Bad Company ~ Live At Wembley (DVD review) ... Back & badder than ever!

Style: classic rock, hard rock, live
Label: Eagle Vision
Year: 2011
Home: Britain

Concert location: Wembley Arena, England
Year Recorded: 2010
Length: 110 minutes
Bonus Features: band interviews

Members: Paul Rodgers ~ vocals/guitar/tambourine/piano
Mick Ralphs ~ guitar
Simon Kirke ~ drums

Additional: Howard Leese ~ guitar/mandolin/piano
Lynn Sorensen ~ bass

I can't count the number of friends a generation older than me who rave about Paul Rodgers as one of the greatest of 1970's singers. I've never understood it as The Firm with Jimmy Page was good but I felt Rodgers was vocally tame in a desire to sell commercial rock over bluesy rock while his blues belting with Queen always seemed for me mismatched with the camp Freddie Mercury spirit. For some strange reason, partly due to my youth, I never got into Rodgers' Free & Bad Co. catalogs. These two bands have always mysteriously floated just outside my radar outside of being familiar with their chart hits. I know see my loss. Returning to Jimmy Page to set the scene ... I grew up loving Led Zeppelin but had a musical revelation when I finally got to see concert footage of them. They're magicians in the studio but on stage they become gods as its one thing to overdub & overdub to find perfection over a long period of trial & error, but its another hitting it just as powerfully on stage in under two hours with a limited supply of instruments & back-up musicians, if any. I've heard a bit of Bad Co. but was never struck enough to hunt up their studio albums. But, now, seeing them live, or at least 3 of the original members, I'm getting that Led Zep revelation all over again. The now over middle-aged reunited Bad Co. present an unbelievable live show in their first U.K. tour in 30 years. Now, I truly can say that I understand what all the bragging of Paul Rodgers is about. If you've been like me & think he's 'just another' 70's singer let me point you to this DVD, or CD if you choose to get that version, to change your mind. Before you start listing his contemporaries who are still performing & may have, in their heyday, been far better than him ... let's be honest - many of them have not retained their voices ... Rodgers has & if anything has better control than ever ... or maybe he always did & now I'm just realizing what I've missed. He's in prime form, young singers could take a few lessons, where the natural high of the stage gives his voice an extra kick. But, then, one might also say that after all these years, different bands & solo albums, Bad Co. is home & it's always good to be home. Some reunited bands show their age & remind us why rock'n'roll has always been primarily a young kids sport, but while the guys may not be a band of top tier rock stars whose names immediately call up tons of images they are definitely rockers that are having as much fun as a garage band at their first show in the high school cafeteria. Actually, I'm reminded by how many middle-aged rockers today are disproving the notion that being old isn't much fun & that rock'n'roll is for the young only. Even new 'boys' - guitarist Howard Leese, most famous for being a founding member of Heart, & extroverted bassist Lynn Sorensen - help kick things up like this is also their first time & they're out to prove something versus laying back as the 'other' guys. There's a mix of nerves & excitement that opens the show. When the audience takes over vocals of opener "Can't Get Enough" you can tell the band is a little bit surprised that after so long people are still enjoying the music. But, the nerves quickly break into excitement as the band pulls out all the stops in one of undoubtedly the best reunions of the past few years. Reunited bands, particularly those with new/replacement members, often come off as tributes/cover bands rather than the real thing, which was one criticism of Rodgers time with Queen. These guys, new boys & all, are the real thing no doubt. The great thing about Bad Co. is they remind the forgetful just how much 70's music rocked. The Journeys, Black Sabbaths, Jefferson Starships & other bands that pushed the boundaries might have eclipsed bands that played it somewhat safe like Bad Co., but on some level Bad Co. might be more responsible for the 80's hair metal than many others. Certainly few bands sound like Sabbath, but Bad Co. have the same vitality as Bon Jovi. They definitely rock as hard as what would follow in years ahead, sans wasting their time with costumes, overly mellow-dramatic power ballads, "Simple Man" & "Ready For Love" being the closest, & other weaknesses of the era. Bad Co. is bad rock'n'roll plain & simple & I want to have as much youth as them when I hit their age in a couple decades. Sadly, a lot of young folks will probably write the DVD off as being a bunch of old guys. The loss was mine & now theirs. A great bonus features include pre/post-band interviews including the three original members together, who are just normal guys who seem genuinely surprised at how good the music is & looking forward to going out with this final show with a bang, plus the new American boys that look more like rockers than their bandmates. Note that the DVD, versus the CD, features the additional track of "Burnin' Sky", which is a real vocal powerhouse & worth spending the extra money for the video. 

The Firm ~ The Firm (aka debut) (album review) ... With a firm place in music history!

Style: hard rock, blues-rock
Label: Atlantic Records
Year: 1985
Home: England

Members: Paul Rodgers ~ vocals/guitars
Jimmy Page ~ guitars
Tony Franklin ~ bass/keyboards
Chris Slade ~ drums/b. vocals

Additional: Steve Dawson ~ trumpet
Paul "Shilts" Weimar, Willie Garnett, Don Weller ~ sax
Sam Brown, Helen Chappelle, Joy Yates ~ b. vocals

This is one of those albums everyone has in their vinyl collection ... & probably don't want to part with it but neither listen to it much either. Even when Paul Rodgers joined Queen ... the album probably got pulled out, looked at nostalgically & maybe Side A listened to ... & well, that says it all about this wanna-be powerhouse. This is one of the legendary supergroups of the 80's, up there with Asia & GTR, staying together long enough to release 2 albums, but the idea is stronger than the outcome as became particularly obvious to the follow-up to this debut Mean Business. It's got all the pieces there for something great - all the recognizable musical bits that forged their own legacies decades earlier - but something just never clicked for The Firm. The foundation just wasn't ... firm enough. Paul Rodgers of Bad Company & Free on vocals is in fine form as always, albeit, as demonstrated in his work with Queen, it's the limited range of a blues belter who doesn't always let loose enough that is his weakest trait. Led Zeppelin guitar god Jimmy Page creates his trademarked layered riffs & arrangements that at moments are reminiscent of later Zeppelin, albeit few of the songs ever really seem to rock out or even dig deep into his blues roots that laced so much of the Zep repertoire. Putting this together with his later reunion with Robert Plant one begins to realize how much John Paul Jones affected Plant's arrangements giving them a spice he seems to often miss & pushing Zeppelin to the forefront of music. Steady beats are laid down by famous bald-headed drummer Chris Slade of Manfred Mann & Uriah Heep & later AC/DC. The relatively unknown Tony Franklin from Roy Harper is on bass, his largest credit being the introduction of the fretless bass into metal, playing a thick & funky bass that gives the album a definite 80's feel. The Firm largely plays it safe, almost too safe at moments. It's an enjoyable listen & Page is always a pleasure, but his joining with David Coverdale a decade later would be far more exciting. Perhaps one of the problem is that this smells of its obvious commercial appeal, something Led Zeppelin never did, proof being that in Britain they refused to allow the release of singles, while Bad Company & Uriah Heep both existed in the shadows of prog-rock that believed in the art of music over pretty much everything else. Albeit, it should be said The Firm is better than I'm probably describing it & there's a reason somewhere why it appears in everyone's collection. It's just that these musicians are put up to such high expectations that one imagines that the album should be better. These guys came from good bands & would return to them in various ways. The Firm just wasn't meant to be, though it did nothing to damage any reputations.