BAD CO.: Jumpin’ Pumpin’ Music

Stuffed buffalo heads crowd the desert arena's trophy case. All that separates you from the herd's inert stampede is about 95 years and a thin sheet of glass. Glass which reflects another essentially extinct creature of the same era; a noble red savage squats across the aisle...updated by green army fatigues whose pockets hold protruding bottles of Mad Dog 20-20. Some of the cheap swill dribbles out of his mouth, coating his hairless, crimson chin.

It's showtime at the Phoenix Collosseum and Bad Co. is on stage.

"A burning sky, a big thunderclap with a sun rising off in the sky," in Bad Co. drummer Simon Kirke's words or "5000 sunburned Gila monsters, up on their little hind claws, humping the air in unison to an hour and forty-five minute orgasm that's nothing less than pure greasy pleasure," in mine.

Phoenix is the eighth gig on the band's 50-city tour and their musical jiz is just starting to gel and squirt. As with most Supergroups these days, the battle plan for penetrating all that territory is to set up three general field headquarters in rented homes in centrally located cities, from which the boys in the band can depart; (on their own Lear Jet, natch), permeate any particular concert hall with their musical love juice and then retreat back to camp for rest and recuperation.

I was assigned to catch the Arizona show, fly back with the band to their Western HQ in Palm Springs and interview the guys the following day.

First to meet the press was the aforementioned and self-described "flamboyant" skin-beater of the group, Simon Kirke. Simon's probably the most polite member of this entourage, stepping right up, saying hello and introducing himself on the plane the night before. He is also probably the most loquacious (at least from what I was able to perceive) and certainly presented the most "quotable quotes." For example, when I asked Paul Rodgers, Bad Co.'s good boy gone bad front man and vocalist extraordinaire, whether he felt any injustice had been done by the majority of the rock press in their denigrating the band as brainless machismo gizmoes, he thought for a lengthy moment and then blurted out,

"I just don't like to take any shit from anyone." No more, no less. (But more on this goober later!) Whereas Simon, sitting on the edge of his rented couch in his rented home, studiously converting a Thai stick into the fattest spliff north of Jamaica, offered the following rebuttal which developed into a twohour conversation.

"People have a definite image of us. A preconceived image like the macho bluesy, ballsy sock-it-right-betweenthe-eyes sort of image. Which I think we had when we first started because we really wanted to make our mark the first time out."

Then your macho image just came out of the enthusiasm to get the band underway?

"No, we were macho before we were in Bad Co. The wife tells me I'm macho...I've always been sort of an athletic guy."

(Athletic indeed. If it wasn't for the Chinese dew-rag that he wears to keep his long blond hair out of his face when he's drumming, Kirke's onstage wardrobe would make him feel quite at home in any NFL spring training camp.)

Meanwhile another "sort of athletic guy," Muhammed Ali, appears briefly on the silent color TV across the room.

"My Guv'ner! I love that man!" Kirke exclaimed, referring to Ali. "He's a gas. He don't make no compromises. He calls his own shots. We're in a very lucky position now because we can do that, too. We can say, 'Well, we'd like to play here, this area and then go on to that area,' whereas before we had to go...wherever! Anywhere; 'play here, here...get the name around.' We did that on the last tour and it nearly fuckin' killed us.

"Although, this tour is equally big; we're doing 50 cities, which is a lot, only we're doing it in a more comfortable style."

Comfortable style? It's more like a royal style, what with all the members having their own luxury homes complete with swimming pools, Jacuzzis, and lawn tennis courts... their own goddamn jet complete with braless Charlie's Angels-style stewardesses to keep their glasses full of the best alcohol and their tummies full of food that's better than you can get in most restaurants.

There are melodic sides to us. We don't like to be known as a HARD ROCK band... SimonKirke

"But by keeping us comfortable we can perform very strongly on every date," Simon retorts while passing a second joint to Desiree, his wife; one of the two string bikini-clad women lounging about, making yours truly drool so much that I have a hard time spitting out my questions. I eventually slobber out that I overheard one of Atlantic Records' shooters say that he had never seen the band so tight.

"That's nice. We're much more confident now."

Is confidence the secret to being a successful band?

"If I knew the secret, man, I wouldn't be sittin' here! I wouldn't be playing drums...I'd be out making millions of dollars. I don't know what the secret is...other than timing, of course...just coincidence."

Rock fans are fortunate that Simon doesn't know the key to having a successful band, because they wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing and hearing one of the most powerful drummers drumming. Kirke's style is more than simple raw power, though. He beats with a conviction that gives Bad Co. the slickest most grinding-steady musical spine humps anywhere. (He's also one of the very few drummers who can pull off a drum solo onstage without putting off the audience. Besides just being interesting to listen to, Simon has these little pressure-sensitive electronic gimmicks under his drum heads which somehow connect to the lighting system, providing the eeriest-looking rainbow of color this typewriter jockey has ever seen; hallucinating or otherwise. No shit.)

"Well, success to me is progressing every night," Simon responds to my suggestion that he doesn't seem very satisfied with his band's level of success. "You can always improve your performance. Success is sticking your neck out, going after a challenge and meeting it. We try to do that on every gig"

How does he gauge whether or not he's progressing and therefore being successful?

"By playing the numbers differently every night, but still...having a certain closeness within the band. There's a lot more understanding that goes between the four of us now—by having that you can explore more musical channels. You don't just have to stick to the beat or the arrangement; you can explore different avenues. I think this is what we have gained by having been together for over four years now. Like, I prefer to drive around scenic valleys instead of straight down the freeway...and that's what we try to do in our music. Oh, fuck me...I sound like Captain Beefheart! But you get my drift."

Ha! Then the next thing you'll be saying is that Bad Co. will become more melodious over the years!

"Well.," Simon chuckles, "Not so much melodious as varied...adding little embellishments so that the sound becomes more varied.. .but still keeping that hard thing. I think that would be a progression or at least on the right track.

"There are melodic sides to us. We don't like to be known as a HARD ROCK BAND, you know—capital letters. I mean, we are rock 'n' rollers— we can play rock with the best of them, but I think our appeal is that we suggest rather than dictate. We don't overkill, you know. ..we're not 'getting up there and kicking their heads in' type of band.

But doesn't that contradict your macho image?

"Well, we do it with a lot of machoness!"

Touche.

Simon began constructing a third doobie as I asked if it didn't go hand in hand with the" band's macho, hard guy mystique; that the main theme running through virtually all their songs is something like "Let's make love."

"That's true...our music has certain sexual nuances—for want of a better word. And I don't think you'll find a better word than nu-ances," the thoroughly relaxed drummer confided.

"Like, 'Feel Like Makin' Love,' 'Rock Steady,' and 'Can't Get Enough' are real explicit."

But it's more than just the titles of the songs...

"Oh, you're right. The actual pulse of the thing is very..." (Kirke makes a fist with his right hand and begins rhythmically slapping it in and out of the palm of his right hand; his forearm pumping like a fleshy piston.)

Throbbing?

"Yeah, there! That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, I'd say that's a definite part of our style. It took a while to develop it."

Well, now that Bad Co. has got it, are they going to take it out and use it to muscle their way to the very pinnacle of good old in 'n' out rock 'n' roll idoldom?

"We don't worry about it. We don't try to topple anyone off their throne, 'cause they have their throne and we have ours, so to speak. There's no point in competing with bands that are already established. You can learn, from them, though. Like an apprentice learns from a master. You can learn, but you develop your own style from that learning."

So Bad Co. evolved from several different influences into a hump 'em pump 'em sexual style all their own?

"I hope you write that, 'cause that was right on."

(Consider it done.)

"Yeah, you've got to develop your own style if you want to succeed to any real extent in this business. That holds true for most anything, I think. If you just go with the breeze, you'll go anywhere. If you think thaCWell, what I'm doing isn't workin' out, so I'll follow this kind of trend 'cause it's popular,' then you're not going to get anywhere. The only way you can become a success is to have a definite style; one that's going to make a wind, not fuckin' go with it."

Pouit!

Desiree, who had earlier wandered out of the room, wandered back in and asked if she could fix anyone a drink. Simon requested a "vodka and orange please, love." Desiree placed a comforting hand upon her hubby's shoulder and in a consoling voice, lowered the boom:

"There is no vodka.. .we drank it last night."

"Oh, me," Simon sighed.

"You notice," he shouted, "This is what I mean. I'm not in the lap of luxury. I have no vodka."

Waaaaaaah!

The Kirkes were finally successful in booting me out graciously, so they could watch the Ali fight on the tube and so I could be shuttled over to Paul Rodgers' hideaway..

After an oddly picturesque drive through several winding back streets, Sam Aizer—a very helpful Swan Song publicist—and I pulled up to the vocalist's retreat. Once inside, introductions were made and we took seats around the TV, featuring the same Ali fight we just left at Simon's.

"Would you like a beer, Eric?" (My real name.)

"No thanks, Paul."

"Oh, that's too bad. I was hoping you would," so I could have you bring me one."

Ha, ha, ha ya prick; (Sam gets up to fetch Rodgers a Coors.) So it's all true about you being just another lazy ass rock star, waited on hand and foot, just sitting around getting fat?

"No, I like to stay pretty active, really. I like to swim and play a little volleyball out in back."

Paul's place was unique, not only because of the mirrored walls, but because of a championship size pingpong table positioned in the middle of the living room. I asked if this sissy game was part of his "pretty active" activity. I was challenged to a game, but declined. Sam, however, was eager to oblige.

As the two Swan Song employees volleyed for the serve, I noted that Rodgers had trimmed his once long, shaggy black mane down to a young professional dry look bouffant (all the better to see his bluer than Paul Newman blue eyes and ruddy little boy complexion). I commented on the new clean-cut image.

"Imagesare bullshit," came Rodgers' reply, as fast as a backhand volley that, set Sam whiffing at the dry Palm Springs air. The agile rock star grinned at his triumph; shutting out interviewer and publicist all in one fell swoop.

Sam scrambled to retrieve the pingpong ball as I scrambled to think of another question, but before the ball was back in play and before my mouth was in motion, Rodgers' was already expounding on his own.

"Someone's image is just what anyone could perceive it to be. That doesn't have anything to do with what the person's really like."

I was impressed that Rodgers could remain so philosophical as he was diving to return a vicious Aizer volley. But as a diligent dilletante rock reporter, I was more • interested in determining Paul's favorite color (which turned out to be blue, by the way), than engaging in a discussion of cognitive theory, so I changed the subject.

Do you have anything to say in

TURN TO PAGE 71. defense of the criticisms of Bad Co. being just a bunch of dummies who can only play three chord grunt grunt boogie?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 49.

"Gee, Eric, I don't know..." Rodgers leans back and then leaps forward to meet Sam's long lob with a soccer-style head butt which actually lands fair and scores a point! "I dropped out of school before I was twelve."

Paul Rodgers seemed to be a natural at everything he did. Singing of course; dancing—even the Soul Train kids can't touch him—sports, if you happen to consider table tennis a sport; and even comedy as it turned out, since Sam was to later assure me that Paul was just jiving about being a dropout.

More of Rodgers' zingers:

How do you feel about the way the people at your record company are taking care of you?

"Well, the band does keep a lot of people out of the unemployment lines."

What are you going to be doing on your three-day vacation in Palm Springs?

"Why, is that an offer?"

In genuine Anita Bryant-baiting tradition, I stammered a reply of "No. I ain't no homo, but thanks anyway." (Lousy pervert. Jimmy Page and he ought to get together and compare their china collections. Or have they already?)

As the "P-P" match wound up 2-0 in Rodgers' favor (nice effort on the part of Aizer, though), the singer asked the time, announced that he was late to pick up yet another date at the airport and told Sam and I that we were leaving.

Not only the above encounter, but indeed Paul Rodgers himself could be summed up in one succinct phrase: Short, but sweet.

The sun was setting as we arrived at yet a third Better Homes & Garden award-winning abode to await guitarist Mick Ralphs' appearance for the final segment of the interview.

I was informed that Mick and Bad Co. bassist Boz Burrell had just started a "backroom jam session with some local musicians over at Palm Springs Music." I sadly went to take a seat and resign myself to a "one half of Bad Co. feature," but before my backside hit the sofa, an out-of-breath Ralphs came running into the room to shake my hand and apologize for being late. I marveled at the rare phenomenon of so much consideration from a rock star, and assured the guitarist that we'd just arrived ourselves.

"We met on the plane last night over an ear of corn," was Mick's next remark,. "Right?"

Right. Gulping down one of several screwdrivers, having previously cleaned my dinner plate of all but a solitary com cob, (An old hillbilly once told me that com was bad for the liver so I never touch it.) I noticed Ralphs wandering from person to person, eyeing their empty plates. When he got to me, or more specifically my plate, his eyes bugged out, saying hello and asking if I was going to eat my corn. I told him to help himself. It was horrible. Gnashing fangs punctured the helpless little yellow bodies in a slobbering spray of dripping saliva and squirting digestive juices. The loud pounding crunch of hulk encrusted molars competed with the roar of the jet's engines backing down for the landing and won. Stray victims, somehow escaping the voracious assault on their persons, were

propelled by the crude force of flapping lips and flew around the cabin like shrapnel. My left shoe was seriously wounded. How could I forget?

Hailing from the Ron Wood/Jeff Beck school of nose, Mick Ralphs proudly announced his loyalty to the Chuck Berry school of guitar.

Originally I came to the Bad Co. concert more than a little doubtful of actually being impressed, but came away from it feeling very much impressed with the dynamics of their stage show. All due primarily to the way the group functions as one solidly stroking shaft of musical penis erectus, but especially to Ralphs' ability to so smoothly blend so many styles of guitaring into such a superlative technique all his own.

Come on, Mick—you can hear elements of every guitarist from Atkins to Zoot-Hom Rollo in your playing. You chew up notes almost as gluttonously as you chew up corn.

"Well, I try."

So how come you stay so elemental on your records?

"It's true, I do play a lot more things onstage, partly because I get so inspired when I see and hear the audience. When I'm recording I lay a real basic rhythm track down first and then I go back and add solos that I can work in between the chords, so that when I do a final track, I can play the whole thing at once without having to over-dub. I don't want it to come out like there's 3000 guitars playing at once. Like someone we're both well aware of. By the time we're playing a number onstage, I know the tune real well and can add new things here and there."

Mick was in the process of explaining how much better it is for Bad Co., as a band, to have such comfortable accomodations and more time between dates, when a very polluted Boz Burrell careens into the room and flops down on the bed.

" 'Elio, 'ow's it going?"

Pretty good, Boz. We were just talking about how much fun you guys are having on this tour. Are you having lots of fun, Boz?

"DON'T ASK ME, CHIEF! 'OW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW?"

Sam had warned me about Boz.

There's no need for concern, though, because the fairy tale will have a happy end, as fairies are wont to do (no pun intended, Anita). It really is like Ted Nugent says: "Thinking is the beginning of deterioration in rock 'n' roll."

You won't have to worry about deterioration as you go to see Bad Co. when they come into and all over your town. You'll be having too much fun.