer; he\u2019s not a natural pop singer, and my songs are pop.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all this time, Bad Company\u2019s theme song stirs mixed emotions in Kirke. On the one hand there\u2019s the time-travel element of going back to his youth. On the other there\u2019s the sadness that he will never again get to play it with Ralphs, who had to give up music after a stroke in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be very strange to go on stage without him,\u201d Kirke says. \u201cI\u2019m getting a bit emotional thinking about it now. But Bad Company\u2019s an amazing band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 238 (June 2017)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be fair to say that things weren\u2019t looking great for the remaining founder members of Free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-536552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}