Bad Company
Dangerous Age

Introduced by a curious transgressive cover, or rather ethically incorrect, this album is the best among those that can be assigned to the "phase 2" of Bad Company, consisting of four works published between 1986 and 1992, easily distinguishable from the rest of the discography due to the high and penetrating voice of the frontman (and composer) of that period: Brian Howe.

Compared to his illustrious predecessor Paul Rodgers, Howe takes away much of the blues nuances and infuses AOR and almost pop components, making Bad Company's proposal significantly more commercial, without slipping into the sycophantic or the soft. The two founding members, Simon Kirke (drummer, formerly of Free with the same Rodgers, a hammer) and Mick Ralphs (guitar, ex-Mott the Hoople, a great riffeur), build a convincing and compelling hard rock, on which Howe imposes his melodic taste, not sparing in screams and gritty performances. After all, his previous engagement was with the group of the very loud American guitarist Ted Nugent, who is certainly no softie.

The virtuous, historical characteristic of Bad Company to keep the music extremely simple, yet tremendously effective, is more than ever confirmed by this almost dozen of songs: no one overplays, the solos are compact and brief, the guitar and bass lines are bare and driving, the sounds are excellent (behind the console, there's a skilled producer, Terry Thomas) although inevitably eighties and therefore a bit too reverberated.

The songs are more or less equivalent; everyone can choose their favorites. My absolute favorite is track number three, "No Smoke Without a Fire": its riff in E is a real blow, at the same time defused and dynamized by a second funky little guitar playing around it, noticeable only during the (gigantic) syncopations. It is from these seemingly minor execution insights that one perceives the class of these musicians: it is, after all, the same strong and accessible hard rock of the Kiss, only much more... decent, purged of all the clichés and easy-to-catch elements.

Notable is also "Shake it Up", perfectly adorned a little in the funky style by the duel, for refined palates, between a bouncing Fender Stratocaster and a fat Gibson Les Paul in pursuit. Mick Ralphs is truly a great guitarist, especially in rhythm. He plays few things and all beautiful... the songs of his group stand primarily thanks to a couple of his clear phrasing insights, so that Kirke's partner only needs to keep time solidly in his way, and the singer to put in some good melody (but nothing special).

The blues ballad "Something About You", dragging and resonant, episodically breaks the otherwise lively and sustained rhythm of this album, ultimately a work of good classic rock, anchored to the eighties but much drier and humbler than the average of the time. In other words, this is one of those good pages of rock from that decade, which was nevertheless swept away along with teased hair, arrow-shaped guitars, and leggings by that unheard-of drastic and excessive clean slate of the mid-nineties.

Bad Company, bolstered by its glorious history and its quality, managed to stay cohesive until 1996 (no longer with Howe but with a third, fantastic singer in the person of Robert Hart) before throwing in the towel and resigning themselves to being very talented, but out of fashion. The last, relatively more recent reunions finally, again with Rodgers as in the beginning, don't count: pure revival.