Bad Company – Desolation Angels (2LP, 45RPM)
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- Paul Rodgers – vocals, guitar, piano, synthesisers
- Mick Ralphs – guitar, keyboards
- Boz Burrell – bass
- Simon Kirke – drums
Written by Paul Rodgers (A1-2, B1, D2), Bad Company (A3), Mick Ralphs (C1-2), Bill Payne (C2), Boz Burrell, Simon Kirke (D1)
2LPs, gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton Printing
Limited numbered edition
Original analog Master tape : YES
Heavy Press : 180g
Record color : Black
Speed : 45 RPM
Size : 12'’
Stereo
Studio
Record Press : Quality Record Pressings
Label : Analogue Productions - Atlantic 75 series
Original Label : Atlantic
Recorded August – September 1978 at Studio Ridge Farm Studio, Surrey, England
Engineered by Tony Patrick
Produced by Bad Company
Sleeve design by Hipgnosis sleeve design
Originally released in March, 1979
Reissued in 2024
Tracks:
Side A:
- Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy
- Crazy Circles
- Gone, Gone, Gone
Side B;
- Evil Wind
- Early In The Morning
Side C:
- Lonely For Your Love
- Oh, Atlanta
- Take The Time
Side D:
- Rhythm Machine
- She Brings Me Love
Reviews:
"By the time Bad Company released Desolation Angels, it was evident that even Rodgers and Ralphs were getting tired of their '70s-styled, conveyor-belt brand of rock & roll, so they decided to add keyboards and some minor string work to the bulk of the tracks. Although this change of musical scenery was a slight breath of fresh air, it wasn't enough to give Desolation Angels the much added depth or distinction that was intended, and only the vocal passion of "Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy" really comes out on top, eventually becoming a gold single. The good news is that Desolation Angels is a noticeable improvement from 1977's Burnin' Sky, with Bad Company's sound taking on a smoother, more polished feel than its predecessor. "Gone, Gone, Gone," "Lonely for Your Love," and "She Brings Me Love" work best in Rodgers' favor, and fans did prove their loyalty, pushing the album to the number ten mark in the U.K. and to number three in the U.S. The campaign toward a new sound does cause a few of the cuts ("Crazy Circles," "Evil Wind") to appear a bit forced and overly glitzy (especially the use of electronic drums), and the album spawns a smattering of a few attractive moments rather than evolving as a complete, constructive listen. Things didn't get much better for Bad Company, and it was after the release of 1982's Rough Diamonds, a much weaker and unattached effort, that Rodgers decided to call it quits." AllMusic Review by Mike DeGagne
"Mick Ralphs, Bad Company‘s lead guitarist, has been quoted as saying he left Mott the Hoople because he “wanted to play a ballsier kind of rock & roll.” There you have it. Ralphs’ description captures the strengths and weaknesses of Bad Company’s erstwhile style in a nutshell: balls, but less in the sense of nervy musical expansion than of macho bullishness and the allocation of brutish power to the most simplistic riffs.
There’s riffing aplenty on Bad Company’s latest, but the balls are constrained by a jockstrap of despair. Desolation Angels reveals qualities about these guys that their earlier work didn’t hint at: wry world-weariness and a bemusement toward the tension between the sexes, plus a querulous, queasy feeling about their own place in all this. It’s as if Bad Company had listened to the product of their ball-brained heirs, Foreigner, and what they heard made them feel scared and scarred, old and depressed.
What’s impressive about Desolation Angels is less the quality of the music than the kind of music the band has now chosen to make. Fully half of the new album consists of medium-tempo ballads, songs as garrulously melancholy as the Jack Kerouac novel from which the LP’s title is taken. Kerouac’s book was an exhausted excoriation of the aging writer’s themes of betrayed friendship and unbalanced love affairs, and that’s also what Paul Rodgers is singing about in such numbers as “Early in the Morning” and “Lonely for Your Love.” Rodgers’ vocals and Ralphs’ guitar playing are every bit as ragged and repetitious as Kerouac’s prose — song for song, there’s a lot of sincere, mediocre work earnestly being committed to vinyl.Fortunately, these individual mediocrities gather a cumulative force that results in a triumph of tone: on Desolation Angels, Bad Company is no longer the bunch of mechanical hedonists they’ve always seemed in the past. Instead, they present themselves as confused, desperate rockers, aching to be admired (both by the fans who’ll buy this record and by the lovers to whom the tunes are addressed) even when they know that admiration — be it professional or romantic — is the most ephemeral of rewards.
The most blatant example of this change in attitude is the album’s most blatant hard rocker, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy,” a bit of self-contemplation made charming by the modesty of its detail. Here, Rodgers holds that, for him, nirvana is but a well-played and well-received Bad Company concert — a nice, if too obviously ingenuous, notion.
Things get slightly more subtle in the moony pastorale, “Early in the Morning,” which sports a vocal from Rodgers that at first sounds like Seals and Crofts but then rises to recall the young Stevie Wonder at his most solemnly sentimental. Yet at least two of the track’s five minutes are slow, surplus boogie music. Bad Company may have discovered the aesthetic advantages of tenderness, but they still can’t come up with compelling, varied melodies to express that feeling.
Only twice do song and sentiment converge to create the group’s desired ballsy-but-brainy combination. The bass and drums that drive “Rhythm Machine” provide a dense, terse hook for what initially seems to be just another salute to the male member. Quickly, however, the title metaphor expands to include the idea that this “machine” works only for its one true love, and will do so all night long — if she wants it to." The Rolling Stone Review by Ken Tucker
Ratings:
Discogs : 3.63 / 5 ; AllMusic : 3 / 5 ; The Rolling Stone Album Guide : 3 / 5