RIP Mick Ralphs - By Bob Lefsetz

Reposting Bob Lefsetz' tribute to Bad Company/Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs, because I thought it was perfect.

Bob Lefsetz wrote such a perfect tribute to guitarist Mick Ralphs that I asked him for permission to run it here, which he graciously granted. Bob’s Lefsetz Letter is a must-read. sign up for it here. You won’t regret it. -AP

I really don’t want to write another obituary, but I don’t want Mick Ralphs to be overlooked as he too often was in the two big bands he was a member of.

Mott the Hoople was dominated by Ian Hunter, even though the band’s initial single was an instrumental cover of “You Really Got Me,” long before Diamond Dave and the Van Halens did their version of this Kinks classic.

There was a buzz on that first Mott the Hoople album, it had the aforementioned Kinks cover, and it also featured a distinctive album cover, M.C. Escher’s “Reptiles,” which I studied in the bins. As for buying an LP based on the cover, I never did that, who would? And “You Really Got Me” was all over underground FM radio, which was burgeoning in the New York market with multiple stations, and I saw the band open for the Traffic reunion at Fillmore East in the spring of 1970, but the album was not a commercial success, and the three Atlantic LPs which followed the eponymous debut were not either, even though “Brain Capers” got good reviews. It was a different era, if a label signed you they stuck with you, especially the English acts, but not forever, Mott eventually jumped to Columbia, however…

The other big cut on the debut was “Rock and Roll Queen,” which was Mott’s signature cut before “All the Young Dudes,” and it was composed by Mick Ralphs. That’s why I’m writing this, not only was Ralphs’s playing overlooked, but his songwriting ability. “Rock and Roll Queen” was an Ian Hunter tour-de-force, the average punter had no idea that Mick had composed it.

And by the time of “All the Young Dudes”… The story was that Bowie wrote and produced the number, and I don’t want to take anything away from the way Ian Hunter twists the words and emotes vocally, but that indelible guitar work, that was Mick Ralphs.

And if you weren’t concentrating on Ian Hunter in the band, your eyes drifted to the tall and gussied up Pete “Overend” Watts, with his platform boots. Mick Ralphs was just the guitar player.

But I bought that album, which bore the moniker of the hit song. I’d read it was good, but also I had to own “All the Young Dudes.” The LP never caught fire, you never heard another track on the radio, but if you owned it, on the second side…

There was a Hunter/Ralphs number “One of the Boys” that is great straight ahead rock and roll with attitude, and then there is…

“Ready for Love/After Lights,” which was remade on the initial Bad Company album, but as good as Paul Rodgers’s vocal is, the original is a completely different experience, that sets you free to drift, something that’s been lost in today’s in-your-face era. Furthermore, Mick SANG IT! His weak voice adding gravitas.

The follow-up to the “All the Young Dudes” album, entitled “Mott,” was solid throughout and more commercially successful, even though there was not a huge hit single. HOWEVER, “All the Way from Memphis” opened the not yet legendary Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and Ralphs wrote the driving opening track on the second side with Ian, entitled “Drivin’ Sister,” truly the second best song on the album…

And then Mick left. Replaced by a man named Ariel Bender, who was really Luther Grosvenor from Spooky Tooth, and the ensuing record wasn’t bad, Mr. Bender could pick the notes, but he could not add the flavor Mick Ralphs did and the band broke apart, Ian Hunter went solo and…

Started off with a lot of hype and then faded until he switched to the nascent in America Chrysalis label and delivered a classic, “You’re Never Alonie With a Schizophrenic.”

Meanwhile, Mick Ralphs was the guitarist in one of the biggest bands in the world, the first signed to Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label, Bad Company, where Paul Rodgers showed that he was more than a one hit wonder, that “All Right Now” was just the beginning.

But in that previous band…it is well established that Paul Kossoff was one of the best guitarists EVER! So not only did it look like Ralphs was slotted into a replacement Free, with Simon Kirke from that band on the drums, but almost no one could live up to the talent of Paul Kossoff, whom Paul Rodgers told me was the best guitarist he ever worked with, and don’t forget that he worked with Jimmy Page in the Firm and fronted Queen with Brian May.

But, once again, Ralphs’s songwriting talents were overlooked, still are. It’s one thing to be able to play, but to compose? And don’t ever forget, Bad Company was a guitar-dominated group, and Mick was the guitarist. Paul played occasionally, but it was Mick who did the heavy lifting, and go no respect.

Bad Company 1975 promo phot

It was MICK who wrote Bad Company’s debut smash, “Can’t Get Enough.” Yup, you might have forgotten that, if you ever even knew it.

Mick also wrote “Movin’ On” on the second side of the first album, a track in the vein of “One of the Boys” and “Drivin’ Sister,” and just as good.

But it was really the second album that broke Bad Company wide, that made the band ubiquitous. That’s right, as huge as the debut was, “Straight Shooter” was even BIGGER! And all the wankers on the Rock Hall of Fame committee seemed to have forgotten this until this very year. I don’t want to get into a pissing match, but KISS was never a match for Bad Company, KISS was about the live show, Bad Company was first and foremost about the music! And “Straight Shooter” opened with a bang, Mick Ralphs’s “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad.”

But the true breakthrough cut on the second album was the second song, with its stinging guitar emphasis, a Ralphs/Rodgers co-composition, a song that you heard everywhere in 1975 and those addicted to the radio still remember, FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE! Yup, that staccato guitar, wow!

And how about that guitar on the two opening cuts on the second side, “Deal with the Preacher” and “Wild Fire Woman”? Just listen! It’s not how fast you play, but what you wring from the instrument, a sound, a soul, a feeling that goes alternately straight to the heart and straight to the genitals.

As for the third album, not equal to what came before but still with merit, it opens with Mick Ralphs’s “Live for the Music,” my personal anthem:

“Some people say I’m no good

Laying in my bed all day

But when the nighttime comes I’m ready to rock

And roll my troubles away”

I’ve gotten sh*t for DECADES about being a late riser, a creature of the night. In a world where everybody boasts about how early they awaken, those in the arts know that nothing good happens during the day, greatness arrives after dark, oftentimes after midnight, when the rest of the world is asleep and you can stretch out and be yourself, create. And when you create in these hours you can’t fall asleep thereafter. Creative work takes mental energy that you just can’t come down from, which leaves you up all night, just like a band that’s left the arena stage unable to shut their eyes on the bus.

But then, but THEN, comes the PIECE-DE-RESISTANCE! My absolute favorite Bad Company song, one that I sing to myself and play CONSTANTLY, “Simple Man.”

“Simple Man” is a masterpiece from start to finish, the music and the lyrics, the guitar-playing and the vocal, but the key comes forty seconds in:

“Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me

Oh, you can’t fake it

Freedom is the only song, sing a song for me

Oh, we’re gonna make it”

Absolute free speech, all the right wing b.s. parroted under the rubric of freedom, that’s not real freedom and that’s not what Bad Company is singing about, the meaning I take from this number. Rather it’s the freedom to be ME! And believe me, I’ve run up against this my entire life, people criticizing me for what I say and who I am, I just want to be left alone to be myself, but since I’m not just like everybody else, this is a problem. The bands and the music they used to play represented this ethos, they lived in an alternate world, they were a beacon to those of us who didn’t fit in. Please, at this late date, let me be me. Let everybody be themselves if they’re not hurting you. Yes, what difference does it make to you if someone has an abortion or is trans… Give them their FREEDOM!

And then there’s the Bad Company “comeback” album, when their previous record was a disappointment, when they’d disappeared for years, when nothing was expected, the group came back with DESOLATION ANGELS! Mick wrote “Oh, Atlanta,” which Alison Krauss employed to cross over to the mainstream.

So Mick Ralphs was more than a guitar player, MUCH MORE, but he was a great guitar player TOO! All those legendary Bad Company records, that was HIM, up front and center, that was MICK!

And he had a stroke nearly a decade ago and now Mick Ralphs just passed.

This is not just another faceless member of a group, a support player, sans Mick Ralphs THERE IS NO BAD COMPANY! Paul Rodgers never had as much commercial success after he stopped working with Mick. And let’s not forget Mott the Hoople.

But everybody forgets Mick Ralphs.

But not me. You see it’s all personal. How the music hits you. Sure, you can stand with tens of thousands and enjoy a live performance, but the essence is how the sound hits you, yourself, and only yourself. It’s what goes in your ears.

Speaking of “Desolation Angels,” how about that intro to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy”?

That’s what it was, our rock and roll fantasy. It’s gone now, but the music still remains, even though those lauding artists with a way with words and not much more and pop singers want to forget this era completely. Sure, to a degree it’s cock rock. But sans this sound so many of today’s young males feel lost and alienated. Used to be this music made them feel alive and whole. As for the girls… Just go backstage, to the stage door at a Bad Company show, call them groupies, call them whatever you want, but these women were drawn to the sound and the men who made it, no one wants to be raped, but that does not mean people don’t want to have SEX! And this was the music that got them excited and they f*cked to. You need to get loose and into the mood, and the way you did that was to put on a record. And you can dance to a disco track, but it doesn’t have the raw sexual energy, the stripped-down human essence of rock, what did Aerosmith sing, WALK THIS WAY?

These Bad Company records stand up. Because Paul Rodgers could sing and Mick Ralphs could play and both could write, and Simon Kirke and Boz Burrell provided a rock steady rhythm section.

Bad Company and I can’t deny.

BAD COMPANY ‘TIL THE DAY I DIE!

Copyright 2025, Bob Lefsetz. Thanks to Bob for allowing me to re-post this great article. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter.